This dissertation consists of the three independent chapters in the areas of Public Economics and Microeconomic Theory. The first two chapters use experimental and computational techniques to address two important behavioral issues in Public Economics. In particular, the first chapter (with Lise...

Charitable giving in the U.S. totaled more than $300 billion in 2009, amounting to about 2% of GDP.These organizations depend on fundraising activities to generate donations from individuals who provide three-quarters of the funding for charitable organizations.Despite the size and scope of...

We examine the expectational stability (E-stability) of rational expectations equilibrium under optimal interest rate rules in the context of the standard, "New Keynesian" model of the monetary transmission mechanism. We focus on the case where the monetary authority adds interest rate...

We examine the expectational stability (E-stability) of rational expectations equilibrium under optimal interest rate rules in the context of the standard, "New Keynesian" model of the monetary transmission mechanism. We focus on the case where the monetary authority adds interest rate...

The theme of my dissertation is emerging capital markets behavior. I utilize three approaches: institutional, experimental and econometric to study the impact of reforms on capital allocation and stock market operation.In Chapter one, using a unique data set on Chinese provincial savings and...

This dissertation examines the reasons for which a seller may decide to conduct a multi-unit auction sequentially rather than simultaneously. It analyzes the manner in which the information generated during a sequential auction can affect bidding to the seller's benefit and demonstrates the...

The first essay, "Producers and Predators in a Multiple Community Setting" investigates how different ways of organizing the provision of local policing services in a multi-community setting affect the level of criminal activity, the spatial distribution of the population, the cost of policing,...

My dissertation uses game theoretical and experimental approaches to study how individual's behavior in different informational environments affects economic outcomes and motivations for charitable giving. Chapter 2 "Bargaining with Uncertain Value Distributions" studies a bargaining model in...

This dissertation consists of three empirical chapters. The first chapter examines the extent to which real-world agents are rational in making quantitative expectations, an issue over which there is much debate. In this chapter dynamic models for new plant-level survey data are estimated in...

This thesis deals with macroeconomic dynamics. In chapter 1, I study a one-sector growth model withendogenous discount rate of the sort proposed by citet{1}. I extendthe model into a heterogeneous agents model with respect to initialwealth, and investigate whether the wealthdistribution may...