"Teacher unions and their members have long stood as polarizing figures in a vast educational landscape. As in the Western films of the 1920s, policymakers, education reformers, and onlookers often assign union leaders and the teachers they represent either the white hats of heroes or the black...

This PhD dissertation consists of three self-contained chapters in the field of macroeconomics. The first two chapters rely a large scanner data set from the United States. The data set contains detailed pricing and sales information from retail stores as well as comprehensive information on...