This thesis studies two strategies that households may use to keep their consumption smooth in the face of fluctuations in income and expenses: credit (borrowing and savings) and insurance (state contingent transfers between households). The first chapter asks why insurance among households in...

This thesis studies the economics of local labor markets. There are three chapters in the thesis, and each chapter studies how economic outcomes are affected by local labor market conditions. The first chapter studies the incidence of local labor demand shocks. This chapter starts from the...

The first essay provides evidence that banks are liquidity constrained and hold private information about borrowers that hinders substitution of financing sources. Using loan level data from a public credit bureau and exploiting an exogenous shock to bank liquidity, I show that adverse selection...

Since 1999, regional retail and wholesale gasoline markets in the United States have experienced significant price volatility, both intertemporally and across geographic markets. In particular, gasoline prices in California, Illinois and Wisconsin have spiked occasionally well above gasoline...

This thesis is a collection of three empirical essays on the effect of profit incentives on innovation and technology adoption. Chapter 1, written with Daron Acemoglu, investigates the effect of (potential) market size on entry of new drugs and pharmaceutical innovation. Focusing on exogenous...

This thesis is a collection of three essays on exchange rate policies and international capital flows in emerging markets. The first chapter examines the theoretical foundations of the "fear of floating" that has been observed to characterize many emerging market exchange rate regimes. Building...

In the first essay, we investigate which provisions, among a set of twenty-four governance provisions followed by the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), are correlated with firm value and stockholder returns. Based on this analysis, we put forward an entrenchment index based on six...

This dissertation is a collection of three independent essays in theoretical and applied econometrics, organized in the form of three chapters. In the first two chapters, I investigate the properties of parametric and semiparametric fixed effects estimators for nonlinear panel data models. The...

In this thesis, I estimate a structural demand model for prescription drug benefits by Medicare beneficiaries using data from the Medicare HMO program. I then use the utility parameter estimates to explore other questions of interest relating to the elderly's demand for prescription drug...

This thesis is a collection of three theoretical essays on institutions and economic growth. Chapter 1 considers a particular institution: ethnicity. Ethnic, religious and tribal divisions are empirically associated with economic underdevelopment. I construct a model in which groups form...