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...

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...

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...

Inefficiencies in private giving are a common occurrence in public good games. In this dissertation, we ask four questions: do subjects recognize the inefficiency due to the lack of coordination on group giving, is there a simple way to overcome this coordination problem, is there a mechanism...

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...

The first chapter of my thesis (co-authored with David N. DeJong, Jean-Francois Richard and Roman Liesenfeld) develops a numerical procedure that facilitates efficient likelihood evaluation and filtering in applications involving non-linear and non-Gaussian state-space models. These tasks...

First chapter of my dissertation uses an EGARCH method and a Stochastic Volatility (SV) method which relies upon Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) framework based on Efficient Importance Sampling (EIS) to model inflation volatility of Turkey. The strength of SV model lies in its success in...

In this dissertation, I develop empirical methods, built on the recent advances in industrial organization, to study charitable giving and fundraising in the charity market. In the first essay, we propose a multiple discrete choice model with differentiated charitable products and estimate the...

This dissertation comprises three essays on theoretical and empirical issues in industrial organization. Chapter 1 outlines the issues explored in the subsequent chapters and briefly describes their conclusions.Chapter 2 explores how product differentiation impacts the incentive compatibility...

In the process of implementing market reforms, many post-socialist countries have struggled to preserve economic and political integration. Using a statistical model of commodity trade, we quantify the evolution of economic integration observed among regions within Russia during 1995-1999, and...