In this paper, we develop a Heckman selection model with endogenous covariates. Estimation of this model is easy and can be done within any econometrics software which supports maximum likelihood estimation of the Heckman selection model. The most important benefit of our model is that it provides an easy-to-interpret measure of the composition of the fully observed sample with respect to unobservables. As an example, we apply our model to the study of the composition of the female full time full year workforce, as has been done by Mulligan and Rubinstein (Q J Econ 123:10611110, 2008). We find that their conclusion that the female workforce was negatively selected in the late 1970s is robust to accounting for the potential endogeneity of education in a Heckman selection model. However, we find that accounting for endogeneity leads to a huge increase in the estimated returns to education.

We evaluate optimal age-dependent labor income taxes in an environment for which the age-efficiency profile is endogenously determined by human capital investment. The economy is one of overlapping generations in which heterogeneous individuals are exposed to idiosyncratic shocks to their human capital investments, a key element, along with the endogeneity of human capital itself in the determination of optimal age-dependent taxes. Our model is sufficiently rich to study the role of general equilibrium effects, credit market imperfections and different forms of human capital accumulation. The very large welfare gains we find to be generated by age-dependent are lost during the transition to the new steady state if human capital is endogenous.

This paper examines the optimal taxation of families in an environment in which (i) families earning abilities and tastes for children are private information, and (ii) child-rearing requires both parental time and goods. The optimal tax system combines an income tax schedule for childless families with tax credits for families with children. These components insure parents against low earning ability and high taste for children draws respectively. The parental time and cost of goods involved in childrearing have distinct impacts on the shape of optimal child tax credits. In the quantitative part, I estimate these costs and show that they translate into a pattern of optimal credits that is U-shaped in income. The credit to one (two) child families is decreasing over the first 40% (50%) of the income distribution. In addition, the credit for the second child is not equal to the credit for the first, owing to economies of scale in child-rearing. For median-income families, the credit for the second child equals 44% of the credit for the first child. Finally, I offer a simple linear-income dependent credit policy that achieves most of the welfare gain from the optimum.

Using 3+ person households as a proxy for families, I determine that hours worked per person are highest for families making $150K a year. Above that , family members work less hours on average.

Η παρούσα διατριβή εκπληρώνει τις απαιτήσεις για την απόκτηση διπλώματος του Διδάκτορα της Σχολής Ηλεκτρολόγων Μηχανικών και Μηχανικών Υπολογιστών, του Εθνικού Μετσόβιου Πολυτεχνείου. Η παρούσα δουλειά περιγράφει διάφορες μεθόδους ανωνυμοποίησης για την διασφάλιση της Προστασίας Ιδιωτικότητας σε Μη-Σχεσιακά Δεδομένα και πραγματοποιήθηκε στο Εργαστήριο Συστημάτων Βάσεων Γνώσεων και Δεδομένων του ΕΜΠ. Με το πέρας αυτής της δύσκολης και ενδιαφέρουσας διαδρομής νιώθω την ανάγκη να ευχαριστήσω όλους όσους με βοήθησαν. Θα ήθελα να ευχαριστήσω τον Επιβλέποντα Καθηγητή μου, κ. Ιωάννη Βασιλείου για την ευκαιρία που μου έδωσε να ξεκινήσω αυτό το ταξίδι στην επιστημονική έρευνα, για την υποστήριξη και την καθοδήγησή του όλα αυτά τα χρόνια. Χάρη στην εμπιστοσύνη που μου έδειξε μπόρεσα να ασχοληθώ με ενδιαφέρουσες ερευνητικές περιοχές. Επιπλέον, θα ήθελα να ευχαριστήσω τον Καθηγητή κ. Τιμολέοντα Σελλή, για τις πολύτιμες συμβουλές του που με βοήθησαν να βελτιώσω σημαντικά την ποιότητα της έρευνάς μου. Θέλω να εκφράσω τις θερμές μου ευχαριστίες προς τον Δρ. Μανώλη Τερροβίτη, Μεταδιδακτορικό Ερευνητή του ΙΠΣΥ/ΕΚ «Αθηνά», για τη συνεργασία μας, για την καθοδήγηση και την ανεκτίμητη βοήθειά του, καθώς και για την συνεισφορά του στις εργασίες που περιγράφονται στην παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή. Ευχαριστώ επίσης τον Δρ. Θοδωρή Δαλαμάγκα, Ερευνητή Β΄ του ΙΠΣΥ/ΕΚ «Αθηνά» για την βοήθεια και πρόσφατη ερευνητική συνεργασία. Επιπλέον, θα ήθελα να ευχαριστήσω τα Μέλη της Επταμελούς Εξεταστικής Επιτροπής Καθ. ΕΜΠ Ι. Βασιλείου, Καθ. ΕΜΠ Τ. Σελλή, Ερευνητής Β΄ ΙΠΣΥ/ΕΚ «Αθηνά» Θ. Δαλαμάγκα, Αναπλ. Καθ. ΕΜΠ Κ. Κοντογιάννη, Επικ. Καθ. ΕΜΠ Γ. Στάμου, Καθ. ΕΜΠ Α.-Γ. Σταφυλοπάτη και Αναπλ. Καθ. Πανεπιστημίου Ιωαννίνων Π. Βασιλειάδη για τον χρόνο που αφιέρωσαν να μελετήσουν και να αξιολογήσουν την διδακτορική μου διατριβή. Ευχαριστώ ιδιαίτερα για τα σχόλια, τις ερωτήσεις και τις προτάσεις τους για θέματα μελλοντικής έρευνας, τόσο στην ενδιάμεση κρίση όσο και στην τελική υποστήριξη. Ακόμη, θα ήθελα να ευχαριστήσω τα μέλη του Εργαστηρίου Συστημάτων Βάσεων Γνώσεων και Δεδομένων ΕΜΠ και του Ινστιτούτου Πληροφοριακών Συστημάτων του ΕΚ Αθηνά, για τις δημιουργικές στιγμές που περάσαμε, για την φιλία και για την συνεργασία τους. Επιπρόσθετα, θα ήθελα να αναγνωρίσω την συνεισφορά της Κατερίνας Λεπενιώτη και του Σωτήρη Αγγελή, που εργάστηκαν σε θέματα που σχετίζονται με την παρούσα διατριβή στα πλαίσια των διπλωματικών τους εργασιών στο Εργαστήριο Συστημάτων Βάσεων Γνώσεων και Δεδομένων του ΕΜΠ. Αφιερώνω την παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή στην γιαγιά μου ΄Ολγα. Η αγάπη και η στήριξή της μου έδωσαν την δύναμη να προχωρήσω προς την ερευνητική πορεία που ήθελα να ακολουθήσω. Η άσβεστη φιλομάθεια της ήταν για μένα φωτεινό παράδειγμα για την διαρκή αναζήτηση της γνώσης μέσα από την επιστημονική μελέτη και έρευνα.

Does personal wealth translate into political power, and does it influence the ideology of officeholders? This paper investigates the role of personal wealth in politics using the 1805 Georgia land lottery as a natural experiment. Matching lottery records to a roster of officeholders and roll call votes, I estimate the effects of winning a land lot prize on ex-post officeholding, and on votes in favor of slavery legislation and state banking policy for participants who served in the state legislature. I find that lottery wealth significantly reduces legislators' support for slavery legislation, and find no evidence that wealth effects officeholding nor legislators' support for banking policy. I use property tax records to show that the treatment effect on support for slavery legislation varies systematically according legislators' pretreatment wealth. The results demonstrate that wealth can influence policy, but not in the direction anticipated by economic elite theories of American politics.

Social welfare programs and policies can have a variety of anticipated and unexpected effects on the human capital investments of young adults at-risk of living in poverty in the United States. My dissertation investigates how three large-scale public programs – means- tested, cash welfare (e.g., Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Temporary Aid to Needy Families), Medicaid health insurance for children, and the Social Security Student Benefit Program – affected the educational attainment and work experience of vulnerable young adults. In the first chapter, I examine how public policies encouraging labor force participation by low-skilled single mothers during welfare reform unintentionally led to labor supply declines by young, less-educated single males. While the labor market woes of low-skilled male workers over the past several decades have been well documented, the academic literature on the identification of causal factors leading to the decline in labor force participation (LFP) by young, low-skilled males is relatively scant. In this paper, I use a fixed-effects, instrumental variable research design to exploit the timing and characteristics of welfare reform policies to explore whether policies targeted to increase LFP rates for low-skilled single mothers inadvertently led to labor force exit of young, low-skilled males. Using data from the Current Population Survey and the series of work inducements enacted by states throughout the 1990s as a source of exogenous variation in a quasi-experimental design, I find that a welfare-reform-generated 10 percentage point (pp) increase in LFP for low-skilled single mothers resulted in a statistically significant 2.6 pp decline in LFP rates by young, low-skilled single males. Furthermore, after a series of alternative model specifications and robustness checks, I find that this result is driven entirely by the decline in labor supply for white males; young black males and other groups of workers appear to be unaffected by the labor supply response of less-educated single mothers to welfare reform. The second essay in my dissertation studies one of the long-term effects of the child Medicaid health insurance expansions. Prompted by the legislative decision to decouple child Medicaid benefits from cash welfare receipt, the number of young children qualifying for public health insurance grew markedly throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. This chapter extends the academic literature examining early childhood investments and longer-term human capital measures by exploring whether public health insurance expansions to low-income children led to a greater number of high school completers in the 2000s. Using a technique developed by Currie and Gruber (1994, 1996) to simulate the generosity of a state’s Medicaid program during early childhood, I find large and significant effects on completion rates, which are examined in two forms: the dropout rate and the traditional four-year high school graduation rate. Intent-to-treat estimates range from a 1.9 to 2.5 pp decrease in the dropout rate for each 10 pp increase in early childhood years covered by the state-level Medicaid program. The same 10 percentage point increase in child Medicaid program generosity reveals increases of 1.0 to 1.3 pp when applied to four-year graduation rates, indicating that dropout reductions are propelled by increases in traditional diplomas. In addition, results appear to be driven by Hispanic and white students, the two groups which experienced the greatest within-group eligibility increases due to the decoupling of child Medicaid from the AFDC cash assistance program. My final dissertation chapter investigates how a particular college fund guarantee affected achievements in higher education. Utilizing data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979) and a difference-in-differences model, this work re-examines the impact of the Social Security Student Benefits Program (SSSBP) on post-secondary educational attainment, a topic first studied by Dynarski (2003). By exploiting a larger panel of data and exploring degree attainment at various ages, my coauthor and I find that disadvantaged youth potentially qualifying for SSSBP funds – e.g., those losing a father before they turned 18 – were over 20 pp more likely to obtain higher education degrees beyond their high school diploma than similar students who would have qualified for benefits, but-for the program’s termination in May 1982. Initial program impacts – i.e., those by age 23 – show an increase in Associate’s degree attainment. As these respondents age, however, many go on to obtain four year degrees. Impacts are large and statistically significant, and suggestive that social programs seeking to reduce the financial costs of Associate’s degrees – such as the one announced by President Obama in his 2015 State of the Union Address – could be well-targeted.

We examine variation in local rents, wage levels, commuting costs, household characteristics, and amenities for 2071 areas covering the United States, within metropolitan areas, by density and central-city status. We demonstrate the sensibility of estimating wage levels by workplace, not residence, and recover decentralized rent gradients that fall with commuting costs. We construct and map a willingness-to-pay index, which indicates the quality of life typical households receive from local amenities, when households are similar, mobile, and informed. This index varies considerably within metros, and is typically high in areas that are dense, suburban, sunny, mild, safe, entertaining, and have elevated school-funding.

Studies estimating the consequences of immigration on wages paid to native-born workers often uncover small to nonexistent effects when using cross city or state variation (the spatial approach) but large deleterious effects when using variation across education-by-experience cells (the national approach). One mechanism of labor market adjustment emphasized in the spatial approach is that native-born workers respond to immigration by specializing in occupations demanding skills in which they have a comparative advantage, thereby helping to protect themselves from labor market competition and wage losses. This paper examines whether the national approach also identifies this skill response. We find evidence that such a response does occur, which reduced the magnitude of within-cell wage effects by more than 20%.

The keep it simple, stupid slogan, or the KISS principle has been the basic guideline in agent-based modeling (ABM). While the KISS principle or parsimony is vital in modeling attempts, conventional agent-based models remain abstract and are rarely incorporated or validated with empirical data, leaving the links between theoretical models and empirical phenomena rather loose. This article reexamines the KISS principle and discusses the recent modeling attempts that incorporate and validate agent-based models with spatial (geo-referenced) data, moving beyond the KISS principle. This article also provides a working example of such time and space specified (TASS) agent-based models that incorporates Schellings (1971) classic model of residential segregation with detailed geo-referenced demographic data on the city of Chicago derived from the US Census 2010.

Who are Burmese and Bhutanese Americans? What caused their migration? While national data shows Bhutanese and Burmese constituting a large proportion of refugees entering the United States in recent years, they, however, remain largely invisible in the current national discourse on Asian American socioeconomic outcomes. This article addresses this gap by providing a historical and demographic portrait of the Burmese and Bhutanese communitiesspecifically addressing their social, economic, political, and educational adaptation patterns. Data in this article draws from U.S. Census Bureau data, and interviews with Burmese and Bhutanese refugees who are working in different capacities in their respective communities.

This article studies in detail the settlement patterns of blacks in the urban North from before the Great Migration and through 1940, focusing on the cases of New York and Chicago. It relies on new and rarely used data sources, including census geocoded microdata from the 1880 census (allowing segregation patterns and processes to be studied at any geographic scale) and census data for 1900–1940 aggregated to enumeration districts. It is shown that blacks were unusually highly isolated in 1880 given their small share of the total population and that segregation reached high levels in both cities earlier than previously reported. Regarding sources of racial separation, neither higher class standing nor northern birth had much effect on whether blacks lived within or outside black neighborhoods in 1880 or 1940, and it is concluded that the processes that created large black ghettos were already in place several decades before 1940.

This dissertation examines the economic effects of occupational regulation of dietitians and nutritionists (DNs) and social workers (SWs). Both occupations require a bachelor’s degree, employ high percentages of female, part time, and institutional workers, have strong occupational associations, and are subject to different types of regulation in different states. Models for the effect of regulation on numbers and wages of practitioners use individual-level data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 5% Census surveys and control for regulation via a dummy variable (for linear effects) or a function of years of regulation (for non-linear effects). Models for the effect of regulation on quality of service use individual-level data from the 1984 through 2013 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) surveys and measure quality of service in terms of health indicator variables derived from survey questions. Empirical models include OLS, FE, and 2SLS models with IVs for regulation variables. Results are found for the effect of any regulation, regulation that is named licensure (with or without practice restriction), or licensure on the number of practitioners, wages, and quality of service. I find no evidence that regulation reduces the number of DN or SW practitioners, but licensure of DNs is associated with an increase in the . . .

We use a neoclassical general-equilibrium model to explain cross-metro variation in population, density, and land supply based on three amenity types: quality-of-life, productivity in tradables, and productivity in non-tradables. This elucidates commonlyestimated elasticities of local labor and housing supply and demand. From wage and housing-cost indices, we explain half of observed density and total population variation, and find jobs follow people more than people follow jobs. Land-area and density data are used to estimate elasticities of housing and land supply, and improve landrents and local-productivity estimates. We show how relaxing land-use regulations and neutralizing federal taxes would affect different cities.

Often times minimum wage laws are decided at the state or regional level. Others, federal level increases are only binding in certain states. This has been used in previous literature to evaluate the effects of minimum wages on earnings and employment levels. This paper introduces a spatial equilibrium model to think about the seemingly conflicting findings in this previous literature. It shows that the introduction of minimum wages can lead to an increase or a decrease in population depending on the local labor demand elasticity and on how are unemployment benefits financed. The paper provides empirical evidence consistent with the model. On average, increases in minimum wages lead to increases in average wages, decreases in employment and net out-migration of low-skilled workers. The implied local labor demand elasticity is estimated to be between -.4 and -.7.

This paper examines the effects of state merit-based student aid programs on college attendance and degree completion. Our primary analysis uses microdata from the 2000 United States Census and 2001-2010 American Community Survey to estimate the effects of exposure to merit programs on educational outcomes for 25 states that adopted such programs by 2004. We also utilize administrative data for the University System of Georgia to look more in depth at the effects of exposure to the HOPE Scholarship on degree completion. We find strong consistent evidence that exposure to state merit aid programs have no meaningfully positive effect on college completion.

American women have seen tremendous changes in their roles and opportunities since the end of World War II. Women have made gains in many areas, even overtaking men in some, but equality remains elusive. This report reviews the changes that have taken place at work and at home during the past several decades. It identifies coming trends and the changes in policies that will be needed to get to a place of true gender equality and economic security for women. The report examines several generations of women and the challenges they have confronted and continue to confront as the workplace and education system evolve. These include the gender wage gap, occupational segregation and job polarization, the lack of work-family supports, and changes in retirement expectations.