Vanderbilt Economics Department Honors Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Need-Based Financial Aid for the “Not Too Needy”: An Analysis of the Middle Class Scholarship of California(Vanderbilt University, 2024-02) Lewallen, Katelynn;I present new evidence on the effects of need-based grant programs for the middle-class. Using data from the National Association of State Student Grant Aid Programs and the Integrated Postsecondary Education System from 2011-2019, I use a synthetic difference-in-differences approach to estimate effects of the first major need-based program in California, the Middle Class Scholarship Program of 2015. I compare outcomes at University of California and California State schools to synthetic outcomes at other public universities in the United States. I evaluate total enrollments and graduation rates before and after program introduction. I find the middle class need-based program increased total enrollments by 3% and graduation rates by 6% per year on average.Item Gender Differences in Job Flexibility(Vanderbilt University, 2024) Hong, Jaehyeok;In this paper, I explore the factors of workplace flexibility under the compensating differential framework and examine the gender differences in how flexibility is experienced from three different angles: workplace culture, flexible work arrangements, and occupational characteristics. I propose and examine four components, which are reasons for paid leave, intermissions during work hours, work from home, and flexible job characteristics that arise from work style and values. The regression analysis of these measures against weekly wage revealed that the same flexible work arrangements could be cheaper or more expensive based on gender, which may be connected to traditional gender roles. In identifying that the worker’s skill level leads to endogeneity, I employ the spouse’s usual work hours as an instrument. Although the instrument turned out to be poor, the IV regression results support that there is some female penalty—making the price of taking flexible work arrangements more expensive for females—correlated with flexible work. This penalty seems to be also related to the findings by Goldin (2014), which states that nonlinearity of wage with respect to work hours generates a gender pay gap for women who require more workplace flexibility.Item The Emotional and Cognitive Impacts of Air Pollution: Evidence from Twitter(Vanderbilt University, 2023-04-03) Katz, Jared;I study whether heightened air pollution leads to emotional and cognitive responses at the infra-marginal level. To address this question, I employ geolocated, timestamped Twitter microdata. Using an original dataset of over 30 million unique Tweets, I observe linguistic responses to varying levels of pollution across the U.S.. I find that Tweets from higher-pollution backgrounds are more negative and aggressive than Tweets from observably similar backgrounds with less pollution. Additionally, I find evidence that higher-pollution Tweets score cognitively lower for some groups, but otherwise have little to no effect. I find that lower cognitive-scoring users Tweet less as air quality worsens, but individual users Tweet at a lower level. I also find that originally negative and cognitively low-scoring Tweets are more vulnerable to air pollution’s negative effects than high-scoring Tweets.Item The Differential Responses of US Higher Education Institutions During Pandemic(Vanderbilt University, 2023-04) Wang, Annie;This paper examines the responses to the COVID-induced shock of US higher education institutions. Using institution-level data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the study focuses on the doctoral and master’s universities following the Carnegie Classification. The event study compares changes in student enrollment, tuition fees, student-to-faculty ratio, and institutional grant aid between different types of institutions: more and less foreign-exposed, public and private, and high and low-ranked institutions. The results show that high-ranked institutions demonstrated higher adaptiveness to the shock by exhibiting higher growth rates in both domestic and international student enrollment, and institutional grant aid after the shock. Moreover, high-ranked institutions showed more pricing power in domestic and international student tuition. There is no significant difference in the growth rates of outcomes of interest between the other two comparison groups. These findings descriptively illustrate the varying responses to the COVID-induced shock of different types of higher education institutions, primarily focusing on movements due to COVID.Item Exposure, Integration, and Interracial Marriage: Evidence from The Great Migration and Residential Segregation(Vanderbilt University, 2024-03-26) Deal, Cameron;Interracial marriage offers a measure of social integration between racial groups. This paper studies the effects of social interactions on racial integration in the marriage market using two historical quasi-experiments. I use a shift-share instrument to find that the Great Migration increased the prevalence of interracial marriage but the magnitude of this increase is small relative to the change in Black population. This relationship is muted in high-segregation cities, suggesting that residential segregation limited the social integration response to the Great Migration. Additionally, I use railroad track placement to instrument for residential segregation and find that residential segregation decreased interracial marriage. Together, this evidence suggests that social interactions played a role in the increase in interracial marriage in the non-Southern 20th century United States.Item Changes in the Assimilation of Asian Americans from 1860–1940(Vanderbilt University, 2024-05-02) Chen, Claire;Asian immigration to the United States motivated the first instance of federal immigration legislation with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, but little is known about Asian immigration during the period despite a robust literature on their European counterparts. I use linked cohorts drawn from complete-count census data to find that Asian immigrants displayed the “u-shaped” pattern of occupational assimilation characterizing contemporaneous European immigrants. I also find that they displayed a “catch-up” assimilation phenomenon: successive Asian cohorts steadily reduced their outcome gaps with the native population, and despite starting at a lower occupational tier than European immigrants, they assimilated more than European immigrants in all cohorts but the post-Exclusion cohort of 1880–1900. These findings provide insight into the assimilation process of an understudied immigrant community, furthering the understanding of assimilation in the United States.Item State-Based Heterogeneity in Right-to-Work’s Effects(Vanderbilt University, 2023-04-03) Whitaker, Nicholas;The role of unions in the US labor market has been a highly contested political issue, leading states to pass Right-to-Work (RTW) laws. As of 2023, 27 states in the US have active RTW laws, legislation that makes it illegal for unionized firms to require union membership as a condition of employment. I use synthetic control methods to estimate RTW’s effects on a broad range of state outcomes that could be of interest to policymakers. I find evidence that RTW typically reduces the union coverage rate and average hourly wages, while it seems to have no generalizable effect on other important state-level variables such as total employment and the unemployment rate. The synthetic control methods help to uncover substantial heterogeneity in RTW’s impacts on a state’s union coverage rate, and this heterogeneity is likely due to union composition in the public sector and the size of a state’s public sector at the time of enactment. It is also possible that differences in union organizing tactics after RTW enactment contribute to this heterogeneity. This paper examines five states that passed RTW after 2010 separately – Indiana (2012), Michigan (2013), Wisconsin (2015), West Virginia (2016), and Kentucky (2017). Additionally, estimated effects of RTW do not seem to be due solely to shifting union preferences or worker expectations. Synthetic control results for Missouri, which passed RTW in 2017 and then struck down the law before it could be enacted, are not similar to the results of the post-2010 enactment states. Missouri’s results provide evidence that RTW has an independent effect on a state’s union coverage rate and average hourly wages.Item From Preference to Policy: Wealth, Institutions of Government, and the Search for Democracy(UCL Journal of Economics, 2022-08-25) Siegel, Nolan;What is the nature of substantive representation within American institutions of government, and to what extent do constituents’ preferences turn into adopted policy? To answer these questions, I analyze data on federal policies proposed between 1964 and 2006 and constituents’ support for them by running a series of linear probability models to estimate the chance of policy adoption as a function of constituent support. I find the president is more responsive to constituents than Congress, and high-income constituents’ preferences – but not those of median- and low-income constituents – are significantly correlated with policies adopted by both Congress and the president.Item Transition Economy Readjustment: A Trade-Shock Perspective(Vanderbilt University, 2022) Stefanov, Janet;To what extent is Hungary’s recession between 1991 and 1996 driven by the costs of institutional adjustment following the collapse of the planned economy? Using a dynamic general equilibrium model with trade policy, price subsidies, and labor frictions, I build on prior work by Gorodnichenko, Mendoza, and Tesar (2012) to argue that the collapse of Soviet trade in 1991 induces a costly restructuring of Hungary’s planned economy. I show that the estimated model closely matches the trajectory of consumption as seen in the data. Counterfactual experiments indicate that high wage rigidity, habit formation in consumption, and large oil price subsidies, together, go a long way in explaining the severity of Hungary’s recession. The model highlights alternative policies resulting in a shortened and lessened severity.Item Understanding Effects of Pharmaceutical Price Control on Firms’ R&D Expenditure and Impacts on Social Welfare(Vanderbilt University, 2022-05-11) Huang, Shijia;Many studies have examined price regulations in the pharmaceutical industry in developed countries and found a negative relation between price control and pharmaceutical research and development (R&D). Nevertheless, the further impact of reduced pharmaceutical R&D spending on drug innovation has been less thoroughly studied. It is unclear whether the public benefits more from the controlled price or loses more from the reduced drug innovation in the future. Therefore, we are led to examine how the tradeoff between price cap and pharmaceutical R&D affects social welfare. By understanding price control's impact on future innovation and the market's demand, this research seeks to continue discussing whether the government should implement strict price control policies in the drug industry. Methodology: Based on 1084–2020 data for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, we investigate the impact of price on the industry's R&D intensity. We estimate an aggregated R&D spending elasticity with which the industry responds to the pharmaceutical price level. We also establish a causal link between controlled pharmaceutical prices and consumer surplus in the market. A conceptual model is then used to compare drug innovation in the future with consumer savings at the current time and to discuss social welfare concerning the drug industry.Item Design and Predicted Effects of a Carbon Tax with Border Carbon Adjustment in the United States(Vanderbilt University, 2020-04) Vest, Jacob; Crucini, Mario J.With Climate Change at the center of many global political and policy debates, a Pigouvian tax on carbon dioxide emissions remains a favorite solution among economists and other policy experts. However, asymmetric implementation of a carbon tax across the globe gives rise to several problems. A country which implements a carbon tax while others do not faces relatively higher energy and manufacturing costs than its taxless peers. As a result, its energy-intensive industries are made less competitive, and there is potential for significant carbon leakage. Border carbon adjustments (BCAs) are one measure designed to protect domestic firms and prevent carbon leakage, but there is not yet consensus on what form they might take. This thesis makes several recommendations for the design of a BCA and provides a prediction of the effect of a carbon tax combined with BCA on US production and carbon emissions.Item The Many Roads to Recovery: Assessing the Recoveries of US Metropolitan Housing Markets Following the Housing Bubble(Vanderbilt University, 2017) Rezabek, John; Goodman-BaconItem Price and Advertisement Targeting in the Online Marketplace(Vanderbilt University, 2017) Ose, Tim; Getz, MalcolmItem The Dynamics of Interest Rates and Housing Prices at the National and Regional Level(Vanderbilt University, 2017) Eagle, Max; Anderson, KathrynItem Understanding the Difference in Export Prices through Trade Data between China and Various Countries(Vanderbilt University, 2017) Dai, Ao; Guiterrez, FedericoItem Intra-city Income Inequality and the Role of Transportation Infrastructure: What can Nashville Learn from Similar Cities?(Vanderbilt University, 2017) Chen, Marc; Rodrigue, JoelItem Security, Social Capital, and Child Health in Kyrgyzstan, 2010-2013.(Vanderbilt University, 2017) Monken, Anderson; ConleyItem Immigration and the Welfare State(Vanderbilt University, 2017) Cary, John; Crucini, MarioItem Direct Investment vs Mergers and Acquistions in Asia(Vanderbilt University, 2016) Xiao, Wenye (Vanessa); Moro, AndreaItem The Effect of Government Spending on Quality of Health Services(Vanderbilt University, 2016) Greaves, Kathryn; Rousseau, Peter