Essays in applied microeconomics
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation in applied microeconomics examines supply-side behavior, particularly responses to policy changes. The first chapter studies the supply response of urban private schools to public school funding changes in New York City. We find that private schools whose public school competitors received larger funding increases were more likely to close in the subsequent two years. These closures amplified student sorting and undid some of the funding reform's positive achievement effects. The second chapter investigates how stimulus-motivated federal funding directed to universities affected their revenues, expenditures, employment, tuition, student aid, endowment spending, and receipt of state government appropriations. We find that private universities spent additional funding on many categories of expenditures while public universities used federal funds as leverage to gain independence from state governments-gaining the ability to set tuition and other prices closer to market-based rates but losing state appropriations in the bargain. Overall, the stimulus apparently caused universities to increase their investments in research and human capital. The third chapter examines how online platform design interacts with consumer search and seller price-setting to affect market outcomes. We use browsing data from eBay to estimate a model of consumer search and price competition when retailers offer homogeneous goods. We find that retail margins are on the order of 10%, and use the model to analyze the design of search rankings. Our model explains most of the effects of a major re-design of eBay's product search, and allows us to identify conditions where narrowing consumer choice sets can be pro-competitive.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Dinerstein, Michael | |
|---|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Economics. | |
| Primary advisor | Einav, Liran | |
| Primary advisor | Hoxby, Caroline Minter | |
| Thesis advisor | Einav, Liran | |
| Thesis advisor | Hoxby, Caroline Minter | |
| Thesis advisor | Levin, Jonathan D. (Jonathan David), 1972- | |
| Advisor | Levin, Jonathan D. (Jonathan David), 1972- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Michael Dinerstein. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Economics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Michael Fread Dinerstein
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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