Essays on behavioral economics and economic history
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- How do local wealth shocks impact economic activity? For over two centuries, Spain has conducted a national lottery which often results in the random allocation of up to $800 million in cash to the citizens of one town. This is the only case in the world where individuals living in the same location randomly receive pure wealth shocks of this scale. Leveraging data on town-level lottery ticket expenditures, we compare winning towns to non-winning towns with the same probability of winning. We nd that for towns that won in recent decades, consumption of cars and housing increases while employment, business growth, and migration to the town all decrease. Anecdotal evidence suggests many winners use their earnings to pay o their home mortgages immediately, suggesting strong debt aversion. In chapter 2, we propose that holding debt causes worse financial decisions using two novel experimental designs where we randomly assign debt. Our first set of findings show that debt causes behavioral biases detrimental to subjects financial payoffs. However, subjects strategies are not random but instead debt-biased, consistent with a model of debt aversion. Furthermore, we show in additional treatments how these debt-biased behaviors can also deter subjects from borrowing and miss arbitrage opportunities. In chapter 3, I use a regression discontinuity framework to examine the long-run effects of conservative education on womens family and labor decisions. In 1939, the Spanish dictatorship created the Social service, a compulsory 6-month training program aimed at relegating women to the roles of mothers and housewives. I exploit the discontinuity induced by the sudden abolition of the Social Service, in addition to variation in the age of enrollment, to examine the consequences of attending the program. Using historical enrollment records and the universe of birth certificates, I nd the Social Service was successful in instilling the regimes ideology. Women exposed to the class get married and have kids at younger ages, consistent with the desire to form a family sooner. In addition, they are more likely to declare being housewives when their first child is born.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Martínez Marquina, Alejandro |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Abramitzky, Ran |
| Degree supervisor | Niederle, Muriel |
| Thesis advisor | Abramitzky, Ran |
| Thesis advisor | Niederle, Muriel |
| Thesis advisor | Bernheim, B. Douglas |
| Degree committee member | Bernheim, B. Douglas |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Economics |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Alejandro Martínez-Marquina. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Economics. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/dd120dg8894 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Alejandro Martinez Marquina
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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