Natural experiments in economics
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- What happens when an entire town suddenly receives a huge wealth shock? For over a century, Spain has conducted a national lottery which often results in the random allocation of large cash windfalls to one town. Leveraging data on lottery ticket expenditures, we match winning towns to non-winning towns with equal winning probability. For towns that won in recent decades, consumption of durables increases while employment, businesses, and migration to the town decrease. An analysis of a century of winners reveals a stark and persistent population increase for towns that won after the Civil War. My results suggest a limited role for wealth shocks in spurring economic growth outside of large recessions. In chapter 2, I study the effect of parenthood on the lives of low-socioeconomic-status parents. My data consists of longitudinal, high frequency administrative records from a large urban U.S. county, covering housing, treatment for substance use disorder (SUD), enrollment in government assistance programs, and crime. Using an event study design, I find that new parenthood leads to increases in housing instability and government assistance use. New parenthood also decreases crime and increases take-up of treatment for substance use disorder. The effects of parenthood are heterogeneous by race and vulnerability to mental health disorders. In chapter 3, I examine the extent to which education is a valuable investment for academically marginal students. I ask this question in the context of the Dominican Republic, where schooling is mandatory until eighth grade and many students must decide between continuing on to high school or entering the labor force. I estimate the value of years of secondary education and high-school completion for low-performing students by exploiting the passing cutoffs on the eighth and twelfth grade national exams. I find that students who barely pass the exam in eighth grade complete more years of education, are more likely to enroll in college and experience higher earnings. A broad implication of these facts is that education has large and positive returns even for the lowest part of the ability distribution.
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 | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Kent, Christina Allison |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Hoxby, Caroline Minter |
| Thesis advisor | Hoxby, Caroline Minter |
| Thesis advisor | Diamond, Rebecca, (Of Stanford University. Graduate School of Business) |
| Thesis advisor | Persson, Petra, 1981- |
| Degree committee member | Diamond, Rebecca, (Of Stanford University. Graduate School of Business) |
| Degree committee member | Persson, Petra, 1981- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Economics |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Christina Kent. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Economics. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/mj258qs3061 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Christina Allison Kent
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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