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School of Economics

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70712

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Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

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https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/1157

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 14

Three essays in applied Industrial organization

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-04-03) Ahmed, Mishal

In this dissertation I analyze the impact of factors such as competition, technology and consumer behavior on the pricing and quality decisions of firms and service providers, as well as how certain pricing strategies can lead to unintended effects. In Chapter 1, I show three results pertaining to a firm selling to buyers who focus more on the “salient” attribute of a product relative to other attributes. First, the firm can make more profit by making quality “salient” (i.e. make the buyer focus on quality, not price). Second, whether the firm can make quality the salient attribute to the buyers depends on the firm's cost of upgrading quality and consumers' preferences for quality upgrades. Third, the firm can profitably deviate from the optimal price-discriminating menu of price and quality by granting an additional discount to consumers who value quality more or by downgrading quality of the low-quality good. In Chapter 2, using data on Uber and Lyft trips and complaints against taxi drivers, I show that increased competition from Uber has led to more complaints regarding unsafe driving, refused pick-ups etc. by taxi drivers, which is opposite to what one would expect. Finally, in Chapter 3, I show three new unintended effects of price-matching. First, a price-match guarantee may decrease firms' incentives to invest in reducing costs. Second, it may reduce the incentive to invest in enhancing quality. Third, without price-matching, low-cost firms produce too little relative to the social optimum and I show that price-matching can aggravate this problem by allowing high-cost firms to steal further market share.
Networks and energy transitions

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-03-28) Blackburn, Christopher J.

This dissertation reflects on strategies for utilizing networks to catalyze a low-carbon energy transition. In particular, I focus on the role of networks for two policy strategies: (i) switching to alternative, low-carbon energy technologies, and (ii) reducing consumption of carbon-intensive, fossil fuel energy resources. Chapter 2 of this dissertation uses historical energy transitions to argue networks complicate prescriptive policy design. In particular, we illustrate the nature of the underlying technologies used to covert physical fuel inputs into energy services structures interactions between markets. The interconnections between markets, in turn, creates complex feedback loops that lead to simultaneous changes across the entire economy. We explore how these feedback loops impact energy efficiency policy in more detail in chapter 4. Chapter 3 investigates the role of networks in proliferating the diffusion of low-carbon energy technologies. We provide evidence that network formation is critical for the early success of emerging low-carbon innovations. When networks form at this early stage of the technology life cycle, they provide a platform for information exchange between early and future adopters, leading to lower search, transaction, and operational costs for future adopters. Lastly, in chapter 4, we develop a theoretical model that embeds industrial, energy efficiency improvements within a network setting to understand how interconnections between markets affects the outcomes of sector-specific low-carbon energy policy. Energy efficiency is often touted as a cure-all policy measure to reduce dependence on carbon intensive, fossil fuel resources. However, when markets are connected by the economy's production network, the outcome of energy efficiency policy is highly uncertain. Using a combination of theoretical and numerical analyses, we illustrate the structure of the economy's production network shapes the change in aggregate energy consumption following a sector-specific energy efficiency improvement.
On-job learning and human capital accumulation

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-05-11) Liu, Qinyi

The dissertation investigates the human capital accumulation through on-job learning. It has three empirical studies. The first two essays investigate skill accumulation through performing job tasks. The third one analyzes the labor market effect of tertiary education for full time workers. Using the data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) for USA, we firstly investigate whether cognitive skills can be improved through on-the-job learning, especially via tasks at work. With rich information on job tasks performed at individual level, we construct different job complexity measures: a general job complexity measure, and two specific complexity measures of interactive and analytical tasks. The results show that workers can accumulate cognitive skills through solving complex problems. Additionally, analytical tasks play an important role on cognitive skills, while interactive tasks at work do not show a significant effect. Furthermore, we investigate whether tasks performed at work contribute to the improvement of a worker’s problem-solving skills. Based on two datasets for Germany, the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and “LLLight’in’Europe” project (LLL), we analyze on problem-solving skills at different levels, general problem-solving skills and complex problem-solving skills. The results of two problem-solving skill measures show workers benefit from doing a complex job, and task complexity improves complex problem-solving skills with a much smaller magnitude. In addition, analytical tasks at work play a more important role than interactive tasks. The third essay investigates the difference in effects of tertiary education between full-time workers and full-time students, based on data from the Chinese Household Income Project (1995, 2002, 2007, and 2013). We find that the schooling returns to a college and a graduate degree earned by full-time workers are significantly lower than the returns on corresponding degrees earned via full-time studies, however, there is a much smaller or no significant gap for junior college degrees for those two groups. The results are quite robust with different model specifications and estimation methods. Our further investigation shows that school quality or aging cannot explain the gap fully.
Innovation and business strategy in healthcare markets

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-11-06) Zhai, Zhe

In the first chapter, we use patent and financial data from the pharmaceutical industry to examine the effects of international innovation on profitability and the channels through which the effects take place. Positive impacts of internationalization are found for both innovation performance and financial performance. In the second chapter, we examine the impact of uncertainty on firms’ decisions related to R&D expenditures, patenting, and physical capital investments using a sample of firms in the global pharmaceuticals industry. Our results indicate that uncertainty has mixed effect on the innovation variables: it affects R&D negatively, but has a weak and ambiguous effect on patents. The estimated impact on capital investment is negative. In the third chapter, using U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recall data from 2001-2013, we examine various factors that may determine recalls. We consider a wide range of firm-specific and device-specific measures such as their R&D expenditures, foreign versus domestic ownership, size of firms, degree of vertical integration, device complexity, profitability, among several other variables. In our empirical analysis, we examine whether there are systematic longer-run differences in recalled devices across the firms in our sample, and whether firm-specific and device-specific attributes can explain why some firms systematically have a higher or lower number of recalls.
Innovation, product quality, complexity, and duration of international trade

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-07-20) Yan, Sen

Factors affecting products arrive and duration in international market are examined. Intellectual property rights (IPR) and innovation are suggested to influence exports of new products. Product quality and complexity are suggested to impact duration of trade relationships by theories. Trade data are collected from UN Comtrade and Feenstra et al (2002). Results indicate that IPR protection increases the number of new products exported to U.S. for poor countries. In addition, products with higher quality have longer trade duration and larger trade growth. More complex goods are more likely to survive than simple goods. Findings suggest that technology and innovation play an important role determining trade patterns.
Innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-06-26) Kamada, Vitor

Three aspects of the drug development process are little understood in the literature: 1) which type of organization has comparative advantage in conducting clinical trials, firms or nonprofit organization (NPOs)?; 2) what determines the timing of technological collaboration?; and 3) how the strategies making, allying, and buying R&D impact the probability of drug approval? Using data on over 20,000 clinical trials, 800 technological alliances, and 14,000 R&D projects, the main findings of this econometric study are: 1) firms complete each phase of clinical trial faster than nonprofit organizations; 2) licensor scientific and technological specialization is the main factor to speed up the technological collaboration; and 3) R&D projects developed by research alliance have higher probability of drug approval than internal R&D projects, but R&D projects originated from M&A have lower probability of drug approval than internal R&D projects. Together these findings inform policy makers and managers on how to foster the innovation performance in the biopharmaceutical industry.
Economic determinants of multilateral environmental agreements and their timing

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-07-19) Tian, Xinping

This dissertation examines the economic factors that contribute to countries’ cooperation on multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). Our results indicate that extensive economic interactions may help countries overcome potential free-riding problems and work together on international environmental issues. We first examine the likelihood a pair of countries enters into the same MEA as well as the number of MEAs they both share using a near universe of agreements. We then separately examine the MEAs dealing with pollution issues and those dealing with resource issues. At last, we examine how long it takes two countries to have their first agreement since 1950 and how long it takes them to have an additional one conditional on already having had some agreements. Our MEA data come from Ronal Mitchell’s International Environmental Agreements Database (2002-2016). The main results are summarized as follows. First, we find that two countries are more likely to have an MEA or have more of them if they are economically larger and of similar economic size, closer in distance, have a preferential trade agreement, and trade more. These results are strongest for environmental agreements between a small number of countries. Second, we show that these economic factors have similar effects on the formation of pollution related agreements and resource related ones. We also show that there exists a spillover effect between countries’ cooperation on these two types of agreements. Third, we find that economic size, distance, and trade integration variables shift the hazard of two countries having their first agreement as well as subsequent ones. Moreover, we show that countries’ likelihood of cooperating on an additional agreement is much larger than the likelihood of having their first one.
Three essays on human capital: Development and impact

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-06-28) Tong, Tingting

This dissertations investigates the development and impact of human capital, and it includes three essays. The first essay evaluates the impact of cognitive and noncognitive ability on leadership. We find that in additional to traditional measures of human capital such as education and experience, both cognitive and noncognitive ability have significant impact on leadership. Among different measures of ability, problem-solving and perseverance are the most important in affecting an individual’s potential leadership. Essay two evaluates factors affect the demand of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) in OECD countries and in China. We use search engine data provided by Google Trends and Baidu Index to proxy MOOC demand in each country from 2012 to 2015. The results show that in both OECD countries and in China, higher unemployment rate and internet speed increase MOOC demand. In addition, adult education levels positively affect MOOC demand in OECD, and wage has a positive impact on MOOC demand in China. Essay three investigates the impact of family and teacher human capital on student ability development in middle schools in China. The ability measures include both cognitive and noncognitive ability. We find that both family and teacher have significant impact on the development of student cognitive ability. With respects to noncognitive ability, family plays a more important role compared to teacher human capital.
Competition and innovation in automobile markets

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-06-23) Ni, Jiayao

Innovation is viewed as critical to fostering the growth of markets, generating efficiencies, and improving welfare. In this study we examine the determinants and the shifting dynamics of innovation in the U.S. automobile market. We use firm-level time-series data over a long horizon (1969-2012) for nine well established firms selling in the U.S. market (GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler).We examined three aspects related to market competition, innovation, and innovation rivalry in the U.S. automobile industry. First, we examine the relationship between competition and innovation. We use patent counts as a measure of innovation, and use market shares and market concentration as measures of market competition. Some of our key findings are: (1) increase in firms’ market shares result in higher patenting, and the relationship is reasonably non-linear; (2) higher market-wide competition results in an increase in patenting, and the relationship is weakly non-linear; (3) there is relatively strong path-dependence in firms’ patenting behavior. Second, we examine the relationship between knowledge gap and patent rivalry. In particular, we examine how a firm’s current patenting behavior is influenced by the knowledge gap between the leader and the firm, firms’ market shares, and the indirect effects of knowledge gap and market share. Our key findings are: (1) the relationship between patenting and knowledge gap is non-linear, and is U shaped; (2) an increase in market share results in higher current patenting; (3) the interaction between firms’ market share and technology gap does not have a statistically significant effect on their current patenting. Third, we examine the changing composition of patents. Over time, the dynamics in a market can change substantially due to competition in the product market, shifting positions of firms from an innovation standpoint, fundamental shifts in technology, changes in regulatory constraints, among other factors. We study the intertemporal shifts in the composition of innovation, and in particular, we examine how a firm’s current patenting behavior is influenced by the own patent concentration and rivals patent concentration. Our key findings are: (1) the relationship between knowledge stock and current innovation is complex, and depends on technologies categories; (2) an increase in own patent diversification results in higher current patenting in electrical & electronic and mechanical technologies; (3) an increase in rivals’ patent diversification results in higher current patenting in electrical & electronic on mechanical technologies; (4) rivals’ knowledge diversification has statistically higher effects on current patenting than own knowledge diversification, and is the main driver of changing compositions in patenting.
The role of environmental agreements on trade margins and investment flows

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-06-17) Wang, Jianqiu

This dissertation consists of three essays that examine the impact of environmental agreements on member countries' trade flows and bilateral trade margins. The precise relationship between environmental regulation, the location of production, aggregate trade flows and subsequent bilateral trade margins remains an open and widely debated issue. By using panel data estimation techniques on a large number of global environmental regulations and their accompanying standards, this dissertation finds that environmental agreements and trade are reinforcing each other. Furthermore, it also takes into account the differential impacts of agreements by category/size, and pays attention to the heterogenous design of individual environmental agreements when assessing their specific effects on trade. After introductory remarks of the first chapter, the second chapter analyses the consequences of multi-lateral environmental agreements (MEAs) on international bilateral trade. To mitigate potential bias caused by the endogeneity, I apply a five-year first-differencing method to examine the specific effects of environmental agreements when simultaneously taking the effects of trade agreements into account. To identify the categorical impacts of both trade and environmental agreements, I divide all complete trade agreements into two categories; (i) free trade agreements and (ii) custom and economic unions, and environmental agreements into those dealing with (i) pollution and (ii) natural resources. I also look at the differential impact of small and large size MEAs on trade flows, and estimate an effect specific to each agreement as a further robustness check. The third chapter focuses on the specific role of international environmental agreements (IEAs) and accompanying regulations and standards on bilateral extensive and intensive margins in international trade. Similar to the previous chapter, it uses panel data estimation techniques along with a 1962-2000 bilateral trade flows data set at the product-sector level and a full list of IEA membership along with agreement lineage of 198 countries. The estimation results show that the tightening of environmental standards between a pair of countries reduces trade margins to a small extent only. To identify the specific deterring effects of different environmental agreements, I divide all IEAs into three categories: (i) pollution, (ii) resource, and (iii) other. Small effects for specific type of IEAs are concerned as well. Such an empirical finding of the small magnitude of negative IEA impact remains consistent with various robustness checks. The fourth chapter investigates the effect of one particular environmental policy that introduces stricter regulations on sulfur dioxide emissions in China. The Two Control Zones (TCZ) policy was instituted by the Chinese government in 1998. By focusing on the amount of foreign direct investment inflows of 31 provinces between 1988 and 2012, I find that an average of ten percent of the provinces that have been designated as TCZ areas have attracted about 26.5% less capital investment than their non-attainment counterparts. Such a negative impact of the environmental stringency on investment inflows in these provinces is consistent with various robustness checks. However, ignoring the spatial correlation of provincial capital inflows leads to an over-estimated policy effect. The subsequent spatial-analysis results further confirm the presence of third-region eff effects in estimating the impact of environmental regulations. The final chapter provides concluding remarks and future outlook based on current research.