Business taxation, by affecting the costs of certain behaviors of firms, owners, or their counterparties, can trigger potentially substantial changes in real activity, such as changes in inputs or production processes. But it can also prompt avoidance responses—such as legal restructuring or...

This dissertation comprises of three essays on the political economy of bureaucracy in the United States. The first chapter of my dissertation examines how the possibility of future electoral turnover can limit agencies’ engagement in presidential favoritism, focusing on policy areas where...

In this dissertation, three studies examine how taken-for-granted assumptions around how researchers measure race, social mobility, and education obscure heterogeneity in Black-White economic inequality.In chapter 2, I analyze Black-White wealth disparities based on skin tone using data from the...

The rise of the USD as the main currency for international transactions and investments makes non-us banks hold significant amounts of US dollars. As a result, there is spillover from US monetary policy to these foreign banks. I show that an increase in interest rates in the US dollar increases...

This dissertation examines the profitability and management of public US corporations since the 1950s. I argue that a shift in their ability to turn a profit helps us understand why today’s corporations are run more as portfolios of assets than as organic wholes. Even while aggregate corporate...

Campaign donors in the United States, though a small and unrepresentative segment of the broader electorate, have the financial means to potentially exert an outsized influence in American politics. Understanding the micro-foundation of donor behavior–why do they give? And how do they choose...

The recent nation-wide health reform --- Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or simply ACA --- drastically altered the functioning of the health insurance industry in the US, opening many questions about how the system should be designed and regulated. While previous literature largely...

This dissertation studies the economic forces that determine prices in business-to-business health care markets. Health care is a large fraction of the US economy. In US health care markets, consumers are often insured and interact with the health care system through intermediary decision makers...