This thesis consists of three studies of labor markets where differences in talent are associated with very large differences in income. The unifying theoretical feature is the view that the analysis of such labor markets should take into account the scarcity of jobs, which is a natural...

This thesis is a collection of three essays on entry regulation, institutions, and development.Chapter 1 examines the effect of a business registration reform in Mexico on economic activity. This reform made registration procedures less complex and was implemented in different municipalities at...

This thesis is a collection of three essays on development economics and finance. The first chapter studies the 1992 presidential impeachment in Brazil to evaluate the impact of an anti-corruption drive on politically connected companies. I identify two types of firms: companies owned by friends...

This dissertation consists of three separate essays. In the first essay, privatization is found to improve bank performance by both better monitoring of existing firms, and improved selection of new bank clients. Data on firms borrowing from government-owned banks, and firms borrowing from a...

This dissertation is a collection of three independent papers in empirical development economics. The first chapter studies the effect of a family planning program in Bangladesh, which successfully reduced fertility, on households' asset accumulation. In developing countries parents expect their...

Chapter 1 is the product of joint work with Ferhat Akbas and it provides a behavioral explanation for monthly negative serial correlation in stock returns. For the first time in the literature, this work reports that only low momentum stocks experience monthly negative serial correlation. Using...

This thesis consists of three essays that examine investment choices in less developed countries. Chapter 1 examines how the structure of existing microfinance contracts may discourage risky but high-expected return investments. I develop a theory that unifies models of investment choice,...

This dissertation is a collection of three independent essays in theoretical and applied econometrics. The first chapter analyzes dynamic games with continuous states and controls. There are two main contributions. First, we give conditions under which the payoff function is nonparametrically...