This dissertation consists of three essays that study preventive health behaviors among the elderly U.S.population. The first essay studies the effect of Medicare coverage on demand for the influenza vaccine. I use apropensity score matching estimator to look at the effect of the 1993 Medicare...

A study to determine whether lifetime earnings in various specialties influence physicians' choice of field. Although income payments to practicing physicians in certain specialties felt to be "shortage" fields may be a politically infeasible policy instrument for influencing specialty choice,...

In this dissertation, I discuss two important factors in individuals' decision-making processes: subjective expectation bias and time-inconsistent preferences. In Chapter I, I look at how individuals' own subjective expectations about certain future events are different from what actually...

Motivated by an empirical analysis of a data set collected in the field of ecology, we proposed nonlinear varying-coefficient models, a new class of varying-coefficient models. We further propose an estimation procedure for the nonlinear varying-coefficient models by using local linear...

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate dual approaches to corner solutions that are both tractable and flexible in recreation demand. Two structural models are estimated using data from the Iowa wetlands survey in the incomplete demand system context. This dissertation expands...