My dissertation studies the dynamics of primary commodity prices empirically and theoretically. In Chapter II, I provide empirical evidence on the time series behavior of commodity price movements. Employing monthly prices for 36 individual commodities, I find that the commodity price to CPI...

This study contributes to the scarce empirical literature on dollarization by investigating the short and long-run effects of dollarization on the dynamics of prices at the macro and the micro level. This study also presents a survey of the available literature.This study examines the short-run...

Evidence that asset returns are more highly correlated during volatile markets and during market downturns (see Longin and Solnik, 2001, and Ang and Chen, 2002) has lead some researchers to propose alternative models of dependence. In this paper we develop two simple goodness-of-fit tests for...

This dissertation studies the distributions of treatment effects in switching regimes models (SRMs). First, we propose a general class of SRMs and provide simple estimators of average treatment effects. Second, we establish sharp bounds on the joint distribution of potential outcomes and the...

In this dissertation, we evaluate the efficiency of electric utilities in the United States since 1997, and determine whether investor owned electric utilities (IOUs) and cooperatives (COOPs) achieve higher cost, technical and allocative efficiency and greater financial performance than publicly...

My dissertation focuses on partial identification of the distribution function of treatment effects. When treatment effects are believed to be heterogeneous, policy evaluation often requires knowledge of the distribution function of potential treatment effects. This function cannot be...

The main focus of this thesis is the study of distributional aspects of income and other dimensions of well-being. The first two essays pertain to the use of multidimensional poverty techniques. In the third essay I discuss a different distributional aspect, the middle class as captured by...

A widely accepted feature of financial markets across the world is that there are limits to access credit. While this problem is extremely acute at times of economic crisis and recession, it is also prevalent at times of robust economic growth. When investment opportunities in an economy are...

Chapter I investigates how the fertility, marriage and labor supply decisions of American women changed between 1870 and 1930. The proposed explanation for the historical trends in marriage and labor market behavior is based on the premise that gradual improvements in technology drew single...

ECONOMICS ESSAYS ON THE EFFECTS OF TRADE LIBERALIZATION AND OIL PRICE VOLATILITY IN OPEN ECONOMIES OSAYI ETHEL OVBIOSA-AKINBOSOYE Dissertation under the direction of Professor Eric W. Bond This work comprises three chapters. In the first two chapters, I study the effect of reductions in...