Travelers' value of travel time savings (VTTS) are often used to estimate thebenefits of transportation facilities, including managed lanes (MLs). With variouseligibility criteria and time of day pricing on the MLs, the VTTS estimation iscomplicated. This is evident by the underestimation of...

Policy analysis of nonmarket goods requires accurate knowledge about the behavior of economic agents. This dissertation explores several facets of behavior models in recreational angling for three New England groundfish species.Stated preference methods are used frequently for nonmarket...

My philosophical case study concerns textbook presentations of the theory of demand. Does this theory contain anything more than just a collection of tautologies? In order to determine its empirical content, it must be viewed holistically. But then, the theory implies false factual claims. We...

Using data from the confidential and restricted-access Characteristics of Business Owners (CBO) Survey, we provide some suggestive evidence on the causes of intergenerational links in business ownership and the related issue of how having a family business background affects small business...

We explore the possibility that a systematic relationship exists between employment within a particular type of contract and risk preference. We exploit a set of proxies for risk preference, whereby some of the proxies capture risk loving behaviour (expenditure on gambling, smoking and alcohol)...

This dissertation shows how the transformation of social ownership to private ownership affected the behavior of firms and entrepreneurship in selected former Yugoslav countries. The goal was to determine whether firms’ objective remains the maximization of income per worker and, on the other...

To what extent is the performance of a small business venture, once started, affected by capital constraints at the time of inception and by the business founder's investment in human capital? We attempt to answer this question taking into account the potential endogeneity of human and financial...

This dissertation explores how economic, organizational, and personal factors affect self-employment transitions, occupational decisions, and firm formation activities of individuals at different positions in the skill distribution. The first essay of my dissertation studies how local...