Recently, the heterogeneity of workers has been documented and emphasized as a very important feature of labor in various economics fields. Labor is one of the key inputs in the production process, and it is quite different from other inputs in that no single worker can be treated the same as...

This paper uses the lens of Social Identity Theory (Ashforth & Mael 1989; Tajfel 1982), frompsychology and organisational psychology literature, and the concept of employer branding (Ambler& Barrow 1996; Ewing et al. 2002) from the marketing discipline, to investigate differing perceptionsof employer...

This dissertation considers the determinants of individual careers within firms and it is articulated into two chapters. The first chapter analyzes a learning model in which a firm and a worker can acquire information about the worker's ability by observing his performance at different tasks....

This dissertation examines the effect of minimum wages on the Non-Accelerating inflation Rate of Unemployment, or NAIRU. The first chapter is empirical, examining whether minimum wages raise the NAIRU. I find that the level of the minimum wage is highly significant in regressions explaining...

This dissertation presents and estimates a model that examines the economic causes of intergenerational welfare recipiency. Previous literature in this area has found that daughters of welfare recipients have a higher incidence of receiving welfare than daughters of non-recipients. My...

Neoclassical theory of consumer behavior posits a static framework for utility maximization from micro perspectives. The consumer is assumed to behave as if he maximizes a utility function subject to a set of non-stochastic restrictions like exogenous prices and predetermined income. Gary Becker...

This dissertation consists of two essays studying macroeconomics questions about labor markets. The research in this document is separated into chapters that study distinct features of aggregate labor market outcomes.The first essay documents the change in behavior of fertility rate at business...

In Chapter 2, "Accounting for Cross-Country Differences in Intergenerational Earnings Persistence: The Impact of Taxation and Public Education Expenditure," I study the determinants of cross-country differences in intergenerational earnings persistence between fathers and sons. Western economies...

This thesis consists of three chapters, each of which focuses on different aspects of economic inequality.First, we investigate the differences in wage inequality between the United States and continental European countries (CEU). Wage inequality has been significantly higher in the US compared...

With 2.4 million employees, the military is America's largest employer. Individuals make the military labor force participation decision within the context of other labor market opportunities, which may vary by race and over the business cycle. This paper develops and estimates a dynamic...