Sexual activity among adolescents is associated with risks such as pregnancy and STDs, and there is substantial policy interest in how peers influence the timing of sexual initiation. This paper measures separate effects for two social mechanisms--peer-group norms and partner availability--using...

This dissertation includes three separate papers that share an emphasis on the significance of socio-political and historical factors on the quality of demographic data in China and Vietnam. The first two papers investigate the interaction between data collection and family planning policy...

The deteriorating labor market position of young men has arguably played an important role in later and less frequent marriage since the 1970s. This dissertation examines the relationship between men's socioeconomic characteristics and marriage formation and the labor market causes of marriage...

This dissertation is a multi-method, institutional theoretic study that sought to understand how organizational communication in the United States petroleum industry functioned as a device for corporate legitimation over the years 1975-1990. The study investigated the symbolic dimension of...

How do changes in competitive intensity affect trade patterns? In this paper, we exploit a quasi-natural experiment associated with increased anti-trust enforcement activity over the last two decades. A large number of international markets underwent a change in competitive intensity as they...

In this study, we present novel statistics on the patenting in US manufacturing and new evidence on the question of what happens when firms patent. We do so by creating a comprehensive firm-patent matched dataset that links the NBER patent data (covering the universe of patents) to firm data...

We propose an industry-level index of capital liquidity -- defined as the share of used capital in aggregate industry capital expenditure -- that relates (inversely) to sunkenness of capital investment. We then test the effect of capital liquidity on the dispersion and mean of industry...

We use firm-level data and national input-output tables from 17 countries over the 2002- 2005 period to test new and existing hypotheses about the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the efficiency of domestic firms in the host country (i.e., spillovers). Providing evidence from a...

We develop an economic model of "greenwash," in which a firm strategically discloses environmental information and a non-governmental organization (NGO) may audit and penalize the firm for failing to fully disclose its environmental impacts. We identify conditions under which NGO punishment of...

We analyze a large stratified random sample of firms that provide us with measures of performance and each firm’s top manager’s perception of the severity of business environment constraints faced by his/her firm. Unlike most existing studies that rely on external and aggregated proxy...