This paper investigates the dynamic relation between callers' socialties and their wireless phone service consumption. We construct a largepair-level panel dataset with information on the number of each pair'scommon contacts, calling activities, prices, and each caller'scharacteristics over a...

Recent social spending inflation in China has led to its growth rate far exceeding that of income and other consumption. In this paper, we estimate private returns to social spending, such as higher social status and larger social network that serve as certain functions. In almost all...

The scope of my dissertation is to understand how consumers’ online communication affects consumers’ behavior and market outcomes. The recent growth of consumer generated media (CGM), also known as “new” media, has provided consumers easier interaction, both to search for product...

As networks improve and new services emerge, questions arise that affect service deployments and network choices. The Internet is arguably a successful example of a network shared by many services. However, combining heterogeneous services on the same network need not always be the right answer,...

This dissertation contains three essays that can be read independently. The first chapter examines how a debt crisis can occur and persist as a result of unanticipated, transitory, real interest rate and commodity price shocks. Using an optimal stopping framework, the debtor country's optimal...

This study is an empirical analysis of household expenditure behavior using the Linear and Quadratic Expenditure Systems. The expenditure systems are estimated using data collected in 1972 by the Departmento Administrativo Nacional de Estadisticas (DANE) of Bogota, Colombia. The Linear...

My dissertation research is composed of two parts: a theoretical part on semiparametric efficient estimation and an applied part in energy economics under different dynamic settings. The essays are related in terms of their applications as well as the way in which models are constructed and...

In the first chapter; we consider nonlinear transformations of random walks driven by thick-tailed innovations with infinite means or variances. In particular, we show how nonlinearity, nonstationarity, and thick tails interact to generate persistency in memory, and we clearly demonstrate that...