In pursuit of its transition from a command to a market economy, post-Soviet Russia has witnessed enormous regional differences in economic growth rates. Moreover, the economic reforms implemented under this transition, while initiated at the federal level, have also differed markedly across...

Drug consumption is a voluntary decision based on preexisting situational contexts, social events, personal traits and cultural circumstances. Because of this, drug consumption is not pathological but rather normal and ubiquitous. It is only as a result of persecution by the authorities of...

The paper attempts to shed light on the key drivers of consumer tipping behavior and reports the findings from an exploratory study aimed at addressing consumer motivations and their influence on consumers’ willingness to tip. When approaching the research issue, the phenomenon presents an...

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...

We study incentive compatible profit-sharing rules when output (or profit) is obtained via the joint use of a technology exhibiting decreasing marginal returns. The incentives compatibility criterion we adopt is that of strategy-proofness (SP), arguably the most robust and the most demanding...