Internalizing market transactions has been seen by New Institutional Economics (NIE) as a means of over-coming transaction costs. Several specific theories have been put forward as to how the presence of such costs (variously defined), or other institutional factors, motivates firms to...

Essay 1 investigates an empirical link between institutional variables and the performance of firms based on cross-country firm-level survey data. Current empirical evidence based on this type of data is unsatisfactory because employing survey responses as direct measures of institutional...

This thesis consists of three chapters on the choice of institutional governance. The first chapter provides empirical evidence on the effect of local norms on the contractual choice, using a comprehensive dataset on US agricultural leasing contracts. We focus on the choice between cash-rent and...

The first half of the dissertation studies how conditional lending by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) affects the implementation of economic reforms. In the presence of asymmetric information about the outcome of a structural reform between an opportunistic agenda-setter government...

This dissertation contains three essays. In Chapter 2, I investigate the causal factors of the soft budget constraint (SBC) problem. Based on a panel dataset from a survey of Chinese enterprises, the test results support the policy burden hypothesis but not the ownership hypothesis. The findings...

This dissertation inquires into the relationship between income, aspirations, and life satisfaction in post-transition Russia. It first explores the channels through which adaptation and social comparison contribute to higher income aspirations. The results show that social comparison is a...

The first chapter of this dissertation considers the complexity of contracts to be determined bytransacting partners based on their exposure to the opportunistic behavior of theother. A transaction cost economics model generates the hypothesis that buyer andseller relationship-specific...

This thesis examines the effect of integration on wages when the economy is partially unionized. The first part sets up a general equilibrium model where wages in one sector are set by a monopoly union. The unionized sector of the economy also utilizes a factor (capital) which is internationally...