Households pay a premium to live in houses assigned to high quality public schools, and the housing market yields information about the demand for public school quality. The current study estimates a two-stage house price hedonic emphasizing the role that private schools play in the willingness...

The nineties have witnessed broad economic growth and prosperity throughout the nation, with improvements in all major indicators of economic well-being. Yet, many rural and urban regions continued to experience economic distress during this period. At the same time, investments in...

Built on the foundation of economic principles, real estate offers many pursuits of academic discovery within the realm of finance. This dissertation examines three areas of real estate finance. In the first chapter, I use the unique real estate characteristics of heterogeneity, immobility, and...

The Hausman test is used in applied economic work as a test of misspecification. It is most commonly thought of (wrongly some would say) as a test of whether one or more explanatory variables in a regression model is endogenous. There are several versions of the test available with modern...

Group lending has received a great attention from economists and policymakers for its successful delivery of credit to poor borrowers and its role in alleviating poverty in the developing countries. The success of group lending in providing credit to poor borrowers has been attributed to its...

Networks of relationships play an important role in the social and economic operation of the labor market. Social connections have been shown to be crucial in influencing the transition and efficiency in the labor market because they can quickly spread information over large segments of society....