In this dissertation, I study the effect of environmental regulation on firm behavior. In the first chapter, I use a dynamic model to quantify the effects on exit, entry, investment and welfare of different allocation schemes of a cap-and-trade program. I focus on allocation rules regarding...

The focus of my research is dynamic political economy in macroeconomics. The first chapter of my dissertation studies the fact that Countries in the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) vary widely in their ratio of capital tax rates to labor tax rates. This chapter’s...

Research has demonstrated that the effects of intellectual property right (IPR) protection on firm research and competitive strategies are varied. This dissertation quantifies the dynamic effects of IPR protection along different dimensions. First, I show that countries choose different levels...

In the first chapter, I analyze the US banking industry in order to explain two facts. First, larger banks have lower but less volatile returns on loans compared to smaller banks over the years. Second, larger borrowers have better financial records, i.e. verifiable "hard" information, and they...

This dissertation consists of three essays pertaining to the causes of the levels and composition of the international trade flows of nations, and the consequential implications for the levels of per capita income and welfare of their populations. The first of these documents a pattern of...

First chapter aims to quantify the role of trade in capital goods incross country income differences. I construct a multi-country general equilibriummodel of trade along the line of Eaton and Kortum (2002) and Alvarezand Lucas (2007) and introduce trade in capital goods and capital...

Since the 1980s, household debt has been increasing rapidly. The high level of household indebtedness has been accompanied by a high household bankruptcy rate. My research attempts to provide a better understanding of the theoretical mechanisms behind these credit market and bankruptcy...

This dissertation consists of three essays in International Trade. The first essay studies the impact of changing tariffs on the range of goods countries export to the United States. The empirical analysis shows that tariffs tend to have a statistically significant but small impact: at best 5...

In the first chapter, I examine an incomplete markets economy in a politico-economic general equilibrium setting in which the median voter chooses the inflation rate. I use an environment where individuals face an uninsurable idiosyncratic labor productivity shock, and money is the only asset....