This dissertation examines the impacts of family policies on the economic position of women in East and West Germany in 1989-90. Chapter I reviews and critiques neoclassical and Marxian theories of women's subordination, focussing on the neoclassical postulate of a joint household utility...

The market-based approach to controlling industrial pollution is a major innovation in environmental policy, and is rapidly gaining support among policy makers. It is likely that environmental quality standards can be achieved at much lower cost with market-based policies than with traditional...

With new tools such as evolutionary game theory and agent based modeling this, dissertation expands the traditional model of human behavior within the BPC model. All three essays involve heterogeneity. All model relatively simple agents playing a common social dilemma repeatedly with other...

This dissertation consists of three independent essays. The first essay, "Long Waves and Short Cycles in a Model of Endogenous Financial Fragility," presents a stock flow consistent macroeconomic model in which financial fragility in firm and household sectors evolves endogenously through the...

This dissertation consists of two theoretical papers on market-based environmental policy. The first paper exploits the correlation between the environmental performance of firms and their economic performance to show that financial markets can be used to help enforce environmental policy and to...

With recent trends toward globalization and capital market integration, emerging markets have increasingly become the target of many investors in search for higher returns. Before placing their money abroad, however, investors need to bear considerable challenges in mind. While investments in...

This dissertation explores the effect of trade liberalization on income distribution under conditions which depart in one or more ways from the Heckscher-Ohlin model. Each essay was written with Mexico in mind, but the results are stated in terms as general as possible. The first essay shows...

Many economists have heralded markets as institutions promoting individual freedom, liberty and expanding wealth while others have condemned them for generating avarice, economic inequality and crises. Exchanging Entailments critically evaluates how prominent economic theorists link these...

This dissertation (consisting of two essays) analyzes the impact of policy measures used to control the risk-taking behavior of banks. Specifically, the first essay explores the impact of increasing the required minimum capital to asset ratios on the riskiness of banks' assets. The second essay...

In this dissertation, I explore the origins and consequences of the dramatic rise in the size and importance of financial markets in the U.S. economy since the late 1970s. I focus on the impacts of this process of 'financialization' on the operations of the non-financial corporate sector....