Chapter 1: Why Is the Sex Ratio Unbalanced in China? The Roles of the One-Child Policy, Underdeveloped Social Insurance, and Parental ExpectationsThe sex ratio imbalance in China has reached such an alarming level that, by 2020, men of marriageable age are estimated to outnumber women by 24...

This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter provides an overview of the dissertation by summarizing the two papers presented in the following chapters.The paper in the second chapter contributes to the labor-macro literature. More specifically, I develop a general equilibrium...

As foreign direct investment (FDI) grows rapidly in this highly integrated world, numerous new challenges confront the existing global trading system. Both developed countries and their developing counterparts have been trying to reach harmonious bilateral or multilateral agreements. However,...

The economic behavior of Hawaii's longline fishers was analyzed using a cross-sectional and time-series dataset from 1991 to 1998. Three empirical essays were written analyzing (1) the technological and economic interrelationships in the longline fishery, (2) trip choice behavior, and (3) vessel...

The main objective of the dissertation is to apply recent advances in modern econometric analysis, namely cointegrating Vector Autoregression (VAR) and Bayesian VAR (BVAR) to a small open regional economy like Hawaii. This is accomplished in three related yet independent essays demonstrating how...

This dissertation consists of three essays on corporate pension plan underfunding and securities valuation. The first essay presents evidence that sell-side stock analysts systematically underreact to pension underfunding information when they forecast firm earnings and such underreaction is...

This dissertation empirically investigates the effects of the gaming industry on a local economy, specifically housing prices and sales in the city and surrounding areas of Las Vegas. This study explores many of the economic effects that Las Vegas' relatively unrestricted gaming industry has on...

This paper confronts the tractability problems that accompany IPV auction models with multi-unit bidder demands. Utilizing a first order approach, the asymptotic properties of symmetric equilibria in discriminatory and uniform price auctions are derived. It is shown that as the number of bidders...

We introduce a subsidized Vickrey auction for cost sharing problems. Although the average, marginal, and serial cost sharing mechanisms are budget-balanced, they are not allocatively efficient and they do not induce players to truthfully reveal their values as a dominant strategy. The...

This paper studies the characteristics of firm level equity volatility. There is a lack of consensus in the finance literature as to the relative statistical and economic significance of the leverage and feedback effects on equity volatility. We provide a dynamic framework to investigate...