Dissertation

By the end of the second year, a student has passed the qualifying examinations, has selected a dissertation topic, and conducts background study on the topic. The normal mechanisms for topic development are:

  • elective courses
  • participation in workshops and colloquia
  • consultation with the dissertation committee

After completing a dissertation acceptable to the committee, a student will present a final oral examination on the dissertation. The presentation is open to the public; family, friends, and classmates may be invited to attend. (A minimum of three quarters must lapse between advancement to candidacy and the filing of the dissertation. The quarter of advancement counts as the first quarter.)

The following list of recently completed theses illustrates the kind of dissertations undertaken in the program:

2008-09:

  • "Essays on Rural-Urban Migration in Hinterland China"
  • "Nonroutine Tasks in International Trade"
  • "Essays on Health Economics"
  • "Essays on the Economics of Real Estate Brokerage and Contracts"
  • "Essays on Migration and Monetary Policy"
  • "Limit Theory for Overfit Models"
  • "Essays on Testing Conditional Independence"
  • "Measuring U.S. Labor Market Dynamics"

2007-08:

  • "Essays in Monetary Economics"
  • "Essays on Regional and Firm-Level Productivity, Military Spending and Technology"
  • "Essays on Optimal Tests for Parameter Instability"
  • "Three Essays on Macroeconomics"
  • "Three Essays on Estimation of Policy Disturbances"
  • "Dynamic Analysis in Productivity, Oil Shock, and Recession."
  • "Three Essays on the Economics of Immigration and Education"
  • "Essays on the Predictability and Volatility of Returns in Stock Market"
  • "The Emergent Contingent Workforce"
  • "Essays on Portfolio Choice with Bayesian Methods"
  • "Essays on the Optimal Selection of Series Functions"
  • "Mobility and Information Flows in International Trade and Investment"
  • "Essays in Empirical Microeconomics"

2006-07:

  • "Essays on the Definition, Identification, and Estimation of Causal Effects"
  • "Essays on Productivity, Technology, and Economic Fluctuations"
  • "An Empirical Study of Environmental Policy and Technology Adoption: Phasing out Metal-Based Antifouling Paints on Recreational Boats"
  • "Essays on the Specification of New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model"
  • "Essays on Portfolio Choice with Bayesian Methods"
  • "Essays on Investment Specific Technological Change, Factor-Hoarding, and Business Cycles"
  • "Essays on Return Distributions and Applications"
  • "Three Essays on Teacher Quality and Education Production"
  • "Agglomeration and Labor-Market Activities : Evidence from US Citizens"
  • "Essays on Hypothesis Testing In the Presence of Nearly Integrated Variables"
  • "The Constrained Management of Marine Resources"
  • "Water Resources Planning Under Climate Change and Variability"
  • "Mobility and Information Flows in International Trade and Investment"
  • "Essays on Strategic Incentives For Information Revelation"
  • "Essays in Empirical Microeconomics"
  • "The Emergent Contingent Workforce"
  • "Essays on the Optimal Selection of Series Functions "
  • "Contrasting Costs, Contractual Form, and Welfare"