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 elapse 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:

2011-12

  • "Essays in Governance, Development, and Decisions"
  • "Essays on Energy and Environmental Policy"
  • "Essays on the Impacts of Affirmative Action"
  • "Essays on Liquidity of U.S. Common Stocks"
  • "Essays on Frictions in Financial Macroeconomics"
  • "Three Essays at the Intersection of Public Finance and Environmental Economics"
  • "Essays in Monetary Policy"
  • "Three Essays on International Trade"
  • "Distributional Effects of Trade and Tariffs Between and Within Countries"
  • "Essays on International Trade Agreements and Contracts under Renegotiation"
  • "Information and Incentives in Stochastic Games, Social Learning and Crowdsourcing"
  • "Trade and Institutions"
  • "Investments in Children in Developing Countries"
  • "Essays in Macroeconomics"
  • "The Impact of Uncertainty and Risk Measures"

2010-11

  • "Modeling and Estimation of Financial and Bioeconomic Settings in a Dynamic Environment"
  • "Essays on Unconventional Pricing Strategies and Impacts of Economic Regulation on Stock Return Asymmetry"
  • "Optimal Taxation in Life Cycle Models"
  • "Term Structure of Interest Rates and Monetary Policy"
  • "Essays on Communication Games with Multiple Informants and Their Applications to Legal Systems"
  • "Essays in Time and Risk"
  • "Essays in Behavioral Economics"
  • "Essays on Institutions and Innovation in Natural Resource Industries"
  • "Essays in Labor Economics"
  • "Essays on the Japanese Labor Market"
  • "Essays in Entrepreneurship"
  • "Improved Inference for Spatial and Panel Models"
  • "Essays in International Trade and Entrepreneurship"
  • "Understanding and Managing Corporate Agency Problems"
  • "Essays on Time-Varying Investment Opportunities and Investors' Asset Allocation"
  • "Essays on Health Insurance and Education"
  • "Essays in Public and Labor Economics"
  • "Three Essays on Environment and Development Economics"
  • "Mortgage Default and Student Outcomes, the Solar Home Price Premium, and the Magnitude of Housing Price Declines"
  • "Multiple-Group Games"
  • "Essays on Predictability of Emerging Markets Growth and Financial Performance"
  • "Contracting and Litigation Under Biases and Asymmetric Information"

2009-10

  • "Essays in Decision Making Under Cognitive Load"
  • "Essays on Biased Self Image"
  • "Social Learning in Labor Markets and in Real Estate Brokerage"
  • "Essays in Belief Formation and Decision Making"
  • "Three Essays Concerning Information Transmission"
  • "Three Essays in Labor Economics"
  • "Essays on Inference and Strategic Modeling"
  • "The Economic Impact of Tax-Based Federal Student Aid"
  • "Essays in Behavioral Economics: Evidence from the Field"
  • "Statistical Discrimination, Recognition and Altruism, and Pure/Mixed Strategy Manipulation"
  • "Essays in Labor Economics and the Economics of Education"
  • "Optimal Policy Structure in Natural Resource and Environmental Economics"
  • "Venture Capital Returns, New Firms and Social Networks"
  • "Inference for Partially Identified Economic Models"
  • "The Impact of News on Monetary Policy Expectations"
  • "Three Essays in Labor Economics"
  • "Four Essays in Econometrics"
  • "Three Essays on International Trade and Economic Development"
  • "Three Essays on Behavioral Economics"
  • "Endogeneity and Measurement Error in Nonparametric and Semiparametric Models"
  • "Identification of Demand for Differentiated Products"

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"