Asmat Belleza, Roberto Carlos (2021) Essays in applied microeconomics. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis consists of three essays on Applied Microeconomics. It broadly deals with understanding how access to information can affect decision-making by using state-of-the-art causal analysis.

Chapter one studies how the lack of information about cases' characteristics affects differences in decision-making between female and male judges. This study uses administrative data on child support cases where the father is the respondent and the mother who has the child custody is the petitioner. By exploiting random assignment of cases to judges, this chapter reveals that female judges set lower awards than their male counterparts in child support cases. However, the gender-based difference is much lower when the income of the respondent is not observable to judges. By combining decisions made in cases where the income of the respondent is observable with decisions made in cases where it is not, the analysis shows that female judges estimate higher levels for the unknown income, which attenuates the gender-based differences in decision-making.

The other two chapters investigate how information given to competitors in district mathematical Olympiad affects their willingness to participate again and their subsequent performance. Chapter two evaluates whether giving positive feedback to competitors increases their subsequent participation in mathematical Olympiad. To establish causality, I exploit a score cutoff that determines the provision of positive feedback (\you are successful") and find that positive feedback positively affects subsequent participation in competitions. Interestingly, the positive feedback effect is weaker when recipients are surrounded by extremely talented competitors in their district but remains the same when surrounded by low-performing competitors. Chapter three investigates whether equally talented competitors who learn they are differently ranked in their districts participate more and perform better in the following year. By exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the score distribution across districts, I find that higher-ranked competitors are more likely to attend the vi competition the following year and perform better. In exploring mechanisms, I investigate whether these rank effects are driven by school choices. I find positive but non-significant rank effect on the likelihood of switching from regular to selective schools.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Microeconomics, Microeconomics -- Decision making, Microeconomics -- Competitions
Official Date:	September 2021
Dates:	Date Event September 2021 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Economics
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Rathelot, Roland ; Lockwood, Ben
Extent:	vi, 120 leaves : charts
Language:	eng

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