Economics, 1927-2026

This thesis examines how quantitative easing and carry-trade incentives affect equity markets in Hong Kong between 2010 and 2025, asking whether monetary expansion by the Fed, ECB and BoJ combined with US dollar-Hong Kong dollar carry-related incentives can help explain movements in Hong Kong equities. The analysis uses data on the Hang Seng Composite Index and selected sector-specific indices, combined with monetary base measures, forward-market variables, short-term interest rates and macroeconomic control variables. The research estimates baseline and controlled regression models for quantitative easing and a series of carry-trade regressions using interest-rate differentials and forward-implied measures to test whether external liquidity conditions and carry incentives are associated with Hong Kong equity performance. The results show that quantitative easing variables are more consistently associated with Hong Kong equities than the carry-trade measures, which remain largely insignificant across specifications. The findings imply that under a pegged exchange-rate regime, foreign monetary spillovers reflected through the monetary base may be transmitted more clearly through domestic asset markets than through simple bilateral carry-based return predictability, while also pointing to the need for future research using alternative quantitative easing measures, more granular sector analysis and broader carry-trade constructions.

This paper examines the impact of the 2021 Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) re-evaluation on food insecurity in the United States. The reform increased maximum Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits by approximately 21 percent relative to pre-pandemic levels and represents the first permanent adjustment to benefit adequacy in decades. Despite its scale, there is limited empirical evidence on how such structural increases in benefit generosity affect food insecurity over time. Using a state-level panel dataset from 2016 to 2023, this paper implements a difference-in-differences framework with continuous treatment intensity, exploiting variation in pre-policy SNAP participation rates across states. This approach enables identification despite the nationwide implementation of the policy. The analysis also incorporates regional price parities to examine how cost-of-living differences shape the effectiveness of benefit increases. The results indicate that the 2021 TFP update is associated with reductions in food insecurity in states with higher SNAP participation, with larger and more precisely estimated effects for child food insecurity. In contrast, effects on overall food insecurity are smaller and less consistently significant across specifications. Additional analyses provide limited evidence that cost-of-living differences systematically alter the policy’s effectiveness. These findings suggest that permanent increases in SNAP benefit generosity can improve food security, particularly for more vulnerable populations, but may not generate uniform effects across all households. More broadly, the results highlight the importance of program exposure in shaping policy outcomes and contribute new evidence on the effects of a structural reform to SNAP.

Given the particular role lithium continues to play in all forms of battery powered vehicles, I ask the question of what the effect of lithium price shocks is on lithium-based vehicle production quantities. This question is answered by considering the effect on the aggregate production quantities for countries, manufacturers, and carlines using three suitable metrics for lithium prices. I use a series of local projections and accompanying impulse response functions to determine this effect. Data is collected primarily from the UN Comtrade database and the Internal Handling Services Markit’s light-vehicle sales database. In response, I find that shocks to the price of lithium hydroxide result in a lagged negative response in the long term for lithium-based vehicles’ production quantities in both the aggregate country and manufacturer models.

This study explores the structural drivers of Japan’s prolonged economic stagnation, known as the “Lost Decades,” by integrating analysis of micro-level financial frictions and reallocation processes and macro-level resource misallocation. Utilizing firm-level panel data from TOPIX-listed nonfinancial companies (1995-2025) and estimating capital stocks and production functions including intangible capital, the study estimates the dual-channel effect of funding constraints on capital formation and the effect of factor-specific misallocation on aggregate productivity. At the micro-level, I find that financial frictions are highly significant determinants of investment behavior and have not moderated over time. Notably, cash stocks exert a stronger impact on investment than operating cash flow. Additionally, tangible investment is more sensitive to both internal liquidity and Tobin’s Q, while intangible investment remains relatively unresponsive. Lastly, I find that Bond-Cummins analyst-forecast-based Q values are a worse predictor of investment behavior than traditional market-based Q after adjusting for intangible capital. At the macro-level, I estimate responsiveness of capital formation to productivity signals, finding that tangible capital is more readily adjustable than both labor and intangible capital, while theory suggests labor should be the least fixed input. Then, I estimate a total annual TFP loss due to misallocation, and attribute this loss to individual factor misallocation; I find that misallocation in the labor market is responsible for the largest portion of the output gap, and while labor and tangible capital markets have gotten marginally more efficient during the study period, intangible capital has become increasingly inefficiently allocated as it takes an increasing share of factor costs in the Japanese economy. This drove a persistent output gap of roughly 20-25% through the study period, despite a return to TFP growth in the last 15 years. The findings suggest a divergence in the Japanese economy, where despite financial frictions facing tangible investment, managers continue to prioritize such physical assets, leaving the accumulation of intangible capital and labor as mechanical processes that do not respond to shocks in Tobin’s Q, TFP, or liquidity. Ultimately, the study concludes that Japan’s corporate ecosystem is locked in a defensive equilibrium that drives stagnation.

Key Words: Japanese Economy, Lost Decade, Intangible Capital, Tobin’s Q, Corporate Investment, Financial Frictions, Efficiency, Misallocation

This paper examines the impact of Canada’s 2016 federal income tax reform—which raised the top marginal rate from 29% to 33% on income above $200,000 CAD—on the emigration of high-skilled Canadian workers to the United States. Using the Canadian Tax and Credit Simulator applied to Labour Force Survey data, I construct occupation-level measures of exposure to the reform based on the simulated change in post-tax income for top earners within highly educated occupations. Difference-in-differences and triple-difference event study specifications are estimated using American Community Survey data from 2010–2022, leveraging variation in tax exposure across occupation groups and comparing Canadian-born to OECD-born workers. The Canada-only estimates suggest that the stock of Canadian-born workers in the most tax-exposed occupations increased by approximately 17% relative to the least exposed occupations, with effects emerging two years after implementation and continuing through 2022. However, the triple-difference estimates, which account for common trends among OECD-born workers, are positive but small and statistically insignificant, indicating that the observed increase may reflect broader U.S. demand for high-skilled labor. The implied elasticity of migration with respect to the net-of-tax rate is 0.76, exceeding domestic estimates in prior work but slightly below foreign elasticities observed in European settings. These findings suggest that the migration response is economically modest and may fall below the precision of the estimates, consistent with the presence of cross-border frictions that limit mobility. Nonetheless, the concentration of these responses among top earners implies that relatively small outflows may still carry outsized economic consequences through their impact on innovation, investment, and employment.

The Inflation Reduction Act was passed by the United States government on August 16th, 2022. In an effort to bolster domestic production and consumption of electric vehicles, Section 30D of this sweeping bill provided tax credits of up to $7,500 for consumers who purchased electric vehicles meeting several manufacturing and component sourcing requirements. Going beyond the common portrayal of the Section 30D consumer tax credits as industrial policy instruments, this thesis considers these electric vehicle tax credits as trade policy instruments by examining how the stringent eligibility requirements outlined under Section 30D subsequently affect the United States’ trade flows of electric vehicles, critical minerals, and battery components. To conduct this analysis, fixed effects difference-in-differences models are employed to examine changes in the trade flows of the products of interest, causally induced by respective eligibility requirement enactments. The results reveal realized impacts on the relative differences between the trade flows of eligible and ineligible electric vehicles within the three years following the initial implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act. Estimations are the most robust for the analysis of electric vehicle imports, with little to no changes observed in the trade flows of most critical mineral and battery component products. These findings suggest that the Inflation Reduction Act Section 30D electric vehicle consumer tax credits had implications as a trade policy instrument and drove meaningful impacts on reshaping the import flows of electric vehicles.

This paper investigates whether socioeconomic status (SES) systematically predicts olfactory function in older U.S. adults using data from the second wave of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP). Prior biomedical research has long documented links between smell loss and adverse outcomes such as poor nutrition, reduced social engagement, as well as neurodegenerative diseases and even mortality. However, these relationships have not been examined within an economic framework. This study uses a microeconomic lens to treat olfactory function as an overlooked component of health capital, in order to test whether it follows the well-established socioeconomic gradient observed in other health outcomes. Using data obtained from a validated five-item odor identification test as the primary outcome, my analysis estimates the relationship between olfactory performance and socioeconomic measures of education and income, controlling for demographic characteristics, health behaviors, and environmental hazard. The results provide evidence on whether sensory health reflects broader patterns of socioeconomic inequality. Finally, the paper ventures to explore the potential mechanisms by which socioeconomic status may affect olfaction, including via avoidance of harmful behaviors, environmental conditions, and social network structure.

Australia's Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) is one of the world's most ambitious and controversial experiments in water commodification, having unbundled water from land across a river system that produces roughly 40 percent of the nation's agricultural output. Using a trade-level panel of 179,000 surface water allocation trades from 2009 to 2023, this paper estimates the structural determinants of water allocation price volatility under the MDBP and traces its downstream consequences for agricultural land values. Agricultural land use composition significantly predicts allocation market price volatility, with pastoral and revenue-intensive zones exhibiting lower volatility than inflexible cropping zones. Predicted volatility is positively capitalised into farm land values, with the effect concentrated in the Northern Basin. A panel analysis of entitlement ownership concentration finds a consistent null result across entitlement type, price measure and water source.

This paper examines whether the National Pension Service’s (NPS) November 2018 adoption of Korea’s Stewardship Code narrowed the Korea Discount, the persistent undervaluation of Korean equities relative to international peers. Using a firm-year panel of listed firms across 41 countries from 2012 to 2023, I exploit the NPS’s stewardship adoption as a discrete policy event and estimate a continuous-treatment two-way fixed-effects difference-in-differences model, with treatment intensity measured by each Korean firm’s pre-treatment NPS ownership share. I evaluate effects on raw valuation multiples, a set of governance-relevant outcomes, and a firm-year Korea Discount measure I construct by adapting the "warranted-multiple" approach of Bhojraj and Lee (2002). I find that firms with greater pre-treatment NPS ownership experienced a relative decline in price-to-earnings and price-to-cash-flow multiples after adoption, and that the firm-level Korea Discount widened for NPS-owned firms. Tests of the governance channels produce limited evidence of the behavioral shifts theorized to come from improved stewardship, and a binned robustness specification shows that the elect does not scale uniformly with the size of the NPS’s ownership stake. These results suggest that institutional monitoring by the NPS did not deliver the valuation gains envisioned by Korea’s governance reform agenda, providing insights for both Korean policymakers and investors.

This research analyzes the relationship between platform mediated labor and artistic gig work in the United States using American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample (ACS PUMS) data from 2010-2024. Defining gig workers as unincorporated self-employed individuals and artists using core and extended occupational definitions, it estimates gig participation with linear probability and logistic (logit) models and estimates labor supply and income outcomes with Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) under multiple fixed effects specifications. The findings show that older and female artists are more likely to engage in gig work, while race, marital status, and education also shape participation patterns. Across both artist samples, gig participation is associated with roughly 6.5 fewer weekly hours worked and approximately 50% lower total income. These results suggest that although artistic gig work may expand labor-market access, it is also strongly associated with economic insecurity and unequal outcomes.

This paper tests the silicon shield hypothesis, which holds that global dependence on Taiwan’s semiconductor industry generates measurable diplomatic alignment with the US-led bloc. Using a 2003-2024 country-year panel, product-level trade exposure measures for HS 8541 and HS 8542, and a Bartik shift-share instrumental variables strategy drawing from Goldsmith-Pinkham, Sorkin, and Swift (2020) and Borusyak, Hull, and Jaravel (2022), I find that the cross-sectional correlation between Taiwan semiconductor dependence and US-bloc alignment reflects stable country characteristics rather than any causal effect of chip sourcing on diplomatic behavior. Once country fixed effects are introduced, the relationship attenuates substantially, and where the instrument provides credible identification, the within-country effects are negative rather than positive. Six-digit specifications for HS 854231, the product category containing TSMC’s most advanced logic chips, show a negative and significant within-country association across both outcome measures, reinforcing this conclusion. Supply-side evidence from an on-the-record interview with a former Taiwanese minister, an official Ministry of Foreign Affairs response, and several public statements by senior officials points toward a deliberate Taiwanese policy of non-coercion that provides a coherent mechanism for the demand-side null. The silicon shield may raise the costs of conflict by creating economic dependencies, but it does not appear to generate the diplomatic loyalty that the hypothesis implies.

This thesis examines whether financial constraints at college graduation, including student debt, low parental wealth, and limited family income, drive graduates toward career paths that reduce lifetime earnings. Combining the NLSY97 with occupation-specific earnings growth profiles derived from the American Community Survey, I estimate the relationship between a composite financial constraint index and career outcomes over a fifteen-year time horizon after controlling for ability (AFQT), demographics, graduation year, and region fixed effects. A one standard deviation increase in the constraint index predicts 1.5 percentage points lower occupation-specific earnings growth (p = 0.002). Cumulative earnings are 6.9 percent lower fifteen years after graduation (p = 0.003), with the penalty growing over time. The AFQT x constraint interaction (p = 0.010) reveals the penalty is concentrated among high-ability graduates. Supplementary data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study broadly confirms the direction, timing, and approximate magnitude of the NLSY97 findings with different constraint measures and ability controls. The results indicate that the earnings consequences of financial constraints at graduation extend beyond repayment burden and negatively impact the constrained student’s early-to-middle career trajectory.

My paper examines the impact of national economic conditions at time of college graduation on labor market outcomes over the first decade following graduation, using sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) the Correlated Random Effects (CRE) framework of Ashenfelter and Zimmerman (1997) to control for shared family background. I examine three labor market outcomes: wages, annual weeks worked, and employment status. My paper extends Kahn’s (2010) paper, The Long-Term Labor Market Consequences of Graduating from College in a Bad Economy, not only by controlling for family attributes, but also by examining a more recent time period and expanding the sample on which the analysis relies on. My research yields four main findings. First, family background does not meaningfully bias standard OLS estimates. Second, graduation-year economic conditions have no meaningful effect on wages at any point in the first decade of a career, contrasting sharply with Kahn's finding of large and persistent wage losses. Third, graduating in a worse economy is associated with a small but significant positive effect on weeks worked in the short-run, but not the long-run. Fourth, employment trajectories between siblings diverge significantly over time. These findings suggest that the consequences of graduating in a bad economy are not uniform and cannot be easily generalizable to different time periods or demographic groups.