Job Market Paper

Many countries are committed to achieving pay equity, with the aim of reducing wage disparities that typically average around 15% in hourly earnings between men and women performing the same job within the same organization. In 2018, Portugal revised its pay equity legislation to impose pay-equity policy targeting larger firms, imposing fines on those that maintained a gender wage gap exceeding five percent. Using detailed employee-employer data and an event study design, we examine the immediate labor market effects of this legislation and reveal significant unintended consequences.

This paper explores the effects of cannibalization and business-stealing within the lenders’ branch networks in the U.S. shadow banking mortgage market. Given the difficulty in obtaining data related to the shadow bank branch network, a novel dataset, the Your-Economy Time Series dataset, is introduced to provide details on shadow bank branch locations from 2012 to 2017. Implementing a two-stage least squares approach shows that having a branch increases the lender’s market share.

We study inference on dynamic average treatment effect parameters for staggered interventions when parallel trends are only valid conditional on unobserved interactive fixed effects. Our identification strategy allows for any first stage system of moments that controls the column space of the unobservable trends including principal components, common correlated effects, quasi-differencing, and more. This result applies to data sets with either many or few pretreatment time periods.

Structural estimation of welfare effects from new goods largely relies on demand models that include a logit error and the simulation of a counterfactual that removes the new goods. In markets where consumers have both brand preferences and product-type (option) preferences, nested demand models come into play. However, the logit errors in nested logit models not only lead to an inaccurate prediction of shares in the counterfactual but also make welfare estimates sensitive to the number of nests.

This paper uses a quasi-randomized field experiment in Zimbabwe to understand the impact of a large-scale intervention targeting community attitudes. I measure the impact that the program has had on attitudes, the behaviour of teachers and caregivers, and the learning and progression outcomes of at-risk youth. The quantitative survey and learning assessment data I use for this is complemented by transcripts from focus groups and interviews, which I analyze using innovative text mining methods to measure changes in community sentiment towards marginalized groups.

Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are financial derivative products that insure bond investors against firm-default. Determining the payout, however, is complicated because the outstanding value of the insurance is larger than the debt outstanding. The value of a bond is also heterogeneous. CDS payouts are therefore determined in a two-stage auction. In the first stage dealers commit to either supply or purchase a fixed quantity at the unknown final price. Then, the excess supply or demand is announced and a multiunit uniform price auction is held to determine the market clearing price.

We use data on a large wave of directed hospital mergers and closures in Ontario to investigate the impact of hospital reorganization on patient welfare. We estimate a model of patient hospital choice on data collected before the reorganization, finding that both distance and hospital quality are determinants of choice. The model is then used to determine the short-run and long-run welfare impact of reorganization. Results suggest that cost savings and efficiency are not the only factors to consider when restructuring in settings where patients do not pay for services.

We use data on a large wave of directed hospital mergers and closures in Ontario to investigate the impact of hospital reorganization on patient welfare. We estimate a model of patient hospital choice on data collected before the reorganization, finding that both distance and hospital quality are determinants of choice. The model is then used to determine the short-run and long-run welfare impact of reorganization. Results suggest that cost savings and efficiency are not the only factors to consider when restructuring in settings where patients do not pay for services.