Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Essays On The Market For Higher Education, Samuel Lawrence Rhoads Glick

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation studies the market for higher education and impacts of higher education policy on the market. In the first chapter, I estimate the short-run elasticity of supply of higher education using the rollout of state merit grant programs as plausibly exogenous variation in student demand for in-state higher education. I find that public and private not-for-profit four-year institutions have elastic supply responses to these programs. Public institutions have an estimated elasticity of 2.1 and private institutions have an estimated elasticity of 1.34. I estimate the causal effects of marginally qualifying for and receiving the federal Pell Grant and the …

Essays On The Economics Of Entrepreneurship, Nicholas Graff

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three chapters related to the economics of entrepreneurship. The second chapter focuses on the business performance of necessity entrepreneurs, specifically focusing on job creation and earnings. The third chapter investigates the large and persistent earnings differences between self-employed men and women, finding women earn less in self-employment because of different choices of industry, number of hours worked, and differences in business capital. The fourth chapter investigates whether the black-white self-employment gap explains the black-white wealth gap.

Essays On Impacts Of Natural Disasters, Fang-Yu Yeh

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three chapters that study how natural disasters affect households and individuals. The first chapter examines how Kentucky’s housing market responds to changes in flood risk information. The second chapter looks at disproportionate drinking water non-compliance post-disaster. The third chapter studies the effect of flooding events and the national school meals program in Kentucky on education outcomes.

The first chapter examines Kentucky’s housing market response to changes in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) flood maps and how the responses differ depending on whether an area has been flooded recently. I use Zillow’s ZTRAX property transaction data …