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Essays on the Economics of Education
Todua, Gega ; Jeong, Byeongju (advisor) ; Patrinos, Harry Anthony (referee) ; Veramendi, Gregory (referee)
In the first chapter, we study financial aid policies in developing countries that sup- port students' education abroad. We collect a unique data-set on government-funded scholarship and loan programs and establish stylized facts for developing countries. We find that scholarship programs select students based on merit criteria, target grad- uate and postgraduate studies, and require recipients to return after graduation more frequently than loan programs do. We build a two-country student migration model that qualitatively accounts for the observed patterns. In the model, government inter- vention is justified for two reasons. First, students from a developing country are as- sumed to be financially constrained and cannot afford education abroad. Second, the government values the productivity of "returnees" more highly than the market does. We argue that when students are uncertain about their future productivity and may fail in their studies, scholarship programs can insure them against potential default. Consequently, if students differ in their expected ability, under certain conditions, a government with a tight budget will prioritize ex-ante high-ability students and sup- port them with scholarships with return requirement, and support ex-ante low-ability students with loans without return...
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Essays on Matching Markets
Vozár, Mário ; Katuščák, Peter (advisor) ; Veramendi, Gregory (referee) ; Kahanec, Martin (referee)
The first chapter of this work develops a theoretical model of marriage market which complements existing models explaining the phenomenon of match separation. While existing models assume that agents' characteristics do not change over time, I account for the effect of aging on partners' wealth and physical attractiveness to introduce yet another explanation of the phenomenon of divorce. Furthermore, I use the model to analyze how increased female income prospects influence stability of the matches. The objective of the second chapter is to analyze significance of different determinants of match separation proposed by matching market theory. First, we construct unique dataset from Czech ballroom dancing association records, which allows us to assess the quality of individual matches by evaluating dancers' performance throughout their career. Being able to observe the match quality helps us then to individually infer about the potential cause of match separation and to show that both prevalent theories of reason for match separation discussed in the theoretical literature, search frictions and initial uncertainty about match quality, play a significant role in reality and both should be taken into account when match separations are studied. The last chapter concentrates on the effect of growing...
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