Empirical essays in development economics.

详细信息   

• 作者：Tazhibayeva ; Kamilya.
• 学历：Ph.D.
• 年：2011
• 导师：Townsend, Robert M.,eadvisorLucas, Robert E.ecommittee memberMurphy, Kevin M.ecommittee member
• 毕业院校：The University of Chicago
• Department：Economics
• ISBN：9781124536224
• CBH：3445054
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：3560234
• Pages：129

文摘

This dissertation consists of two essays on decision making of individuals in developing economies with regards to earning opportunities. The common underlying theme is empirical analysis of processes which have large potential to affect individual earnings in developing economies: human capital accumulation Chapter 1) and production adjustments by traditional farmers to potential climate change Chapter 2). Chapter 1 estimates individuals schooling decisions for senior high and college attendance as well as returns to different education levels with data on Indonesia. I find significant positive returns to vocational senior high and college education, as well as evidence of partial self-selection into different schooling choices based on unobserved personal characteristics. While effect of parents education on individual schooling decision disappears by the time of senior high graduation, the opposite is true for the effect of familys finances. Chapter 2 joint with Professor Robert Townsend from MIT and John Felkner from National Opinion Research Center) models production behavior of rice growing farmers in Thailand and accesses their ability to adjust to different climate change scenarios. We specify a three-stage production function for rice cultivation which incorporates the sequential nature of both production shocks realizations, including rainfall, and input choices which are based on sequentially updated information sets of history of realized shocks and observed changes in crop growth. We integrate our economic model of rice production with soil science crop growth modeling, weather simulators, and global climate change models. We consider two alternative climate change scenarios for Southeast Asia. Comparison of yield changes predicted by the soil science model, which does not account for adjustments in input usage, with economic model predictions demonstrates the extent of farmers ability to mitigate adverse effects of climate change.