EC: Dissertations
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- PublicationThe Economics of parenting style and child development : evidence from rural ThailandThis dissertation investigates the determinants of parenting style and the bidirectional relationship between parenting style and child outcomes in the context of rural Thailand in two parts. The first part examines the socioeconomic determinants of parenting style in the context of a developing country using early childhood panel data from rural Thailand. Our key findings are that more patient caregivers tend to be more authoritative than authoritarian, caregivers are more likely to be authoritative than authoritarian when they observe better behavior from their children, and caregivers exhibit more authoritarian than authoritative parenting if they perceive the community to be more dangerous. We also find that families with fewer resources, proxied by wealth, marital status, and parental absence, are more likely to be authoritarian. The second part focuses on the role of parenting style in child development. Our findings reveal that more authoritative relative to authoritarian parenting is positively associated with self-regulation and behavioral skills in children. These findings persisted when the relationship was estimated by considering community risk as an IV for parenting style. Relating cognitive skills, authoritative relative to authoritarian parenting is found to be positively associated with working memory. We also find that wealth and the caregiver's education were positively associated with the child's working memory. Moreover, while wealth promoted the positive impact of authoritative versus authoritarian parenting on child behavioral skills and working memory, the caregiver's education was insignificant for the former and achieved the opposite for the latter skill
89 5575 - PublicationThe Stock market and firm investment in VietnamThis thesis consists of two essays on the correlation between the stock market and firm investment from two perspectives: information channel and equity financing channel. The first essay investigates the relationship between the stock market and firm investment from the price informativeness perspective. Using the unbalanced panel dataset of Vietnamese listed firms from 2007 to 2017, the results show that the stock market valuation is positively related to firm investment. Secondly, investment of firms with higher level of price informativeness is likely less sensitive to their stock prices than that of firms with lower level of price informativeness. In addition, the development of financial markets plays an important role in determining corporate investment level and investment-to-stock price sensitivity. The regression results also suggest that the role of price informativeness in investment-to-stock price is not much different among the groups of firms (firms with high-quality auditors vs. low-quality auditors as well as small firms vs. large firms). The second essay examines how the level of equity dependence affects the sensitivity of corporate investment to stock price. Using the panel dataset of Vietnamese listed firms over the 2007 - 2017 period, the results indicate that the level of equity dependence increases the sensitivity of corporate investment to stock price. In addition, the investment of equity-dependent (higher level of Kaplan and Zingales index) firms is more sensitive to stock price than of less-equity-dependent (lower level of Kaplan and Zingales index) firms. Moreover, the sensitivity of corporate investment to stock price are even stronger for firms with small size, low dividend payout, new equity issuance, and high growth opportunity.
86 496 - PublicationEssays on Labor Issues : Performance and EfficiencyThis thesis consists of two essays which focus on labor issues. They are (1) job performance and (2) labor efficiency. In an attempt to understand which factors determine working people’s job performance, the first essay aims to examine the importance of locus of control to job performance. We draw Australian panel data and utilize the fixed effects model to estimate the causal effect of locus of control on working people’s job performance. Our findings reveal that locus of control positively affects the adaptive performance dimension of job performance. This implies that employees with more internal locus of control tend to be more adaptive to conditions and happenings in the workplace, leading to better performance on their job. The positive effect of locus of control on adaptability still holds when we address the endogeneity of locus of control by applying Lewbel’s identification method (Lewbel, 2012) and control for attrition bias driven by panel survey. Our finding also suggests that gender and job complexity matter in how locus of control influences job performance. Particularly, locus of control drives adaptive performance, especially among males with high complexity jobs. The second essay investigates the labor-use efficiency in the context of ASEAN countries using the balanced panel data of the six largest ASEAN economies (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines) from 1990-2018. We use a flexible translog functional form to specify the labor demand, which is defined as a function of output (real GDP), average wage, capital stock, country-specific variables, and time effects. We generalize the model by incorporating a variance function, which accommodates marginal effects. The parameters of the demand and variance functions are estimated through a multi-step procedure using generalized least squares and a nonlinear method, respectively. The empirical results show that the average labor-use efficiency among ASEAN countries is about 96.3%, implying that the six ASEAN countries are very efficient in labor use relative to the country with the best labor-use practice in our sample which is Singapore. The two-sample t-test results show that the labor-use efficiency is significantly different between countries.
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