ESSAYS ON LABOR ECONOMICS

Abstract

The first chapter explores the effect of gender identity on individuals’ mate selections and on dual-earner households’ labor divisions and residential and workplace locations choices. Results show that men tend to marry women who are younger and who earn less than themselves, and that wives outearning their husbands have to compensate by working farther away than their husbands. The second chapter examines expenditure responses to the kink of health insurance policies using a bunching method. Results show that about one third of the population fails to optimize its choices and the elasticity is around 0.6415. The third chapter develops a structural model to separate the depreciation rate from the discount rate by taking advantage of housing characteristics that do not depreciate over time. Results show that the discount rate schedule declines over time, with the first-year discount rate around 0.11 − 0.18 and a decreasing rate of 0.002 − 0.004.