ESSAYS ON LABOR ECONOMICS, HEALTH ECONOMICS, AND HUMAN CAPITAL FORMATION

Abstract

My thesis exploits modern empirical methods to study questions related to China. The first chapter adopts the instrumental-variables strategy to quantify the causal effects of air pollution on the health status as well as the school attendance of the Chinese students. We find a sizable negative effect of air pollution on school attendance through the health channel. The adverse impact persists for four days and displays a monotonically increasing pattern. It is non-negligible even on days with pollution levels below the Chinese official standards. The second chapter studies market overreaction to awards and its consequences in financial markets by exploiting a regression discontinuity in performance recognition among financial analysts. We show that the star-analyst designations induce attention trading that generates excessive stock price volatility and further affects analysts’ post-award performance through brokerages’ team allocation.