Essays on the Economics of Education and Market Design

This dissertation consists of three essays on the economics of education and market design. The first two chapters are united in their attention on school choice issues. Chapter 1 considers a specific application, whereas chapter 2 focuses on a matching mechanism widely used in multiple applications. Both chapters 1 and 3 explore equity concerns in education but through very different lenses (affirmative action vs. educational investment) and very different settings (the United States vs. Vietnam). Chapter 1 addresses the diversity issue that is especially prevalent in elite schools that select students based on exams. Whereas previous studies only consider the direct impact on elite schools, I quantify the effects of two widely-discussed affirmative action plans on both elite and regular schools in New York City. I find that the two plans have quite different effects. First, there is a trade-off between improving diversity and maintaining student quality in elite schools as measured by state test scores in middle school. Despite taking into account the socioeconomic status of students' neighborhoods, the Chicago plan gives rise mostly to reshuffling within elite schools. Thus, both the overall racial composition and quality of incoming students are largely preserved as in the status quo. In contrast, the Top 7% plan, which would accept into the elite sector students in the top 7% by academic performance of each public middle school, causes considerable flows of students between the elite and regular sectors. The elite sector experiences a substantial increase in the proportions of Black and Hispanic students, along with a decrease in average student quality. Analyzing the difference between the outcomes of these two policies provides some insight into how the two objectives—diversity and peer quality in elite schools—might be better balanced in general. The second difference between the plans arises because they transform the distribution of diversity across schools in different ways. The Chicago plan reduces the differences among schools within the elite sector, while the Top 7% plan reduces the gap in diversity between the two sectors even as it increases within-sector dispersion. Both plans result in considerable changes in school assignments in the regular school sector, thus affecting the average student quality in these schools. Chapter 2, joint work with Guillaume Haeringer and Silvio Ravaioli, uses a lab experiment to study learning dynamics when participants receive feedback in centralized matching mechanisms. Our design allows for two types of learning: to coordinate within the same environment as well as to understand the underlying mechanisms. We provide additional evidence to previous work that the majority of the deviations from truth-telling, the dominant strategy in the Deferred Acceptance mechanism, are those that do not affect payoffs. Furthermore, by explicitly analyzing learning, we can confirm that at least some of the participants learn about the optimality of truth-telling, and their departures from it happen primarily when they face the same environment being repeated. Finally, we find that when learning to coordinate, agents tend to retain their previous strategy when the payoff from this strategy is high. This is suggestive evidence of reinforcement learning. Chapter 3 documents the pattern of educational investments for high school students across different demographics and their effects on performance on the college entrance exam and in college. Survey data from Vietnam shows that high school students from higher-income households have higher education expenditure and participation in extra classes (both at the extensive and intensive margin). Minority and rural students invest less than their non-minority and urban counterparts even after controlling for income. Out of these investments, only extra classes during the school year education expenditure other than that on extra classes are effective in increasing college entrance exam scores. In terms of college performance, a higher entrance exam score leads to a slightly higher grade point average at graduation, controlling for academic department fixed effects and investments in high school. Neither education expenditure or participation in extra classes in high school show any significant effects on college performance, except that already captured in the entrance exam scores. I record multiple gender differences. Female high school students tend to receive more investments. Even though they perform slightly worse on the entrance exam than their male peers with the same investments, they perform better in college, given the same entrance exam scores

The Impact of Thiamine Treatment in the Diabetes Mellitus

Thiamine acts as a coenzyme for transketolase (Tk) and for the pyruvate dehydrogenase and α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complexes, enzymes which play a fundamental role for intracellular glucose metabolism. The relationship between thiamine and diabetes mellitus (DM) has been reported in the literature. Thiamine levels and thiamine-dependent enzyme activities have been reduced in DM. Genetic studies provide opportunity to link the relationship between thiamine and DM (such as Tk, SLC19A2 gene, transcription factor Sp1, α-1-antitrypsin, and p53). Thiamine and its derivatives have been demonstrated to prevent the activation of the biochemical pathways (increased flux through the polyol pathway, formation of advanced glycation end-products, activation of protein kinase C, and increased flux through the hexosamine biosynthesis pathway) induced by hyperglycemia in DM.Thiamine definitively has a role in the diabetic endothelial vascular diseases (micro and macroangiopathy), lipid profile, retinopathy, nephropathy, cardiopathy, and neuropathy

Growth and development of transgenic peanut (Arachis hypogaea) lines containing chitinase 42 kDa gene from Trichoderma asperellum SH16

Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is vulnerable to many diseases. Vietnam and other regions where peanut is widely cultivated have a high threat of fungal and other plant diseases. Various fungicides are available to control the fungal disease but these have various harmful effects on the natural flora, fauna, and environment. Transgenic peanut lines which possess antifungal activity provide a possible solution in managing fungal diseases apart from the traditional resistance and fungicide usage. Therefore, this study evaluated the probable growth and development of chitinase transgenic peanut lines against Sclerotium rolfsii, a pathogen that causes “southern blight” in plants, under greenhouse conditions. This study provided evidence that through Agrobacterium itumefaciens mediated transformation, 42 kDa chitinase genes from Trichoderma asperellum, which is under the regulation of 35S promoter, were successfully incorporated into the peanut’s (A. hypogaea L.) genome and expressed in their plants. This evidence also demonstrated that transgenic peanut lines were suitable for growing and developing in the greenhouse. Further, it was reported that transgenic peanut lines took approximately 133 to 145 days from planting to maturity. These results also revealed that various growth characteristics of transgenic peanut lines having two synthetic genes (syncod Chi42-2 i.e. S2-2, S2-4, S2-6, and syncod Chi42-1 i.e. S1-1, S1-2, S1-3) were greater than that from the wild-type Chi42 (WT-1, WT-2, and WT-3). In addition, yield-related parameters including the number of mature pods, 100 pods weight and 100 seeds weight for all the transgenic peanut lines were higher than that of the non-transformed plant. Among the transgenic lines, line S2-4 exhibited significantly higher growth and yield than the other transgenic lines. These results demonstrated that 42 kDa chitinase genes overexpressing peanut lines could be a candidate for improvement against plants to phytopathogenic fungus S. rolfsii and high yield.

Identification and estimation of the marine ecosystem services surrounding selected offshore islands of Vietnam

Intertidal and larger marine ecosystems surrounding the islands of Bach Long Vi (Northern Vietnam), Con Co (Central Vietnam) and Tho Chu (Southernmost Vietnam) which have typical and valuable ecosystems are planned as marine protected areas. They are the study area of this paper on identification and estimation of these ecosystem services. The total economic valuation concept is used to estimate the total value of the ecosystems during the period March 2014 to October 2015. The marine ecosystems surrounding Bach Long Vi Island were estimated servicing 599,047.8 million VND (Vietnam Dong)/year in total (corresponding to 26.62 million USD (US dollar—1 USD = 22,503.68 VND (rate May 1, 2015)); calculated per hectare; this value corresponds with 94 million VND/year. The marine ecosystems surrounding Con Co Island provide a total monetary service of 267,518 million VND/year (approximately, 12 million USD/year); this corresponds with 307 million VND/ha/year. The marine ecosystems surrounding the Tho Chu archipelago were worth 565,236 million VND/year (approximately, 25 million USD/year); this corresponded with 125.47 million VND/ha/year. These figures show the most significant service value of marine ecosystems, particularly around the three islands

Role of GmNAC019 transcription factor in salinity and drought tolerance of transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana

Increasingly severe drought and salinity stress due to global climate change have made these stresses bigger threats to ecosystem and agriculture. Previous studies reported that GmNAC019, a soybean NAC transcription factor - encoding gene, displayed induced expression upon drought treatment in wild-type cultivars. In this study, drought and salinity stresses were applied on GmNAC019-overexpressing Arabidopsis plants to verify the contribution of GmNAC019 in regulating plant response to the stress conditions. Results from the water loss rate and survival rate assays revealed that the transgenic line conferred improved tolerance to drought stress as evidenced by lower leaf water loss and significantly higher rate of survival than seen in the wild-type plants. Similarly, the survival rate assay for testing salinity effects on plants by growing the plants on MS medium supplemented with different NaCl concentrations also indicated that the transgenic plants had a better tolerance to salt stress as they displayed lower rate of root growth inhibition and higher survival rate. Taken these results altogether, it is suggested that GmNAC019 might play important role in aiding plant response to drought and salinity stresses. Specific functions of this gene should be elaborated in future studies to evaluate its potential application for crop improvement

Conservation, Exploitation And Use Of The Ginger Family (Zingiberaceae) At The National Genebank In Vietnam

There are 741 accessions in the ginger family such as turmeric, ginger, galangal, and pinecone ginger collections conserved at Plant Resources Center, Vietnam. These collections were highly diverse in the number of accessions and species composition. The results of the Zingiberaceae exploitation shown the G10 ginger variety plants reached around 63.7 - 77.5 cm in height, 400 - 500 g/clumps in fresh weight, 25 - 27 tonnes/ha in fresh yield. The G10 ginger variety contained 4.37% oil, 1.2 mg/kg Zn and 9.31 mg/100g Vitamin C. This G10 ginger variety resistance to leaf spot and green aphids. In addition, the N8 turmeric variety plants reached 130 - 170 cm in height; 880 - 1000 g/clumps in fresh weight and 35 tonnes/ha in yield, curcumin content 6.2 - 6.6%, essential oil contents 2.5 - 2.7%. This turmeric resistance to heat stress, leaf spot, and green aphids. The conserved root and tuber crops at PRC are very diverse both of the amount of sample in collections and species. Conservation and evaluation on root and tuber crops reviewed the promising G10 ginger and N8 turmeric varieties had high yield, good oil content to release for production

A propensity score matching analysis of the relationship between forest resources and household welfare in Vietnam

Using secondary data from a socio-economic quantitative household survey in of the North Central region of Vietnam, the main aim of our study is to analyze the causal effect of forest resources on household income and poverty. Based on the observed characteristics of a forest-based livelihood and forest-related activities, we use a propensity score matching (PSM) method to control for potential bias arising from self-selection. The PSM results indicate that households with a forest livelihood had a higher level of income and lower level of poverty than did those without. Interestingly, our findings confirm that a forest-based livelihood offers much higher income than any other type of livelihood adopted by local households. Also, the poverty rate among households with a forest livelihood is lower than those earning non-labor income or engaged in wage/crop and crop livelihoods. Moreover, households whose livelihoods depend on timber forest products (TFPs) and animals (non-TFPs) also had higher income and lower levels of poverty than did those lacking these resources. Among households and provinces, we find differing opportunities deriving from forest resources, suggesting that there are potential barriers hindering local households from pursuing a forest livelihood or participating in some forest activities. Therefore, government policy and regulations on forest management should focus on improving the access of households to forest resources, at the same time enhancing the sustainability of these resources

Development of spectrophotometric method for determination of mesalazine in pharmaceutical preparation

A simple, rapid, sensitive and accurate spectrophotometric method for the determination of mesalazine in pharmaceutical preparation has been developed. The method is based on the reaction of mesalizine, with excessive nitrite, in an acidic medium, to produce the corresponding diazonium salt. After the removal of residual nitrite with sulphamic acid, the diazonium salt was coupled with N-(1-naphthyl)ethylenediamine (NEDA) in acidic medium to give a violet colored azo dye which has maximum absorption at 552 nm, the colored chromogen was stable for twenty four hours. Beer's law is obeyed in the concentration range of 0.5-40.0 µg/ml (R2 = 0.999) with limit of detection (LOD) being 0.113 µg/ml. The molar absorptivities were  1.5.104 l.mol-1.cm-1 and Sandell's sensitivity index of 0.0263 μg.cm-2. Recoveries of mesalazine from excipients were 95.4 -102.3 %. No interference was observed from common excipients present in pharmaceutical formulations. The proposed method has been applied successfully to determine mesalazine in pharmaceutical preparation as tablets (Pentasa and Sunmesacol). Keywords. Mesalazine, spectrophotometry, NEDA, Bratton-Marshall reagent, Pharmaceutical Preparation

A propensity score matching analysis of the relationship between forest resources and household welfare in Vietnam

Using secondary data from a socio-economic quantitative household survey in of the North Central region of Vietnam, the main aim of our study is to analyze the causal effect of forest resources on household income and poverty. Based on the observed characteristics of a forest-based livelihood and forest-related activities, we use a propensity score matching (PSM) method to control for potential bias arising from self-selection. The PSM results indicate that households with a forest livelihood had a higher level of income and lower level of poverty than did those without. Interestingly, our findings confirm that a forest-based livelihood offers much higher income than any other type of livelihood adopted by local households. Also, the poverty rate among households with a forest livelihood is lower than those earning non-labor income or engaged in wage/crop and crop livelihoods. Moreover, households whose livelihoods depend on timber forest products (TFPs) and animals (non-TFPs) also had higher income and lower levels of poverty than did those lacking these resources. Among households and provinces, we find differing opportunities deriving from forest resources, suggesting that there are potential barriers hindering local households from pursuing a forest livelihood or participating in some forest activities. Therefore, government policy and regulations on forest management should focus on improving the access of households to forest resources, at the same time enhancing the sustainability of these resources

TURBIDITY REMOVAL BY MUCILAGE FROM BASELLA ALBA

Coagulation and flocculation are preliminary used in water treatment processes for turbidity removal, using popularily synthetic chemicals with health and environmental concerns. The use of natural flocculants has known to be a promising alteratives for chemical ones due to their environmental friendly behavior. This research investigated turbidity removal efficiency of mucilage extracted from Basella alba - an indigenous species in Vietnam - in the role of a flocculant. The removal efficiency of mucilage was investigated in combination with PAC or Alum on To Lich river water by mean of Jar tests. PAC or Alum alone can remove maximum 97% and 90% turbidity of To Lich river water at its original pH for the sedimentation time of 30 minutes. The combination of mucilage and PAC or Alum increased the efficiencies of turbidity removal and reduced the amount of chemicals needed. The corresponding increases were maximum 7% and 18%, respectively; while the reduction of PAC/Alum used was 75-80%