Essays in Social Economics.

The central idea in social economics is that an individual's actions are influenced by the choices and characteristics of peers. This occurs because group (network) membership provides information and shapes beliefs (norms). For both researchers and policymakers, the interest in social economics stems from its ability to explain a range of phenomena including the persistence of urban poverty and the spatial distribution of crime. This dissertation contributes to the literature by providing new empirical evidence on the effects of social interactions. Specifically, the first two chapters examine the impact of neighborhood peers on children by studying housing policy reforms in Chicago using novel administrative data. The third chapter (joint with Lasse Brune and Jason Kerwin) studies how coworkers affect workplace productivity using data from a field experiment.PhDEconomicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133263/1/ericchyn_1.pd

Fees, Framing, and Financial Literacy in the Choice of Pension Manager

A growing literature shows how consumers make mistakes in a variety of different settings pertinent to financial decision-making. Using data from a randomized experiment in Chile, we show how different ways of presenting pension management fees shape consumer choices, and how responses to pension fee information varies by level of financial literacy. Our results indicate that, in choosing pension funds, those with lower levels of education, income, and financial literacy rely more on employers, friends, and coworkers, than on fundamentals. We also find that such individuals are more responsive to information framing when interpreting the relative benefits of different investment choices

The Great Migration and Educational Opportunity

This paper studies the impact of the First Great Migration on children. We use the complete-count 1940 Census to estimate selection-corrected place effects on education for children of Black migrants. On average, Black children gained 0.8 years of schooling (12 percent) by moving from the South to the North. Many counties that had the strongest positive impacts on children during the 1940s offer relatively poor opportunities for Black youth today. Opportunities for Black children were greater in places with more schooling investment, stronger labor market opportunities for Black adults, more social capital, and less crime

The causal impact of removing children from abusive and neglectful homes

Este documento analiza cómo impacta en el desempeño escolar la reubicación de niños en servicios de cuidado tutelar, tras investigaciones familiares por maltrato infantil. Para estimar el efecto causal de la reubicación, se construye una variable instrumental. Dicha variable es la propensión a reubicar a otros niños de cada investigador de servicios de protección infantil. La muestra analizada se concentra en los niños involucrados en investigaciones antes de que cumplan seis años, y del análisis se desprende que reubicar a las niñas ocasiona un aumento significativo de sus notas escolares y reduce su probabilidad de repetir un grado. Por el contrario, no hay efectos significativos en los niños. Las diferencias de género en los resultados no se explican por la heterogeneidad en las características de los niños antes de ser reubicados, el tipo de establecimiento en el que son albergados, o las características de sus escuelas. Los resultados respaldan la hipótesis de que las niñas responden de manera más receptiva a ser reubicadas que los niños.This paper measures impacts of removing children from families investigated for abuse or neglect. We use removal tendencies of child protection investigators as an instrument. We focus on young children investigated before age six and find that removal significantly increases test scores and reduces grade repetition for girls. There are no detectable impacts for boys. This pattern of results does not appear to be driven by heterogeneity in pre-removal characteristics, foster placements, or the type of schools attended after removal. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that development of abused and neglected girls is more responsive to home removal

The IDENTIFY study: the investigation and detection of urological neoplasia in patients referred with suspected urinary tract cancer - a multicentre observational study

Objective To evaluate the contemporary prevalence of urinary tract cancer (bladder cancer, upper tract urothelial cancer [UTUC] and renal cancer) in patients referred to secondary care with haematuria, adjusted for established patient risk markers and geographical variation. Patients and Methods This was an international multicentre prospective observational study. We included patients aged ≥16 years, referred to secondary care with suspected urinary tract cancer. Patients with a known or previous urological malignancy were excluded. We estimated the prevalence of bladder cancer, UTUC, renal cancer and prostate cancer; stratified by age, type of haematuria, sex, and smoking. We used a multivariable mixed-effects logistic regression to adjust cancer prevalence for age, type of haematuria, sex, smoking, hospitals, and countries. Results Of the 11 059 patients assessed for eligibility, 10 896 were included from 110 hospitals across 26 countries. The overall adjusted cancer prevalence (n = 2257) was 28.2% (95% confidence interval [CI] 22.3–34.1), bladder cancer (n = 1951) 24.7% (95% CI 19.1–30.2), UTUC (n = 128) 1.14% (95% CI 0.77–1.52), renal cancer (n = 107) 1.05% (95% CI 0.80–1.29), and prostate cancer (n = 124) 1.75% (95% CI 1.32–2.18). The odds ratios for patient risk markers in the model for all cancers were: age 1.04 (95% CI 1.03–1.05; P < 0.001), visible haematuria 3.47 (95% CI 2.90–4.15; P < 0.001), male sex 1.30 (95% CI 1.14–1.50; P < 0.001), and smoking 2.70 (95% CI 2.30–3.18; P < 0.001). Conclusions A better understanding of cancer prevalence across an international population is required to inform clinical guidelines. We are the first to report urinary tract cancer prevalence across an international population in patients referred to secondary care, adjusted for patient risk markers and geographical variation. Bladder cancer was the most prevalent disease. Visible haematuria was the strongest predictor for urinary tract cancer

The Great Migration, Place Effects and Children\u27s Education

This project aims to study the effects of the Great Migration on the education of African American children by analyzing the outcomes of mover households in the 1940 Census. We will estimate place effects at county-level controlling for movers’ origin locations and a range of household characteristics related to educational attainment. Our approach is based on a strategy developed by Finkelstein et al. (2019) to adjust for unobservable differences between households that move to different areas. In preliminary analysis, we find evidence of substantial heterogeneity in place effects during the Great Migration. Moving from the 10th to the 90th percentile location would increase educational attainment by 1.35 years. Destinations for black families that have beneficial impacts on educational attainment are overwhelmingly located outside the South. In future work, we will explore mechanisms by studying correlations between estimated place effects and other characteristics such as local school quality, crime and social capital

The Demographic Effects of Dodging the Vietnam Draft.

This paper quantifies the impact of the Vietnam War on fertility rates in the late 1960s and early 1970s. For draft-eligible men wishing to avoid military service, the hardship deferment (III-A) for paternity created a powerful incentive to father a child. We provide a time series suggesting that the risk of being drafted and the availability of the paternity deferments significantly increased US fertility rates, especially among childless women likely to be partnered with draft-eligible men. Our results suggest caution in attributing the decline in fertility after 1970 solely to the legalization of abortion