Essays in Applied Microeconomics

This dissertation investigates the implications of different aspects of economic uncertainty. The first two chapters analyze the effect of education policy in the presence of economic uncertainty. The results offer important lessons for education policies such as mandatory schooling policies, tracking policies, or the integration of vocational programs with other schooling options. The last chapter is about the formation of household beliefs. The study suggests that households use very different belief formation processes when forming macroeconomic expectations

Sequential Choices, Option Values, and the Returns to Education

Using detailed Norwegian data on earnings and education histories, we estimate a dynamic structural model of schooling and work decisions that captures our data's rich patterns over the life-cycle. We validate the model against variation in schooling choices induced by a compulsory schooling reform. Our approach allows us to estimate the ex-ante returns to different schooling tracks at different stages of the life-cycle and quantify the contribution of option values. We find substantial heterogeneity in returns and establish crucial roles for option values and re-enrollment in determining schooling choices and the impact of schooling policies

Your Failure is My Opportunity - Eff ects of Elimination in Contests

In this paper, we consider a sequence of multi-prize all-pay auctions, where the contestants who exert the lowest e fforts in a round are eliminated. We analyze if and how the behavior of contestants is influenced by the possibility that strong rivals are eliminated along the way. The conditions under which behavior is not influenced are rather restrictive. For cases where these conditions are not met, we derive equilibria in a two-period model. We compare our equilibrium predictions to those of a static model and a two-stage contest where the sequential structure is not announced in the first round

The CoViD-19 pandemic and mental health: Disentangling crucial channels

Since the start of the CoViD-19 pandemic, a major source of concern has been its effect on mental health. Using pre-pandemic information and have customized questionnaires in the Dutch LISS panel, we investigate how mental health in the working population has evolved along with the most prominent risk factors associated with the pandemic. Overall, mental health decreased sharply with the onset of the first lockdown but recovered fairly quickly. In December 2020, levels of mental health are comparable to those in November 2019. We show that perceived risk of infection, labor market uncertainty, and emotional loneliness are all associated with worsening mental health. Both the initial drop and subsequent recovery are larger for parents of children below the age of 12. Among parents, the patterns are particularly pronounced for fathers if they shoulder the bulk of additional care. Mothers' mental health takes a particularly steep hit if they work from home and their partner is designated to take care during the additional hours

Antitumor activity of cytotoxic T lymphocytes engineered to target vascular endothelial growth factor receptors

The demonstration that angiogenesis is required for the growth of solid tumors has fueled an intense interest in the development of new therapeutic strategies that target the tumor vasculature. Here we report the development of an immune-based antiangiogenic strategy that is based on the generation of T lymphocytes that possess a killing specificity for cells expressing vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFRs). To target VEGFR-expressing cells, recombinant retroviral vectors were generated that encoded a chimeric T cell receptor comprised of VEGF sequences linked to intracellular signaling sequences derived from the ζ chain of the T cell receptor. After transduction of primary murine CD8 lymphocytes by such vectors, the transduced cells were shown to possess an efficient killing specificity for cells expressing the VEGF receptor, Flk-1, as measured by in vitro cytotoxicity assays. After adoptive transfer into tumor-bearing mice, the genetically modified cytotoxic T lymphocytes strongly inhibited the growth of a variety of syngeneic murine tumors and human tumor xenografts. An increased effect on in vivo tumor growth inhibition was seen when this therapy was combined with the systemic administration of TNP-470, a conventional angiogenesis inhibitor. The utilization of the immune system to target angiogenic markers expressed on tumor vasculature may prove to be a powerful means for controlling tumor growth