Essays in empirical macroeconomics
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Vancouver School of Economics
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Wei, Mengying
issued: 2020-10-28T15:16:19Z
issued: 2020
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This thesis presents three chapters in empirical macroeconomics. The first chapter studies how the mortgage expansions in the early 2000s affect U.S. regional economies by estimating its impact on the local labor market from 2003 to 2017. Using a plausible exogenous measure of the credit supply shock, I find that counties with higher credit supply shocks have not seen significant changes in local unemployment but have shown slower wage growth. While the high-credit counties did not experience significantly different changes in local labor markets in the expansion period, they did experience larger increases in unemployment in the recession, but also recovered faster after the recession, summing to a zero net effect in the long run. Meanwhile, these counties experienced a slowdown in wage growth since the recession, resulting in a depressed wage level until 2017. Additionally, the wage decline was accompanied by a decrease in the employment share of young firms. In Chapter 2, I propose a mechanism to explain how mortgage market fluctuations affected the labor market, slowed down wage growth, and led to labor reallocation. I introduce two financial constraints, one on the household side and the other on the production side, both tied to the collateral values of houses. I show that changes in household borrowing constraints affect housing prices and thereby affect firms’ financial condition. When working capital constraint binds, mortgage market fluctuations affect firms' labor demand, which led to labor reallocation from financially constrained to unconstrained firms and a decline in wage. In Chapter 3, we study how small and micro enterprises (SMPE) respond to the policy in reducing the corporate income tax rate in China. Using gradual increases in the qualifying threshold for SMPEs during 2010-2016 as a natural experiment, we find that the rate cut led to significant increases in sales growth, investment, and productivity of affected SMPE firms. We further show that…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/76381
note: Essays in Empirical MacroeconomicsbyMengying WeiB.Sc. Economics, University of Amsterdam, 2013M.A. Economics, University of British Columbia, 2014a thesis submitted in partial fulfillmentof the requirements for the degree ofDoctor of Philosophyinthe faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies(Economics)The University of British Columbia(Vancouver)October 2020c©Mengying Wei, 2020The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend tothe Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the disser-tation entitled:Essays in Empirical Macroeconomicssubmitted by Mengying Wei in partial fulfillment of the requirements forthe degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics.Examining Committee:Henry Siu, EconomicsSupervisorMichael Devereux, EconomicsSupervisory Committee MemberSanghoon Lee, BusinessUniversity ExaminerJack Favilukis, BusinessUniversity ExaminerAdditional Supervisory Committee Members:Paul Beaudry, EconomicsSupervisorViktoria Hnatkovska, EconomicsSupervisory Committee MemberiiAbstractThis thesis presents three chapters in empirical macroeconomics. The firstchapter studies how the mortgage expansions in the early 2000s affect U.S.regional economies by estimating its impact on the local labor market from2003 to 2017. Using a plausible exogenous measure of the credit supplyshock, I find that counties with higher credit supply shocks have not seensignificant changes in local unemployment but have shown slower wagegrowth. While the high-credit counties did not experience significantly dif-ferent changes in local labor markets in the expansion period, they did ex-perience larger increases in unemployment in the recession, but also recov-ered faster after the recession, summing to a zero net effect in the long run.Meanwhile, these counties experienced a slowdown in wage growth sincethe recession, resulting in a depressed wage level until 2017. Additionally,the wage decline was accompanied by a decrease in the employment shareof young firms.In…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2020-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0394831
language: eng
degree discipline: Economics
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/76381