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Students

Ph.D. Students : Job Market Candidates 2006- 2007

Thank you for visiting GSPP's PhD employment page. Its purpose is to give interested institutions a preview of our Ph.D. candidates who are available for employment.

Current List

The links are to curriculum vitae in PDF format. Click the ' ' for more information on a candidate.

Olga V. Aleshina

• Fields: Social Policy, Public Policy Analysis; Health and Development Economics
  
  Clinic Reconstruction in Post-Conflict Areas: Effects on Health Care in East Timor
  Job Market Paper
  
  Abstract: Soon after the violence that took place in East Timor in 1999, donor aid poured in to rebuild the country from severe consequences. As a part of the reconstruction program, 44 percent of primary health care clinics in East Timor have been rebuilt, with new buildings being put in place of the destroyed or damaged ones. The paper investigates the initial impact of this health infrastructure rehabilitation on the use of health care facilities by children under five years old. Two distinct household surveys were used to estimate the program effect. The paper demonstrates that the construction of new buildings for clinics in place of the damaged or destroyed between 2002 and 2003 is not associated with a significant increase in utilization of health care facilities in post-intervention period relative to the pre-intervention period for children less than five years old.

Robert Letzler

• Fields: The microeconomics of public policy analysis and design; Psychology and economics; Public policy analysis; Energy and environmental policy
  
  Applying Psychology to Economic Incentive Design: Using Incentive Preserving Rebates to Increase Acceptance of Critical Peak Pricing [Job Market Paper]
  
  Abstract: This project extends the idea that we should address policy problems by getting incentives right to add that incentives should elicit good decisions from both people who decide in economically rational ways and people who use heuristics to decide. The project applies behavioral economics to design practical electricity pricing policies. The social cost of power fluctuates enormously from hour to hour but most customers get pay a uniform price per unit of power regardless of when they use it. This mismatch between the uniform retail price and the fluctuating marginal cost creates billions of dollars in dead weight losses. Customers who participate in Critical Peak Pricing (CPP) programs use less power during high priced periods than do customers on traditional, time invariant rates. CPP customers report high satisfaction levels and often reduce their annual spending on electricity 10% or more. Yet, roughly 99% of customers reject opportunities to switch to critical peak pricing. I conjecture that customers are using decision-making heuristics documented in the psychology literature. For example, customers might be loss averse and dislike the risks and losses involved with paying more to get less during high priced critical "events". Hence I suggest Incentive Preserving Rebates that change the presentation of CPP to address these heuristics. Incentive Preserving Rebates reframe incentives during events as an opportunity to get rebates rather than as a period of extremely high prices. They change the presentation while preserving the marginal incentives and each customer's total annual payments.

Lucas Ronconi

• Fields: Social Policy, Labor and Development Economics
  
  Enforcement and Compliance with Labor Regulations [ Job Market Paper ]
  
  Abstract: This paper provides the first empirical analysis of the effect of government enforcement of labor law on labor markets outcomes in a developing country where only half of the workforce receives legally-mandated benefits. Using the number of labor inspectors as a proxy for enforcement, I assess the effect of enforcement on the extent of compliance with several labor regulations (i.e., minimum wages, overtime provisions, vacations, annual extra monthly wage, work-related injuries and heath insurance), on employment and on wages in Argentina. Because of potential simultaneity between enforcement and labor market outcomes, I explore instrumenting enforcement by electoral years. Two-stage least squares estimates indicate that enforcement increases the extent of compliance, particularly with minimum wage and overtime provisions regulations, positively affects total employment, and has no statistically significant effect on average wages. The paper concludes with a cost-benefit analysis suggesting that enforcing labor regulations, particularly those that are moderate by international standards, is a welfare enhancing policy.