Economics ETDs

Publication Date

Summer 7-15-2020

Abstract

The approach used to answer many public policy questions is firmly rooted in the empirical and theoretical frameworks developed in the field of economics. The proposition of the economic approach to public policy has provided the foundation in which policy makers and practitioners design policies and investigate outcomes. The purpose and scope of this dissertation is to explore health and labor market outcomes within in the economic framework, while proposing two separate and novel analytical approaches. The theme connecting the sections of this dissertation can be characterized as a development of the economic approach to public policy analysis. In Chapter 2, the study employs a conventional economic concept of utility in a relatively unconventional empirical approach, by using subjective wellbeing (SWB) to proxy utility in order to make inferences about economic behavior. Although this approach to quantifying the value of non-markets goods is gaining traction in the field of economics, there remains a gap in the literature that needs to address the concerns of validity. The study in Chapter 2 primarily address concerns of convergent validity by evaluating estimates across three independent data sets. The results suggest that the subjective wellbeing method produces comparable willingness to pay estimates despite many of the vi empirical challenges across independent data sets. Ultimately, the evidence supports a cautious use of subjective wellbeing method to help inform health policy and the decisionmaking process. The study presented in Chapter 3, focuses on a novel approach in predicting unauthorized immigrant status in nationally representative data sets, where a detailed description of immigration status is not surveyed. This methodological approach is essential in uncovering a disproportionate gender effect not previous found in studies. Furthermore, the contribution of this study allows for new insight into the labor supply behavior of the unauthorized immigrant population. The methodological approach proposed in Chapter 3, is reconsidered in Chapter 4 to investigate policy impacts on private health insurance coverage. The results reported in the chapter demonstrates the connection between immigration policy and health equity among the undocumented immigrant population. Moreover, these findings reported in Chapter 4 help solidify the robustness of the empirical approach to predict immigration status and its application to make causal inferences

Degree Name

Economics

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Department of Economics

First Committee Member (Chair)

David van der Goes

Second Committee Member

Robert Berrens

Third Committee Member

Richard Santos

Fourth Committee Member

Gabriel Sanches

Document Type

Dissertation

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Economics Commons

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