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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9066-0544

AccessType

Open Access Dissertation

Document Type

dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Program

Economics

Year Degree Awarded

2023

Month Degree Awarded

September

First Advisor

Gerald Epstein

Second Advisor

Michael Ash

Third Advisor

Daniele Girardi

Fourth Advisor

Charles Schweik

Subject Categories

Finance | Macroeconomics | Nonprofit Studies | Public Economics

Abstract

This dissertation uses quantitative and qualitative methods to study questions of allocation in different contexts.

The first chapter, "Cui Bono: Do open source software incubator policies and procedures benefit the projects or the incubator?”, co-authored with Curtis Atkisson and Charles Schweik, examines whether the Apache Software Foundation’s (ASF) incubation policies help sustain the open source software (OSS) commons. The OSS commons depend on contributions of private goods such as personal time and effort from many individuals, which ultimately become public goods that benefit everyone. The ASF attempts to aid this collective action process by providing services like legal and financial assistance to OSS projects. However, developers must invest additional time and effort to comply with ASF’s procedures. Using a novel dataset of institutional statements from ASF’s incubation policy documents, we investigate whether there is an asymmetry in the allocation of costs and benefits of these policy statements between the ASF and OSS projects. We find a nearly symmetric distribution, indicating that the ASF’s institutional design aids in sustaining the OSS commons without burdening projects with excessive policy compliance.

The second chapter, “Foreign Bank Entry and Credit Allocation”, co-authored with Esra Ugurlu, explores the impact of bank ownership on credit allocation between households and firms. In recent decades, banking systems have deviated from their traditional role of financing businesses to provide more loans to households. Credit allocation has significant implications for economic growth and macroeconomic stability. We combine country-level data on household credit for 1973-2015 with financial liberalization information to examine whether easing restrictions on foreign bank entry affects credit allocation. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, we find that foreign bank entry leads to a rise in household credit levels and the share of private credit allocated to households. Our findings suggest that the increasing presence of foreign banks is a likely driver of the shifting lending patterns of banks.

The third chapter, “The Impact of Austerity on Gender Inequality in Time Allocation in the United States”, investigates how austerity policies affect the time spent on unpaid work by men and women. The Great Recession of 2007-2009 caused large declines in state revenues, prompting many states to implement austerity measures to meet their balanced budget requirements. Decreases in public spending can have heterogeneous gender effects due to existing inequalities in the time allocated for unpaid work. I combine data from the American Time Use Survey for 2005-2015 and the State and Local Expenditures database to examine the relationship between decreases in state education spending and time spent on childcare. Using an event study approach, I find that residents of austerity states spend more time on childcare than those in non-austerity states, with men allocating 1.8 additional hours and women allocating 3 additional hours per week. The effects on the gender gap in childcare time persist six years after the initial reduction in education spending. My findings suggest the need for gender budgeting at all stages of the fiscal budget cycle so that governments can pursue both economic and social goals even during times of crisis.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/35714579

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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