Essays in Applied Microeconomics

Abstract

The three chapters of this dissertation use tools of applied microeconomics to study topics related to education and regulation. The first chapter, “Where Doctors Work,” studies how openings and closures of medical schools in the United States have affected the geographical distribution of doctors. The principal contribution is the construction of a novel dataset based on the American Medical Association’s comprehensive physician directories. Using both an individual-level approach and a broad county-level, differences-in-differences strategy, I show that medical school location influences the geographical distribution of doctors, signaling a potential lever for policymakers to address the ongoing shortage of rural physicians.The second chapter, “University Presidencies at a Glance,” examines wage-setting in the context of university presidents. Using data from The Chronicle of Higher Education, my coauthors and I study determinants of salary in both public and private settings. University size is the overriding factor in salary considerations, although alumni and internal hires are often willing to take a small cut in wages. Remarkably, universities setting pay for presidents seem to behave similarly to large companies setting pay for CEOs. The final chapter, “Immigrants in the Age of Information: Earnings, Language Skills, and Technology,” studies immigrant earnings and how the returns to education vary with language skills. I additionally provide results and summary statistics regarding the expanding female immigrant workforce, which generally mirrors the results for male immigrants, with some notable caveats.