Essays in Applied Microeconomics

Abstract

This dissertation has three chapters. In the first two chapters, I have studied the left-behind children issue in China. According to the latest statistics (2018 Ministry of Civil Affairs), there are 69.7 million children who are separated from their migrant worker parents and are receiving education in their respective hometowns which accounts for more than one-fifth of the Chinese children population today. Hence, there is significant amount of literature on this. However, in the process of studying the causal effect of left-behind children’s status on the outcome variables, endogeneity has always been a challenge. My contribution in the literature is the deployment of two stage least square method to reduce endogeneity. I have used the family Hukou type of left-behind children as an instrumental variable in order to analyze the outcome variable, which is a novel attempt with more technical robustness. In the third chapter, we focus on the widely known "Hot Hand" phenomenon in the NBA. The “Hot Hand” phenomenon is the perception that whenever a player starts to make consecutive shots, he/she is more likely to continue making those shots for being on a “hot streak”. In our research, we focused on the impact of an NBA player's first shot in a game on the behavior of subsequent players, coaches, and opposing players. Since the first shot in a game represents a player’s first impression which is of paramount importance, we believe that previous researchers have not given its necessary attention. Our research also sheds light on the importance of the phenomenon of first impressions in everyday life.