Essays in applied microeconomics

The first chapter examines whether funding for public schools affects parents' decision to send their children to private schools in the US. In the wake of the Great Recession, funding for public K-12 education fell precipitously and stayed low for several years. Exploiting the fact that states with greater reliance on state appropriations and states with no income tax experienced larger cuts, I instrument for local public school funding. I find that students exposed to a $1,000 (9.0 percent) decrease in per-pupil funding are more likely to enroll in private schools by 0.48 to 0.59 percentage points (4.5 to 5.6 percent). I show further that the effect is strongest among high socioeconomic status students living in disadvantaged areas. These findings suggest that reductions in public school resources lead to greater inequality in education and negatively change student composition in public schools through school choice.

In the second chapter, I investigate the effect of Facility-Based Childbirth Policy (FBCP) to promote facility-based child delivery (FBD) and prenatal care in Rwanda. To identify the causal effect on childhood mortality rates, I utilize the geographical variation of FBD in the baseline period and the timing of the policy in a difference-in-difference framework. The reform has a substantial effect on infant (under one year) and child (under five years) mortality, with reductions of 12 and 25 deaths per 1,000 live births, respectively. However, the overall reduction in newborn (seven days) neonatal (30 days) mortality is not statistically significant despite a large increase in FBD. I also show that other policy interventions like performance-based financing schemes can strengthen the treatment effect on newborn and neonatal mortality, implying the importance of multiple approaches to reduce mortality rates.

The third chapter explores whether the increase in service outsourcing to India has reduced the employment of the occupations with greater exposure to Indian service imports. To account for endogeneity, I instrument for the growth of the US's service import from India, exploiting the change in Indian import in European countries. The occupation-level analysis produces a mixed result. An increase in service imports reduces the total employment from 2000 to 2006; however, the effect attenuates in the later period of 2006 to 2016. The change is skill-biased: the reduction in employment is smaller for college-educated workers in the first period, and the sign reverses later.