Economics

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Economics.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Empirical Essays in Water and Electricity Use
(University of Waterloo, 2018-04-30) memartoluie, ghazal; Sen, Anindya
This thesis consists of three self-contained essays evaluating the impacts of educational attainment and average income at the community level on water consumption, the effects of different sources of energy on wholesale electricity rates and the effects of eliminating coal-fired electricity generation on air quality. The first chapter looks at the impacts of educational attainment and average income at the community level on water consumption. The focus of this paper is on the three cities of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo. In this chapter, we construct a unique household-level panel dataset that has monthly water consumption data of 22,000 households from 2012-2014. Our study shows that water consumption decreases as income at the Dissemination Area (DA) level increases. Our findings also show that educational attainment affects water use in a different way at different education levels in the following sense: increasing educational attainment at lower levels of education (from no certificate to high school certificate) increases water consumption, but the effect reverses when people receive post-secondary education. In addition, our study suggests that although education at different geographical levels affects household water consumption in different ways, there is a turning point where the explained relationship changes direction. By creating and utilizing a unique panel data from the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) and Statistics Canada, over 2009 to 2014, the second chapter intends to analyze the effects of different sources of energy on wholesale electricity rates to see how the considerable shifts in electricity fuel mix since $2009$ have impacted the Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) and Global Adjustment (GA). The study demonstrates that while less reliance on coal has resulted in an upward pressure on the HOEP, the increase in other sources of energy such as nuclear, hydro and wind power generations outweighed the effects of eliminating coal, which explains why the average HOEP fell from 26.4 $\$/MWh$ in 2012 to $23$ $\$/MWh$ in 2014. On the other hand, the GA in terms of $\$/MWh$, rose by almost $50\%$. Although less coal is significantly associated with higher GA payments, we do not find that more wind and nuclear power generation have resulted in higher GA payments. In addition, our results show that more gas power is correlated with a reduction in GA. Lastly, the third chapter uses the hourly air pollutant data associated with four cities of Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa and Sarnia in addition to the data on hourly electricity generation from coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, wind and other (solar and biofuel) type of power plants for the period of $2009$ to $2016$. The pollution data are obtained from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change and the data on fuel mix are obtained from the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO). We estimate the effects of hourly changes in fuel mix on Ozone ($O_{3}$), Nitrogen Oxide ($NO_{x}$), and Particulate Matter ($PM_{2.5}$) over a period in which coal-fired electricity generation was gradually eliminated from the electricity market. The paper also estimates the impacts of fuel mix on the probability of smog days. The results suggest that relative to coal, more nuclear and wind energy is correlated with decreased levels of $NO_{x}$ and $PM_{2.5}$. In addition, an increase in nuclear powered generation is associated with reduced $O_{3}$ levels. On the other hand, the results suggest that in general, the correlation between different types of fuel mix and the elimination of smog days are not statistically significant.
Essays in Consumer Debt, Personal Saving Rate, and Household Insolvency in Canada
(University of Waterloo, 2017-01-24) Ghaziaskar, Mohamad; Sen, Anindya; Parker, Thomas
This thesis consists of three essays attempting to determine the key determinants of spending-saving behaviour and financial stability of Canadian households from both micro and macro economics. In the first chapter, we try to isolate and evaluate the socio-economic character- istics of households who accumulate debt by spending more than what they earn in a given year. In particular, with a focus on the right tail of spending distribution –households who tend to spend a larger fraction of their income– we use multivariate regression type analysis to isolate socio-economic factors that contribute to debt ac- cumulation and lead to insolvency. We aim to highlight the micro level factors that have contributed to the increase in the proportion of spender households in the population. Specifically, what are the marginal effects of age, income level, education, and family structure on the probability of a given households spends more than its income? Related to this question, we also consider the effect of budget allocation decisions on the probability of spending more than income and accumulating debt. We find that budget share of specific items in household consumption basket, has important information about the spending-saving behaviour of a household. Our analysis provides valuable information about what goods and services are the main outlays of expenditure for households in severe debt. The second chapter is about evaluating the relationship between household’s saving rate and its long-run income from a more technical perspective. This chapter is an attempt to address the possible endogeneity issue present in this relationship. In addition to the conventional and widely exercised methodology, three alternative approaches are considered, and in a Monte Carlo experiment, the performance of four approaches is tested in three different environments. Results of our analysis show that the conventional methodology outperforms only when there is a simple linear type of endogeneity in the model. However, when more complicated types of endogeneity are present, it fails to predict saving rate unbiasedly. In the end, using FAMEX and SHS datasets from Canada, we re-evaluate the question with all different methods. Our empirical analysis suggests that more affluent households do save a larger fraction of their income, and the results are consistent across different years not sensitive to different instruments. Finally, the third chapter looks at the household financial stability from a macroeconomic perspective. Using aggregate data, at the provincial level, on households insolvency rate, we try to point out important aggregate key factors in determining financial instability of households. In a series of panel regression analysis, we explore the effect of aggregate variables such as GPD, unemployment rate, housing prices, interest rate, and household debt level, on the insolvency rate of households. Moreover, in a panel vector autoregressive estimation, we attempt to investigate the interactive effects and consequences of insolvency rate and gross domestic product, while controlling for other related aggregate variables. The key finding is that higher levels of household debt are associated with higher insolvency rate, and insolvency rate has a negative impact on GDP.
Essays in Earnings, Academic Productivity, and School Competition
(University of Waterloo, 2017-08-31) gao, hang; Sen, Anindya
This thesis consists of three self-contained essays evaluating current issues in earnings, academic productivity, and school competition. The first chapter, coauthored with Anindya Sen, looks at returns to post-secondary education and the gender gap in Ontario. We construct a unique individual level panel dataset consisting of earnings of public sector employees of the Government of Ontario, facilitated by the Ontario Salary Disclosure Act which reveals earnings of $100,000 or more. Individual earnings from 2005-2013 were merged with publicly available profiles on www.linkedin.com, which contains details on educational attainment, field of study, job experience, and specific occupation. There are significant field specific differences in returns to post-secondary education. In terms of graduate education, on average, while Ph.D.'s earn a premium relative to undergraduates, there is a modest gender gap in earnings of doctoral degree holders, which is not present among undergraduates. The sample period also experienced significant salary increases for female undergraduates. However, there are significant gender differences in the proportion of individuals who are managers and also in earnings of senior managers belonging to early cohorts. By creating and utilizing a unique panel data from several different sources including the Ontario Ministry of Finance, EconLit, Web of Science, Online CVs, and so forth on all tenured and tenure track professors in 16 Ontario economic departments over 1996 to 2012, the second chapter intends to analyze the pay and position of those professors to see how co-authorship affect an economist's research productivity and how research productivity impacts pay and promotion. The study demonstrates that there is a significant return to co-authored publications relative to solo-authored publications in Ontario universities. The investigation of the relationship between co-authorship and productivity reveals that co-authored publications are associated with higher citation counts. Our research has also demonstrated that higher quality publications have a greater effect on salary, and the likelihood of promotion is positively associated with past performance. The estimates also suggest that some gender differences exist concerning the impact of co-authored publications on the likelihood of promotion. Finally, we find that in Ontario, economists are more likely to co-author with their colleagues,who have the similar ability, experience, and research interest. We found no gender-sorting effect among Ontario economists. In the last chapter, I use a data set obtained from the Ontario Ministry of Education and the Educational Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) to estimate whether average school performance is affected by competition from other nearby schools. The availability of data on a panel of schools allows me to control for the potentially confounding effects of unobserved school specific attributes. I employ fixed effects, random trend and Instrumental Variables estimation to eliminate the potential simultaneity bias associated with competition between schools. Following Gibbons, Machin and Silva (2008), I use proximity to school board boundaries as an instrumental variable for local school competition. IV estimates suggest a statistically insignificant association between school competition and school performance. Another important finding is that the estimated coefficient is stronger when the sample is restricted to the Toronto District School Board, which may suggest that competition may improve school performance where students are given more freedom to choose their school. This finding may lend support to the current policy which is designed to improve public school performance in Ontario.
Three Empirical Essays on Job Training, Income Support Programs, and Household Debt
(University of Waterloo, 2016-04-29) Amery, Behnoush; Sen, Anindya
This thesis consists of three essays examining the effects of education and job-related training on promotions and wages in Germany, the effects of a reduction in Unemployment Insurance duration on the likelihood of joining welfare in Germany, and examining the debt-asset and debt-income ratios across different income levels in Canada. The first chapter uses the German Socio Economic Panel (GSOEP) to investigate the relative impacts of education and job-related training on job promotions within different occupation levels. The panel data allow me to control for the confounding effects of unobserved, time invariant, individual specific characteristics, and unobserved temporal shocks. My findings suggest that the recent job-related training increases the probability of promotion to middle level occupations, but has no significant effect on promotion to high and executive level jobs and on the corresponding wage increase. This effect appears greater for women than men. Although men have, on average, a higher probability of promotion and corresponding wage increase, job-related training increases the likelihood of promotion for women more than men. Moreover, the job-related training raises the probability of promotion to middle level jobs for higher educated employees more than for lower educated ones. That is, job-related training complements the role of higher education in increasing the probability of promotion to middle level occupations. The second chapter uses the German Socio Economic Panel (GSOEP) to investigate how a reduction in the length of Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits may affect the likelihood of joining a welfare program for the individuals who have used UI benefits in Germany. If the UI program is not helping to return the unemployed to employment, the UI users may transition to a welfare program such as Social Assistance (SA) which provides financial support to low income households. Any modifications in the UI system might affect this transition. The results show that a less generous UI system, in terms of a reduction in UI duration, as a result of the Hartz reforms in Germany, increases the hazard of joining welfare. Lastly, the third chapter uses the Survey of Financial Security (SFS) to calculate the ratios of average total debts to total income and assets across different income levels over three years of 1999, 2005, and 2012. The debt-income ratio increases for all income levels over theses three years. The average debt-income ratio for low-income households earning less than $40K is 4.3 in 1999 and 6 in 2012 suggesting that these households owe, on average, 4.3 dollars in 1999 and 6 dollars in 2012 for every dollar they earn. The debt-asset ratios have also increased for all income levels in 2005 compared to the ones in 1999, but this ratio has increased in 2012 only for income levels greater than $80K. The findings suggest that power of households to pay back their debts, specifically for low income households, decreases from 1999 to 2012. The main sources of the increasing indebtedness of Canadians over these years are found as the debts on mortgages on principal and non-principal residences.

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Browsing Economics by Author "Sen, Anindya"