Essays on the Effects of Public Policy

Abstract

This dissertation presents three papers on the effects of public policy on market outcomes. In the first paper, I analyze the effects of trade liberalization on firm labor market power in Brazil. I find that while Brazil’s 1990s trade liberalization significantly lowered wages and increased labor market concentration, it did not increase firm labor market power. The negative effects of trade on local wages were therefore likely driven by reductions in the marginal revenue product of labor. In the second paper, in collaboration with M. Chatib Basri, Rema Hanna, and Benjamin A. Olken, I analyze the effects of two corporate taxation reforms in Indonesia: one in tax administration and one in tax rates. We find that the tax administration reform had large effects on tax revenue and reported income, and that the government would have had to raise the corporate income tax marginal tax rate on affected firms by 8 percentage points to match those revenue gains. Finally, the third paper evaluates the impact of a school discipline policy in Massachusetts on student suspensions and test scores at charter schools. I find that the policy reduced charter suspensions by roughly 10 percentage points, but had no impact on charter learning.