Essays on Labor and Development Economics

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three separate essays on topics in labor and development economics. The first chapter examines the impact that the increased demand for foreign players in US Major League Baseball(MLB) has had on male youth’s educational attainment in the Dominican Republic. I use a triple difference strategy (DDD) and exploit the expansion of athlete visas by the US government as an exogenous source of variation. Contrary to concerns expressed by journalists and international policy researchers about the negative impacts of MLB’s overseas player development, my findings suggest an absence of meaningful negative effects, ruling out a decrease in schooling greater than 0.07 years.The second chapter studies the short-term effects of an unconditional transfer on the labor supply in Seongnam city, Korea. In 2016, Seongnam started a “Youth Dividend” program, which paid out gift vouchers of 1,000,000 won (USD 950) to all of its 24-year-olds. The transfer differs from other programs in that it is explicitly unconditional and targets a specific age. Using data from the Local Area Labor Force Survey and the synthetic control method, I show that the unconditional transfers had no effect on the recipients’ labor supply at neither the extensive nor intensive margin. The third chapter focuses on the relationship between statutory work-hour reductions and labor supply. Reducing the number of working hours and improving work-life balance has been an important challenge for industrialized economies. In July of 2018, South Korea lowered its maximum working hours from 68 hours a week to 52 hours. The policy reduced the standard hours at different times according to industry and firm size. I take advantage of this quasi-natural experiment setting to identify the impact of standard hour reductions on working hours and employment. Using a triple difference approach, I find that female workers in affected firms worked 3.59 hours more per week than those in the control firms, but that there was no significant difference for male workers. My findings show no significant relationship between work-hour reductions and job creation.