{"id":{"repo_id":"buffalo","oai_identifier":"oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/79970"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/buffalo/oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/79970","repository":{"repo_id":"buffalo","name":"Buffalo","base_url":"https://ubir.buffalo.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Essays on Retirement, Self-Employment, and Business Entry","abstract":"Ph.D.","abstract_html":"Ph.D.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Ngo, Nguyen; 0000-0001-6916-1396"],"institution":"State University of New York at Buffalo","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["McLaughlin, Joanne Song","Economics"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2019,"date_issued":"2019-07-30T15:11:29Z","date_published":"2019-07-30T15:11:29Z","updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:21Z","subjects":["economics","entrepreneurship","public policy"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/10477/79970","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["McLaughlin, Joanne Song","Economics"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Ngo, Nguyen; 0000-0001-6916-1396"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2019-07-30T15:11:29Z","2019","2019-05-16 01:49:17"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["State University of New York at Buffalo"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Text","Dissertation"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["economics","entrepreneurship","public policy"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/79970"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Ph.D.","The first chapter determines the causal effect of choosing self-employment over wage-employment on the timing of older workers' retirement. Older workers have the highest self-employment rate among all age groups. This suggests that self-employment might keep workers productive longer, and policies to encourage self-employment among older workers might be a solution to the United States aging workforce. Finding the causal effect of choosing self-employment on retirement decision is, therefore, an essential piece of information in the policy discussion. However, this has been a challenge to the previous research as many older workers select self-employment to transition gradually into their retirements or/and to avoid the difficulties of finding a suitable wage-and-salary job. This study attempts to overcome this challenge by constructing an instrumental variable for the workers' self-employment choices using the US interstate-banking deregulation laws. The estimates show that choosing self-employment delays workers' retirements by up to 28 months. Specifically, being self-employed reduces the probability that a worker enters retirement by at least 10 percentage points after 1 year and 18 percentage points after 2 years. The results also suggest that older workers are more likely to enter self-employment given greater access to credit. The second chapter investigates the role of minimum wage laws in the decline of new firms in the United States (U.S.) since the 1970s. This trend concerns researchers and policymakers because new firms contribute significantly to job creation as well as productivity growth and innovation. This study uses the 1977–2012 Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) data to investigate the role of minimum wage laws in the observed trend. The results show that minimum wage increases have a negative effect on the establishment entry rate of new firms, but a positive effect on the expansion entry rate of incumbent firms. A percentage increase in minimum wage rate reduces the establishment entry of new firms by 0.046 percentage point. In addition, I find that the impact of minimum wage on new firms is strengthened in states that have lower employment share in the manufacturing, services, and retail trade industries.The third chapter shows that two firms can select different production cost functions even though they are identical prior to entry and produce the same output quantity at the same price afterward. Specifically, the firms can select different marginal cost functions given two conditions. First, they compete in price. Second, the cost of producing an additional unit increases with output quantity at a speed that firms can partially control by trading between the slopes and intercepts of the marginal cost functions. This heterogeneous-firms equilibrium occurs particularly when the market demand is small where one firm chooses a steeper marginal cost curve with a lower intercept to minimize the production cost and the other firm chooses a flatter marginal cost curve to lower price raising market demand."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Essays on Retirement, Self-Employment, and Business Entry"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["McLaughlin, Joanne Song","Economics"],"dc:creator":["Ngo, Nguyen; 0000-0001-6916-1396"],"dc:date":["2019-07-30T15:11:29Z","2019","2019-05-16 01:49:17"],"dc:description":["Ph.D.","The first chapter determines the causal effect of choosing self-employment over wage-employment on the timing of older workers' retirement. Older workers have the highest self-employment rate among all age groups. This suggests that self-employment might keep workers productive longer, and policies to encourage self-employment among older workers might be a solution to the United States aging workforce. Finding the causal effect of choosing self-employment on retirement decision is, therefore, an essential piece of information in the policy discussion. However, this has been a challenge to the previous research as many older workers select self-employment to transition gradually into their retirements or/and to avoid the difficulties of finding a suitable wage-and-salary job. This study attempts to overcome this challenge by constructing an instrumental variable for the workers' self-employment choices using the US interstate-banking deregulation laws. The estimates show that choosing self-employment delays workers' retirements by up to 28 months. Specifically, being self-employed reduces the probability that a worker enters retirement by at least 10 percentage points after 1 year and 18 percentage points after 2 years. The results also suggest that older workers are more likely to enter self-employment given greater access to credit. The second chapter investigates the role of minimum wage laws in the decline of new firms in the United States (U.S.) since the 1970s. This trend concerns researchers and policymakers because new firms contribute significantly to job creation as well as productivity growth and innovation. This study uses the 1977–2012 Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) data to investigate the role of minimum wage laws in the observed trend. The results show that minimum wage increases have a negative effect on the establishment entry rate of new firms, but a positive effect on the expansion entry rate of incumbent firms. A percentage increase in minimum wage rate reduces the establishment entry of new firms by 0.046 percentage point. In addition, I find that the impact of minimum wage on new firms is strengthened in states that have lower employment share in the manufacturing, services, and retail trade industries.The third chapter shows that two firms can select different production cost functions even though they are identical prior to entry and produce the same output quantity at the same price afterward. Specifically, the firms can select different marginal cost functions given two conditions. First, they compete in price. Second, the cost of producing an additional unit increases with output quantity at a speed that firms can partially control by trading between the slopes and intercepts of the marginal cost functions. This heterogeneous-firms equilibrium occurs particularly when the market demand is small where one firm chooses a steeper marginal cost curve with a lower intercept to minimize the production cost and the other firm chooses a flatter marginal cost curve to lower price raising market demand."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/79970"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:publisher":["State University of New York at Buffalo"],"dc:rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"dc:subject":["economics","entrepreneurship","public policy"],"dc:title":["Essays on Retirement, Self-Employment, and Business Entry"],"dc:type":["Text","Dissertation"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:21Z"}