Essays on Applied Microeconomics from the Perspective of Taiwan

This dissertation consists of two applied microeconomic studies with a background in Taiwan. First, superstitions have been shown to influence people’s decision-making in various areas. However, little research discusses how superstition affects people when they make medical decisions. Using a reduced-form model with a sample of administrative data from the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan, I find that when people are in their Taisui years, which are considered unlucky times in one’s life in East Asia, they adjust their healthcare usage, and people with more severe illness have stronger reactions. However, the average change is less than 1%. From a case study on heart attack patients, I find that treatment decisions are not significantly affected by beliefs about Taisui. The results show that superstition can influence medical decisions, but the effects are small. Second, mandatory wage reveal on job postings is a popular pay transparency policy recently. However, the evaluation of the policy’s effectiveness is still rare. Using online job posting data and representative survey data, I examine Taiwan’s wage reveal policy enacted in 2018. With a difference-in-differences model, I find that while the earnings of workers with stronger policy exposure increase, the policy does not close the gender wage gap in general. The following robustness check excludes the potential bias due to annual minimum wage increases. My paper shows that external/cross-firm pay transparency can raise the wage for low-paying jobs, but no evidence supports that the policy can reduce gender inequality. The finding implies that the government can apply a wage reveal policy to help workers in low-wage jobs.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Economics

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Lin, Shuan-Wen

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Liu, Elaine M.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Chin, Aimee
• Juhn, Chinhui
• Chou, Shin-Yi

• Economics

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10657/19948

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/19948