This dissertation consists of three essays. The first one brings together the areas of public and labor economics by developing a hypothesis that relates optimal taxation and time use. Using Mexican data on household time use and consumption, we find significant substitution between goods and time in home production and different elasticities of substitution for different house-hold commodities. Adding these findings to the optimal tax problem, we show it is optimal to impose higher taxes on market goods used in the production of commodities with a lower elasticity of substitution between goods and time. This is an analog of the classical Corlett and Hague (1953) result, differing in that we allow for the possibility of substitution between goods and time in the production of commodities. The second chapter is about international migration, in the area of labor economics. On one hand, surveillance of the border between Mexico and the United States by the U.S. government has increased dramatically over the last two decades. On the other hand, undocumented Mexican migrants often make multiple trips between the two countries. Thus, my hypothesis is that these migrants respond to heightened surveillance by increasing the length of stay of the current trip. I estimate a semi-parametric hazard model following Meyer (1990). Using data from the Mexican Migration Project I find no evidence that border enforcement affects the hazard of leaving the U.S. by undocumented Mexican Immigrants. The last essay is about mother's time and children related expenditures. Using data from the Mexican Time Use Survey and the National Household Survey of Income and Expenditure from 2002, I examine the time Mexican mothers dedicate to taking care of their children and the amount of money spent by the household in raising children. The main contribution of this paper is that it analyzes child care time use and child care expenditures simultaneously. The age of the youngest child is the most important determinant of both child care time and money expenditures. It is the case that more educated mothers spend more money on their children. With respect to child care time use, more educated mothers spend more or less time with their children depending on whether they are working or non-working mothers. At all levels of non-mother's income, working mothers spend significantly more money relative to time in child care than non-working mothers. For both groups the ratio of money over time increases at a decreasing rate; however, for non-working mothers the income expansion path is much flatter.

This dissertation consists of three essays, each using extensive data and rigorous empirical methods to investigate key questions within the fields of public and labor economics with a focus on socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequality. In Chapter 1, I study how the social, learning, and working conditions (school climate) experienced by students, families, and teachers is valued by stakeholders. To study this question, I investigate how publicizing school climate information is capitalized into the housing market and how it affects the sorting of homebuyers from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Using a plausibly exogenous shock of school climate information in Chicago, I employ event studies and a difference-in-differences framework. I find that providing this information publicly leads to an increase in sales price for homes assigned to schools with better climate ratings. Additionally, I find that the information shock also attracts higher income homebuyers into neighborhoods with better climate schools. These initial effects dissipate over time, as information becomes less salient. The effects are consistent across different types of schools and neighborhoods. I find evidence that homebuyers value this dimension of school quality that has been understudied in the revealed preferences literature. In Chapter 2, I investigate how changing the odds of admissions to elite K-12 exam schools affects families' residential decisions. To do this, I leverage a natural experiment created by Chicago's place-based affirmative action policy, where neighborhoods across the city can experience exam school admissions benefits from year to year. I conduct difference-in-differences and event study analyses to compare changes in the outcomes of neighborhoods with varying odds of admissions shocks, before and after these shocks are revealed and implemented each application year. My findings offer evidence that families are willing to pay and, hence, strategize the place-based affirmative action admissions policy in Chicago. Therefore, under this current system, families are able to pay for better odds of admissions to elite exam schools. Furthermore, higher income and white families react more to these admissions benefits, which is the opposite of race- and place-based admissions policies' intentions to prioritize non-white and low-income students, respectively. In Chapter 3, I explore how local immigration enforcement policies can have demographic and economic impacts on local communities through effects on potential homebuyers' willingness to purchase homes. Using an event study and triple-difference framework, I find evidence that implementing local 287(g) partnerships led to large and statistically significant declines in the number of home loan applications by Latino applicants compared to non-Latino applicants. I find that the most intrusive enforcement model (Task Force) had the strongest detrimental effects of all the 287(g) models. Additionally, I demonstrate that studies that use the sample of counties that apply for and are rejected or accepted by ICE into 287(g) partnerships must be cautious and account for strong differences in trends between these counties.

This dissertation consists of three separate papers studying policy relevant questions in labor economics. The goal of these studies is to understand the welfare effects from various government regulation and programs. Chapter 1 investigates how child support income affects household resources for single mothers with at least some college education. I determine that child support income promotes single mother financial independence by reducing welfare participation, decreasing cohabitation rates, and increase labor supply. Chapter 2 examines how a change in minimum nurse staffing regulation affects nurse employment and patient mortality in California nursing homes. My results show that regulation induced increases in nurse staffing cause patient mortality to fall by 4.6%. Chapter 3 determines whether child support enforcement reform coming from the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 has an impact on rates of single motherhood in the United States. I find that child support enforcement reform causes the likelihood of being a single mother to increase among women with 12 or less years of education.

This dissertation presents three essays in labor economics. Chapter 1 explores the effects of changes in the overall educational attainment of workers on wage and employment structure, exploiting a college education policy that has been implemented in Korea over the past 60 years. The Korean government determines a college enrollment quota for each year, which limits the number of college freshmen. The quota has been binding in all years. This study first estimates the causal effect of the relative supply of college workers to high school workers on the relative wage using the college enrollment quota as an exclusion restriction. It then develops and estimates a dynamic equilibrium model that explains the changes in educational attainment, wages, and employment structure simultaneously. Chapter 2 separately estimates the effects of kindergarten-entry age, age-at-test and schooling on cognitive skills using the new identification strategy. These three variables are considered to be perfectly multicollinear so that it is deemed that it is not possible to identify their effects separately. I exploit summer break as a period when age increases but schooling does not. The summer break and the variations in survey date in NLSY79-CS make it possible to resolve the multicollinearity problem. The main findings from the instrumental variable estimations are (1) kindergarten-entry age has a positive effect on math and reading scores; (2)the aging without schooling during summer break does not improve any test score; (3) schooling is the most important factor that improves the cognitive skills among the three factors. Chapter 3 investigates pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns to education exploiting regional variations in college attendance rate induced by the College Enrollment Quota Policy in Korea. The Korean government regulates the maximum number of college freshmen that each college can select for each year. This study employs the ratio of college enrollment quota to the number of 12th graders in the province of residence as an instrument for the years of education. The IV estimates show that an additional year of education increases hourly wage by 10.8-13.6 percent by specification. Education also increases fringe benefits, job satisfaction and life satisfaction.