Abstract
This doctoral thesis consists of three essays: Flying the Nest: Intergenerational Strategic Interaction, Co-residence, and Social Mobility. Southern Europe is characterized by high levels of intergenerational earnings persistence and high levels of co-residence between parents and their offspring. In contrast, Northern Europe exhibits low levels of earnings persistence and of co-residence. This paper analyzes both theoretically and quantitatively the importance of strategic interactions inside the family over living arrangements in generating intergenerational earnings persistence. Student Aid, Academic Achievement, and Labor Market Behavior provides a framework for quantifying the impacts of implicit incentives in study aid schemes. The authors estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of simultaneous education and work decisions to quantify the effects of study aid on college attainment, academic achievement, and early labor market outcomes using Swedish data and exploiting the Swedish Study Aid reform of 2001. Bank Liquidity, Stock Market Participation, and Economic Growth reconciles the decreasing trend in the liquidity ratio of financial businesses with the evolution of the financial architecture of the U.S economy. The authors build a neoclassical growth model where competition between banks and financial markets causes the liquidity held by the financial system to decrease.