ESSAYS ON ASSET MARKETS ANDSELF-ASSESSED HEALTH STATUS

[摘要] This dissertation consists of three chapters on individual decision making in asset markets and subjective assessment of health status. The first chapter studies price convergence in asset markets with indefinite duration induced by existence of bankruptcy risk. By introducing increasing and decreasing fundamental value paths via experimental methodology, this chapter extends knowledge about traders’ incentives in asset markets with indefinite horizons. In most cases, the data indicate significant undervaluation of assets without a buyback value under bankruptcy risk regardless of fundamental value regime. The transaction prices closely follow the fundamental value trend of the asset supported by a terminal value in both definite and indefinite time horizons with constant fundamentals. The second chapter uses cross country survey data from Turkey and the United States to analyze determinants of gender differences in self-assessed health status. Ordered logit models are estimated to quantify the effects of factors that prove important in self-rated health outcomes. While some findings on the relationship between socioeconomic status indicators and self-assessed health level match earlier results, significant gender gap remains even with controls for chronic illnesses. Hierarchical ordered probit estimation reveals that reporting thresholds are significantly affected by gender of the respondents in both countries. The last chapter explains the gender differences in self-assessed health status by providing a theoretical identification mechanism via dynamic model which allows for heterogeneity in discount factor of individuals. Theoretical implications are empirically tested and estimation results support the structural model implications. We conclude that accounting for heterogeneity in individual discount factors explains substantial portion of the gender gap in self-assessed health status.

[发布机构] the University of Pittsburgh