Acknowledgements

I owe enormous gratitude to my dissertation committee members. My committee co-chairs and advisors, Professors Jonathan Levine and Joe Grengs, with their expertise and knowledge, helped me to shape and refine my work in each and every step of this dissertation project. Out of their busy schedule, Jonathan and Joe both spared a generous amount of time to talk with me, read my drafts, give me comments, and write me recommendation letters for grant applications. They also offered me huge emotional support with the most encouragement and compassion. Professor Lan Deng is one of the earliest and continuing readers of my dissertation drafts, to whom I am very thankful. Ever since I began my master’s studies at the University of Michigan eight years ago, Lan has been my mentor and taught me in so many different ways. She offered me my very first opportunity to be involved in a research project, walked me through the whole process and trusted me with every detail. Her intelligence and diligence motivate me to be a scholar and an educator just like her, and I always look up to her as my role model. Professor David Thacher, with his sharp insights and deep understandings of academic research, guided me to think outside of the box of making statistical inferences and to look at the bigger picture of the policy implications of conducting empirical studies, whic