Essays on public economics

This dissertation applies various program evaluation techniques to examine both the intended and unintended consequences of government spending and regulation that affect family labor supply, children's healthcare utilization, and household saving behavior. Chapter 2 of this dissertation exploits the large and anticipated cash influx in the first quarter of the calendar year induced by the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to estimate the causal effect of the receipt of a cash transfer on the timing of family labor supply. I find that income seasonality caused by EITC receipt induces changes in the intra-year labor supply patterns of married women. In contrast, the receipt of the EITC does not affect the timing of the labor supply of married men and single women. The subgroup analysis implies that my results are mainly driven by those from liquidity-constrained families and those who are secondary earners within their families. Chapter 3 exploits a sharp increase in patient cost-sharing at age 3 in Taiwan that results from young children "aging out" of the cost-sharing subsidy to examine the causal effect of cost sharing on the demand for young children's healthcare. It shows that the increase in the level of patient cost sharing at the 3rd birthday significantly reduces utilization of outpatient care. However, the utilization of inpatient care for young children does not respond to a change in cost sharing at the 3rd birthday. Chapter 4 exploits workplace pension reform in Taiwan to estimate the casual effect of workplace pension provision on the household saving rate. It shows that pension reform significantly reduces the prime-age (20-50) household saving rate by between 2.06 percentage points and imply that the degree of substitutability between workplace pensions and saving is about -0.50 to -0.60.Arts, Faculty ofVancouver School of EconomicsGraduat