ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I first want to thank my advisors Andrei Levchenko, Rüdiger Bachmann, Alan Deardorff, and Kyle Handley for their endless support, advice, and encouragement. They have guided me into the world of economic research, and they have never ceased to push me into a better economist. They have spent countless hours with me dis-cussing ideas, reading and revising drafts, and challenging me to think harder. These interactions sharpened my analytical skills, broadened my view of the world, and eventually, made me a better researcher. I have greatly enjoyed my intellectual life in Ann Arbor, and learned tremendously at the same time — and none of these would have been possible without them. I also want to thank my friends in Ann Arbor for their support. Fan Fei has given me many useful feed-backs on my papers, and helped me greatly during my job search. Many of my friends, such as Qing Lai, Xiang Zhou, Jin Li, Yiwen Zhou, and Siwei Cheng, study in the fields of sociology, anthropology, and linguistics. Talking with scholars from these exciting and colorful fields of social sciences has made the study of our own dismal science a lot less bleak than it is supposed to be, and t