This paper is an exploration of numerical optimization as it applies to the consumer choice problem. Suggested algorithms are intended to compute solutions to the Marshallian problem, and some can extend to the dual given the suggested modifications. Each method seeks to either weaken the sufficient conditions for optimization, converge to a solution more efficiently, or describe additional properties of the decision space. The purpose of this paper is to explore constrained quasiconvex programming in a less complicated environment by design of Marshallian constraints.

This paper analyzes the economic, legal, and social aspects of the legal cannabis industry in the United States. These analyses include the history, current status, and future of all three components, all with an emphasis on reforming the existing systems in place in order to achieve the most beneficial cannabis industry possible. Many reformative legal implications are made, stressing the importance of decriminalizing cannabis, releasing nonviolent and cannabis-related criminals from prison, and expunging their criminal records. The paper places a heavy emphasis on the importance of designing the legal system to be fair and equal across all racial and ethnic groups, given that people of color have been hit the hardest in terms of cannabis-related issues. Economic components such as tax design and access to proper financial institutions are also included, as well as the social implications that have both gone into and are a product of the long-standing war on drugs. While there is no comprehensive solution for how to fix every aspect of the industry, this paper highlights key aspects to be aware of in the design stages of potential federal legalization.

In this paper, I discuss my findings from The Toyota Way, 2 Second Lean, and Lean Thinking, I present an analysis of my implementation of lean processes for Page Petal, and I recommend a set of lean<br/>philosophies that I found to be successful for e-commerce product-based small businesses. I also focus on how the economy plays an important role in the demand for goods, a major factor in<br/>which lean processes will ultimately be successful. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the value of mindful risk-taking in entrepreneurship and to reveal what was effective with Page Petal in hopes of giving other small businesses insight into how to be successful.

This dissertation consists of two parts. The first part is about understanding the mechanism behind female labor supply movement over economic development. Female labor force participation follows a U-shape pattern over per capita GDP cross nationally as well as within some countries. This paper questions if this pattern can be explained through sectoral, uneven technological movements both at market and at home. For that I develop a general equilibrium model with married couples and home production. I defined multiple sectors both at home and in the market. And by feeding the model with uneven technological growth, I observe how participation rate moves over development. My results indicate that a decrease in labor supply is mainly due to structural transformation. Meaning, a higher technology in a large sector causes prices to go up in that sector relative to other. Hence, labor allocated to this sector will decrease. Assuming this sector has a big market share, it will decrease the labor supply. Also, I found that the increase in female labor supply is mostly because of movement from home to market as a result of a higher technological growth in the market. The second part is about developing a methodology to verify and compute the existence of recursive equilibrium in dynamic economies with capital accumulation and elastic labor supply. The method I develop stems from the multi-step monotone mapping methodology which is based on monotone operators and solving a fixed point problem at each step. The methodology is not only useful for verifying and computing the recursive competitive equilibrium, but also useful for obtaining intra- and inter-temporal comparative dynamics. I provide robust intra-temporal comparative statics about how consumption and leisure decisions change in response to changes in capital stock and inverse marginal utility of consumption. I also provide inter-temporal equilibrium comparative dynamics about how recursive equilibrium consumption and investment respond to changes in discount factor and production externality. Different from intra-temporal comparative statics, these are not robust as they only apply to a subclass of equilibrium where investment level is monotone.

The dissertation is composed by three chapters. In Chapter 2 (coauthored with Matthew Wiswall) I develop new results for the identification and estimation of the technology of children’s skill formation when children’s skills are unobserved. In Chapter 3 I shed light on the importance of dynamic equilibrium interdependencies between children’s social interactions and parental investments decisions in explaining developmental differences between different social environments. In Chapter 4 (coauthored with Giuseppe Sorrenti) I study the effect of family income and maternal hours worked on both cognitive and behavioral child development.

This dissertation is a collection of three essays relating household financial obligations to asset prices. Financial obligations include both debt payments and other financial commitments.

In the first essay, I investigate how household financial obligations affect the equity premium. I modify the standard Mehra-Prescott (1985) consumption-based asset pricing model to resolve the equity risk premium puzzle. I focus on two channels: the preference channel and the borrowing constraints channel. Under reasonable parameterizations, my model generates equity risk premiums similar in magnitudes to those observed in U.S. data. Furthermore, I show that relaxing the borrowing constraint shrinks the equity risk premium.

In the Second essay, I test the predictability of excess market returns using the household financial obligations ratio. I show that deviations in the household financial obligations ratio from its long-run mean is a better forecaster of future market returns than alternative prediction variables. The results remain significant using either quarterly or annual data and are robust to out-of-sample tests.

In the third essay, I investigate whether the risk associated with household financial obligations is an economy-wide risk with the potential to explain fluctuations in the cross-section of stock returns. The multifactor model I propose, is a modification of the capital asset pricing model that includes the financial obligations ratio as a ``conditioning down" variable. The key finding is that there is an aggregate hedging demand for securities that pay off in periods characterized by higher levels of financial obligations ratios. The consistent pricing of financial obligations risk with a negative risk premium suggests that the financial obligations ratio acts as a state variable.

This paper presents a two-period general equilibrium model that incorporates the firm's learning-by-doing under the green subsidies. I use a dynamic version of the Dixit-Stiglitz monopolistic competition model to analyze the impact of the introduction of green subsidies in the presence of pre-existing effluent taxes. I first show that the introduction of green subsidies promotes the demand for green goods, and consumers are better off each period. I then show that even when the green subsidies directly accrue to consumers, firms in the green sector also benefit via boosted demand for green goods. The learning-by-doing effect accelerates the speed of expansion of the green sector in the face of green subsidies. On the other hand, even when the demand for the green goods increases, and greater pollution may result from meeting the increased demand as a whole, environmental quality may still improve if the technology is good enough to sufficiently boost the net positive impact of green consumption on the environment.