This dissertation contains three chapters related to the study of how business cycles create real and persistent effects on economic agents. Chapter 1 focuses on young individuals' careers and college decisions; Chapter 2 on firms' firing and hiring asymmetric decisions and Chapter 3 on firms' sourcing strategies. In Chapter 1 "Strategic or…

I study the effect of higher education on lifecycle earnings and focus on three ways in which education may help drive earnings: the effect of higher education on one's skills, the effect on one's ability to accumulate new skills in the future, and the relationship between education and one's likelihood of unemployment. In the first chapter, I…

This dissertation is centered on further understanding the warehousing hypothesis. This is a phenomenon where college enrollment patterns across the U.S. are driven by labor market conditions. The interrelated nature of individual and structural level processes motivates the fundamental question driving my research: how do race and ethnicity,…

In this dissertation, I present three distinct topics on labor economics that can be read independently from one another. In the first chapter, using matched mother-child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I investigate the impact of mothers' involuntary job loss on children's academic achievement. In the next chapter, I examine…

This research explores the relationship between place and the career experiences of STEM-educated recent college graduates in the U.S. over the 2000-2010 decade. Specifically, it seeks to understand how these graduates' early career outcomes (earnings, odds of unemployment and underemployment) are contingent on the location where they received…

This dissertation contains three chapters that explore various aspects of the economics of education, with a focus on higher education. In particular, the first two chapters deal with college major as it relates to earnings, occupational choice, and high school curriculum, while the third discusses the relationship between college-student match…

A commonly held belief is that formal education has a strong positive association with earnings (Sanchez, 1998). The motivation for individuals to pursue and complete an education beyond high school is likely founded in the hopes of higher paying jobs or a higher position. The "economic benefits" of a community college education can be…

From the 1960s to the 1990s in the United States, a distinctive feature was observed in variations in the number of Bachelor's degree recipients by field of study. The number in each field demonstrated certain cyclical patterns. Similarly, the U.S. economy experienced fluctuations during a comparable period. Given this 40-year trend, this study…