Miller, KeatonJiang, Sichao2022-05-102022-05-102022-05-10https://hdl.handle.net/1794/27147This thesis is composed of three essays and provides empirical contributions to the Industrial Organization literature, especially in the field of transportation and health economics. It aims to understand different issues related to economics by applying various empirical methods. The first essay (chapter 2) examines firm exit in Canadian markets, specifically the grain elevator market. There is a long line of previous literature that finds capacity, vintage, multi-plant ownership affect exit. In this paper, a choice model is used to examine a firm’s decision to shut down a grain elevator in terms of these variables, but also develops measures of spatial competition, local economic conditions and linkages to the transportation markets. In all cases, these variables are statistically important and point to results that reinforce previous studies, but also direct to new explanations on the determinants of plant exit. The second essay (chapter 3) examines the effects of marijuana legislation change on the agricultural labor market. The paper uses differences-in-differences with a synthetic control methodology to identify the effects of labor market outcomes from marijuana legalization. This method aims to avoid substantial labor market spillovers in neighboring states and to construct a decent parallel trend for the pre-treatment time period with pretty varied agricultural markets in the U.S. The results show that cannabis legalization is associated with an increase in overall employments that people are flushing into the industry, but no increase in per-employee wages in both the retailer and agricultural labor market. The third essay (chapter 4) looks into the accuracy of firms' prediction errors in the context of Medicare Advantage, where insurers receive subsidies from the government and compete to provide health insurance to seniors. The results show that on average firms overestimate future costs. Overestimation in forecast error decreases with the experience of the firm. Firms in more competitive markets (as measured by the number of other firms present) form more accurate estimates. Firms with higher costs than expected generally offer plans that feature greater patient cost sharing (i.e. higher deductibles and copays). This dissertation includes both previously published/unpublished and co-authored material.en-USAll Rights Reserved.Applied EconometricsApplied MicroeconomicsHealth EconomicsIndustrial OrganizationElectronic Thesis or Dissertation