Essays in Applied Microeconomics

This dissertation consists of three papers in the field of applied microeconomics. The first paper investigates whether or not physical tests used in the hiring process negatively impact the number of women hired. Previous studies have reported that physical tests administered to new recruits adversely impact women. Although interesting, these papers have not applied econometric analysis to determine the effects of physical exams on the composition of local police departments. Instead they use case studies and test of means to derive their conclusions. The purpose of this paper is to use econometric analysis to determine the discriminatory effects of physical exams. Our main contribution is to use a fixed effects approach to control for unobserved discrimination. Our results indicate that once discrimination has been controlled for physical exams do not affect the proportion of women employed in police departments.;The second paper investigates the economic variables and data used to model notices of default in California during the financial crisis of 2008--2009. Forecast models are notoriously complicated and require sophisticated software to run. Few businesses, particularly small enterprises, have the necessary resources to engage in large-scale model building. Furthermore, data can be difficult and expensive to obtain and usually requires significant analysis. The paper will focus on methodology to give the model a general appeal. The model has been kept simple and easy to use in the hope that others will use it.;The final paper investigates the impact of foreign aid on tuberculosis outcomes. Each year foreign aid organizations give billions of dollars to developing countries with the goal of improving their economic and social welfare. Most research suggests that foreign aid is ineffective. However, we believe that most researchers do not compare aid to the right outcome variable. To correct this problem we compare aid designated specifically for tuberculosis control to specific tuberculosis outcomes. Our results suggest that tuberculosis aid reduces the incidence of tuberculosis.