| This dissertation consists of four essays in labor economics and microeconometrics.;Chapter 1, "Who Gets Good Jobs? The Hiring Decisions and Compensation Structures of Large Firms," presents a new empirical finding that large firms hire younger workers. A simple model incorporating firm-specific human capital investment and employee search is advanced to study firms' behavior in the labor market. There are two main findings. First, newly-hired workers at large firms exhibit flatter wage-age profiles than those at small firms. Second, workers at large firms display steeper wage-tenure profiles than workers at small firms. Empirical findings along dimensions other than firm size, such as industry and occupation, are also consistent with the theory.;Chapter 2, "Use of Means-Tested Transfer Programs by Immigrants, Their Children and Their Children's Children," (co-written with Kristin Butcher), examines the extent to which immigrants and their descendents rely on welfare before the 1996 welfare reform. We also make the first attempt to calculate the intergenerational correlation in welfare use for immigrants.;Chapter 3, "Estimating a Censored Dynamic Panel Data Model with an Application to Earnings Dynamics," is motivated by the empirical project to study earnings dynamics using matched data from the Current Population Survey and Social Security Administration Earnings Records. The earnings records are severely top-coded; consequently, an econometric method is proposed to estimate a censored panel data model with a lagged latent dependent variable and individual-specific fixed effects. Valid asymptotic confidence intervals for the AR(1) parameter in the earnings process are constructed.;Chapter 4, "Estimation of Cross Sectional and Panel Data Censored Regression Models with Endogeneity," (co-written with Bo Honore), proposes methods to estimate panel data censored regression models with general predetermined variables rather than a lagged dependent variable, which was considered in Chapter 3. The insight behind the estimation methods can also be applied to cross-sectional censored regression models with endogenous explanatory variables. |
