Essays in applied economics, household behavior, and environmental economics

This Thesis examines two main topics: household behavior and environmental economics. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 focus on bargaining behavior within households. Chapter 1 extends the literature by considering control function approach to solve the endogeneity issues from using income share and consumption share to study bargaining behavior within households. Chapter 2 extends the literature by considering cohabitation behavior. This chapter examines differences between union dissolution rates of married households and cohabiting households. Chapter 3 examines four discontinuities in the ethanol content in blended gasoline fuel, mandated by Brazil's central government over the period 2010 to 2013, to test the joint hypotheses that atmospheric ozone production in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area is limited by the volume and reactivity of hydrocarbons, and increased ethanol use in the gasoline-ethanol vehicle fleet leads to higher ozone concentrations in urban Sao Paulo's ambient air.