Three essays in labor, environmental, and behavioral economics

This thesis is made up of three papers in the areas of labor, environmental, and behavioral economics. The first paper examines the impact that trade liberalization has had on wage inequality in Mexico since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was enacted in the mid 1990s. The second and third papers examine the problem of how to boost support for land uses widely perceived to benefit society, but present net costs to their prospective host communities. Such land uses have been termed not-in-my-backyard or NIMBY projects. I use wind farms as the type of NIMBY project to test the ideas in the latter two papers.;In the first paper, I attempt to isolate one piece of NAFTA's effect on wage inequality. I match annual industry wage and employment data with data on the tariffs the U.S. and Canada impose on goods from Mexico. A difficulty in isolating NAFTA's effects through changes in U.S. and Canadian tariffs on Mexican exports is that these tariffs are highly correlated with the tariffs that Mexico's other major trading partners impose on imports from Mexico. Since exports to these countries impact Mexican wages, leaving these relationships out of a model for estimation will leave the estimates for the effect that U.S. and Canadian tariffs have on wages biased. Since tariff data for this period is available for one of Mexico's other top importers, I include this data to help mitigate the bias. The result is that the estimates for the effect that U.S. and Canadian tariffs have increase several fold. However, because the U.S. and Canada had little room left to lower their tariffs on the manufactured goods evaluated here, the small changes in tariffs that occurred in the post-NAFTA period result in calculations that attribute a less than one percent change in inequality to changes in U.S. and Canadian tariffs on Mexican exports.;The second paper analyzes how the more directly someone in a prospective host community sees compensation as addressing their concerns over a proposed land use, the less likely the person may be to see the offer of compensation as a bribe. Other studies note an often significant bribe effect, but cannot distinguish why one form of compensation might be seen as a bribe while another worth the same amount of money might not be. The NIMBY literature notes that compensation perceived as appropriate is more likely to be acceptable, but offers reasons that can primarily only be applied ex post in determining why a given offer of compensation might be seen as appropriate. The theory developed here can be applied ex ante in developing compensation and mitigation packages that are likely to be seen as appropriate and therefore acceptable.;The third paper primarily examines the effect of others' support on individuals' support for a wind farm hypothetically proposed one mile from their home. It also investigates how others' support may affect individuals' support for wind power in general and how directly individuals see compensation as addressing their concerns. Others' support is only found to significantly affect support for the wind farm among those who have neutral or lower support for wind power in general. It is especially noteworthy that others' support significantly affects these groups since the finding is consistent with conformity as a driving force, but not reciprocity---two of the primary behaviors believed to motivate conditional cooperation. Others' support will only move a reciprocator to engage in a kind act---one that s/he believes will confer some benefit to others or society. It is unlikely that those who have neutral or lower support for wind power believe hosting a wind farm constitutes a kind act. Alternatively, it could be that respondents in these groups saw high others' support as signaling fewer impacts from the wind farm than they previously expected. For respondents in these groups, there was no significant difference in the impacts expected among those in the high treatment group versus those in the low group. However, the results for those with neutral or lower support for wind power may be sensitive to the small number of respondents who indicated these levels of support. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).