My PhD thesis is composed of two chapters. The first chapter evaluates the effectiveness of China’s anti-corruption campaign in 2012 by conducting a difference-in-difference analysis of product-city-level cigarette consumption data from 2007 to 2014. The analysis found that following the campaign, there was an increase in sales of middle-end cigarettes and a decrease in sales of luxury cigarettes, which contrasts with the trend for lower-end cigarettes. This substitution pattern may be attributed to a decrease in public spending on luxury goods, and the patter is also influenced by officials’ wages. Additionally, our findings suggest that provinces with more intense anti-corruption efforts experienced a greater decline in luxury cigarettes sales. The second chapter studies the effect of early maternal distress on children’s long-run outcomes. Exploiting longitudinal data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study in the UK, we find that exposure to maternal distress in early life are more likely to be involved in risky behaviors. The results are likely driven by maternal time investment in early childhood, especially education time investment.
| Date of Award | 16 Aug 2023 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | |
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| Supervisor | Junji XIAO (Supervisor), Cheng Ze Simon FAN (Co-supervisor) & Xiangdong WEI (Co-supervisor) |
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