Essays in applied microeconomics and applied econometrics

In the first chapter of this dissertation, we study a monopoly with bilateral asymmetric information, where a monopolist sets its price given a unit mass of consumers with heterogenous preferences and demand for a single unit of a commodity. Consumers' purchasing decision depend on a private signal of their experienced utility and price. Under constant absolute risk aversion and the normal distribution, we derive the Bayes-Nash equilibrium as the accuracy of consumers' private information varies. Our analysis yields a distinction between speciality and non-speciality commodities. If the monopolist can invest in product quality and affect consumer preferences, we demonstrate that in the Perfect Bayes-Nash equilibrium, the investment in quality and the price decrease with the accuracy of consumers' private information. In addition, we relate our results to observed sales strategies and marketing practices. Motivated by recent discussions concerning wage formation in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), Bulow and Levin (2006) argued that a centralized match has good efficiency properties, and profts that are above, and wages that are below, those in a competitive equilibrium. In the second chapter of this dissertation, we demonstrate that early contracting has poor efficiency properties and profits that above, and wages that are below, those under perfect competition at the ex post efficient match date. In addition, we show that centralized matching has good efficiency properties, and if a matching market unravels early enough, wages that above those under early contracting. In the third chapter of this study, we assess the various adjustments and corrections that have been made to the available data on economic inequality for the sake of consistency and definition. We argue that it is ill-advised to use the adjusted data as a dependent variable, providing an econometrically robust alternative, and to use the available data on economic inequality, adjusted or unadjusted, as an independent variable in regression analysis. Finally, we examine the implications of missing data and evaluate econometric methods to solve this problem.