Essays on Industrial Policy and Communication

Abstract

In my dissertation, I study government policies and their effects on the behavior of agents in the economy. Chapter 1 discusses the effects that subsidies for small firms have on aggregate output and productivity, with an empirical application to policies in India. Chapter 2 studies the effects of lowering communication costs on structural transformation, with an empirical focus on the roll out of Rural Free Delivery in the United States. Chapter 3 presents a method to estimate the effects that increased transparency have on deliberation, in particular that of the Federal Reserve Bank.