Essays in Applied Microeconomics: School Admission Mechanisms and Corporate Bankrupcy

In my dissertation, I address two topics in applied microeconomics. First two chapters deal with the functioning of school admission mechanisms and their affects on student school choice behavior. Third chapter deals with the question of optimal bankruptcy law design. Pupil-school matching mechanisms play a critical role in the schooling system. They affect the behavior of students and-through the information they convey-also the behavior of the schools and the authorities responsible for education policy. In the first chapter (joint with Daniel Münich), using a computational simulation model, we analyze the functioning of an admission scheme used in the Czech Republic as a prototype of decentralized, ability-based admission schemes widely used in the world to assign pupils to upper-secondary schools. Our findings show large incidence of strategic misrepresentation of school preferences among applicants, large differences between revealed and trued demand, and large incidence of justified envy in the resulting matching. We point out several implication this could have for functioning of schooling systems. In the second chapter, I empirically study the behavior of students under the Czech pupil-school matching mechanism. Using district-level data on demand for public gymnasia, I find significant evidence. ; CERGE ; Faculty of Social Sciences ; Fakulta sociálních věd