Essays on Institutional Arrangements and their Consequences

Abstract

This dissertation examines the roles that institutions play in our lives. Chapter 1 explores the relationship between the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), legislation intended to improve the labor market outcomes for the disabled, and post-secondary educational attainment for that same group. This chapter argues that although the ADA was intended to improve the lives of the disabled, it did the opposite. The literature documented the ADA had a negative effect on labor market outcomes for the disabled, and this chapter builds on these findings, finding that the ADA had a negative impact on post-secondary educational attainment for the disabled, particularly in states that had no disability-based labor protections before the passage of the ADA. Chapter 2 builds on this finding by examining whether state-level economic freedom can mitigate the deleterious effect of the ADA found in Chapter 1. This chapter finds that economic freedom mitigates the impact of the ADA on undergraduate and post-secondary educational attainment for the disabled, even overtaking the effect in the former case. Chapter 3 provides a modern analysis of the relationship between capitalism and democracy, as noted in the Hayek-Friedman hypothesis. This chapter finds that only four countries have ever had socialist or near-socialist economies when they also had high levels of democracy. These violations of the Hayek-Friedman hypothesis, though, consist of economies of transition and as such contain no true violations of the Hayek-Friedman hypothesis.