Three essays in applied microeconomics

A focus in my dissertation is the analysis of grade inflation with a new angle. Researchers have provided various explanation of grade inflation; to date, however, no one explored "students' nuisance" as an explanation to grade inflation. I define "students' nuisance" as "students persistent requests for upward adjustment of their grades." The first chapter of this dissertation is "Grade inflation under the threat of students' nuisance-A Game Theoretic Approach." I show how students' nuisance, or the threat of students' nuisance, can cause grade inflation. Because the opportunity cost of dealing with students is high, the professors might inflate grades to avoid students' nuisance.;The second chapter is "Grade Inflation and Students' Nuisance: An Empirical Approach." I report empirical findings that come from four distinct data sources. In a survey of UC Irvine professors that I conducted, I find that a large majority of the professors (72%+) agree or strongly agree that students' nuisance is "annoying" and "costly in terms of time, energy and effort." I conducted another survey for UC Irvine students about their nuisance behavior, and the regression from that data set demonstrates a positive relationship between the likelihood of student's nuisance and the value of the grade, as well as the cost of studying. Another data set collected from six UC Irvine professors indicates that most pestering students are poor performers. The regression of the last data set tests a proposition in chapter 1, which predicts more preemptive grade inflation in larger classes.;The third chapter, "Job Market Signaling Games in Hospital-intern Markets," utilizes a job market signaling model to analyze early contracting and central matching of hospital-intern markets, where newly graduate medical students seek residency positions in hospitals. Before the central matching by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), certain hospitals provide pre-matching offers to promising students, who choose whether to pre-commit to those hospitals or to participate in the central matching of NRMP. The model shows that if signals are public, no hospitals provide pre-match offers. If signals are private, there exists no pure Nash equilibrium.