Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Marriages Made in Silico: Essays on Social Norms, Technology Adoption, and Institutions in Online Matrimonial Matching Platforms(2020) Karmegam, Sabari Rajan; Gopal, Anandasivam; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Online matrimonial platforms have emerged as a way to take the highly institutionalized process of arranged marriages online while preserving the offline social, cultural, and gender norms. While there is a rich body of empirical work on online dating, the corresponding literature on online matrimonial platforms is sparse. My dissertation seeks to fill this gap. In my first essay, I look at mobile adoption's role in online matrimonial platforms' engagement and matching outcomes. The analysis shows that unlike the dating market where the market's transaction costs are eased by the ubiquity and personal nature of the mobile device for all users, here subgroups associated with strong endogamous preferences benefit with mobile adoption. My work extends the mobile ecosystem study to the societal context where institutional norms take precedence and influence mobile adoption outcomes. In my second essay, I study how the search frictions, social norms, and disempowerment that results from the gender skew in online matching platforms can be mitigated by using appropriate market design. I use a quasi-experimental methodology by relying on two interventions designed by the platform to reduce women's cognitive load. The interventions improved the overall well-being of women on platforms. My work here aims to increase awareness on the role platforms needs to play to improve women's well-being while ensuring that online platforms do not unravel. In my third essay, I look at whether the sanctity of institutional norms and traditional markers of status - involvement of multiple stakeholders through parental involvement and social norms related to endogamy and gender roles are retained in online matrimonial platforms. I find that "platformization" leads to institutional unbundling, with outcomes guided by more liberal ethos. This essay extends the platform literature on institutional contexts and shows that transition to online settings may not be seamless. My dissertation thus contributes to the literature on Information Systems by highlighting the need to consider the societal, cultural, and gender norms to further our understanding of the market design and technology adoption in highly institutionalized contexts.Item Essays on Matching Markets and Their Equilibria(2016) Utgoff, Naomi M.; Ausubel, Lawrence M; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Matching theory and matching markets are a core component of modern economic theory and market design. This dissertation presents three original contributions to this area. The first essay constructs a matching mechanism in an incomplete information matching market in which the positive assortative match is the unique efficient and unique stable match. The mechanism asks each agent in the matching market to reveal her privately known type. Through its novel payment rule, truthful revelation forms an ex post Nash equilibrium in this setting. This mechanism works in one-, two- and many-sided matching markets, thus offering the first mechanism to unify these matching markets under a single mechanism design framework. The second essay confronts a problem of matching in an environment in which no efficient and incentive compatible matching mechanism exists due to matching externalities. I develop a two-stage matching game in which a contracting stage facilitates subsequent conditionally efficient and incentive compatible Vickrey auction stage. Infinite repetition of this two-stage matching game enforces the contract in every period. This mechanism produces inequitably distributed social improvement: parties to the contract receive all of the gains and then some. The final essay demonstrates the existence of prices which stably and efficiently partition a single set of agents into firms and workers, and match those two sets to each other. This pricing system extends Kelso and Crawford's general equilibrium results in a labor market matching model and links one- and two-sided matching markets as well.Item INTEGRATED DYNAMIC DEMAND MANAGEMENT AND MARKET DESIGN IN SMART GRID(2014) Asudegi, Mona; Haghani, Ali; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Smart Grid is a system that accommodates different energy sources, including solar, wind, tidal, electric vehicles, and also facilitates communication between users and suppliers. This study tries to picture the interaction among all new sources of energy and market, besides managing supplies and demands in the system while meeting network's limitations. First, an appropriate energy system mechanism is proposed to motivate use of green and renewable energies while addressing current system's deficiencies. Then concepts and techniques from game theory, network optimization, and market design are borrowed to model the system as a Stackelberg game. Existence of an equilibrium solution to the problem is proved mathematically, and an algorithm is developed to solve the proposed nonlinear bi-level optimization model in real time. Then the model is converted to a mathematical program with equilibrium constraints using lower level's optimality conditions. Results from different solution techniques including MIP, SOS, and nonlinear MPEC solvers are compared with the proposed algorithm. Examples illustrate the appropriateness and usefulness of the both proposed system mechanism and heuristic algorithm in modeling the market and solving the corresponding large scale bi-level model. To the best knowledge of the writer there is no efficient algorithm in solving large scale bi-level models and any solution approach in the literature is problem specific. This research could be implemented in the future Smart Grid meters to help users communicate with the system and enables the system to accommodate different sources of energy. It prevents waste of energy by optimizing users' schedule of trades in the grid. Also recommendations to energy policy makers are made based on results in this research. This research contributes to science by combining knowledge of market structure and demand management to design an optimal trade schedule for all agents in the energy network including users and suppliers. Current studies in this area mostly focus either in market design or in demand management side. However, by combining these two areas of knowledge in this study, not only will the whole system be more efficient, but it also will be more likely to make the system operational in real world.Item Computational and Experimental Market Design(2010) Higgins, Nathaniel Alan; McConnell, Kenneth E; Cramton, Peter; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation contributes to the literature on the market design of auctions. I use computational and experimental techniques to make two types of contributions to the literature. First, I provide a program that implements a state-of-the-art algorithm for solving multi-unit auctions with asymmetric bidders. This methodological contribution can be used by other economists to solve a variety of auction problems not considered in this dissertation. Second, I undertake the study of one auction environment in particular, utilizing my program to generate hypotheses when bidders participate in a particular sealed-bid, asymmetric multi-unit auction. These hypotheses are then tested in an experimental setting.