Date of Award
Spring 2025
Language
English
Embargo Period
5-14-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School/Department
Department of Economics
Program
Economics
First Advisor
Chun-Yu Ho
Second Advisor
Haruka Takayama
Committee Members
Byoung Park
Keywords
Place-Based Policy, Regional Development, Air Transportation, Tourism
Subject Categories
International Economics | Regional Economics
Abstract
The first chapter examines the economic impacts of large theme park openings in China from 2000 to 2020 using a newly compiled dataset on county-level theme parks and entrepreneurship. Leveraging the staggered openings of theme parks across various counties, we document three main findings. First, theme park openings lead to a 14% increase in entrepreneurial activities, especially in tourism-related service sectors. This result is robust to the instrumental variable approach, the heterogeneous treatment effect, alternative specification and measurement, and propensity score matching. Second, theme park openings generate spillover effects on neighboring counties within a 50-75 kilometer radius. Third, we identify tourism and agglomeration as the potential mechanisms driving these economic impacts. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that theme park openings promote employment by 11% and overall economic activities by 2%. This study sheds new light on the evaluation of the effectiveness of tourism-related place-based policies.
The second chapter studies how direct flight connections affect the spending of international visitors. A novel dataset on card payments made by Chinese travelers through point-of-sale (POS) terminals enables us to investigate that question. We instrument for the frequency of direct flights between Chinese cities and foreign countries by exploiting overseas airport expansions as exogenous shocks. Our IV estimates indicate that a 1% increase in the weekly frequency of direct flights leads to a 2% increase in cross-border card transaction value. This suggests that in a city with the average frequency, adding one extra weekly direct flight increases the value of transactions by 52% to the destination country. While improving air connectivity promotes international travel, we find that negative shocks to consumer preferences for destination countries, such as boycotts, diminish the positive impact of air connectivity.
The third chapter examines the competitive effects of regional airline exits in the U.S. from April 2019 through December 2020, leveraging the first wave of COVID-19 as a natural experiment. Using propensity score matching and difference-in-differences, we find consumers are worse off after exits, with a 16% decrease in flight availability and a 6% rise in fares. Longer-haul markets and those dominated by full-service carriers experience less impact. Incumbent airlines expand services and raise fares, while competing regional airlines and those with greater cash reserves seize market share, with less impact on on-time performance.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Peng, Tingting, "ESSAYS ON PLACE-BASED POLICY AND REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT" (2025). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 238.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/238
