Essays in Applied Empirical Economics

Abstract

This dissertation presents three empirical studies on how structural constraints and market frictions shape economic outcomes. The first chapter uses a 52-country panel from the World Bank Global Findex database and two-stage least squares to show that female financial technology adoption raises divorce rates, while formal savings has a stabilizing effect, consistent with a household bargaining framework. The second chapter examines credit gap dynamics in Saudi Arabia (2010–2025) using Bry–Boschan cycle dating and a vector autoregression, finding that non-oil GDP is the dominant predictor of the credit gap in oil-exporting economies. The third chapter uses System GMM on weekly U.S. data to show that bulk truck rates are highly persistent and significantly driven by fuel prices.