UC Irvine

The chapters of this dissertation analyze the choice decisions of various groups of individuals. Chapter 1 examines the choices of consumers regarding movie videos. We utilize weekly video sales data, encompassing digital videos from online platforms and physical discs from retail stores, to investigate the director's backward spillover effect, factors influencing consumer preferences, and the market structure. Our findings confirm the presence of backward spillover effects on video sales and provide an estimation of the movie video market's cost structure. Additionally, we analyze the impact of structural changes in the market using a merger simulation. Chapter 2 investigates household choices related to leisure activities. We consider both the time spent and the associated expenditure measurements to offer a comprehensive analysis of time allocations and costs for leisure pursuits. By combining a time-use survey with mobile app scanner data, we categorize activities and products into 14 leisure categories. Then we uncover the geography of leisure, constructing leisure price indexes and estimating the time spent and expenditure variations in income. Our study further probes choice sensitivity, employing a causal inference framework to estimate heterogeneous elasticity and leisure substitution patterns. Chapter 3 focuses on the choices made by refugees regarding their destination cities during migration. This analysis focuses on those escaping the Russia-Ukraine war that erupted in February 2022. We use data from Hornet, a Queer Social Network, to classify refugee users into three groups: Ukrainians, Russians, and Foreigners. An interactive map has been developed to visualize the daily aggregated movements of the refugees. Subsequently, we investigate the factors that influence refugee preferences when choosing destination cities. We also analyze the elements that impact both the number of refugees in these cities and the migration movements between them due to the conflict. Lastly, we estimate the average migration patterns of the refugees.