ICT introduction in the city councils. A regional analysis

The peculiarities and heterogeneity of city councils hinder the homogenous implementation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in all Spanish regions. This study investigates some city council websites and its aim is to enhance the degree of ICT integration, relating it to municipality size. The websites of six Spanish regions have been analyzed and aspects such as accessibility, e-participation, transparency, website design, and use of channels as well as the usefulness to the user have been investigated. In certain aspects, some regional differences and deficiencies have been observed, particularly in small municipalities. Other issues such as participation or use of languages besides the official ones do not seem to be related to size.     

Mortality risk assessment in the elderly: the utility of delayed word recall

Cognitive impairment is an important predictor of mortality in the elderly. An extended delayed word recall (DWR) is one of the most sensitive tests for cognitive impairment. A mortality study was performed on a population of long-term care insurance applicants aged 70 and older who were underwritten during the years 1995-2003 and who had cognitive testing by DWR. Within this relatively short period of time, individuals with DWR score of 0-5 compared to those with DWR score of 6-10 had a markedly worse mortality outcome overall and also when analyzed by gender, underwriting age, underwriting year or smoking status.     

Stepping-stones, dead-ends, or both? An analysis of Swedish replacement contracts

The paper studies whether temporary jobs in the form of fixed-term replacement contracts reduce the risk of future unemployment among job-seekers. Using matching on detailed information on labour market history and personal characteristics we find positive average effects of having a replacement contract. Our second focus is on whether the duration of the contract matters. We use data on replacement contracts with information on the ex ante duration of the contract which is determined by the individual on leave and find no significant effect on the subsequent unemployment risk of the replacement worker. However, the longer the replacement contract the higher is the probability of having an open ended contract at the same site 2–2.5 years after the start of the contract. Overall, the results suggest that replacement contracts may reduce the risk of future unemployment, but that longer contracts only improve the position within the workplace and not necessarily on the labour market in general.     

Exchange Rules and the Incentive Compatibility of Choice Experiments

The incentive properties of stated-preference surveys continue to be a central debate in the valuation of public goods. The majority of empirical studies have focused on incentive properties of contingent valuation questions in relation to situations where answers have monetary consequences. This research explores the incentive properties of repeated, attribute-based choice questions when subjects are provided with an explicit connection between choices and outcomes. Two market/provision-rules are investigated: a posted-price market and a plurality-rule vote. These two provision rules are contrasted to treatments in which no provision rule is discussed—subjects are simply asked to choose their preferred alternative. These three hypothetical choice treatments are compared with a binding choice treatment. While none of the public good treatments are theoretically incentive compatible, we include a comparison of hypothetical and binding choices for a private-good that is incentive compatible. The private good experiments indicate that marginal willingness to pay (WTP) estimates from the hypothetical treatment are larger, but not statistically different than corresponding estimates in the binding choice treatment. Results for the public good experiments indicate that marginal WTP estimates from the hypothetical treatments are much larger, and statistically different than corresponding estimates in the binding choice treatment. The bias is largest when no provision rule is discussed. The bias is reduced with the inclusion of a provision rule, but surprisingly, there was no difference across provision rule treatments. Overall, our results indicate that choice experiments involving a public good should include a provision rule to reduce bias, but the resulting marginal WTP estimates may still be more biased, on average, than those arising from contingent valuation survey formats.     

CEO Regulatory Foci,Environmental Dynamism,and Small Firm Performance

This research proposes and tests that regulatory foci of small business chief executive officers (promotion focus and prevention focus) relate to firm performance differentially when levels of environmental uncertainty vary. Results suggest that a promotion focus is positively related to firm performance, whereas a prevention focus is negatively related to firm performance. Further, these relationships are moderated by the degree of environmental dynamism such that in more dynamic environments, the relationship between promotion focus and firm performance is strengthened, whereas the relationship between prevention focus and firm performance is negatively affected. The reverse was found for less dynamic environments. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research avenues are offered.     

Domestic Effects of Offshoring High‐skilled Jobs: Complementarities in Knowledge Production

We provide evidence on how changes in the use of high‐skilled workers (inventors) in a foreign location affect a firm's domestic use of the same type of worker. We exploit rich data that provide variation in the location of inventors within multinational firms across industries and countries to control for confounding firm–time and industry factors. We find that a 10% increase in the use of foreign inventors leads to a 1.9% increase in the use of domestic inventors. Our results suggest that foreign and domestic inventors are complementary in the production of knowledge.     

Marriage equality and interstate migration

This study examines the impact of state imposed, marriage equality laws on interstate migration prior to the 26 June 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to legalize same-sex marriage in all states. Results of the estimation of a series of probit models suggest that all head of households are more likely to leave states without marriage equality. This estimated impact is significantly larger for household heads in same-sex relationships. When examining the migration choices separately by both sex and relationship type, this result remains significant for female heads of households in different-sex relationships and male heads of households in same-sex relationships. Simulations, using the results of the probit estimations, the analysis of regional trends, and recent rebellions against the Supreme Court ruling indicate that state level, marriage equality laws may be aggravating the imbalanced distribution of same- and different-sex couple households across the country.     

Modelling the sectoral allocation of labour in open economy models

Indivisible labour is not the only type of non‐convexity affecting labour supply decisions. Another type of non‐convexity arises in economies with sectors whenever individuals can work in only one sector at a time. I introduce this restriction into an open economy model with a tradeable and a non‐tradeable sector, and I use lotteries to convexify the consumption possibilities set. This approach implies that the aggregate elasticity of labour supply becomes infinite. I compare the performance of the model with an analogous model in which the labour supply elasticity is finite. I find that there is a disconnect between the response of wages to monetary shocks and the open economy variables. The labour supply elasticity plays a more important role in the transmission of technology and government expenditure shocks to the real exchange rate and the terms of trade.     

Unemployment insurance and the business cycle*

An equilibrium model is developed to study the interaction of the business cycle, unemployment insurance (UI), and the labor market for young men in Canada. The model combines optimal job offer, layoff, and recall decisions within a numerically solved and restricted Bayesian–Nash equilibrium. We consider the long‐run implications of changes made to unemployment insurance in Canada during the 1990s. The changes lead to equilibrium increases in average rates of unemployment, layoffs, and recalls. Eliminating UI lowers the equilibrium unemployment rate and average observed earnings. UI policy affects the timing of cycles of endogenous outcomes relative to the productivity cycle.