Agricultural subsidy policies fail to deal with child labour under agricultural dualism: What could be the alternative policies?

We provide a theoretical explanation why agricultural subsidy policies are likely to fail to ensure simultaneous eradication of the incidence of child labour and improvement in the well-being of the poor working families in terms of a three-sector general equilibrium model with child labour and agricultural dualism. We identify both demand and supply side effects of any policy intervention on child labour. We also suggest two alternative policies, a scheme of direct cash transfer to poor people and economic growth through foreign direct investment (FDI), both of which would be effective in achieving these twin objectives of a welfare government.     

The productivity challenge. What to expect from better-quality labour and capital inputs?

The aim of this article is to develop and implement an analytical framework assessing whether better-quality inputs, via a rise of TFP, could compensate an ageing-induced slowing of economic growth. Here ‘better-quality’ means more educated and older/more experienced workforces; and also better-quality capital proxied by its ICT content. Economic theory predicts that these trends should raise TFP. To assess these predictions, we use EU-KLEMS data, with information on the age/education mix of the workforce, as well as the importance on ICT in total capital, for 34 industries within 16 OECD countries, between 1970 and 2005. We generalize the Hellerstein–Neumark labour-quality index method to simultaneously capture workers’ age/experience or education contribution to TFP growth, alongside that of ICT. The conclusion of the article is that the quality of inputs matters for TFP. We find robust microeconometric evidence that better-educated and older/more experienced workers are more productive than their less-educated and younger/less-experienced peers. Also, ICT capital turns out to be more productive than other forms of capital. And when used in a growth accounting exercise covering the 1995–2005 period, these estimates suggest that up to 40% of the recorded TFP growth could be ascribed to the rising quality of inputs.     

Does local social capital deter labour migration? Evidence from rural China

This article empirically investigates the effect of local social capital on job-related migration in rural China. A household’s social ties in the region of origin, which we refer to as local social capital, may deter migration, because local social capital is location specific and an individual cannot benefit from it if s/he migrates. In view of Chinese gift-giving culture, we use household expenses on wedding gifts for family members outside household, relatives and friends as a proxy for local social networks. Based on the data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we find that in rural China local social networks have a significantly negative effect on migration. The IV results suggest that a 10% increase in wedding gifts expenses results in roughly a 1.1 percentage points decrease in migration probability.     

What drives the perception of health and safety risks in the workplace? Evidence from European labour markets

Worker perceptions of job-related health risk are a little-studied dimension of heterogeneity in the labour market. According to information from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), one out of three European workers considers that her health and safety is at risk because of work. Not surprisingly, risk perceptions are influenced by objective risk factors such as hazardous working conditions, onerous job characteristics and by the probability to be affected by occupational accidents and illnesses. This paper explores also the role played by personal characteristics and household structure for the explanation of risk perceptions. After controlling for job characteristics, workplace hazards, job satisfaction and health outcomes, I find that risk perceptions are strongly correlated with gender, age, and household structure. Lone parents as well as older and more experienced workers have a higher propensity than other categories to consider their health at risk because of work. The same seems to hold true for better educated workers, especially for those who have completed tertiary education. Further results suggest that the relationship between household structure and risk perception is stable across gender.     

Active labour market policies in Germany: do regional labour markets benefit?

This article examines on a regional level whether active labour market policies (ALMP) improve the matching process. To take the fact of heterogeneous search effectiveness during programme participation into account, we distinguish between current and former programme participants. Our findings based on a regional augmented matching function show that higher search effectiveness due to ALMP is not outweighed by indirect effects on nonparticipants. The total number of matches in a region increases with a higher share of former programme participants among the jobseekers. However, these effects largely differ between programme types.

Abbreviation OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)ALMP (active labour market policy)     

Technology adoption: does labour skill matter? Evidence from Portuguese firm-level data

This paper investigates the effect of labour characteristics on the decision to adopt new technologies. As a potential endogeneity problem might arise, we implement estimation techniques that control for endogenous covariates. The results suggest that the share of skilled employees has a significant positive impact on the likelihood of adoption, providing an additional and interesting insight in understanding technology adoption. We also find that firms’ nationality does not matter to the adoption process. The transfer of technology due to foreign investment may not be a widespread phenomenon, casting doubts on the standard internalization theory of foreign direct investment.

What Drives Entrepreneurship in Digital Economy? Evidence from China

Using data collected in the 2017 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), we study the impact of mobile payment on the likelihood of household entrepreneurship. In the empirical analysis, we use two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression to address the endogeneity of mobile payment. The study finds that mobile payment significantly increases the likelihood of household entrepreneurship. The mechanism could be that the mobile payment: 1) makes users more risk seeking; 2) enriches social networks; 3) provides an additional lending channel.     

What prevents PROS from making KNOTS? Evidence for nano-researchers

The current study examines the barriers faced by research organisations in nanoscience when transferring knowledge to the industrial sector. Two are the questions that guide this research: Does the context play a role in the effectiveness of knowledge transfer activities? Does the transfer of scientific output in nanoscience depend on the type of organisation? Three geographic areas are compared: the Basque Country (Spain), Uusimaa (Finland) and Sydsverige (Sweden). A survey to the research groups in the three locations was conducted, together with interviews with each group’s leaders. Quantitative and qualitative methods are thus used to interpret the information collected. The results indicate that the main barriers to knowledge transfer come from the innovation system, rather than from the organisation to which the research group belongs. The study discusses a series of trade-offs facing policy makers in charge of implementing science, technology and innovation.     

Does expert information affect citizens’ attitudes toward Corona policies? Evidence from Germany

Information provided by experts is believed to play a key role in shaping attitudes towards policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper uses a survey experiment to assess whether providing citizens with expert information about the health risk of COVID-19 and the economic costs of lockdown measures affects their attitudes towards these policies. Our findings show that providing respondents with information about COVID-19 fatalities among the elderly raises support for lockdown measures, while information about their economic costs decreases support. However, different population subgroups react differently. Men and younger respondents react more sensitively to information about lockdown costs, while women and older respondents are more susceptible towards information regarding fatality rates. Strikingly, our results are entirely driven by respondents who underestimate the fatality of COVID-19, who represent a majority.     

What deters labor-owned firm creation? Evidence from Italian manufacturing sectors

We analyze the determinants of labor-owned versus capital-owned firm creation. We match firm-level information on a large sample of new manufacturing firms with available industry-level proxies of the main determinants of ownership structures according to existing economic theories. We estimate a logit model and quantify the empirical contribution of each argument to explain labor-owned versus capital-owned firm entry. Our results show that human capital specificity and workers heterogeneity largely explain labor-owned firm entry, while other dimensions, such as limited worker wealth, have a weaker statistical relevance. These findings are robust to different estimation methods and are unlikely to be affected by endogeneity concerns. Our results contribute to the general understanding of the endogenous dynamics of ownership rights distribution in manufacturing firms and to the elaboration of policy initiatives aimed at supporting cooperative modes of firm organization.     

What Is Common Among Return Anomalies? Evidence from Insider Trading

For a broad set of anomalies, we establish a common pattern of underreaction to information contained in preceding insider trading activity. Our main analysis focuses on the anomalies' short legs, which generate persistent negative abnormal returns. For stocks in the short legs, future returns are systematically related to the information signal contained in preceding insider trading activity, indicating underreaction. For insider trading information, we consider the possibility of net buying, net selling, and no trading (or silence). The underreaction effect is economically significant, with the most negative signal accounting for an average of 71% of short-leg returns. This underreaction effect survives numerous robustness checks and remains important after accounting for investor sentiment, information environment, and limits to arbitrage.     

Is retention beneficial to low-achieving students? Evidence from Portugal

The role of retention as an educational tool to overcome under-achievement is a hotly debated issue, especially given that the results in the literature are not consensual. The Portuguese case is particularly well suited to study this issue: all students must take standardized national exams at specific grades. Moreover, the available dataset tracks the performance of students over time. Therefore, we are able to measure the impact of students’ retention on their subsequent academic performance since we can control for each student’s initial level of ability at the moment of retention. We use a propensity score matching approach, in which retained and promoted 4th grade students are matched according to their socioeconomic characteristics and the scores obtained in national exams. To address potentially remaining endogeneity biases, we also use the culture of retention at school level as an instrumental variable. The results suggest that in some situations retentions may have on average a positive impact on future achievement. However, in the cases where statistically significant impacts are found, the estimated magnitudes are relatively small. Our results are relevant for countries with high retention rates that are considering alternative educational policies to promote students’ achievement.     

Does decentralization contribute to efficiency? Evidence from OECD countries

This article provides evidence on the relationship between fiscal decentralization and technical efficiency. We begin the first stage of this study with a data envelopment analysis to obtain technical efficiency estimates for a sample of 23 OECD countries over the period 1992–2009. In a second stage, we explore the effects of fiscal decentralization and other control variables on technical efficiency. The results including all the control variables reveal a statistically significant negative relationship between fiscal decentralization of public expenditure and technical efficiency.     

How to hire helpers? Evidence from a field experiment

How to hire voluntary helpers? We shed new light on this question by reporting a field experiment in which we invited 2859 students to help at the ‘ESA Europe 2012’ conference. Invitation emails varied non-monetary and monetary incentives to convince subjects to offer help. Students could apply to help at the conference and, if so, also specify the working time they wanted to provide. Just asking subjects to volunteer or offering them a certificate turned out to be significantly more motivating than mentioning that the regular conference fee would be waived for helpers. By means of an online-survey experiment, we find that intrinsic motivation to help is likely to have been crowded out by mentioning the waived fee. Increasing monetary incentives by varying hourly wages of 1, 5, and 10 Euros shows positive effects on the number of applications and on the working time offered. However, when comparing these results with treatments without any monetary compensation, the number of applications could not be increased by offering money and may even be reduced.     

How does anti-corruption affect firm labour inputs? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

This study investigates the impact of anti-corruption on firm labour inputs. Using the province-by-province rollout of the central inspection team campaign in China, we find that the labour intensity rises by 9% in the firms located in the provinces inspected by the central inspection teams. Moreover, firms with low corruption are more susceptible to the policy shock.     

Does Monetary Policy Respond to Uncertainty? Evidence from Australia

We construct a novel measure of uncertainty using expert monetary policy recommendation data for Australia. Our results suggest that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) tends to lower the cash rate when expert uncertainty is high. This result is robust to using other uncertainty measures.     

What does tax aggressiveness signal? Evidence from stock price reactions to news about tax shelter involvement

We study the stock price reaction to news about corporate tax aggressiveness. We find that, on average, a company's stock price declines when there is news about its involvement in tax shelters. We find some limited evidence for cross-sectional variation in the reaction. For example, the reaction is more negative for firms in the retail sector, suggesting that part of the reaction may be a consumer/taxpayer backlash. In addition, the reaction is less negative for firms that are viewed to be generally less tax aggressive, as proxied by the firm's cash effective tax rate. We interpret this as being consistent with the market reacting positively to evidence that a firm is trying to reduce taxes when their financial reports would lead one to believe the firm is not tax aggressive.     

How do telecommunications reforms affect labour market arrangements? Evidence from Central and Western Europe

This paper exploits variations in the timing of telecommunications reforms across Europe to investigate the relationship between the rise of alternative work arrangements and the emergence of the Internet. We evaluate whether sectors that are technologically more dependent on information and communication technologies (ICT) experienced disproportionately larger changes in their employment outcomes after telecommunications reforms were introduced. Our main results point to a disproportionate increase in total employment, part‐time work and home‐based work among ICT‐dependent sectors after the implementation of telecommunications reforms. These results suggest that telecommunications reforms affected labour market arrangements by fostering the adoption of ICT. The results are robust to several specifications.     

How stock markets react to regulatory sanctions? Evidence from France

Our study of how the stock market reacts to sanction announcements by the French financial regulator from 2004 to 2017 finds that the market reacts negatively when a sanction is announced in the press. Cross-sectional regression models show that the penalties are too low to influence market reactions. Our results suggest that after the financial crisis of 2008, a plethora of news on financial wrongdoings has desensitized markets to announcements of sanctions against large companies.     

How to Increase R&D in Transition Economies? Evidence from Slovenia

The recent initiative of the European Union Lisbon Agenda to increase levels of R&D investment is addressed by studying the determinants of R&D investment in one of the recent EU entrants, Slovenia. Previous empirical literature—mainly cross‐sectional in nature—has tested the demand–pull hypothesis and found that overall R&D expenses may be driven by output demand. We use a panel of more than 150 of the largest Slovene firms over the period 1996–2000, modeling firms' R&D behavior within an error‐correction framework and estimating it in a system GMM specification. While we find that sales have a significant role in inducing R&D expenditures, we also show that the availability of internal funds and wage bargaining represent important factors determining R&D expenses. Moreover, firms owned by insiders (workers and/or managers) and/or firms with dispersed ownership (small shareholders) display higher R&D investments than firms owned by privatization investment funds or by other firms.