Gender,attractiveness, and judgment of impropriety: The case of accountants

Gender and attractiveness have been studied as affecting employment, incomes, and politics. We focus on these characteristics in influencing judgments of unethical behavior of accountants. Vignettes involving unethical behavioral were displayed to 4102 subjects in different versions accompanied by the image of the perpetrator. Unethical behavior was judged with more severity if the behavior was illegal than if there had been a violation of professional norms. The same behavior by male accountants was evaluated as more ethical than when undertaken by female accountants. There was however a high beauty premium for women. The greatest tolerance was shown toward plain-looking male accountants, who represent the traditional accountant stereotype whose likelihood of behaving unethically is regarded as low. Our results show compromise of fairness and of equality before the law. We propose explanations for our results based on accountant-stereotype hypothesis.     

Towards a Holistic Approach of the Attitude Behaviour Gap in Ethical Consumer Behaviours: Empirical Evidence from Spain

This paper explores alternative understandings of the attitude behavior gap, a well documented phenomenon, both in ethical consumer behavior and social research in general. A multi-method, qualitative approach is adopted, aiming at greater internal validity of data. The findings broaden current knowledge on the attitude behavior gap, showing how ethically minded consumers rationalize their inconsistent behavior. The last section of the paper integrates existing knowledge on the attitude behavior gap with the empirical findings of the present study into a conceptual model. Relevant implications for marketers are also discussed.     

Emigration intentions in a post-conflict environment: evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina

In this study we analyse intentions to emigrate from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), focusing not only on typical individual and household determinants, but also on post-conflict specific influences. We investigate cross-sectional survey data collected over the period from 2002 to 2010. Our findings indicate that higher intentions for emigration are indeed linked to the typical individual and household conditions: the young, educated and low-family income respondents report the highest intentions to emigrate. In addition, the post-conflict environment characterised by economic and political instability, as well as by conflict and post-conflict related migration, increases these intentions further, both independently and in different combinations. Although determinants such as employment status, household income and perception of economic development are relevant, their effect is of second-order importance. This contradicts the conventional thinking that economic factors are the main driving forces of emigration intentions. We provide evidence that the conflict and post-conflict related migration experiences, and the political situation, may surpass individual and societal economic influences in importance.     

Biases in patent examination and firms’ responses: Evidence from the pharmaceutical industry

Empirical analysis of matched patent application data in the world’s major patent offices has shown considerable variation in patent granting probability and examination duration across different countries. This phenomenon is attributed to institutional misclassifications or patent examiners’ mistakes by some authors. Others argued that cross-country heterogeneity could also be caused by deliberate manipulation of patent examination procedures with the goal to foster native inventors through suppressing foreign patent applicants. To explore whether manipulation exists, this study presents a case study of pharmaceutical patents granted by the US patent office and approved by the US FDA. Especially it focuses on the filing behavior of pharmaceutical companies in Korea, Japan and China. The regression results show that the granting ratio of the previous applications of a foreign company is correlated with the company’s probability of lodging a new patent application, which provides a supplementary evidence of the existence of the manipulated patent examination procedures.     

Language,culture and institutions: Evidence from a new linguistic dataset

Kashima and Kashima's (1998) linguistic dataset has played a prominent role in the economics of culture, providing the instrumental variables used in two seminal works to identify the causal effect of culture on institutional quality. However, for economists, this dataset has a number of weaknesses, including poor overlap with a key cultural dataset and reliance on sources of linguistic information of uneven quality. We address these issues by constructing a new linguistic dataset based on an authoritative source of linguistic information, the World Atlas of Language Structures. The resulting dataset has greater overlap with key sources of cultural information, is arguably less subject to selection bias, and provides more refined information regarding key dimensions of linguistic variation. We show that the variables in this dataset are significantly correlated with commonly used measures of individualism and egalitarianism. In addition, we reexamine the key results from the literature on culture and institutions, showing the causal relationship between culture and institutions is robust to the use of the new linguistic instruments.     

Exit polls,turnout, and bandwagon voting: Evidence from a natural experiment

We exploit a voting reform in France to estimate the causal effect of exit poll information on turnout and bandwagon voting. Before the change in legislation, individuals in some French overseas territories voted after the election result had already been made public via exit poll information from mainland France. We estimate that knowing the exit poll information decreases voter turnout by about 11 percentage points. Our study is the first clean empirical design outside of the laboratory to demonstrate the effect of such knowledge on voter turnout. Furthermore, we find that exit poll information significantly increases bandwagon voting; that is, voters who choose to turn out are more likely to vote for the expected winner.     

Emigration intentions of Roma: evidence from Central and South-East Europe

The Roma constitute the largest, poorest and youngest ethnic minority group in Europe. Over the last few years, they have attracted unprecedented attention with the fear of massive waves of emigrants to Western European countries. Using unique comparative data from 12 Central and South-East European countries, we study the pattern and determinants of Roma emigration intentions. We find that plans to go abroad are more frequent among Roma compared to non-Roma, but the ethnic gap in emigration intentions is not explained by the more disadvantaged characteristics of Roma compared to non-Roma. Among the Roma population, potential emigrants are more educated and wealthier on average. Finally, ethnic discrimination is a very influential factor that explains the intentions to emigrate within the Roma population.     

Piece Rates, Fixed Wages and Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Data from a field experiment are used to estimate the gain in productivity that is realized when workers are paid piece rates rather than fixed wages. The experiment was conducted within a tree-planting firm and provides daily observations on individual worker productivity under both compensation systems. Unrestricted statistical methods estimate the productivity gain to be 20%. Since planting conditions potentially affect incentives, structural econometric methods are used to generalize the experimental results to out-of-sample conditions. The structural results suggest that the average productivity gain, outside of the experimental conditions, would be at least  21.7  %.     

Trade Openness,Corruption and Factor Abundance: Evidence from a Dynamic Panel

Using the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson–Vanek (HOSV) framework, this paper illustrates a relationship between corruption and the pattern of international trade that depends on the factor endowments of countries. The relationship between trade openness and corruption is empirically investigated by using a panel dataset on trade openness, corruption and capital–labor ratio, and applying estimation techniques developed for dynamic panels. The regression results provide strong support to the hypothesis that the effect of corruption on trade openness depends on relative factor abundance.     

Consumption,habit formation,and savings: Evidence from a rural household panel survey

Protecting consumption from the effects of uninsured risk is vital for rural farming households, who tend to be poor and live close to subsistence level. Income uncertainty and habit formation play important roles in the consumption and savings. Variability in weather conditions has a strong linkage with variability in agricultural income in developing countries. This study analyzes consumption and saving decisions of rural farm households in India. Using household panel data for 4 years, we estimated consumption equation accounting for habit formation under income uncertainty. Our findings suggest an evidence for habit formation among rural households. Additionally, we found that both annual and seasonal weather risks significantly influence savings among rural households. Findings from this study also suggest a robust and vibrant farm economy and that the nonfarm economy could contribute to the economic well‐being of rural farming households.     

Ownership, institutions, and capital structure: Evidence from China

We employ a unique data set to explore the role of ownership structure and institutional development in debt financing of non-publicly traded Chinese firms. We show that state ownership is positively associated with leverage and firms’ access to long-term debt, while foreign ownership is negatively associated with all measures of leverage. Surprisingly, firms in better developed regions are associated with reduced access to long-term debt, suggesting the availability of alternative financing channels and the tightening of the lending standards under the on-going banking reform. The combination of ownership structures and institutions explains up to 6% of the total variation in firms’ leverage decisions, while firm characteristics alone explain no more than 8% of the variation. Further, we show that non-state-owned firms tend to have lower total and short-term debt than their state-owned counterparts in less developed regions. Finally, we show that state-owned firms’ easy access to long-term debt is positively associated with long-term investment and negatively associated with firm performance.     

Income, income inequality, and health: Evidence from China

This paper tests using survey data from China whether individual health is associated with income and community-level income inequality. Although poor health and high inequality are key features of many developing countries, most of the earlier literature has drawn on data from developed countries in studying the association between the two. We find that self-reported health status increases with per capita income, but at a decreasing rate. Controlling for per capita income, we find an inverted-U association between self-reported health status and income inequality, which suggests that high inequality in a community poses threats to health. We also find that high inequality increases the probability of health-compromising behavior such as smoking and alcohol consumption. Most of our findings are robust to different measures of health status and income inequality. Journal of Comparative Economics 34 (4) (2006) 668–693.     

"Uncertainty, Investment and Economic Growth: Evidence from a Dynamic Panel"

This paper studies the interactions between uncertainty, investment and economic growth. Utilizing panel data for a sample of 59 industrial and developing countries between 1966 and 1992, we estimate reduced form equations to explore the possible effects of uncertainty on economic growth and investments. Uncertainty reduces both investment and growth.     

Taxes,Competition and Finance for Albanian Enterprises: Evidence from a Field Study

This paper analyses the results from a survey, carried out in 1999, of more than 100 enterprises in Albania. The main finding of the survey is that registered businesses regard competition from the informal sector as the most important problem they face in doing business. Unregistered firms have a significant advantage because they are able to evade the relatively high tax burden. Poor access to loans is also a significant obstacle. Enterprises tend to rely on own sources of funds for business start-up expansion. Larger enterprises are more likely to apply for loans than smaller ones, but having applied, are no more likely to be successful.     

Combat,casualties, and compensation: Evidence from Iraq and Afghanistan

Our research examines the effect of combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan on casualties and combat exposure compensation policy. We use restricted data from the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) and Social Security Administration (SSA) to construct a panel of all US Active Duty service members having served at some point during the years 2001–2012. Casualties disproportionately occur at higher rates among (i) young, white, males, (ii) enlisted personnel, (iii) less educated personnel, and (iv) those in combat job types. Our estimates indicate that overall US military personnel who deployed in an individual year to Iraq or Afghanistan had a 45 per 100,000 higher probability of death than non-deployed military personnel who remained stateside. The increased fatal injury risk of deployed US military personnel is 15 times higher than the national average civilian workplace fatality rate, but roughly equal to the fatal injury risk faced in some of the most dangerous civilian occupations. Our estimates suggest a compensating wage differential equal to $861 per month would be appropriate in comparison to the current average of $1238 per month in danger pay provided to US military personnel deployed into combat zones. We recommend a revenue-neutral approach in adjusting the pay structure for military members. For example, the military should consider increasing bonuses or base pay while simultaneously decreasing danger pay by an equivalent amount. Furthermore, it may be beneficial to adjust danger pay by service or job type to reflect fatality risk more accurately.     

民营化、外资股东和嵌入性:来自中国的证据

与传统经济学研究以代理理论为主对民营化的讨论不同,本文通过整合演进理论、制度理论和代理理论,研究了民营化企业改进绩效必须解决的组织和管理问题。以2001年经历了民营化并且在1998～2003年间持续运营的企业为样本进行实证研究,发现,外资股东参与的民营化企业更有可能改进治理结构,进行组织学习和资源能力的培养。但是,这种关系会受到改制企业组织和制度嵌入性的影响。因此,如何管理好组织和制度嵌入性的双重影响,是影响民营化企业改制后绩效改善的关键。     

Crime,incentives and political effort: Evidence from India

Political representatives with criminal backgrounds are considered a great problem in many countries. In India, public disclosure of the large share of politicians currently facing criminal charges has sparked a heated public debate and emerging literature assessing the causes and effects. We develop two hypotheses based on our theoretical considerations. Based on the coding of published affidavits and a comprehensive set of three proxies to measure effort in the 14th Lok Sabha over the 2004–2009 legislative period, we put these hypotheses to an empirical test. Members of the parliament (MPs) facing criminal accusations exhibit on average about 5% lower attendance rates and lower utilization rates in a local area development fund, but only insignificantly lower parliamentary activity. In line with our hypotheses, these differences decline in the development level of the constituency - a proxy for higher rent-seeking possibilities and monitoring intensity. We argue and demonstrate why these negative relations should constitute an upper bound estimate of the causal effect, and show that even under conservative assumptions the effect is unlikely to be caused by unaccounted selection-bias.     

Sorting,school performance and quality: Evidence from China

School choice reforms give talented students the option to sort out of low-performing schools but often leave disadvantaged students behind. This study shows how a Chinese city was successful in helping its low-performing schools to catch up by encouraging talented students to sort into these schools. The city identified eleven low-performing middle schools and guaranteed elite high school admission to their top ten-percent graduates. This study documents that the policy improved school performance by 0.19-0.26 standard deviations. Using data on lottery middle school assignment, I further test for potential mechanisms, including strategic sorting and improvement in school value-added.     

Social capital, innovation and growth: Evidence from Europe

This paper investigates the interplay between social capital, innovation and per capita income growth in the European Union. We model and identify innovation as an important mechanism that transforms social capital into higher income levels. In an empirical investigation of 102 European regions in the period 1990-2002, we show that higher innovation performance is conducive to per capita income growth and that social capital affects this growth indirectly by fostering innovation. Our estimates suggest that there is no direct role for social capital to foster per capita income growth in our sample of European Union countries.     

Avoiding hyperinflation: Evidence from a laboratory economy

Hyperinflation results from the creation and injection of fiat money into the economy. Using laboratory methods, this paper examines conditions under which fiat money can serve as a medium of exchange in a finite horizon economy while the government is active in the markets for goods. Consistent with the rational expectations hypothesis, issuing new fiat currency does not stabilize a hyperinflation; however, restricting government spending to the amount of tax revenue or reverting to backed money does. These findings are consistent with previous studies of historical data; thus this work confirms those findings from an alternative data source, the laboratory.