Does education promote social capital? Evidence from IV analysis and nonparametric-bound analysis

This study uses the British National Child Development Study to examine the effect of educational attainment on social capital at the individual level. Social trust and membership of voluntary groups are considered as two basic indicators of social capital. We employ the IV analysis and nonparametric bound analysis to tackle the problem of education endogeneity. Both the approaches reveal that the OLS estimator of the educational effect suffers from an upward bias in the study of group membership. We do not observe any significant bias in the educational effect on social trust. Our empirical findings indicate that education has a positive influence in promoting social trust and membership of voluntary groups.     

What is the benefit of membership in farm producer organizations? The case of coffee producers in Peru

Empirical evidence of the benefit of farm producer organizations (FPOs) in the developing world is mounting. There is, however, no work in South America on the relationship between FPO membership and farm-level performance. We address the gap by estimating the treatment effect of FPO membership with respect to three outcomes: quantity produced, quantity sold, and price received. The empirical application focuses on the Peruvian coffee sector, where FPOs may have played an important role during the recent price crisis. A sample of approximately 9,000 survey responses from Peruvian coffee producers during the 2015–19 period is used in the analysis. Results show a positive treatment effect of FPO membership on all three farm-level outcomes. Compared to non-FPO members, FPO members produced 120–295 kg/ha more, sold 118–296 kg/ha more, and received 0.42–1.53 PEN/kg more. We also find evidence of heterogeneity in the estimated effect of FPO membership across time, farm size, and membership probability. The findings yield novel implications in terms of policy support for FPOs.     

WTO membership and corruption

Despite widespread belief that accession process and formal membership to the World Trade Organization (WTO) improve the quality of governance within a country, there is no convincing empirical evidence to substantiate this thought. Here, I investigate whether the WTO status of a country has a causal effect on firm-level reports of political corruption using a nonparametric partial identification approach to bound the average treatment effects (ATEs). I also analyze conditional ATEs to explore various sources of potential heterogeneity. Contrary to popular belief, I find that WTO membership is likely to have no causal effect on domestic corruption overall. And if anything, it is likely to increase corrupt practices, particularly among firms that are established post WTO membership and those that are government owned.     

The effect of financial development on economic growth: a meta-analysis

In this article, we contribute to the current debate on the sign and size of the finance–growth relation. To this purpose, we use a meta-analysis with 551 estimates from 68 empirical studies that take private credit to GDP as a measure for financial development. We distinguish between linear and logarithmic specifications. First, we find evidence of significantly positive publication bias in both the linear and log-linear specifications. It suggests the literature has exaggerated the size of the finance–growth effect in the past. Second, we find suggestive evidence that the logarithmic specification is superior to the linear specification. In the logarithmic specification when accounting for publication bias, a 10% increase in credit to the private sector increases economic growth with 0.09 percentage points. For the linear estimates, no significant effect of credit to the private sector on economic growth is found on average. Overall, the evidence points to a positive but decreasing effect of financial development on growth and supports the ‘too much’ finance hypothesis.     

The impact of information-based interventions on conservation behavior: A meta-analysis

Interest in using information-based interventions to induce energy and water conservation has increased in recent years but have shown mixed evidence of their effectiveness. This paper seeks to answer two main questions - whether these programs are broadly effective in inducing conservation, and what are the most effective versions of these programs. Using a meta-analysis of 116 studies, we examine the effects of information-based interventions on residential customers' consumption of electricity, gas, and water. We find evidence of publication bias in this literature. After correcting for publication bias, meta-analysis results indicate that information-based interventions reduce consumption by an average of 6.24%, 95% CI [-10.72, -1.76]. In addition, we find that studies employing RCTs find smaller conservation effects, (-5.2%, 95% CI [−9.53, −0.51]). Our results show that the effectiveness of information-based interventions at the household level are significantly larger than those at the aggregate level (such as dorms and buildings). Finally, interventions with a shorter duration or with more frequent reporting show larger estimated effect sizes.     

A nonparametric analysis of the impact of agri-environmental advisory activities on best management practice adoption: A case study of Québec

This study investigates the factors that determine producers' participation in agri-environmental advisory activities and their adoption of best management practices (BMPs) in Québec (Canada). Data were collected from farmers via telephone interviews, and the impacts of agri-environmental extension activities were analyzed using average treatment effect and local average treatment effect, estimated with non-parametric approaches. The average effects of agri-environmental extension activities are statistically significant for the majority of BMPs. We also find a statistically significant formal diffusion effect of producers' membership in an agri-environmental advisory club. The informal diffusion effect is statistically significant for BMPs that require advanced technical knowledge.     

The “sugar rush” from innovation subsidies: a robust political economy perspective

The governments of most advanced countries offer some type of financial subsidy to encourage firm innovation and productivity. This paper analyzes the effects of innovation subsidies using a unique Swedish database that contains firm level data for the period 1997–2011, specifically informa tion on firm subsidies over a broad range of programs. Applying causal treatment effect analysis based on matching and a diff-in-diff approach combined with a qualitative case study of Swedish innovation subsidy programs, we test whether such subsidies have positive effects on firm performance. Our results indicate a lack of positive performance effects in the long run for the majority of firms, albeit there are positive short-run effects on human capital investments and also positive short-term productivity effects for the smallest firms. These findings are interpreted from a robust political economy perspective that reveals that the problems of acquiring correct information and designing appropriate incentives are so complex that the absence of significant positive long-run effects on firm performance for the majority of firms is not surprising.     

IMPACT OF PRICING STRUCTURE SELECTIVITY ON URBAN WATER DEMAND

Interest in demand management policies has intensified as residential water demand has grown in the United States. Using data from the 1984 American Water Works Association (AWWA) survey, the study here provides an empirical analysis of the differences in price elasticities of demand across water pricing block structures and examines these structures' "conservation-orientedness." However, a potential sample selection bias exists. That is, in cities where people are more interested in conservation, utility managers may be more likely to select a rate structure that they believe is conservation-oriented–an increasing block structure, for example. Managers' selectivity bias may cause research results either to understate or to overstate a particular block structure's impact on water conservation. The analysis here corrects for this selectivity bias in estimating water demand and tests whether consumers respond to average prices or to marginal prices. Correcting for selectivity bias involves an explicit analysis of the factors that influence utility managers' selection of rate structures. Estimating water demand under increasing and decreasing block structures suggests that sample selection bias remains a problem worthy of further investigation.     

Impact of institutions on social network formation: communist party membership and social network investment in China

Using the 2003 wave of China General Social Survey (2003CGSS), we study the influence of the communist party on individual’s social networks in urban China and, thereby, present a case of socio-political institutions being an important ingredient in social network formation. We adopt a counterfactual framework and estimate the effect of communist party membership on social network investment as an average treatment effect. We find the treatment to be significant.     

Deriving conditional and unconditional marginal effects in log earnings equations estimated by Heckman's procedure

Although the Heckman approach has often been used in empirical analysis, the marginal effects, necessary to interpret the effect of the regressors on the dependent variable, appeared to be overlooked. Using the Heckman approach, general expressions are derived for calculating the conditional and unconditional marginal effects. Based on a sample of Brazilian women, the conditional and unconditional return to education are calculated for the logarithm of earnings equation estimated by Heckman's procedure, comparing them to the marginal effect of education obtained without correcting for selectivity bias. The same analysis is carried out for a discrete variable ‘black’.     

Measuring the effects of preservation on farm profits in a continuous treatment setting

Despite billions of dollars of public appropriations to state purchase of development rights (PDR) programmes, there has been limited evaluation of the effects of these investments on the economic performance of preserved farms. This article estimates dose-response functions to evaluate the effects of enrolment in New Jersey’s PDR programme on farm profitability. The generalized propensity score method in a continuous treatment setting is used to address selection bias arising from voluntary programme participation. Treatment effects are measured across treatment levels to determine whether farm profitability is affected differently across levels of programme participation. Our findings reveal that, relative to unpreserved farms, profit per acre tends to increase along lower treatment levels. The profit per acre of preserved farms in the 1–40% treatment range is, on average, $407 higher than that of unpreserved farms in the full sample. Positive profit differentials averaging between $317 and $472 per acre are also observed in the 1–20%, 1–40% and 1–60% treatment quintiles in the farming occupation sample. We do not observe statistically significant profitability differentials when treatment effects are averaged across all positive treatment values.     

Do fiscal rules constrain fiscal policy? A meta-regression-analysis

We implement a meta-regression-analysis for the budgetary impact of numerical fiscal rules based on 30 studies published in the last decade. The existing empirical evidence points to a constraining effect of rules on fiscal aggregates. However, this seemingly optimistic message is strongly weakened as our analysis points to a bias if the potential endogeneity of fiscal rules is not explicitly taken into account. Furthermore, our analysis provides evidence for the presence of a publication bias. Both sources of bias reduce the statistical precision of obtained effects below usual levels of statistical significance. In addition, we offer suggestive evidence for the effect size based on a small coherent sub-sample and provide recommendations for future research on the budgetary impact of fiscal rules.     

The Impact of Computer Use On Earnings in the UK

The effect of new technology on relative demands for workers has been the subject of much research in economics. Krueger (1993) and others have studied the impact of computers on earnings in the US and elsewhere. Such studies have been criticised for ignoring the possibility of bias due to unobserved heterogeneity between computer users and non‐users, resulting in computer users not being a random sub‐sample of all workers. As well as looking at the effects of computers on earnings in the UK, this paper extends previous analyses by using a sample selection framework to deal with the bias problem. Results indicate not only that returns to computer use are positive but that it is important to correct for the sample selection bias.     

Does board gender diversity influence firm profitability? A control function approach

We investigate the relation between board gender diversity and firm profitability using the control function (CF) approach recently suggested by Wooldridge (2015). The CF method takes account of the problem of endogenous explanatory variables that have potential to bias the results. Using a sample of firms that made up the S&P 500 over the period 2004–2015, we find that the presence of women on corporate boards (measured either by the percentage of female directors on corporate boards or the Blau index of heterogeneity) has a positive and significant (at the 1% level) effect on firm profitability (measured by the return on assets). We compare our results to more traditional approaches (such as pooled OLS or the fixed-effects model). Through this study, we shed light on the effect of women on corporate boards on firm performance, as it is still a controversial issue (Post and Byron, 2015).     

我国上市公司选择可转换债券的融资偏好研究

对2001—2004年相关上市公司的实证研究结果表明:公司规模、资产负债率、净资产收益率、流通股比重和每股净资产值五个变量,对公司是否选择可转换债券融资有显著性影响,其中净资产收益率和资产负债率的影响是负向的,其他三个变量的影响是正向的,这一结果表明我国上市公司对可转换债券的选择基本上是理性的。     

Structural reforms and growth in transition

The present fiscal difficulties of many countries amplify the call for structural reforms. To provide stylized facts on how reforms worked in the past, we quantitatively review 60 studies estimating the relationship between reforms and growth. These studies examine structural reforms carried out in 26 transition countries around the world. Our results show that an average reform caused substantial costs in the short run, but had strong positive effects on long‐run growth. Reforms focused on external liberalization proved to be more beneficial than others in both the short and long run. The findings hold even after correction for publication bias and misspecifications present in some primary studies.     

The effect of state health insurance benefit mandates on premiums and employee contributions

The average US state has 40 benefit mandates, laws requiring health insurance to cover particular conditions, treatments, providers or people. We investigate the extent to which these mandates increase the health insurance premiums paid by employers, and the extent to which these higher premiums are passed on to employees in the form of higher employee contributions. We use state-level data on premiums and employee contributions to health insurance from the insurance component of the 1996–2011 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Our main analysis is a fixed effects regression that controls for age, race, income, union membership and the presence of state mandate waivers. We find robust evidence that the average mandate increases premiums by approximately 0.6%, and that mandates lead to similar increases in employee contributions for single-coverage health insurance plans. Alternative specifications using an AR(1) error structure estimate a larger effect of mandates, while those using generalized estimating equations estimate smaller effects. We find that mandates requiring insurers to cover a specific benefit, as opposed to a specific type of provider or person, lead to the largest increases in employee contributions.     

Employment effects of the provision of specific professional skills and techniques in Germany

Based on unique administrative data, which has only recently become available, this paper estimates the employment effects of the most important type of public sector sponsored training in Germany, namely the provision of specific professional skills and techniques (SPST). Using the inflows into unemployment for the year 1993, the empirical analysis uses local linear matching based on the estimated propensity score to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated of SPST programs by elapsed duration of unemployment. The empirical results show a negative lock-in effect for the period right after the beginning of the program and significantly positive treatment effects on employment rates of about 10 percentage points and above a year after the beginning of the program. The general pattern of the estimated treatment effects is quite similar for the three time intervals of elapsed unemployment considered. The positive effects tend to persist almost completely until the end of our evaluation period. The positive effects are stronger in West Germany compared to East Germany.     

For some mothers more than others

We estimate the effect of family size on female labour supply using data from Poland and instrumenting for family size with twinning at first and second birth. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to causally address this relationship in a post‐communist country. We identify the average causal effect of an additional child on mother's employment to be ?7.0 pp, but we do not find significant effects of additional children on female employment among families with two or more children. Furthermore, we identify a positive bias of OLS in the estimates among highly educated mothers and those from younger cohorts.     

Stylized facts about stabilization in central and eastern Europe

This paper analyzes the stabilization policies of the ten central and eastern European countries that have negotiated a Europe Agreement with the European Union and had officially applied for European Union membership by the end of 1997. This paper is a cross-country study of time series. Using a diagrammatic approach, the empirical findings are depicted in two-dimensional inflation-and-growth diagrams. The study shows that some common features of the macroeconomic data can be observed for most of the countries of the sample. From discussing potential determinants of the empirical findings, the analysis suggests that early liberalization attempts have had a strong positive impact on the inflation-growth pattern. While the influence of central bank legislation seems to be negligible, the choice of the exchange rate regime seems to play a crucial role. Regarding fiscal policy, the influence seems to be less obvious. This study concludes that the precondition for successful transformation and stabilization of the economy is a comprehensive approach that consists of early liberalization and tight macroeconomic policy.