Costly information acquisition. Is it better to toss a coin?

This paper presents a strategic model of common value elections with endogenous information acquisition. It proves that majoritarian elections can fail to aggregate information when voters have heterogeneous skills and provides necessary and sufficient conditions for information aggregation. Inefficiencies can be partially corrected by limiting participation to the most competent citizens, a result which provides a rational foundation for epistocratic government.     

Is it all about competence? The human capital of U.S. presidents and economic performance

This paper explores the extent to which human capital improves the economic policy competence of US presidents. Several recent studies have used international data to test similar hypotheses. However, international studies suffer from a variety of comparability issues, not all of which can be avoided through fixed effects and error correction. The US results developed in this paper suggest that both career paths and education have significant effects on a president’s economic policy judgment, particularly in the period after the Civil War. However, the paper also suggests that more than good economic management skills are required to win national elections.     

Is all domestic water consumption sensitive to price control?

This paper presents a model of residential water demand based on the Stone–Geary utility function, which explicitly considers a threshold of water that is insensitive to price and a quantity that can adapt instantaneously to price changes. First, the threshold is assumed constant, being then allowed to vary according to past levels of consumption, a proxy for households' water-using equipment and habits. A measure of the depreciation rate of habits is derived and the effectiveness of price and non-price conservation measures are compared. The results provide useful policy recommendations for the studied case of Seville (Spain).     

Is it all about money? An examination of the motives behind moonlighting

Multiple-job holding is an important labour market phenomenon. In this article, we examine individuals’ motives for multiple-job holding. Specifically, we estimate an empirical model of the motivation for moonlighting assuming that individuals hold a second job for either financial or for nonpecuniary motives. Our results contribute to a better understanding of multiple-job holding. We find that multiple-job holding is used by individuals as a way to deal with the financial difficulties or the increased financial commitments in their household. Individuals are more likely to moonlight for money in the early stages of their adult life. Finally, individuals with more labour market experience are more likely to moonlight for pecuniary than nonpecuniary reasons.     

Is it better to be mixed in group lending?

This paper shows that, in a group‐lending scheme with joint liability, a microfinance institution can achieve a Pareto improvement by promoting negative assortative matching among borrowers. The main results are: (i) borrowers may be better off in heterogeneous groups; and (ii) a heterogeneous group equilibrium is possible when individual or homogeneous group equilibria do not exist.     

Is it Possible to Identify High-Risk Suppliers from Financial Statements?

International Advances in Economic Research -     

Technological Backwardness in Agriculture: Is it Due to Lack of R&D,Human Capital,and Openness to International Trade?

This paper investigates the relationship between the agricultural technological level and R&D expenditures, human capital, and openness to international trade using cross-country information for a sample of 104 countries and various subsamples over the period 1961–91. The unobservable technological level is modeled as a dynamic process in the context of a general translog production function. The results suggest that the technological gap between developed and less developed countries in agriculture increased considerably over this period of time. Overall, the technological levels are directly related to R&D expenditures, human capital, and openness, although this relationship is not robust across different groups of countries.     

A simple and flexible alternative to Stability and Growth Pact deficit ceilings. Is it at hand?

We model a monetary union where fiscal discretion generates excessive debt accumulation in steady state and inefficiently delayed debt adjustment following shocks. By setting a debt target and raising the political cost of deviating from the optimal pace of debt reversal¸ institutional design induces fiscal policymakers to implement unbiased responses to shocks. This is partly achieved by increasing the transparency of the decision-making process. We therefore call for more focused supervision tasks for the European Commission and for parliamentary discussion whenever a disagreement arises between the Commission and a national government.     

Is it easier to publish in journals that have low impact factors?

We use publication data from all journals in economics, mathematics, physics and chemistry. We compute the ratio of publications that come from the top 25 US departments for each journal and use it as a measure of difficulty to publish in a journal. We find that there is a rather weak but positive correlation (0.20) between the impact factor and the difficulty measure.