The Value of Residential Community Associations: Evidence from South Carolina

International Advances in Economic Research - This empirical study uses a hedonic pricing model and a dataset of Spartanburg, South Carolina homes from 2002 to 2005 to evaluate the effect of...     

The Effect of Foreign Demand on Residential Property Prices: Evidence from Australia

This study estimates the impact of foreign demand for Australian residential real estate on property prices. Using postcode-level administrative data and fixed-effects regression techniques we find a positive relationship between foreign investment approvals and price growth. Our analysis suggests that, on average, foreign investment contributed between $80 and $122 to quarterly price growth in Sydney and Melbourne between July 2010 and March 2015. This is a small proportion of the increase in property prices over the period.     

出口退税政策对出口贸易的持续影响效应研究——来自异质性企业出口生存率的证据

出口退税作为一项贸易调控政策,在一国政府应对国际贸易的大幅波动中发挥着重要作用.文章以企业出口关系持续性作为研究切入点,结合高度细化的出口退税率数据,运用生存分析模型对出口退税政策的实施效果进行系统评估.研究表明:(1)总体而言,出口退税率的变动在短期和长期均对企业出口关系的稳定性产生了显著影响.(2)在短期内,出口退税政策的调整对企业出口持续性的影响不因其所在区域和行业特征的差异而存在显著不同,但在所有制属性层面,民营企业受到的影响程度最大.(3)在长期内,来自东部地区、民营以及低技术行业的企业不仅受政策变动的作用时效更长,而且受政策调整的影响效果也更明显;而来自西部地区、三资以及高技术行业的企业则对出口退税政策调整的反应敏感程度最低.因此,出口退税政策的实施需要结合出口信贷等政策加以综合运用,以保证经济的平稳运行.     

The Efficiency of Stock-Based Incentives: Experimental Evidence

The authors report the results of laboratory experiments in which subjects are offered contracts structured similar to equity compensation packages and result in subjects receiving cash payments that are a function of their effort and random factors. The authors compare the outcomes from alternative contractual forms to theoretical benchmarks and report the efficiency of the contracts to provide evidence on whether options or stocks that have same economic cost to the employer yield the same or different effort levels from the managers. Both contracts elicit lower levels of effort than would be chosen by an expected-payoff-maximizing decision maker. Effort choices under the option contract did not differ significantly from effort choices under the stock contract except for male subjects. The option contract elicits a higher effort level for these subjects and condition than the stock contract. Effort choices reflect loss aversion and regret based on past stock price realizations.     

Privatization and Management Incentives: Evidence from the United Kingdom

This article examines whether privatization affects managementincentives and provides an estimate of the magnitude of thechange. Using data from large firms in the United Kingdom, wefind no relationship between compensation and financial performancein state-owned firms, both before and after corporate governancereforms. In contrast, we find a strong sensitivity in privatizedfirms both immediately and in more mature privatized firms drivenlargely by stock options and shareholding. For more mature privatizedfirms, compensation and dismissal sensitivities are complementarywith our estimates, suggesting a £443,000 increase inmanagement returns for a one standard deviation improvementin firm performance. This estimated incentive intensity is higherthan in established publicly traded firms. Our results supportthe theoretical focus on incentives in the dominant theoriesof state and private ownership.     

National Health Insurance and Technology Adoption: Evidence from Taiwan

Generous health-insurance coverage may encourage hospitals to acquire and employ more advanced medical technologies. The authors examine the effects of Taiwan's 1995 implementation of National Health Insurance on technology adoption, ownership, and use by comparing changes in adoption, ownership, and use rates by private hospitals with changes by public nonteaching and public teaching hospitals. Using random-effect panel probit and tobit models, the article finds strong empirical evidence that third-party payment increases the probability of technology adoption, ownership, and use. (JEL H4 , I )     

Incentives and Female Entrepreneurial Activity: Evidence from Panel Firm Level Data

The goal of this paper is to investigate entrepreneurial activity and to analyze the incentives of female participation in the labor market. Female entrepreneurial activity is closely related to social and economic issues. They represent a driving force, active and effective members of economic, political, professional and managerial societies. On the other hand, they have families with serious maternal responsibilities and inelastic household obligations, roles which they are trying to balance effectively. To that reason, specific actions and carefully designed measures are essential in encouraging and promoting them to engage into entrepreneurial activity. To investigate the issue of entrepreneurial activity, personal characteristics and various motivation incentives are examined in order to determine the major factors that may influence female entrepreneurial spirit in Greece. Obtaining data from 1600 industrial firms located in the prefecture of Piraeus over the period 1999–2009, this study makes use of the panel methodology approach to provide evidence about the main determinants of female entrepreneurship. What is found is that a combination of pull and push motives and effective mentoring framework, in addition to a set of personal characteristics such as risk of failure, educational level, creativity, innovativeness, ambitiousness and marital status, seem important for the encouragement of women entrepreneurship in Greece to start up a new business. The implications seem very substantial for the formulation and implementation of effective support policies and measures for female entrepreneurs’ vital start up and early stage period.     

Incentives and targets in hospital care: Evidence from a natural experiment

Performance targets are commonly used in the public sector, despite their well known problems when organisations have multiple objectives and performance is difficult to measure. It is possible that such targets may work where there is considerable consensus that performance needs to be improved. We investigate this possibility by examining the response of the English National Health Service to high profile waiting time targets. We exploit a natural policy experiment between two countries of the UK (England and Scotland) to establish the global effectiveness of the targets. We then use a within-England hospital analysis to confirm that responses vary by treatment intensity and to control for differences in resources which may accompany targets. We find that targets met their goals of reducing waiting times without diverting activity from other less well monitored aspects of health care and without decreasing patient health on exit from hospital.     

The Effect of the Adoption of a Pro‐Women Domestic Violence Policy on Dowry Violence: Empirical Evidence from India

Dowry violence against women in India is among the highest in the world. In 2005, India enacted the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) to help female victims of domestic violence. I develop a model of domestic violence and evaluate the effects of the PWDVA on dowry violence. I estimate an empirical model of dowry violence using district level data from 2001–2012. I find that in the post‐policy period, the reporting rate of harassment for dowry has significantly increased in north and central India where female leadership is high. In these districts, dowry deaths have also declined significantly.     

Adoption and impact of improved maize varieties on maize yields: Evidence from central Cameroon

This study uses both the endogenous switching regression and propensity score matching models to analyze the adoption and impact of improved maize varieties on maize yields in central Cameroon. The results show that (i) education level, agricultural training, proximity to an Institute of Agricultural Research for Development branch and farmers’ perceptions of yield and risk of improved maize varieties significantly affect the adoption of improved maize varieties and (ii) the adoption of improved maize varieties enhances maize yields. Therefore, policies designed to stimulate adoption of improved maize varieties should be promoted. Improvement of access to school and agricultural training may serve as good strategies for promoting the adoption of improved maize varieties in Cameroon.     

Adoption of safer irrigation technologies and cropping patterns: Evidence from Southern Ghana

The new irrigation technologies introduced in sub-Saharan Africa aim at ensuring safer vegetable production when untreated waste water is used as irrigation water. This paper examines the adoption of safer irrigation technologies and crop choices among vegetable farmers, using cross-section data from urban Kumasi in Ghana. The study employed a two-stage conditional maximum likelihood approach to examine the impact of crop choices and farm-level characteristics on the adoption of safer irrigation technologies. The empirical results indicate that apart from household and farm characteristics such as access to extension agents, belonging to a farmer's organization and education, cropping patterns tend to influence adoption of irrigation technologies for safer vegetable production.     

全面推行国际财务报告准则与盈余质量——来自欧盟上市公司的经验证据

本文以2000至2007年具有独特制度背景的欧盟15国资本市场上市公司为研究样本,对欧盟2005年1月1日开始全面推行国际财务报告准则并加强各国会计协调是否提高了欧盟上市公司盈余质量进行了研究。本文以截面操纵性应计利润绝对值作为盈余质量的替代变量,研究结果发现欧盟全面推行国际财务报告准则并加强各国会计协调后上市公司具有显著更低的截面操纵性应计利润绝对值,这表明欧盟全面推行国际财务报告准则并加强各国会计协调后显著提高了欧盟上市公司盈余质量。本文进行了一系列稳健性检验证实了上述研究结论是稳健的。     

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  %.     

地方官员激励和产权保护——基于企业微观数据的研究

文章利用世界银行的企业微观调查数据对地方官员激励与企业产权保护进行了实证研究。研究发现:(1)地方财政分权程度越高、当地市委书记的年龄小于55岁,企业所获得的产权保护水平越高,反之则越低。(2)地方官员激励机制对产权保护的作用在不同规模企业中具有结构性差异。具体而言,在财税剩余所得激励下,地方官员更倾向于保护大企业,而在一把手晋升激励下,地方官员则更倾向于保护小企业。这与不同规模的企业对经济总量和增速有不同的边际贡献率有关,地方官员在财税剩余所得激励下更关心经济总量,而在一把手晋升激励下则更关注经济增速。     

R&D Returns,Spillovers and Firm Incentives: Evidence from China

Using a new data set of 12,000 firms in China, this paper estimates the returns to R&D investment and its spillover effects, and investigates how the returns to R&D depend on firm incentives. For the firms in the sample, the results show that on average firm output increases around 0.4 yuan for each additional 1 yuan spent on R&D in the previous year, and there is high R&D return regardless of whether the endogeneity of R&D intensity is dealt with or not. Interestingly, the marginal return to R&D is significantly higher in firms whose CEOs were not appointed by the government, and lower when CEO pay is directly related to annual performance. The return to R&D is higher in relatively poor regions and for firms with worse access to finance. There are also non-trivial R&D spillover effects.     

Adoption and disadoption of electric cookstoves in urban Ethiopia: Evidence from panel data

Previous studies on improved cookstove adoption in developing countries use cross-sectional data, which make it difficult to control for unobserved heterogeneity and investigate what happens to adoption over time. We use robust non-linear panel data and hazard models on three rounds of panel data from urban Ethiopia to investigate the determinants of adoption and disadoption of electric cookstoves over time. We find that the prices of electricity and firewood and access to credit are major determinants of adoption and transition. Our findings have important implications for policies aiming at promotion of energy transition and reduction of the pressure on forest resources in developing countries.     

出口退税政策调整对中国出口影响的实证分析

2007年7月1日,中国大规模下调了出口退税率。本文运用倍差法(difference in difference),对出口退税率降低引起的出口变动进行了实证分析。结果表明:出口退税率下调对易引起贸易摩擦的商品出口增长率负影响显著,对高耗能、高污染、资源型产品的出口增长率负影响不显著。对政策动态影响和对多次政策调整的分析进一步验证了这一结果。本文据此认为该项政策部分而非全部达到了预想的效果。     

控制权与激励的冲突——兼对股权激励有效性的实证分析

控制权配置与激励安排是组织治理中的两个重要工具,本文首先从组织中委托人私人收益角度分析委托人控制权与代理人激励之间可能的冲突,进而通过上市公司数据对这一冲突关系进行经验检验。我们的研究发现,中国上市公司大股东控制权与管理层股权激励之间存在显著的冲突,而且这种冲突与股权性质、公司成长速度相关。民营控股公司中的冲突程度显著弱于其他类型公司,国资委控股公司中的冲突显著强于其他类型公司;而公司成长速度越快,大股东控制权与管理层激励之间的冲突越强。本文的研究结果能够很好地解释中国上市国有企业中股权激励效果不显著、甚至出现负效应的经验现象,并由此提出相应的政策建议。     

The Subnational Penn Effect: Evidence from China

In this paper we estimate relative consumer price levels as of 2008 for 36 major Chinese cities, using an innovative method purposely designed to rectify three main defects of the existing literature, which are (1) the under-representation of marketized services in the sample data, (2) biased consumption weights, and (3) a mismatch between sample classification and consumption weights. Our estimation results show the “subnational Penn effect” as defined by Tang (2012), i.e., strong inter-city correlations among population size, the relative price level, per capita nominal and real income, and human capital stock, thereby showing that the theoretical model of inter-city price dispersion proposed by Tang (2012) is applicable in China. Our conclusion, methodology, and estimation results have important implications for various aspects of the Chinese economy including the regional, urban and real-estate economies.