Meta‐Analysis of Coefficient Alpha: A Reliability Generalization Study

Increasing precision of measurement is a goal of scientific advancement, but Nunnally's (1978) .70 benchmark for coefficient alpha (alpha) has remained the omnibus test for reliability for nearly 40 years. This likely arises due to there only being scattered empirical evidence of the degree to which the field has met or surpassed this standard. Using meta‐analytic techniques known as reliability generalization (RG), we cumulate alphas across 36 commonly used individual differences, attitudes, and behaviours from 1675 independent samples (N = 991,588). Our primary finding is that alphas almost always exceed .70 and generally fall above .80. In addition, we identified factors that moderate alpha including the specific measure used, the number of scale items, and the rater. The study provides baseline alphas that can be used for research planning and design; it also offers best practices for RG and notes the benefits of RG for understanding systematic fluctuations in reliability.     

Implications of the Philadelphia Beverage Tax on Sales and Beverage Substitution for a Major Grocery Retailer Chain

To understand whether substitution effects occurred for a major national grocery retailer after the implementation of a beverage tax in Philadelphia, the authors used November 2015/2016 and February 2016/2017 data from a major national grocery retailer with stores alongside the borders of Philadelphia County (within 5 miles of each side). A difference in difference was conducted, a statistical technique that allows comparison among groups in an observational data setting, to understand whether the introduction of a beverage tax on January 1, 2017 would lead consumers to shift their buying habits to healthier options. Results are consistent with the notion that the implementation of a beverage tax on sweetened beverages (SBs: both sugar and artificially sweetened) did not generally lead consumers of that retailer to switch purchases to non-sweetened beverages. In contrast, data suggest that consumer purchasing of SBs and general sales increased significantly outside of Philadelphia County at that retailer. A potential explanation is that, some consumers continued buying SBs but traveled outside of Philadelphia County not just to buy the SBs but also for other grocery as well.     

Agricultural externalities and environmental regulation: evaluating good practice in citrus production

Economic activity takes place in a scenario characterized by an increasing number of environmental regulations aimed at bringing under control the emission of contaminating wastes. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of transforming a code of good practice in nitrogen fertilization on Spanish citrus fruit farms into an environmental regulation of compulsory fulfilment. Using data envelopment techniques, we calculate unrestricted and environmentally regulated short-run maximum profits. Both profit values are then used to compute an index of the cost of regulation. Our results suggest that the cost of shifting from a merely recommended practice to a binding rule is low. On average, the loss of profit computed is only about 4%. Furthermore, we find that farms’ overall efficiency is low and that the current gap between observed and regulated fertilization practices could be overcome by improving overall management efficiency.     

The effect of real-time fiscal policy on sovereign interest rates in OECD countries

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of real-time projections of fiscal policy stances on government bonds long-term interest rates using a panel of 20 OECD countries between 1992 and 2008. To deal with endogeneity arising from forecasts of fiscal balances the paper exploits instrumental variables and GMM estimators together with the variation in real-time primary balances. The study shows how a static specification that does not include the one-period lag of the interest rate is prone to serial correlation and to downward bias in standard errors. To correct the bias, a dynamic specification with the lagged interest rates used as explanatory variable should be used due to the intrinsic persistent behavior of the interest rates. Results show that when the persistency of the interest rates is taken into account, it corrects the bias in standard errors of the estimates, and the correlation between fiscal policy variables and sovereign rates disappears: the inertia of the behavior of interest rates is the only variable affecting the relation.     

Performance choice,executive bonuses and corporate leverage

This study examines the causal link between a firm's leverage decisions and the characteristics of its CEO bonus plans. Results from a simultaneous equations model strongly suggest that highly levered firms are less likely to use return on equity (ROE) or ROE-based accounting performance measures to determine executive bonuses. Estimates also indicate that firms with fewer debt covenants, higher interest rates on debt, and a greater proportion of executive pay in the form of stock options are less likely to adopt ROE-based measures for use in CEO bonus plans. These findings lend strong support to the efficient contracting hypothesis. The conflicting interests of corporate stakeholders, especially between stockholders and creditors, encourage firms to tie executive pay to performance metrics like return on assets (ROA) that will strike the optimal balance between the agency costs of debt and the agency costs of equity.Data availability: all data are available from public sources.     

Changing compensation for top corporate executives

Salaries of a quarter of a million dollars or more are not rare in this country. Although-such salaries are criticized from many directions, this level of pay is justifiable when executives' functions are considered, and the level is bound to increase in the period ahead.     

Religious Giving by Individuals: A Cross Denominational Study

Abstract Empirical research to date has provided some evidence on factors important to the determination of religious giving as well as to cross denominational differences in religious giving patterns. For example, regression based models of religious giving, typically utilizing data on congregations and congregational contributions, lend considerable support to the observation that Catholics contribute less in amount and as a share of income than do Protestants. A number of possible explanations for this difference can be offered. Two often cited reasons are: (1) a lower estimated marginal propensity to give out of income for Catholics than for Protestants and (2) the more formalized structure of the giving process found in Protestant denominations. Here data on religious giving by individuals of different denominations is used to estimate a single equation econometric model using (a) the least squares and (b) the Tobit techniques. The least squares results corroborate past findings regarding differences in the religious giving of Catholics and Protestants. Unlike past results, however, the Tobit results reported suggest that though income is a statistically significant factor in the religious giving for both groups and the marginal impacts are actually higher for Catholics than for Protestants.