THE ESTIMATED EFFECT OF CATHOLIC SCHOOLING ON EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES USING PROPENSITY SCORE MATCHING

This paper examines the effect of attending a Catholic high school on educational outcomes. The statistical analysis is based on data obtained from the US National Educational Longitudinal Study. Using propensity score matching methods to control for selection bias, we find that Catholic schooling improves maths test scores, with stronger effects for males than for females, but appears to have little effect (if any) on reading scores. Catholic schooling also raises high school graduation rates and substantially increases the likelihood of enrolment in a 4‐year college. Use of the difference‐in‐difference method suggests that the effect of Catholic schooling on changes in maths scores is more muted, though still statistically significant.     

Executive Compensation and Financial Performance Measures: Evidence from Significant Financial Institutions

We survey the use of financial performance measures in determining executive pay among significant Australian financial institutions. We document evidence of the pervasiveness with which externally disclosed non‐GAAP (non‐Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) financial measures are also used internally to determine variable remuneration, with the apparent popularity of cash profit after tax in short‐term incentives plans. Our evidence also highlights the increasing use of peer group‐adjusted measures (e.g., relative cash earnings per share and return on equity ranking against a peer group) in determining longer‐run incentives, despite the fact that members of the peer group do not measure financial performance in a directly comparable manner. Detailed analysis of the four major trading banks (Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank and Westpac) reveals differences in the way non‐GAAP earnings measures are calculated across the major banks, as well as some variation over time in the way individual banks measure performance. We also document evidence of non‐GAAP earnings restatements, with around 25% of non‐GAAP results subsequently being restated. These restatements are more likely to result in a downward revision of the initially reported non‐GAAP result than an upward revision. We therefore conclude that existing measures of financial performance used to determine senior executive compensation are not as ‘objective’, as might be assumed.     

Shipping cost and development of the landlocked developing countries: Panel evidence from the common correlated effects approach

We estimate the impact of shipping cost on development for landlocked developing countries (LLDCs). Since container trade is important to them, we construct a country-specific measure of shipping cost, called HarpexCost, which combines the global cost of container shipping with information on how exposed to container shipping each LLDC is. We employ the common correlated effects (CCE) estimator of Pesaran (Econometrica, 2006; 55: 967) to first estimate the impact of HarpexCost on the LLDCs’ development, and then recover the actual impact of shipping cost from these estimates. Overall, we observe that shipping cost has large negative effects on the LLDCs. Building upon these results, we provide new estimates on the cost of landlockedness and how trade benefits their development.     

Measurement of Formal Convergence of Vietnamese Accounting Standards with IFRS

Convergence refers to the process of narrowing the differences between International Accounting Standards/International Financial Reporting Standards (IAS/IFRS) and country‐specific accounting standards. The purpose of this study is to measure the formal convergence between Vietnamese Accounting Standards (VAS) and IAS/IFRS using a fuzzy‐based approach. We assess the extent of convergence between VAS and IAS/IFRS from the perspective of a single standard, clusters of standards and the standards as a whole. The levels of standards convergence are clustered into four categories: full convergence, substantial convergence, substantial difference and complete difference. Our results indicate that the level of convergence between the two sets of standards only achieves mid‐level convergence. The findings of this study should help policy makers improve VAS to meet international standards.     

Task‐based structures in open source software: revisiting the onion model

Studies on Open Source Software (OSS) developer communities have long stated that there is a relationship between community structure and tasks carried out by project members. This relationship has been exemplified by the onion model, which has been instrumental in understanding self‐coordination in OSS projects. Despite its ubiquity, there is a lack of empirical evidence to validate the relative position of each task cluster within the onion model. In this study, we map out the community structure of a large open source project and observe its bug‐fixing patterns to explore the relationship between tasks and structure. Our study makes three significant contributions. First, we find no empirical evidence to support the structural location of bug‐fixing tasks in the onion structure. Second, we find empirical evidence to support the core‐periphery continuum model linking an actor’s coreness to problem‐solving ability. Third, our results suggest that the importance and location of each task within the core‐periphery structure evolve over time. These findings add clarity to the community structure and their implications for the management and coordination of collaborative innovation projects.     

Incentives and teacher effort

Few would contest that teachers are a very important determinant of how much students learn in school, and how to improve teacher performance has been the focus of lively policy debate in both rich and poor countries. This paper examines how teacher incentives, both pecuniary and non‐pecuniary, correlate with teacher effort. Using school survey data from Lao PDR, we estimate measures of teacher effort, including the number of hours that teachers spend preparing for classes and teacher provision of private tutoring outside of class hours, which are not the typical measures used in previous research. Estimation results fit well under the standard labour supply framework and indicate that greater teacher effort is associated with non‐pecuniary incentives such as more teacher autonomy over teaching materials and monitoring as measured by the existence of an active parent – teacher association and the ability of school principals to dismiss teachers. Methodologically, this paper provides a detailed derivation of a simultaneous OLS‐probit model with school random effects that can jointly estimate teacher work hours and tutoring provision.     

Foreign versus local investors: Who knows more? Who makes more?

This paper examines the nature of information asymmetry between foreign and local investors on the Helsinki stock exchange (HEX) for the period 1999–2004. We take into account the differences in informational characteristics by partitioning stocks into single-listed, cross-listed and internationally well-known stock categories, after which we compare foreign and local investors’ performance and trading advantages. Local investors have trading advantages in the short term in all stock categories. However, such local advantages diminish for Nokia, the only internationally well-known stock on HEX.     

Government expenditure,external and domestic public debt,and economic growth

This paper analyzes the relationship between government expenditure, tax on returns to assets, public debt, and growth in an endogenous growth model. Public debt is composed of two components, domestic debt and external debt. We show conditions for existence, uniqueness, and multiplicity of the steady states. More precisely, existence of steady state requires a sufficiently high productivity and a sufficiently low tax on returns to assets. We also provide the effects of an increase in the tax rate on returns to assets on the steady state. In particular, the relation between public spending and the tax rate has a bell shape. Domestic debt unambiguously increases with tax whereas external debt displays an inverted U‐shaped curve. A high tax rate leads to a reallocation of public debt in favor of domestic debt (to the detriment of external debt). The effect of taxation on consumption (and production) also displays a nonlinear pattern when the output elasticity of capital is lower than unity (the effect is monotonously increasing if this elasticity is unity). We also derive the conditions under which a tax increase can boost or reduce the balanced growth rate.     

NOMINAL SOVEREIGN DEBT

I show that reputation alone can sustain nominal sovereign debt, which is subject to both the risks of default and opportunistic devaluations. Nominal debt combined with a countercyclical exchange rate policy allows more hedging against shocks than real savings if markets are incomplete. Thus, the loss of either repayment or monetary reputation severely affects the government's ability to smooth consumption. The model offers a simple explanation for the Bulow and Rogoff critique, while simultaneously helping explain the issuance of nominal sovereign bonds by emerging economies. The model also helps explain why many governments borrow and save at the same time.