Age misreporting: An empirical investigation using the New Zealand contingents in the Second Boer War

This is a first focused examination of age misreporting in military recruitment. We take advantage of an original dataset comprised of New Zealand military personnel records in the Second Boer War matched with birth historical records. First, we find that age misrepresentation is common: about one third of soldiers on our dataset misreport their ages. Second, we find that soldiers the estimated age-specific mean heights do not change significantly when we change from using reported ages to using true ages. Researchers can prioritise the investigation of true ages on those reporting to be 21 or younger.     

Sex and Selling: Agent Gender and Bargaining Power in the Resale Housing Market

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - This paper uses a search model with Nash bargaining to identify various channels through which agent gender affects selling price and selling time...     

Tracking farmland investment in Australia: Institutional finance and the politics of data mapping

Tracking farmland purchases is central to interpreting transnational finance's growing power in agrarian restructuring. Australia's public Register of foreign land ownership reveals little about agrarian change, however. In presenting the first comprehensive mapping of farmland purchases made between 2008 and 2020, this paper examines the ways that financial investments are altering farm ownership patterns in Australia. First, we show that most foreign owned land has been purchased by only 10 pastoral companies, which are implicated in speculative development activities. Second, foreign investment in cropping and horticulture is more significant than it appears in the Register, with investments in agricultural infrastructure increasingly driving land use change. Third, we illustrate the deepening entrenchment of institutional finance. By engaging with the findings from our dataset as well as with the politics of data that have shaped the availability of information, the paper progresses understandings of the financialization of farmland in both its material and ideational aspects.     

Ethnicity in housing markets: Buyers,sellers and agents

This paper examines how ethnicity related to cultural differences arising from ethnic background affects housing market transactions in the Atlanta metro area. Using both the US Census and Wikipedia approaches to infer ethnicity from individuals' names, we find that the interplay of buyer, seller, and agent ethnicity composition affects interaction in the housing market. Sellers working with listing agents in the same ethnic group set higher listing prices and enjoy higher selling prices and quicker sales. Agents working with same ethnicity buyers yield higher prices and liquidity. Even though sellers only communicate with buyers through their agents, houses sold by sellers to buyers of same ethnicity have higher prices and sell faster. And while the ethnic mix of agents and their clients matter, the ethnic mix of agents in the transaction does not.