Does studying abroad enhance employability?

Over 200,000 European students study abroad under the Erasmus programme. It appears that studying abroad may impart skills which are helpful for professional careers after graduation. Approximately, 54% of European students report that participation in the Erasmus exchange programme helped them to obtain a first job; however, interestingly, those from Central and Eastern European countries report it much more often—in 73% of cases. The aim of this paper is to find out whether studying abroad enhances the employability of higher education graduates in Poland. Using the propensity score matching method and data from a nationwide tracer survey of Polish graduates, we find that Polish students who completed at least one semester of their studies abroad do not benefit in terms of a higher employment rate after graduation.     

Some Cracks in the Empire of Chance (Flaws in the Foundations of Reliability)

Making quantified statements about the uncertainty associated with the lifelength of an item is one of the most fundamental tasks of reliability assessment. Most practitioners routinely do this using one of the several available statistical techniques. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. The first is to give the user an overview of the key tenets of two of the most commonly used parametric approaches. The second is to point out that these commonly used approaches involve strategies that are either ad hoc, or are in violation of some of the underlying tenets. A method that is devoid of logical flaws can be proposed, but this method is difficult to implement. The user must therefore resign to using that technique against which the fewest objections can be hurled.     

广东省现代物流的供需匹配研究

广东省现代物流正处于快速增长的阶段，如何协调物流供给与需求的矛盾，是现代物流发展过程中不可避免的问题。本文从物流的需求和供给的状况着手，分析了广东省现代物流存在供需不平衡问题的原因与表象，对匹配广东省现代物流的需求与供给提出了几条建议。     

Memory recall errors in retrospective surveys: A reverse record check study

This paper reports on a study to compare self-reports during an interview with staff who attended a University health centre in Turkey, with the records of visits to the same health centre over the previous 12 months. Design of the study reflects the effects of importance of the event, duration since the event, frequency of the occurrence of the event, measurement scale of the event, and bounded and unbounded recalling. In order to assess the extent of recall error, responses to retrospective questions on health centre visits are compared with administrative records. Statistical models are proposed for short and long term human memory recall error effects on responses.     

语义单位关系理论及其作用

Hoey将语义单位关系定为人们根据相邻句子或句群选择语法、词汇和语调来生成句子或句群的认识过 程,并将它分为两大类:逻辑顺序关系和匹配关系。而实现这些关系最常见的途径是标识手段,最基本的语篇模式为 问题解决模式,匹配模式和一般具体模式。     

会计师事务所与客户的双边匹配

以2013年至2018年A股上市公司及为其提供审计服务的国内会计师事务所为研究样本,基于双边匹配理论探讨了审计市场中会计师事务所与企业之间的匹配情况对审计质量和审计风险的影响。研究结果表明,综合实力较强的会计师事务所倾向于与综合实力较强的企业进行匹配,呈现出审计双方综合实力相当的一种正向类聚匹配：当双方匹配程度越高时,企业可操纵性应计利润较少,审计质量越高;同时,当审计双方匹配度越高时,审计风险越低。上述结果证实了审计市场上会计师事务所与客户匹配的有效性和重要性,并对通过双边匹配提高会计师事务所的审计质量、降低审计风险,为审计市场资源优化配置提供了理论指导。     

Core structure and comparative statics in a hybrid matching market

Flexible firms compete by means of wages in the Assignment market while rigid firms have no flexibility over terms of appointment in the Marriage market. Workers trade with both kinds of firms in the hybrid market.Examples show that standard results that characterize the core of the Marriage market (respectively, Assignment market) are not robust to the entrance of flexible (respectively, rigid) firms to this market. A new algebraic structure provides a different characterization for the core of the hybrid model and reflects a sort of robustness to the exit of rigid (respectively, flexible) firms from this market. Meaningful comparative static results are derived.     

Pensions reforms,workforce ageing and firm-provided welfare

This paper investigates the impact of an exogenous increase in the legal retirement age on the firms’ propensity to provide welfare services voluntarily to their employees. To this purpose we exploit a unique information derived from the Rilevazione su Imprese e Lavoro (RIL), a survey conducted in 2015 on a large and representative sample of Italian firms. Applying different regression models we show that firms which were forced to give up previously planned hirings because of the Law 201/2011 (the so-called ‘Fornero pension reform’), increased the probability of providing welfare services at workplace. By referring to the sociological, human resource management and economic literature we then argue that a sudden increase in the legal retirement age may motivate the employers to establish welfare schemes as a way to cope with an ageing workforce. Our findings also hold when propensity score matching methods are used in order to control for sample selection issues.     

The Case of the Missing Pollution Haven Hypothesis

One particularly vexing puzzle for economists and policymakers over the past several decades concerns the empirical significance of the theoretically predicted pollution haven hypothesis. While neoclassical theory and conventional wisdom both surmise that local economies will suffer deleterious effects from stricter environmental regulations, empirical studies have largely failed to validate such claims. This study utilizes the method of matching to show that the impact of stricter regulation is heterogeneous spatially, varying systematically based on location-specific attributes. Previous studies that assume a homogenous response may therefore inadvertently mask the overall impact of more stringent regulations by pooling unaffected and affected regions.JEL Classification: Q25, Q28, H00, L51, R1The authors wish to thank to Michael Crew, Anthony Heyes, an anonymous referee, Werner Antweiler, Randy Becker, Wayne Gray, Shelby Gerking, Michael Greenstone, Vern Henderson, and Arik Levinson. Participants at various university seminars and conferences also lent useful insights to this line of research.