Institutional dynamics and access to non-farm employment in rural China, 1950–1996

This article examines non-farm employment in the context of Chinese rural institutional change, based on evidence from discrete-time logistic models for event history analysis using the Life History and Social Change survey. We find the transition to non-farm sector rose rapidly during the Great Leap Forward and market reform, while the Cultural Revolution saw it reach the lowest ebb. While male advantage prevailed exclusively during the Cultural Revolution and early marketization, education possessed a stable positive effect in all historical periods. Although the returns to different kinds of political capital vary along with institutional dynamics, intergenerational reproduction was greatly reduced after the Cultural Revolution.     

Cognitive ability and human behavior in experimental ultimatum games

Recent researches have shed light on the effect of cognitive ability on economic decision-making. By measuring cognitive ability applying Raven's progressive matrix test, we obtain two significant results that this effect affects decision-making in two types of experimental ultimatum games. First, the higher the cognitive ability, the larger the amount a sender offers when the offer is smaller than or equal to the half split. Second, the higher the responders’ cognitive ability, the smaller the offer they accept, when they accept it or not with the strategy method. This study not only finds new factors that affect decision-making in experimental ultimatum games, but also provides more evidences that cognitive ability influences economic decision-making.     

Large scale infrastructure investment and economic performance – a case study of Oresund

We analyse the effect of a large scale infrastructure investment, namely the construction of the Oresund bridge, on the local and supra-regional economy. We employ the synthetic control method to construct counterfactual regions that mimic the trajectory of Malmo and Southern Sweden without treatment. Our results point to a positive effect. However, placebo tests in space and time only reveal statistical significance at a larger regional level. The results suggest that spillover effects are eminent.     

Social capital and well-being in the Italian provinces

Recent years witnessed a growing interest in the concept of well-being and quality of life, as alternative to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The determinants of well-being, especially at the regional and provincial levels, is understudied in a macro perspective, as opposed to a micro perspective (individuals, survey data) that has been the dominant approach until recently. In this paper, we estimate an empirical model for the Italian NUTS-3 provinces to evaluate the role of social capital on well-being by using aggregated (provincial) data. Our findings suggest that social capital, social security programs, income, and grant-making activities by Bank Foundations, even though not uniformly distributed across Italy, positively affect well-being, thus contributing to explain the persistent dualism that characterizes the Italian economy.     

Is it U.S. GAAP or IFRS? Understanding how R&D costs affect ratio analysis

While financial reporting standards under U.S. GAAP and IFRS are fundamentally similar, differences do exist that may affect our analysis of company financial statements. This is particularly true when comparing a U.S. company following U.S. GAAP to a firm that uses IFRS. To illustrate, we compare research and development (R&D) accounting methods under both sets of standards and illustrate how they affect the analysis of financial results of firms in a specific industry—automotive manufacturers. Our results provide insight into settings in which differences in R&D accounting may have the greatest impact on financial analysis.     

Impact of state-dependent oil price on US stock returns using local projections

In this paper, we investigate the impact of oil prices on both aggregate and industry US real stock returns over the period 1973–2017. The empirical analysis contributes to the related literature introducing a state-dependent oil price (high and low) and the local projections approach. Our main finding is that, depending on the nature of the shock and industry, the negative effects of oil price shocks become exacerbated -and the positive effects get moderated- if oil prices are already high.     

Flood Risk and Salience: New Evidence from the Sunshine State

A growing literature finds evidence that flood risk salience varies over time, spiking directly following a flood and then falling off individuals' cognitive radar in the following years. In this article, we provide new evidence of salience exploiting a hurricane cluster impacting Florida that was preceded and followed by periods of unusual calm. Utilizing residential property sales across the state from 2002 through 2012, our main estimate finds a salience impact of ?8%, on average. The salience effect persists when we base estimation only on spatial variation in prices to limit confounding from other simultaneous changes due to shifting hedonic equilibria over time. These effects range from housing prices decreases of 5.4–12.3% depending on the year of sale. Understanding flood risk salience has important implications for flood insurance and disaster policy, the benefits transfer literature, and, more broadly, our understanding of natural disaster resilience. JEL Classification: Q51, Q54, R21     

Does corruption slow down innovation? Evidence from a cointegrated panel of U.S. states

I investigate the long-run relationship between corruption and innovative activity using annual data from 48 contiguous U.S. states between 1977 and 2006. Using U.S. data allows me to work with a panel long enough to exploit time series properties of the data. I use two different measures of innovative activity: one measuring the quantity and the other measuring the quality of the patents granted. I also use two different measures of corruption: one based on the number of corruption convictions, the other based on number of corruption stories covered in Associated Press news wires. Following Pedroni (1999, 2000), I estimate the cointegrating relationship between corruption and innovative activity with Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS). The results indicate that corruption indeed slows down innovation in the long-run.     

Increasing linkages among European regions. The role of sectoral composition

This paper analyses changes in economic regional interlinkages in Europe over time and investigates the factors that could explain the dynamics of these changes. Our four main findings are the following: (i) we detect a significant surge in regional synchronisation after the Great Recession; (ii) we identify the regions most interrelated with the rest of Europe, namely, Ile de France, Inner London and Lombardia; (iii) we find that sectoral composition explains regional synchronisation in Europe, mainly after the Great Recession and (iv) we document that sectoral composition has important implications for aggregate economic fluctuations, in particular, that similarities in services-related sectors across regions explain a nonlinear relationship between sectoral composition and regional business cycle synchronisation. We also propose a new method to measure time-varying synchronisation in small samples that combines regime-switching models and dynamic model averaging.     

Forget about ‘the ideal worker’: A theoretical contribution to the debate on flexible workplace designs,work/life conflict,and opportunities for gender equality

This study integrates insights from Self-Determination Theory and Boundary Theory to present scenarios on how flexible workplace designs can trigger multiple motivational processes underlying gendered work/nonwork integration behaviors, and how these affect work/life conflict. We disentangle processes underlying work engagement and work/life conflict, explaining the paradoxical outcomes found with regard to gender inequality in terms of work/life performance, satisfaction, and health. Policy makers and organizations need an increased understanding and a reconceptualization of these issues, realizing that the ideal worker does not exist. Instead, a long-term perspective is needed in order to truly realize the potential benefits of flexible workplace designs for all stakeholders. Organizations need to take responsibility for preventing individual workers’ depletion and stimulating the regeneration of workers’ resources.