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作者:Bulte, Erwin; List, John A.; van Soest, Daan
作者单位:Wageningen University & Research; University of Chicago; Tilburg University
摘要:Social scientists have recently explored how framing of gains and losses affects productivity. We conducted a field experiment in peri-urban Uganda, and compared output levels across 1,000 workers over isomorphic tasks and incentives, framed as either losses or gains. We find that loss aversion can be leveraged to increase the productivity of labour. The estimated welfare costs of using the loss contract are quite modest-perhaps because the loss contract is viewed as a (soft) commitment device.
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作者:Drichoutis, Andreas C.; Nayga, Rodolfo M., Jr.
作者单位:Agricultural University of Athens; University of Arkansas System; University of Arkansas Fayetteville
摘要:Economic analysis assumes that consumer behaviour can be rationalised by a utility function. Previous research has shown that some consistency of choices with economic rationality can be captured by permanent cognitive ability. No other known study however has examined how a temporary load in subjects' working memory can affect economic rationality. Using two controlled laboratory experiments, we exogenously vary cognitive load by asking subjects to memorise a number while they undertake an in...
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作者:Asher, Sam; Garg, Teevrat; Novosad, Paul
作者单位:Johns Hopkins University; University of California System; University of California San Diego; Dartmouth College
摘要:There is a long-standing debate over whether new roads unavoidably lead to environmental damage, especially forest loss, but causal identification has been elusive. Using multiple causal identification strategies, we study the construction of new rural roads to over 100,000 villages and the upgrading of 10,000 kilometers of national highways in India. The new rural roads had precisely zero effect on local deforestation. In contrast, the highway upgrades caused substantial forest loss, which ap...
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作者:Izdebski, Adam; Sloczynski, Tymon; Bonnier, Anton; Koloch, Grzegorz; Kouli, Katerina
作者单位:Jagiellonian University; Brandeis University; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Uppsala University; Warsaw School of Economics; National & Kapodistrian University of Athens
摘要:In this article we use pollen data from six sites in southern Greece to study long-term vegetation change in this region from 1000 BCE to 600 CE. Based on insights from environmental history, we interpret our estimated trends in the regional presence of cereal, olive and vine pollen as proxies for structural changes in agricultural production. We present evidence that there was a market economy in ancient Greece and a major trade expansion several centuries before the Roman conquest. Our resul...
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作者:Bassi, Marina; Meghir, Costas; Reynoso, Ana
作者单位:Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); The World Bank; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要:Improving school quality with limited resources is a key issue of policy. This article uses a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to estimate the effectiveness of guided instruction methods as implemented in under-performing schools in Chile. The intervention improved performance substantially, and equally for boys and girls. However, the effect is mainly accounted for by children from relatively higher-income backgrounds. Basing our study on the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) instr...
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作者:Bajgar, Matej; Javorcik, Beata
作者单位:Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD); Czech Academy of Sciences; Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Charles University Prague; University of Oxford; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
摘要:This article argues that inflows of foreign direct investment can facilitate export upgrading in host countries. Using customs data merged with firm-level information for 2005-11, it shows a positive relationship between the quality of products exported by Romanian firms and the presence of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the upstream (input-supplying) industries. Export quality is also positively related to MNE presence in the downstream (input-sourcing) industries and the same industry, ...
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作者:Cherchye, Laurens; Cosaert, Sam; Demuynck, Thomas; De Rock, Bram
作者单位:KU Leuven; Universite Libre de Bruxelles
摘要:We propose a novel approach to model joint consumption decisions of individuals who care for each other. The model encompasses a continuum of group consumption models situated between the fully co-operative model and the non-cooperative model without caring. We also define a measure for the degree of intragroup cooperation that quantifies how close the observed group behaviour is to fully co-operative behaviour. Following a revealed preference approach, we derive testable implications of the m...
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作者:Zabojnik, Jan
作者单位:Queens University - Canada
摘要:This article studies how a firm's reputation for rewarding innovative employees affects innovation and startup creation. In any Pareto-efficient equilibrium of the repeated game, low-value innovations are developed in-house, while high-value innovations are developed in startups. When distributions of ideas are ordered by simple cases of first- or second-order stochastic dominance, the firm has a preference for an extreme distribution. The article also characterises the optimal relational cont...
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作者:Peri, Alessandro; Rachedi, Omar
作者单位:University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Boulder; Banco de Espana
摘要:US corporate default rates increased dramatically from an annual average of 0.32% between 1950 and 1984 up to 1.65% since 1985. Meanwhile, credit spreads rose by just 6 basis points. We argue that financial development-intended as an exogenous reduction in the fixed cost of borrowing-accounts for this evidence. In a heterogeneous firm model financial development boosts both default rates and firms' expected recovery rates. These two effects offset each other, muting the change in the credit sp...
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作者:McCausland, William J.; Davis-Stober, Clintin; Marley, A. A. J.; Park, Sanghyuk; Brown, Nicholas
作者单位:Universite de Montreal; Universite de Montreal; University of Victoria; University of South Australia; University of Missouri System; University of Missouri Columbia
摘要:We test a set of inequalities in choice probabilities, shown to be necessary and sufficient for random utility by Falmagne (1978). We run an experiment in which each of 141 participants chooses six times from each doubleton or larger subset of a universe of five lotteries. We compute Bayes factors in favour of random utility, versus an alternative with unrestricted choice probabilities. There is strong evidence that a large majority of participants satisfy random utility; however, there is str...