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作者：Scholder, Stephanie von Hinke Kessler; Wehby, George L.; Lewis, Sarah; Zuccolo, Luisa
作者单位：University of York - UK; University of Iowa; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Bristol
摘要：We examine the effect of prenatal alcohol exposure on child academic achievement. We use a genetic variant in the maternal alcohol-metabolism gene ADH1B to instrument for alcohol exposure, whilst controlling for the child's genotype on the same variant. We show that the instrument is unrelated to an extensive range of parental characteristics and behaviour. OLS regressions suggest an ambiguous association between alcohol exposure and attainment but there is a strong social gradient in drinking...
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作者：Couttenier, Mathieu; Soubeyran, Raphael
作者单位：University of Lausanne; INRAE; Universite de Montpellier
摘要：We explore the relationship between drought and civil war. We show that the link between rainfall, temperature and civil war found in the literature may be driven by aggregate shocks (such as global climate) that were not accounted for. A standard differences-in-differences specification relying only on within country variation reveals a much weaker and insignificant link between weather variables and civil war. To increase statistical power, we propose a country-specific measure of drought th...
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作者：Bauer, Christian; Lingens, Joerg
作者单位：University of Munich; University of Munster
摘要：Existing search and bargaining models show that firms hire an inefficiently large number of workers. We ask whether decentralised collective wage bargaining may result in a second-best allocation. Collective bargaining restores efficiency when the bargained wage is independent of employment; conditions that we characterise. Firms then behave as if collective bargaining was over both wages and employment, thus linking the large-firm search and bargaining environment to the efficient bargaining ...
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作者：Fredriksson, Peter; Ockert, Bjorn
作者单位：Stockholm University; Uppsala University
摘要：In Sweden, children typically start school the year they turn seven. We combine this school entry cutoff with individuals' birthdates to estimate effects of school starting age (SSA) on educational attainment and long-run labour market outcomes. We find that school entry age raises educational attainment and show that postponing tracking until age 16 reduces the effect of SSA on educational attainment. On average, SSA only affects the allocation of labour supply over the life-cycle and leaves ...
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作者：Gilboa, Itzhak; Postlewaite, Andrew; Samuelson, Larry; Schmeidler, David
作者单位：Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) Paris; Tel Aviv University; University of Pennsylvania; Yale University; Tel Aviv University
摘要：People often wonder why economists analyse models whose assumptions are known to be false, while economists feel that they learn a lot from such exercises. We suggest that part of the knowledge generated by academic economists is case-based rather than rule-based. That is, instead of offering general rules or theories that should be contrasted with data, economists often analyse models that are 'theoretical cases', which help understand economic problems by drawing analogies between the model ...
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作者：Jia, Ruixue
摘要：I use data covering 267 prefectures over four centuries to investigate two questions about historical China. To what extent did weather shocks cause civil conflict? And to what extent did the historical introduction of (drought resistant) sweet potatoes mitigate these effects? I find that before the introduction of sweet potatoes, exceptional droughts increased the probability of peasant revolts by around 0.7 percentage points, which translates into a revolt probability in drought years that i...
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作者：Herrera, Helios; Morelli, Massimo; Palfrey, Thomas
作者单位：Universite de Montreal; HEC Montreal; Columbia University; California Institute of Technology
摘要：We compare turnout under proportional power-sharing electoral systems and winner-take-all elections. The effect of such institutional differences on turnout depends on the distribution of voter preferences. If the two parties have relatively equal support, turnout is higher in a winner-take-all system; the result is reversed when there is a clear underdog. We report findings from a laboratory experiment that was designed and conducted to explore this theoretical hypothesis and several other se...
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作者：Brandts, Jordi; Reynolds, Stanley S.; Schram, Arthur
作者单位：Autonomous University of Barcelona; Barcelona School of Economics; University of Arizona; University of Amsterdam
摘要：We use experiments to study market power with supply function competition, akin to the competition in electricity markets. Our treatments vary the distribution of demand levels as well as the amount and symmetry of the allocation of production capacity between different suppliers. We relate our results to a descriptive power index and to the predictions of two models: a supply function equilibrium (SFE) model and a multi-unit auction (MUA) model. Observed behaviour is consistent with the equil...
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作者：Frijters, Paul; Johnston, David W.; Shields, Michael A.
作者单位：University of Queensland; Monash University
摘要：We investigate the extent to which childhood characteristics are predictive of adult life satisfaction using data from two British cohort studies. In total, variables observed up to age 16 predict around 7% of the variation in average adult life satisfaction. Adding contemporaneous adulthood variables increases the predictive power to 15.6%, while adding long lags of life satisfaction increases it to 35.5%. Overall, we estimate that around 30-45% of adult life satisfaction is fixed, suggesting...
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作者：Adamou, Adamos; Clerides, Sofronis; Zachariadis, Theodoros
作者单位：University of Cyprus; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Cyprus University of Technology
摘要：Vehicle taxation based on CO2 emissions is increasingly being adopted worldwide to shift consumer purchases to low-carbon cars, yet evidence on its effectiveness and economic impact is limited. We focus on feebate schemes, which impose a fee on high-carbon vehicles and give a rebate to low-carbon cars. We estimate demand for passenger cars in Germany and simulate the impact of alternative feebate schemes on emissions, consumer welfare, public revenues and firm profits. We find that revenue-neu...
