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作者：Commander, Simon; Svejnar, Jan
作者单位：Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要：We use two large samples of firms to assess the effects of business environment constraints, competition, export orientation, and ownership on firm performance. We deal with omitted variables, errors in variables, and endogeneity, and find that few business constraints affect performance. Replicating the analysis with Doing Business and Heritage Foundation indicators of the business environment yields similar results. In fact, country fixed effects, reflecting time-invariant differences in the...
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作者：Brunner, Eric; Ross, Stephen L.; Washington, Ebonya
作者单位：Quinnipiac University; University of Connecticut; Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Using California ballot proposition returns and exogenous shifts to labor demand, we provide the first large-scale causal evidence of the impact of economic conditions on policy preferences. Consistent with economic theory, we find that positive economic shocks decrease support for redistributive policies. More notably, we find evidence of a need for cognitive consistency in voting behavior as economic shocks have a smaller significant impact on voting on noneconomic ballot issues. While we al...
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作者：Karlan, Dean; Valdivia, Martin
作者单位：Yale University
摘要：Most academic and development policy discussions about microentrepreneurs focus on credit constraints and assume that subject to those constraints, the entrepreneurs manage their business optimally. Yet the self-employed poor rarely have any formal training in business skills. A growing number of microfinance organizations are attempting to build the human capital of microentrepreneurs in order to improve the livelihood of their clients and help further their mission of poverty alleviation. Us...
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作者：Strobl, Eric
摘要：I estimate the impact of hurricane strikes on local economic growth rates. To this end, I assemble a panel data set of U.S. coastal counties' growth rates and construct a novel hurricane destruction index that is based on a monetary loss equation, local wind speed estimates derived from a physical wind field model, and local exposure characteristics. The econometric results suggest that a county's annual economic growth rate falls on average by 0.45 percentage points, 28% of it due to richer i...
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作者：Hoffman, Mitchell
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：This paper considers the decision of Gentiles whether to rescue Jews during the Holocaust, a situation of altruistic behavior under life-or-death stakes. I examine the role to which economic factors may have influenced the decision to be a rescuer. Using cross-country data and detailed individual-level data on rescuers and nonrescuers, I find that richer countries had many more rescuers than poorer ones, and within countries, richer people were more likely to be rescuers than poorer people. Th...
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作者：Hahn, Jinyong; Ridder, Geert
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; University of Southern California
摘要：It is shown that in a nonparametric nonseparable triangular system, the conditional moment restriction (CMR) does not identify the average structural function (ASF). The CMR identifies the ASF only if the model is structurally separable in observable covariates and unobservable random errors. This excludes, for instance, random coefficient models in which the CMR in general does not identify the average response. An implication of our results is that empirical researchers should use methods ot...
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作者：Czarnitzki, Dirk; Toole, Andrew A.
作者单位：University of Copenhagen; United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
摘要：The main reason governments grant patent protection is to spur innovation. However, the size of the R&D stimulus from patent protection is far from clear because it depends on how effective patents are as a mechanism for appropriating returns. Drawing on real options investment theory, this paper highlights one mechanism through which patents may improve appropriability and stimulate R&D investment: patents reduce the effect of market uncertainty on the firm's investment decision. We find that...
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作者：Aguila, Emma; Attanasio, Orazio; Meghir, Costas
作者单位：University of London; University College London; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：Previous empirical literature has found a sharp decline in consumption during the first years of retirement, implying that individuals do not save enough for their retirement. This phenomenon is called the retirement consumption puzzle. We find no evidence of the retirement consumption puzzle using panel data from 1980 to 2000. Consumption is defined as nondurable expenditure, a more comprehensive measure than only food used in many of the previous studies. We find that food expenditure declin...
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作者：Choi, James J.; Laibson, David; Madrian, Brigitte C.
作者单位：Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Harvard University
摘要：We identify employees at seven companies whose 401(k) investment choices are dominated because they are contributing less than the employer matching contribution threshold despite being vested in their match and being able to make penalty-free 401(k) withdrawals for any reason because they are older than 59 1/2. At the average firm, 36% of match-eligible employees over age 59 1/2 forgo arbitrage profits that average 1.6% of their annual pay, or $507. A survey educating employees about the free...
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作者：Faust, Jon; Wright, Jonathan H.
作者单位：Johns Hopkins University
摘要：It is well known that augmenting a standard linear regression model with variables that are correlated with the error term but uncorrelated with the original regressors will increase the asymptotic efficiency of the original coefficients. We argue that in the context of predicting excess returns, valid augmenting variables exist and are likely to yield substantial gains in estimation efficiency and, hence, predictive accuracy. The proposed augmenting variables are ex post measures of an unfore...
