does education affect risk aversion evidence from the british education reform individual risk attitudes are frequently used to predict decisions regarding education however using risk attitudes as a control variable for decisions about education has been criticized because of the potential for reverse causality causality between risk aversion and education is unclear and disentangling the different directions it may run is difficult in this study we make the first attempt to investigate the causal effects of education on risk aversion by examining the british education reform of 1972 which increased the duration of compulsory schooling from age 15 to age 16 using regression discontinuity design we find that this additional year of schooling increases the level of risk aversion which is contrary to previous findings in the literature and we also find that this result is particularly strong for individuals with less education this positive causal effect of education on risk aversion might alleviate concerns regarding the endogeneity reverse causality issue when using risk aversion as an explanatory variable for decisions about education the sign would remain credible because the coefficients are underestimated

political instability corruption and policy formation the case of environmental policy abstract this paper develops a theory of environmental policy formation taking into consideration the degree of corruptibility and political turbulence the predictions that emerge are that the interaction between the two variables is important political instability has a negative effect on the stringency of environmental regulations if the level of corruption is low but a positive effect when the degree of corruption is high corruption reduces the stringency of environmental regulations but the effect disappears as political instability increases the empirical findings are fully consistent with the predictions of the model

self rewards and personal motivation self administered rewards are ubiquitous they serve as incentives for personal accomplishments and are widely recommended to increase personal motivation we show that in a model with time inconsistent and reference dependent preferences self rewards can be a credible and effective tool to overcome self control problems we also discuss the different types of self rewards the individual can use such as vice goods and virtue goods and analyze which types of goods the individual prefers

lobbying by capital and labor over trade and labor market policies abstract this paper uses the common agency approach to analyze the joint determination of product and labor market distortions in a small open economy capital owners and union members lobby the government on both tariffs and minimum wages while other factors of production are not organized the paper shows that product and labor market distortions always move in the same direction and that their level is not modified by social pacts between capital and labor it also shows that labor market distortions are second best hence conditionality by foreign organizations should target distortions in product markets but not in labor markets

common agency and coordination general theory and application to government policy making we develop a model of common agency with complete information and general preferences with nontransferable utility and we prove that the principals nash equilibrium in truthful strategies implements an efficient action we apply this theory to the construction of a positive model of public finance where organized special interests can lobby the government for consumer and producer taxes or subsidies and targeted lump sum taxes or transfers the lobbies use only the nondistorting transfers in their noncooperative equilibrium but their intergroup competition for transfers turns into a prisoners dilemma in which the government captures all the gain that is potentially available to the parties

education and health in europe abstractthe productive and allocative theories predict that education has positive impact on health the more educated adopt healthier life styles and use more efficiently health inputs and this explains why they live longer we find partial support for these theories with an econometric analysis on a large sample of europeans aged above 50 documenting a significant and positive correlation among education years life styles health outputs and functionalities we however find confirmation for an anomaly already observed in the united states namely the more educated are more likely to contract cancer our results are robust when controlling for endogeneity and reverse causality in iv estimates with instrumental variables related to quarter of birth and neighbours cultural norms

the effect of education on religion evidence from compulsory schooling laws abstract for over a century social scientists have debated how educational attainment impacts religious belief in this paper i use canadian compulsory schooling laws to identify the relationship between completed schooling and later religiosity i find that higher levels of education lead to lower levels of religious affiliation later in life an additional year of education leads to a 4 percentage point decline in the likelihood that an individual identifies with any religious tradition this is a reasonably large effect extrapolating the results to the broader population would suggest that increases in schooling could explain most of the large rise in non affiliation in canada in recent decades

impact of daylight saving time on the chilean residential consumption abstract since 1970 chile has had a daylight saving time dst policy in order to reduce residential electricity consumption in the country the time change was set for the first time by executive decree in 1970 and since that date it was applied every year without great changes until 2010 since then and to date decrees have been set in order to increase the duration of the dst arguing that there are reasons associated with energy savings that justify the extension of the measure that has been adopted by the authority in recent years in the present study the impact of the application of dst in terms of decreased household electricity consumption is analyzed using two complementary methods one based on a heuristic approach and the other using an econometric model the results indicate that there is indeed a marginally small reduction in residential electricity consumption although these results are not homogeneous throughout the country

human capital versus sorting the effects of compulsory attendance laws under the educational sorting hypothesis a state compulsory school attendance law will increase the educational attainment of high ability workers who are not directly affected hy the law under the human capital hypothesis such laws affect only those individuals whose hehavior is directly constrained we find that compulsory attendance laws do increase enrollment rates in age groups they do not affect directly thus our results contradict the human capital hypothesis and are consistent with the sorting hypothesis i introduction the last decade has seen considerable debate between supporters of the human capital and sorting models of education the former assert that the effect of education on wages reflects increased productivity the latter maintain that it reflects at least in part correlation between education and unobserved ability workers use education to signal their ability while employers use education to screen workers despite the importance of the debate no fully convincing tests of the hypotheses have been developed in fact many members of the profession maintain at least privately that these hypotheses cannot be tested against each other and that the debate must therefore be relegated to the realm of ideology in this paper we show that the models can be tested against each other by examining the effects of state compulsory school attendance laws we show that under the human capital hypotheis such laws will affect the educational attainment only of those who in the absence of the law would have left school prior to the minimum school leaving age on the other hand under the sorting hypothesis the effects of the law will percolate through the system increasing educational attainment even among workers not directly constrained by the law our results are consistent with the predictions of the sorting model

upper secondary school completion and the business cycle previous evidence suggests that enrollment in post compulsory education increases decreases in cyclical downturns upturns however little evidence exists on whether enrollment is successfully transformed into completed education this paper adds to the literature by analyzing the relationship between completion of upper secondary education and regional unemployment using norwegian regional panel data on students graduating from compulsory school between 1981 and 2004 we find robust evidence that completion rates are countercyclical our results suggest that poor labor market conditions when starting upper secondary education have a lasting effect and motivate students to stay in school and graduate

how does daylight saving time affect electricity demand an answer using aggregate data from a natural experiment in western australia abstract daylight saving time dst affects the lives of more than 1 6 billion people worldwide with energy saving being the original rationale for its implementation this study takes advantage of natural experiment data from september 2006 to march 2013 in western australia in which dst was observed from december 2006 to march 2009 to estimate the effect of dst on electricity demand using the difference in differences dd approach we find that dst has little effect on overall electricity demand and electricity generation costs however it has a strong redistributional effect by reducing electricity demand substantially in the late afternoon and early evening this redistributional effect of dst may be of particular interest for policymakers who are interested in controlling high demand and the short term energy market price

the relationship between education and adult mortality in the united states prior research has uncovered a large and positive correlation between education and health this paper examines whether education has a causal impact on health i follow synthetic cohorts using successive u s censuses to estimate the impact of educational attainment on mortality rates i use compulsory education laws from 1915 to 1939 as instruments for education the results suggest that education has a causal impact on mortality and that this effect is perhaps larger than has been previously estimated in the literature copyright 2005 wiley blackwell

the determinants of mortality mortality rates have fallen dramatically over time starting in a few countries in the 18th century and continuing to fall today in just the past century life expectancy has increased by over 30 years at the same time mortality rates remain much higher in poor countries with a difference in life expectancy between rich and poor countries of also about 30 years this difference persists despite the remarkable progress in health improvement in the last half century at least until the hiv aids pandemic in both the time series and the cross section data there is a strong correlation between income per capita and mortality rates a correlation that also exists within countries where richer better educated people live longer we review the determinants of these patterns over history over countries and across groups within countries while there is no consensus about the causal mechanisms we tentatively identify the application of scientific advance and technical progress some of which is induced by income and facilitated by education as the ultimate determinant of health such an explanation allows a consistent interpretation of the historical cross country and within country evidence we downplay direct causal mechanisms running from income to health

does longer compulsory schooling affect mental health evidence from a british reform abstract in this paper we examine whether longer compulsory schooling has a causal effect on mental health exploiting a 1972 reform which raised the minimum school leaving age from age 15 to 16 in great britain using a regression discontinuity design we find that the reform did not improve mental health we provide evidence that extending the duration of compulsory schooling impacts mental health through channels other than increased educational attainment we argue that these effects may mitigate or offset the health returns to increased educational attainment

do dropouts drop out too soon wealth health and happiness from compulsory schooling abstract this paper uses compulsory schooling laws to evaluate high school dropout decisions the main empirical result is that lifetime wealth increases by about 15 with an extra year of compulsory schooling students compelled to stay in school are also less likely to report being in poor health unemployed and unhappy the main conclusion is that high school aversion alone is unlikely to explain why dropouts forgo substantial gains to lifetime wealth the results are more consistent with the possibility that adolescents ignore or heavily discount future consequences when deciding to drop out of school if teenagers are myopic making school compulsory or offering incentives to stay in school may help improve lifetime outcomes

political quid pro quo agreements an experimental study we experimentally study the common wisdom that money buys political influence in the game one special interest i e a corporate firm has the opportunity to influence redistributive tax policies in her favor by transferring money to two competing candidates the success of the investment depends on whether or not the candidates are willing and able to collude on low tax policies that do not harm their relative chances in the elections in the experiment successful political influence never materializes when the firm and candidates interact just once by contrast it yields substantially lower redistribution in about 40 of societies with finitely repeated encounters however investments are not always profitable and profit sharing between the firm and candidates depends on prominent equity norms our experimental results shed new light on the complex process of buying political influence in everyday politics and help explain why only relatively few firms do actually attempt to influence policymaking

schooling and citizenship in a young democracy evidence from postwar germany this paper examines whether schooling has a causal impact on individuals political interest voting turnout democratic values political involvement and political membership using two national representative samples between 1949 and 1969 the number of compulsory years of schooling was increased from eight to nine years in the federal republic of germany gradually over time and across federal states these legislative changes allow one to investigate the causal impact of years of schooling on citizenship in a young democracy years of schooling are found to be positively correlated with a broad range of citizenship outcomes however when exogenous increase in schooling through legislative changes is used there is little evidence of a causal efiect several potential explanations are examined 1 poor or apolitical teaching practices in the post war period 2 shortages of qualifled teachers and adequate teaching material 3 extra curricular civic education and 4 whether civic knowledge might have been acquired prior to the increase in schooling the estimates reject the flrst three explanations whereas ample historical evidence is in favour of the hypothesis that the fundamentals of democracy were learned already earlier in school

lobbying and welfare in a representative democracy this paper studies the impact of lobbying on political competition and policy outcomes in a framework which integrates the citizen candidate model of representative democracy with the menu auction model of lobbying positive and normative issues are analysed on the positive side lobbying need have little or no effect on policy outcomes because voters can restrict the influence of lobbyists by supporting candidates with offsetting policy preferences on the normative side coordination failure among lobbyists can result in pareto inefficient policy choices in addition by creating rents to holding office lobbying can lead to excessive entry into electoral competition

location matters daylight saving time and electricity demand the primary rationale for daylight saving time dst has long been energy savings whether it achieves this goal however remains a subject of debate recent studies examining only one location at a time have shown dst to increase decrease or leave overall energy use unchanged rather than concluding the effect is ambiguous this paper is the first to test for heterogeneous regional effects based on differences in natural sun times and societal waking hours using a rich hourly data set and quasi experimental methods applied across canadian provinces this paper rationalizes the differing results finding region specific effects consistent with differences in sun times and waking hours dst increases electricity use in regions with late sunrises and early waking hours

a dual self model of impulse control we propose that a simple dual self model gives a unified explanation for several empirical regularities including the apparent time inconsistency that has motivated models of quasi hyperbolic discounting and rabin s paradox of risk aversion in the large and small the model also implies that self control costs imply excess delay as in the o donoghue and rabin models of quasi hyperbolic utility and it explains experimental evidence that increased cognitive load makes temptations harder to resist the base version of our model is consistent with the gul pesendorfer axioms but we argue that these axioms must be relaxed to account for the effect of cognitive load

dynamic common agency a general model of dynamic common agency with symmetric information is considered the set of truthful markov perfect equilibrium payoffs is characterized and the efficiency properties of the equilibria are established a condition for the uniqueness of equilibrium payoffs is derived for the static and the dynamic game the payoff is unique if and only if the payoff of each principal coincides with his marginal contribution to the social value of the game the dynamic model is applied to a game of agenda setting

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

compulsory schooling laws and school crime extensive literature demonstrates that compulsory schooling laws improve educational attainment well being civic involvement and labour market outcomes however at risk youth incapacitated to schools may impact the learning environment and school safety the purpose of this article is to study whether raising the minimum dropout age mda requirement above 16 increases crime committed within us public high schools a difference in difference estimation exploits changes in state level mda laws over time and indicates that schools in states that raise their mda requirement to 18 incur more overall crime relative to schools in states that do not while no effect on overall crime is identified when the mda requirement is raised to 17 furthermore these effects persist for 4 years after passage and more intensely in metropolitan areas coupling this research with existing literature suggests that when the mda requirement is raised to 18 only a small portion of the observed reduction in juvenile crime is

weighing the military option the effects of wartime conditions on investments in human capital serving in the military is an important vehicle through which young americans invest in their human capital as such changes in the desirability of military service may affect the attainment of enlistment requirements such as a high school degree or equivalent using american community survey data we find that exposure to home state combat fatalities during the iraq and afghanistan wars decreased the probability of high school completion and increased the probability of general equivalency diploma completion using military data we confirm that exposure to home state fatalities selectively deterred some individuals from enlisting the results suggest military service and educational investments are complements jel i20 i26 j24

the impact of alternative grade configurations on student outcomes through middle and high school abstract we use statewide administrative data from florida to estimate the impact of attending public schools with different grade configurations on student achievement through grade 10 based on an instrumental variable estimation strategy we find that students moving from elementary to middle school suffer a sharp drop in student achievement in the transition year these achievement drops persist through grade 10 we also find that middle school entry increases student absences and is associated with higher grade 10 dropout rates transitions to high school in grade 9 cause a smaller one time drop in achievement but do not alter students performance trajectories

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings we establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter of birth as an instrument for education the instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary least squares estimate suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates every developed country in the world has a compulsory schooling requirement yet little is known about the effect these laws have on educational attainment and earnings 1 this paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to estimate the impact of compulsory schooling laws in the united states the experiment stems from the fact that children born in different months of the year start school at different ages while compulsory schooling laws generally require students to remain in school until their sixteenth or seventeenth birthday in effect the interaction of school entry requirements and compulsory schooling laws compel students born

the effects of the 2006 tuition fee reform and the great recession on university student dropout behaviour in the uk abstract this paper investigates the causal effect of the great recession and a conditional effect of a tuition fee reform on the risk of students dropping out of he we use hesa data and our analysis combines duration modelling with difference in differences we find that the causal effect of the recession increases the risk of drop out especially for males a smaller and positive effect of the tuition fee reform for males whereas we observe the opposite effect for females differences in dropout behaviour are also found for high and low income groups and between different types of university and subjects studied

does daylight saving time save energy evidence from a natural experiment in indiana abstract we take advantage of a natural experiment in the state of indiana to estimate the effect of daylight saving time dst on residential electricity consumption our main finding is that contrary to the policy s intent dst increases electricity demand the findings are consistent with simulation results that identify a trade off between reducing demand for lighting and increasing demand for heating and cooling we estimate a cost to indiana households of 9 million per year in increased electricity bills we also estimate social costs of increased pollution emissions between 1 7 to 5 5 million per year

education lifetime labor supply and longevity improvements this paper presents an analysis of the differential role of mortality for the optimal schooling and retirement age when the accumulation of human capital follows the so called ben porath mechanism we set up a life cycle model of consumption and labor supply at the extensive margin that allows for endogenous human capital formation this paper makes two important contributions first we provide the conditions under which a decrease in mortality leads to a longer education period and an earlier retirement age second those conditions are decomposed into a ben porath mechanism and a lifetime human wealth effect vs the years to consume effect finally using us and swedish data for cohorts born between 1890 and 2000 we show that our model can match the empirical evidence

investing in schools capital spending facility conditions and student achievement abstract public investments in repairs modernization and construction of schools cost billions however little is known about the nature of school facility investments whether it actually changes the physical condition of public schools and the subsequent causal impacts on student achievement we study the achievement effects of nearly 1400 capital campaigns initiated and financed by local school districts comparing districts where school capital bonds were either narrowly approved or defeated by district voters overall we find little evidence that these school capital campaigns improve student achievement event study analysis focused on the students actually affected by large campus renovations also generates very precise zero estimates of achievement effects thus u s school capital campaigns financed by local districts the predominant method through which facility investments are made may be a limited tool for realizing substantial gains in student achievement or closing achievement gaps

electoral competition and special interest politics have fixed positions on some issues but vary their positions on others in order to attract votes and campaign contributions in this context we examine whether special interest groups are governed by an electoral motive or an influence in their campaign giving and how their contributions affect the equilibrium platforms we show that each party is induced to behave as if it were maximizing a weighted sum of the aggregate welfares of informed voters and members of special interest groups the party that is expected to win a majority of seats caters more to the special interests

on coalition proof nash equilibria in common agency games abstract in this paper we consider two notions of a coalitional deviation strict deviation where each of member of a deviating group is better off and weak deviation where at least one member of a deviating group is better off while all other members are at least as well off we then examine for the class of common agency games introduced in bernheim and whinston quart j econ 101 1986 1 31 the structure and properties of two notions of a coalition proof nash equilibrium generated by strict and weak deviation we also study a relationship between coalition proof equilibria strong equilibria and pareto undominated nash equilibria journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d79

the effect of education on crime evidence from prison inmates arrests and self reports we estimate the effect of high school graduation on participation in criminal activity accounting for endogeneity of schooling we begin by analyzing the effect of high school graduation on incarceration using census data instrumental variable estimates using changes in state compulsory attendance laws as an instrument for high school graduation uncover a significant reduction in incarceration for both blacks and whites when estimating the impact of high school graduation only ols and iv estimators estimate different weighted sums of the impact of each schooling progression on the probability of incarceration we clarify the relationship between ols and iv estimates and show that the weights placed on the impact of each schooling progression can explain differences in the estimates overall the estimates suggest that completing high school reduces the probability of incarceration by about 76 percentage points for whites and 3 4 percentage points for blacks we corroborate these findings using fbi data on arrests that distinguish among different types of crimes the biggest impacts of graduation are associated with murder assault and motor vehicle theft we also examine the effect of drop out on self reported crime in the nlsy and find that our estimates for imprisonment and arrest are caused by changes in criminal behavior and not educational differences in the probability of arrest or incarceration conditional on crime we estimate that the externality of education is about 14 26 of the private return to schooling suggesting that a significant part of the social return to education comes in the form of externalities from crime reduction

generalizations about using value added measures of teacher quality the extensive investigation of the contribution of teachers to student achievement produces two generally accepted results first there is sub stantial variation in teacher quality as measured by the value added to achievement or future aca demic attainment or earnings second variables often used to determine entry into the profession and salaries including post graduate schooling experience and licensing examination scores appear to explain little of the variation in teacher quality so measured with the exception of early experience together these findings underscore explicitly that observed teacher characteristics do not represent teacher quality

identity and schooling some lessons for the economics of education abstract this review culls noneconomic literature on education by sociologists anthropologists and practitioners to present a new economic theory of students and schools this theory elaborates two themes that have eluded economic analysis first is the student as decision maker whose primary motivation is her identity second is a conception of the school as a social institution this framework suggests a new perspective on questions such as resource allocation and school reform it explains why some educational policies succeed and others fail we show how sociological variables may affect outcomes and suggest ways economists can incorporate them into theoretical and empirical research

campaign finance regulation with competing interest groups abstract regulatory caps on contributions to political campaigns are the cornerstones of campaign finance legislation in many established democracies and their introduction is considered by most emerging ones are these regulations desirable this paper studies contribution caps in a menu auction lobbying model with limited budgets and costly entry in the absence of entry contribution caps improve welfare by leveling the political playing field with entry however a competition effect and a bargaining effect may arise resulting in inefficient entry and exit decisions in particular a cap may lead to worse policies than the status quo and even if better policies are chosen the resulting gain in welfare may be more than offset by the entry costs regulation can also lead to the simultaneous entry of competing groups creating costly rent seeking on issues previously unaffected by lobbying

disruption versus tiebout improvement the costs and benefits of switching schools most students change schools at some point in their academic careers but some change very frequently and some schools experience a great deal of turnover while many argue that mobility harms students economists tend to emphasize tiebout type moves to procure better school quality sq this paper disentangles the disruption effects of moves from changes in sq importantly it identifies the negative externality movers impose on other students student turnover is shown to entail a substantial cost for movers and non movers alike this cost appears to be larger for lower income and minority students who typically attend much higher turnover schools

neighborhood effects on crime for female and male youth evidence from a randomized housing voucher experiment the moving to opportunity mto demonstration assigned housing vouchers via random lottery to public housing residents in five cities we use the exogenous variation in residential locations generated by mto to estimate neighborhood effects on youth crime and delinquency the offer to relocate to lower poverty areas reduces arrests among female youth for violent and property crimes relative to a control group for males the offer to relocate reduces arrests for violent crime at least in the short run but increases problem behaviors and property crime arrests the gender difference in treatment effects seems to reflect differences in how male and female youths from disadvantaged backgrounds adapt and respond to similar new neighborhood environments

estimating the variance of wages in the presence of selection and unobserved heterogeneity abstract identification of potential wage distributions by education is important to the study of the causal links between education inequality and uncertainty potential wage inequality within an educational group that is the variance in wages if all workers had the same education exceeds the observed statistics because self selected education truncates wage distributions decomposing potential wage inequality into heterogeneity known to the agent making the educational choice and uncertainty unknown to the agent suggests that wage uncertainty does not necessarily rise with education it is unobserved heterogeneity not uncertainty that explains the observed relationship between college graduation and higher wage inequality

estimating average and local average treatment effects of education when compulsory schooling laws really matter the change to the minimum school leaving age in the united kingdom from 14 to 15 had a powerful and immediate effect that redirected almost half the population of 14 year olds in the mid twentieth century to stay in school for one more year the magnitude of this impact provides a rare opportunity to a estimate local average treatment effects late of high school that come close to population average treatment effects ate and b estimate returns to education using a regression discontinuity design instead of previous estimates that rely on difference in differences methodology or relatively weak instruments comparing late estimates for the united states and canada where very few students were affected by compulsory school laws to the united kingdom estimates provides a test as to whether instrumental variables iv returns to schooling often exceed ordinary least squares ols because gains are high only for small and peculiar groups among the more general population i find instead that the benefits from compulsory schooling are very large whether these laws have an impact on a majority or minority of those exposed

inefficient equilibria in lobbying lobbying is often represented as a common agency game common agency games typically have multiple equilibria one class of equilibria called truthful has been identified by bernheim and whinston quarterly journal of economics 1986 101 1 1 31 in this paper we identify another class of equilibria which we call natural in which each principal offers a positive contribution on at most one alternative we run an experiment on a common agency game for which the two equilibria predict a different equilibrium alternative the alternative predicted by the natural equilibrium is chosen in 65 of the matches while the one predicted by the truthful equilibrium is chosen in less than 5 of the matches 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

does daylight saving time save electricity evidence from slovakia abstract the european union has recently decided to stop the policy of biannual clock changes in 2021 one reason is that the original rationale for the policy energy savings is not supported by a large portion of recent empirical studies whether the new permanent time will be standard time or the former daylight saving time has not been decided evidence on energy savings from daylight saving time is country specific and each country may choose its own time we examine the effects of the policy in a country for which no studies on daylight saving exist slovakia using hourly data from the 2010 2017 period we apply a difference in differences approach and estimate energy savings to equal 1 of annual electricity consumption alternatively extrapolating the effect from the results of a previous meta analysis on different countries for slovakia we obtain a smaller estimate unlikely to exceed 0 5 moreover our findings suggest that daylight saving time smooths the electricity demand curve

priceless the nonpecuniary benefits of schooling copyright 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 by the american economic association permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of american economic association publications for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not distributed for profit or direct commercial advantage and that copies show this notice on the first page or initial screen of a display along with the full citation including the name of the author copyrights for components of this work owned by others than aea must be honored abstracting with credit is permitted the author has the right to republish post on servers redistribute to lists and use any component of this work in other works for others to do so requires prior specific permission and or a fee permissions may be requested from the american economic association administrative office by going to the contact us form and choosing copyright permissions request from the menu copyright 2016 aea

damned if you do and damned if you don t two masters abstract we study common agency problems in which two principals groups make costly commitments to incentives that are conditioned on imperfect signals of the agent s action our framework allows for incentives to be either rewards or punishments for our basic model we obtain a unique equilibrium which typically involves randomization by both principals greater similarity between principals leads to more aggressive competition the principals weakly prefer punishment to rewards sometimes strictly with rewards an agent voluntarily joins both groups with punishment it depends on whether severe punishments are feasible and cheap for the principals we study whether introducing an attractive compromise reduces competition between principals our framework of imperfect monitoring offers a natural perturbation of the standard common agency model of menu auctions which results in sharper equilibrium predictions the limit equilibrium prediction provides support to both truthful equilibria and the competing notion of natural equilibria which unlike the former may be inefficient

immigration and the human capital of natives large low skilled immigration flows influence both the distribution of local school resources and also local relative wages which exert counterbalancing pressures on the local return to schooling i use the national education longitudinal study nels 88 and u s census data to show that low skilled immigration to an area induces local natives to improve their performance in school attain more years of schooling and take jobs that involve communication intensive tasks for which they native english speakers have a comparative advantage these results point out mechanisms that mitigate the potentially negative effect of immigration on natives wages