the kogut and singh national cultural distance index time to start using it as a springboard rather than a crutch this counterpoint investigates the continued relevance of the 30 year old kogut and singh ks index of cultural distance ks was a seminal contribution highlighting the relevance of cultural differences in ib however since then simplistic replications of the original arguments and index have prevented us from progressing towards a better understanding of how cross national differences matter we discuss the mechanisms underlying the construct and how they relate to the algorithm data and its critiques we call for more theoretically informed approaches highlighting the underlying mechanisms and specifying which data and algorithms best capture those mechanisms in each research context

do female gender role attitudes affect labour market participation in egypt abstractwe analyse the inter generational relationship of attitudes towards gender roles and their impact on individuals labour market participations in egypt we find a strong correlation between mothers and daughters perceptions of gender roles unlike the existing literature perceptions are not associated with the labour market status even if we control for endogeneity issues using an instrumental variable regression furthermore higher educated females are more likely to be unemployed in egypt these results imply that perceptions among females are not translated into their labour market behaviour and the supply side policies alone may not be sufficient for improving young women s employment opportunities

keep your friends close the effect of local social networks on child human capital outcomes abstract social networks can affect demand for human capital investments by relaxing household time or budget constraints or by defining and reinforcing human capital preferences however empirically identifying the effect of social networks on human capital investment is usually problematic because households self select their networks in ways that may be correlated with their abilities to make these investments in northern ugandan internally displaced persons camps networks were not entirely self selected rebel activity which forced households into camps in 2002 disrupted pre existing social networks in ways that were exogenous to household human capital preferences this paper uses the exogenous variation in network disruption to identify a positive impact of networks on children s long term nutritional outcomes

natural groups and economic characteristics as driving forces of wage discrimination we investigate whether the origin of an employee provides different motives for wage discrimination in gift exchange experiments with students and migrant workers in china in a lab and an internet experiment subjects in the role of employers can condition their wages on the employees home provinces the resulting systematic differences in wages can be linked to natural groups and economic characteristics of the provinces in group favoritism increases wages for employees who share the same origin as the employer while an increased probability of being matched with an employee with a different ethnicity reduces wages furthermore wages in the laboratory increase with the actual wage level in the employees home province nevertheless employees effort is not influenced by these variables only the wage paid in the experiment influences effort

recognition redistribution and liberty abstract this paper examines the relationship between redistribution recognition and liberty in particular it critiques the existing approaches in the critical literature that either reduces redistribution to a simple subset of recognition or insists that recognition is both necessary and sufficient for redistribution to occur it argues instead that the introduction of the relatively weak assumption of minimal individual liberty is required for recognition and that while recognition is necessary it is insufficient for redistribution it also considers the sustainability of voluntary redistribution in a liberal society and voluntary recognition in an authoritarian society finally the approach is applied to the problems of discrimination genocide and ethnic conflict

the introduction of formal insurance and its effect on redistribution abstract transfers motivated by altruism guilt and norms of giving play an important role in supporting individuals who suffer losses due to risk we present empirical evidence from an artefactual field experiment in ethiopia in which we introduce formal insurance in a setting where donors make redistributive transfers to recipients who experience losses we find that donors tend to reduce their transfers to recipients who are offered insurance whether or not they take it up when insurance is rejected by a recipient transfer reductions are larger for donors who firmly expect that the recipient would take up insurance the results are consistent with a framework in which the introduction of insurance erodes norms of giving by revealing differences in the extent to which individuals value precautionary behavior with respect to risk taking welfare calculations show that when formal insurance is introduced the welfare of those who fail to take it up may be reduced

the effects of moral licensing and moral cleansing in contingent valuation and laboratory experiments on the demand to reduce externalities recent field experiments show that peer information can induce people to reduce their production of negative externalities related work in psychology demonstrates that inducing feelings of relative culpability in one domain can induce spillover pro social behavior in another domain we use a contingent valuation and parallel lab experiment to explore patterns of cross domain responses to norm based interventions asymmetric responses between those whose impacts are above or below the norm are found to be robust across decision settings substantial heterogeneity in responses is observed across a number of dimensions not explored in large field experiments raising questions about the universality of peer information effects and the design of such programs

the impact of group membership on cooperation and norm enforcement evidence using random assignment to real social groups due to incomplete contracts efficiency of an organization depends on willingness of individuals to take non selfish actions such as cooperating when there is no incentive to do so or punishing inefficient actions by others organizations also constitute a social boundary or group we investigate whether this social aspect of organizations has an important benefit fostering unselfish cooperation and norm enforcement within the group but also whether there is a dark side in the form of hostility between groups our experiment provides the first evidence free from the confounding effect of self selection into groups individuals are randomly assigned to different platoons during a four week period of officer training in the swiss army we conduct choice experiments simultaneous prisoner s dilemma games with and without third party punishment in week three random assignment significantly increases willingness to cooperate with fellow platoon members assignment does not lead to hostility in the sense of vindictive punishment of outsiders but does affect norm enforcement enhancing willingness to enforce a norm of cooperation towards fellow platoon members this suggests that the social aspect of organizations motivates efficient behavior even when ordinary incentives fail and helps to explain practices designed to foster social ties or group identification within an organization this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

racial discrimination in the labor market theory and empirics we review theories of race discrimination in the labor market taste based models can generate wage and unemployment duration differentials when combined with either random or directed search even when strong prejudice is not widespread but no existing model explains the unemployment rate differential models of statistical discrimination based on differential observability of productivity across races can explain the pattern and magnitudes of wage differentials but do not address employment and unemployment at their current state of development models of statistical discrimination based on rational stereotypes have little empirical content it is plausible that models combining elements of the search models with statistical discrimination could fit the data we suggest possible avenues to be pursued and comment briefly on the implication of existing theory for public policy jel j15 j31 j64 j71

understanding ethnic identity in africa evidence from the implicit association test iat abstract we use a variant of the implicit association test iat to examine individuals implicit attitudes towards various ethnic groups using a population from the democratic republic of congo we find that the iat measures show evidence of an implicit bias in favor of one s own ethnicity individuals have implicit views of their own ethnic group that are more positive than their implicit views of other ethnic groups we find this implicit bias to be quantitatively smaller than the explicit bias one finds when using self reported attitudes about different ethnic groups

volatility spillovers between oil prices and stock sector returns implications for portfolio management abstract in this article we take a recent generalized var garch approach to examine the extent of volatility transmission between oil and stock markets in europe and the united states at the sector level the empirical model is advantageous in that it typically allows simultaneous shock transmission in the conditional returns and volatilities insofar as volatility transmission across oil and stock sector markets is a crucial element for portfolio designs and risk management we also analyze the optimal weights and hedge ratios for oil stock portfolio holdings with respect to the results our findings point to the existence of significant volatility spillover between oil and sector stock returns however the spillover is usually unidirectional from oil markets to stock markets in europe but bidirectional in the united states our back testing procedures finally suggest that taking the cross market volatility spillovers estimated from the var garch models often leads to diversification benefits and hedging effectiveness better than those of commonly used multivariate volatility models such as the ccc garch of bollerslev 1990 the diagonal bekk garch of engle and kroner 1995 and the dcc garch of engle 2002

behavioral spillover effects from a social information campaign abstract we investigate whether a social information campaign aimed at reducing water use causes a spillover effect on the use of electricity on average water use decreased by 6 percent for the treatment group we identify a positive spillover effect on electricity use among households that had efficient use of water before the campaign the effect is sizeable almost a 9 percent reduction we argue that these results are consistent with a model of cognitive dissonance where the efficient households infer information about electricity use from the water use information

students perceptions of teacher biases experimental economics in schools we put forward a new experimental economics design with monetary incentives to estimate students perceptions of grading discrimination we use this design in a large field experiment which involved 1 200 british students in grade 8 classrooms across 29 schools in this design students are given an endowment they can invest on a task where payoff depends on performance the task is a written verbal test which is graded non anonymously by their teacher in a random half of the classrooms and graded anonymously by an external examiner in the other random half of the classrooms we find significant evidence that students choices reflect perceptions of biases in teachers grading practices our results show systematic gender interaction effects male students invest less with female teachers than with male teachers while female students invest more with male teachers than with female teachers interestingly female students perceptions are not in line with actual discrimination teachers tend to give better grades to students of their own gender results do not suggest that ethnicity and socioeconomic status play a role

social identity and governance the behavioral response to female leaders this paper uses data from artefactual field experiments and surveys conducted in 61 villages in india to examine whether men and women respond differently to women as leaders we investigate the extent to which behavior towards female leaders is influenced by experience with women in leadership positions we find evidence of significant male backlash against female leaders which can be attributed to the transgression of social norms and in particular a violation of male identity when women are assigned to positions of leadership through gender based quotas increased exposure to female leaders reduces the extent of bias

housework wages and the division of housework time for employed spouses while the popular press may have declared housework passe with the advent of the two income household see housework is obsolescent by barbara ehrenreich 1993 for one such example the facts indicate that housework continues to consume a substantial amount of time particularly for women while estimates vary widely depending on the sample examined and the methods used to generate the information representative values of housework time range around 6 14 hours per week for men and 20 30 hours for women since wages are likely to be influenced both directly and indirectly by the time and effort devoted to other activities and since gender differences in household responsibilities are significant and often assumed to be a driving force behind gender earnings differentials decisions regarding the overall amount of time spent on housework and the division of that time within the household are important ones the goal of this paper is to shed some light on these allocation decisions we begin by discussing the various methods by which time and effort spent on housework may affect wages and summarize the available empirical evidence overall the empirical evidence indicates that time spent on housework has a negative effect on wages an effect which is most pronounced for women we next examine the amount of time spent on housework and the division of that time between working spouses to do so we draw upon the human capital literature and the bargaining literature to construct simple regression equations for time spent on housework by each spouse as well as the share of housework time contributed by the husband the results indicate that husbands do less housework than their wives as their relative earnings and hours spent in the labor market increase

cooperation when n is large evidence from the mining camps of the american west abstract the sources of cooperation in small groups are well documented there is however less understanding about cooperation in large groups i study the enforcement of property rights in the mining camps of the american west miners demanded secure property rights and protection from violence to exploit the region s mineral wealth in the model miners must divide their labor between mining and supporting property rights institutions the main prediction of the model is that cooperation in property rights enforcement emerges only when social norms of cooperation are sufficiently widespread the model also predicts that social norms are less effective in mining camps with large populations or high labor productivity i test these predictions against detailed evidence from the letters diaries and reminiscences of miners in 25 camps in california colorado and montana and find that the evidence supports the predictions the results show that social norms can significantly lower the costs of collective action in large groups

on the dynamic effects of oil price shocks a study using industry level data abstract this paper analyzes the effects of oil price shocks on demand and supply in various industries the impulse responses of identified var models indicate that for industries that have a large cost share of oil such as petroleum refinery and industrial chemicals oil price shocks mainly reduce supply in contrast for many other industries with the automobile industry being a particularly important example oil price shocks mainly reduce demand the paper suggests that oil price shocks influence economic activities beyond that explained by direct input cost effects possibly by delaying purchasing decisions of durable goods

identity and the economics of organizations on plebes first day at west point called r day they strip down to their underwear their hair is cut off they are put in uniform they then must address an older cadet with the proper salute and with the statement sir new cadet doe reports to the cadet in the red sash for the first time as ordered plebes must stand and salute and repeat and stand and salute and repeat until they get it exactly right all the while being reprimanded for every tiny mistake in the summary of david lipsky 2003 pp 145 154 who spent four years tracking a company of cadets at west point on r day you surrender your old self in stages but r day is just the beginning of the training and personal re engineering that is to come so that west point graduates emerge four years later as loyal officers in the u s army lipsky shows that despite some failure this tough program is remarkably successful in creating officers with the will to lead in battle economists current picture of organizations and work incentives has no place for the west point program and the motivations it seeks to inculcate in recruits in a standard economic model an individual s preferences are fixed and utility depends only on pecuniary variables the army s aim at west point is to change cadets preferences they wish to inculcate non economic motives in the cadets so that they have the same goals as the u s army alternatively stated the goal of west point is to change the identity of the cadets so they will think of themselves above all else as officers in the u s army they will feel bad about themselves they will lose utility if they fall short of the ideals of such an officer this change in identity

gender role attitudes and the labour market outcomes of women across oecd countries this paper uses data from the world value surveys 1990 1995 1999 to investigate the impact of gender role attitudes and work values on women s labour market outcomes across 25 oecd countries anti egalitarian views are found to display the strongest negative association with female employment rates and the gender pay gap these views are however softening among recent cohorts on the other hand perceptions of women s role as homemakers which are likely formed in youth and linked to religious ideology are more persistent over time they could be implicated in the recent slowdown of the gender convergence in pay finally the unavoidable clash between family values and egalitarian views that takes the form of an inner conflict for many women the so called mother s guilt is another obstacle in the path towards greater gender equality in the labour market copyright 2005 oxford university press

explaining micro entrepreneurship in rural vietnam a multilevel analysis in the literature on entrepreneurship there is an ongoing debate about the impact of regional factors on the entrepreneurial process to date most of the empirical work on the influence of regional characteristics on entrepreneurship has focused on developed countries while empirical work that analyses the regional determinants of micro entrepreneurship in rural areas of emerging markets remains scare this paper uses three level binary logistic random intercept models to analyse the effects of explanatory factors at different levels on micro entrepreneurship in rural vietnam our analyses show that identifying the motivation behind starting a micro enterprise is a good way to split entrepreneurship into two groups namely opportunity and necessity driven entrepreneurship which are influenced by very different explanatory factors at different levels we find evidence that in rural areas of emerging markets the individual level dominates with regard to explaining both opportunity and necessity driven entrepreneurship nevertheless the regional level has a significant impact albeit only on opportunity driven entrepreneurship

inverse productivity or inverse efficiency evidence from mexico abstractusing a unique panel data set from rural mexico we find strong evidence of a negative relationship between farm size and both productivity and technical efficiency large farms not only have a lower value of output per hectare than small farms they also produce further from the efficiency frontier our findings suggest that in spite of the ongoing transformation of agricultural supply chains and economists recommendations for small farmers to exit crop production there may be sustained advantages for smallholder farms our analysis offers new insights into inverse farm size relationship the productivity efficiency relationship and the use of stochastic frontier techniques

the initiation and withdrawal of odd eighth quotes among nasdaq stocks an empirical analysis christie and schultz 1994 journal of finance 49 1813 1840 nd that market makers in many active nasdaq stocks avoid odd eighth quotes this paper studies 67 58 nasdaq stocks whose market makers initiate withdraw odd eighth quotes these regime shifts are often completed within the span of a day and coincide with dramatic changes in dollar percentage and e ective spreads in most cases we are unable to identify comparable changes in the costs of making markets we do identify long run changes in average prices that may provide a partial explanation however we also nd

social norms and random matching games abstract nash equilibrium has been tremendously useful in understanding economic problems in which strategic behavior is important the theoretical foundations of the solution concept often include the assumption that the game to be played is common knowledge an unrealistic assumption in games with many players we introduce the concept of norm equilibrium for random matching games a norm equilibrium is a nash equilibrium that relies on substantially less information than common knowledge of the game we use norm equilibria to provide a folk theorem for random matching games and to analyze increasing numbers of players in a random matching game journal of economic literature classification numbers c70 c72

environmental policy when consumers value conformity abstract we present a model of consumer behaviour when consumers value conformity and examine the implications for environmental policy the model shares a feature set out in dasgupta et al 2016 of having a structure of preferences for conformity which induces a mass of consumers to adhere exactly to a norm level of consumption clumping however we extend our previous analysis by analysing the conditions for the existence and potential uniqueness of consumption norms in doing so we introduce threshold effects whereby individuals adhere to a norm only if sufficiently many others do so taken together these have striking implications for environmental policy in the case where the norm good generates pollution emissions clumping means many individuals will not change behaviour unless the norm changes while threshold effects plus clumping means that it may be hard to change a norm we show that the use of pigovian taxes to control behaviour may be either ineffective or welfare reducing and that the optimal pigovian tax will work only if it is above some threshold level there are parameter values for which quantity based injunctive policies raise welfare relative to no intervention while optimal pigovian taxes would lower welfare

can t buy me love a field experiment exploring the trade off between income and caste status in an indian matrimonial market i introduction the relationship between economic motive and observance of discriminatory social customs is hardly new to economists this is implicit in the writings of becker 1957 1973 1974 on discrimination and other social customs and explicit in arrow s essay 1972 on discrimination and akerlof s work 1980 on the interactive relationship between economic incentives and discriminatory social customs as scholars like becker arrow and akerlof have investigated the relationship between economic incentives and the prevalence of custom based discrimination of which status based discrimination is an example it is natural to consult the related empirical evidence on the impact of economic incentives on the extent of status based discrimination surprisingly the extant empirical literature is mostly silent on how economic incentives may directly interact with status based discrimination 1 this is atypical as one would be hard pressed to find an issue as weighty as status based discrimination yet our knowledge in this aspect remains oddly limited our study aspires to rectify this gap this study investigates whether and what magnitude of economic incentive can diminish the incidence of status based discrimination by designing a controlled field experiment in an actual marketplace a reputable arranged marriage market that is conducted via newspaper advertisements the existing literature suggests that this market might be especially prone to strong discriminatory mate selection behavior based on the social identity status of an individual where caste identity of an individual is an easily measured indicator of social status the genesis of this discrimination can be attributed to a high status female s concern for a decline in her social status if she engages in a marital relationship with a low status male against this backdrop we ask whether a low status male could attempt to weaken this enduring form of discrimination by providing systematic economic incentive in the form of high monthly groom incomes to a high status female so that the former s marriage proposal receives preliminary consideration by the latter conditional on both individuals participation in this market the marketplace that we utilize is a well functioning arranged marriage market conducted via matrimonial advertisements in a widely circulated bengali language newspaper marriageable males in this market typically advertise their caste and income information among other attributes after these advertisements appear in the newspaper interested families contact the advertiser mostly in form of detailed letters expressing their interest in that advertisement this provides a confidential and reliable measure of first intent of the interested party in this case females therefore the conjunction of an exceptionally strong status based mate selection behavior a reputed market for arranged marriages and an exclusive correspondence process furnish us with a unique opportunity to investigate the main research hypothesis of our study to the best of our knowledge this is the first field experiment that exclusively focuses on how economic incentives can influence status based discrimination in an actual market 2 to operationalize the experiment we create nine unique matrimonial advertisements each representing a fictitious groom type 3 these potential grooms belong to one of the three blocks where each block contains three grooms from a given caste group we vary the caste status across these blocks we consider three different caste groups high middle and low strictly ranked so in the study region we vary the income features of grooms within a block we consider three different monthly income levels i e high medium and low that are considered feasible for each caste group in the study region furthermore we randomly assign other characteristics relevant for this market to all the potential grooms so that these features on average do not affect the behavior of responders

carbon geography the political economy of congressional support for legislation intended to mitigate greenhouse gas production over the last 5 years the u s congress has voted on several pieces of legislation intended to sharply reduce the nation s greenhouse gas emissions given that climate change is a world public bad standard economic logic would predict that the united states would free ride and wait for other nations to reduce their emissions within the congress there are clear patterns to who votes in favor of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions this paper presents a political economy analysis of the determinants of pro green votes on such legislation conservatives consistently vote against such legislation controlling for a representative s ideology representatives from richer districts and districts with a lower per capita carbon dioxide footprint are more likely to vote in favor of climate change mitigation legislation representatives from districts where industrial emissions represent a larger share of greenhouse gas emissions are more likely to vote no jel q54 q58 r50

the effects of oil price shocks on u s stock order flow imbalances and stock returns this paper investigates for the first time the effects of oil demand shocks and oil supply shocks on stock order flow imbalances leading to changes in stock returns through the estimation of a structural var model positive oil demand shocks are able to explain almost 36 of the observed variation in the daily average stock order flow imbalances measured by the buy sell trades ratio which consequently lead to a negative rather than positive stock returns reaction in contrast oil supply shocks exhibit a negative and marginally significant effect on stock order flow imbalances our aggregate analysis suggests that positive shocks on stock order flow imbalances are negatively related to stock returns these effects are stronger for oil related sectors when compared with the rest of the equities sectors

coordination of environmental policy for transboundary environmental problems abstract in order to reach a pareto optimal outcome with transboundary environmental problems there must be some kind of international environmental agreement one possibility is to have an international environmental agreement focusing directly on emissions in each country given such an agreement an important issue is whether one ought to supplement the agreement with some kind of policy coordination or if the choice of environmental policies should be left to each country to decide on unilaterally it is shown that under ideal conditions pareto optimality will be achieved without policies being coordinated across countries such ideal conditions include among other things that all markets including the labour market are competitive however if one has imperfect competition in goods markets or unemployment decentralized policy making may give an outcome which is not pareto optimal

an analysis of coordination mechanisms for the u s cash supply chain the overuse of its currency processing facilities by depository institutions dis has motivated the federal reserve fed to impose its new cash recirculation policy this overuse is characterized by the practice of cross shipping where a di both deposits and withdraws cash of the same denomination in the same business week in the same geographical area under the new policy which came into effect july 2007 the fed has imposed a recirculation fee on cross shipped cash the fed intends to use this fee to induce dis to effectively recirculate cash so that the societal cost of providing cash to the public is lowered to examine the efficacy of this mechanism we first characterize the social optimum and then analyze the response of dis under a recirculation fee levied on cross shipped cash we show that neither a linear recirculation fee which is the fed s current practice nor a more sophisticated nonlinear fee is sufficient to guarantee a socially optimal response from dis we then derive a fundamentally different mechanism that induces dis to self select the social optimum our mechanism incorporates a fairness adjustment that avoids penalizing dis that recirculate their fair share of cash and rewards dis that recirculate more than this amount we demonstrate that the mechanism is easy to implement and tolerates a reasonable amount of imprecision in the problem parameters we also discuss a concept of welfare preserving redistribution wherein the fed allows a group of dis to reallocate amongst themselves their deposits and demand if such a possibility does not increase societal cost finally we analyze the impact of incorporating the custodial inventory program another component of the fed s new policy

gender specific starting point bias in choice experiments evidence from an empirical study abstract in this paper we test whether preferences and willingness to pay estimates obtained in a choice experiment study are susceptible to starting point bias as is often the case in dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies on the basis of a multinomial probit model we find that preferences are indeed susceptible to starting point bias in a split sample design our results suggest that varying the price levels displayed in a so called instructional choice set presented prior to the actual preference eliciting choice sets significantly impacts respondents preferences and willingness to pay for protecting danish nature areas from new motorway development in particular our results show that the bias is gender specific only female respondents are significantly affected results further reveal that the impact of the starting point bias decays as respondents evaluate more and more choice sets this supports the discovered preference hypothesis and on the basis of this we suggest a number of ways to potentially mitigate the starting point bias

liquidity surprise volume and return premia in the oil market abstract we investigate oil market price dynamics in the context of the mixture of distributions hypothesis mdh our econometric model addresses autoregressive properties in returns the impact of surprise volume and conditional oil market return volatility as well as oil market liquidity in the conditional return equation surprise volume as a proxy of private information flow is shown to be unrelated to a set of standard market liquidity proxies oil return heteroscedasticity is found to be partly explained by surprise volume a finding that is consistent with the mdh our findings further show that both oil market liquidity as well as surprise volume shocks are priced in the oil market as such lower levels of lagged market liquidity relate to above average conditional returns surprise volume shocks are associated with lower conditional oil market returns jointly with higher contemporaneous conditional return volatility lagged market liquidity dominates conditional volatility in predicting conditional oil price returns

mitigating principal agent problems in base of the pyramid markets an identity spillover perspective the potential for profitably distributing products to previously underserved base of the pyramid bop markets as a means of poverty alleviation has received growing interest within the management field however such business models often struggle with the agency costs that arise between the firm and local sales agents as the institutions and infrastructure in bop markets make traditional contractual and monitoring mechanisms difficult and expensive to employ we present the results of two complementary studies which were both conducted with salespeople in rural guatemala the first study employed a quasi experimental field study combined with in depth interviews while the second study was a laboratory experiment the results of the studies suggest that identity based mechanisms can potentially mitigate agency costs through a positive identity spillover effect in multiproduct settings abstract from author

persistent parochialism trust and exclusion in ethnic networks decentralized groups such as close knit residential neighborhoods and ethnically linked businesses often achieve high levels of cooperation while engaging in exclusionary practices that we call parochialism we investigate the contribution of within group cultural affinity to the ability of parochial groups to cooperate in social dilemmas we analyze parochial networks in which the losses incurred by not trading with outsiders are offset by an enhanced ability to enforce informal contracts by fostering trust among insiders we show that there is a range of degrees of parochialism for which parochial networks can coexist with an anonymous market offering unrestricted trading opportunities

globalization and convergence in corporate governance evidence from infosys and the indian software industry in contrast to the much studied role of capital markets in fostering convergence in corporate governance practices worldwide we argue that the globalization of product and talent markets has affected corporate governance of firms in the indian software industry we model several possible reasons why a particular firm infosys has emerged as the exemplar of good corporate governance in india traditionally a backwater of corporate governance practices we further analyze the manner in which infosys has attempted to shape corporate governance practices in india more generally and why these attempts have had limited effects thus far

understanding preferences for income redistribution abstract recent research suggests that income redistribution preferences vary across identity groups we employ statistical learning methods that emphasize pattern recognition classification and regression trees cart and random forests randomforests to uncover what these groups are using data from the general social survey we find that out of a large set of identity markers only race gender age and socioeconomic class are important classifiers for income redistribution preferences further the uncovered identity groupings are characterized by complex patterns of interaction amongst these salient classifiers we explore the extent to which existing theories of income redistribution can explain our results but conclude that current approaches do not fully explain the findings

the anatomy of distributional preferences with group identity abstract the increasing diversity of societies raises questions about the consequences for redistributive preferences this paper assesses the impact of social identity on distributional preferences in a modified dictator game i estimate individual level utility functions with two parameters that govern the trade offs between equity and efficiency and giving to self and to other subjects on average put less weight on income of the out group the out group treatment also changes the distribution of equity efficiency concerns however the experiment also uncovers a large individual heterogeneity of preferences an analysis of garp violations reveals that choices in both treatments overwhelmingly stem from well behaved yet systematically different underlying utility functions hence the evidence presented here suggests that the rational choice approach is a useful tool for understanding the effect of social identity on preferences

oil prices exchange rates and emerging stock markets abstract while two different streams of literature exist investigating 1 the relationship between oil prices and emerging market stock prices and 2 the relationship between oil prices and exchange rates relatively little is known about the dynamic relationship between oil prices exchange rates and emerging market stock prices this paper proposes and estimates a structural vector autoregression model to investigate the dynamic relationship between these variables impulse responses are calculated in two ways standard and the recently developed projection based methods the model supports stylized facts in particular positive shocks to oil prices tend to depress emerging market stock prices and us dollar exchange rates in the short run the model also captures stylized facts regarding movements in oil prices a positive oil production shock lowers oil prices while a positive shock to real economic activity increases oil prices there is also evidence that increases in emerging market stock prices increase oil prices

us and them the origin of identity and its economic implications we investigate the origins of identity and the innate proclivity to draw a distinction between insiders and outsiders we propose an evolutionary explanation we argue that identity arises because it facilitates survival in an evolutionary setting we endogenize preferences and demonstrate that the evolutionarily stable preferences fashioned by natural selection would draw a distinction between insiders and outsiders we then work out the implications of such preferences in two contemporary scenarios one entailing rent seeking behavior and the other involving public good provision our results are in conformity with empirical evidence

oil price shocks and stock markets in the u s and 13 european countries abstract oil price shocks have a statistically significant impact on real stock returns contemporaneously and or within the following month in the u s and 13 european countries over 1986 1 2005 12 norway as an oil exporter shows a statistically significantly positive response of real stock returns to an oil price increase the median result from variance decomposition analysis is that oil price shocks account for a statistically significant 6 of the volatility in real stock returns for many european countries but not for the u s increased volatility of oil prices significantly depresses real stock returns the contribution of oil price shocks to variability in real stock returns in the u s and most other countries is greater than that of interest rate an increase in real oil price is associated with a significant increase in the short term interest rate in the u s and eight out of 13 european countries within one or two months counter to findings for the u s and for norway there is little evidence of asymmetric effects on real stock returns of positive and negative oil price shocks for oil importing european countries

upstream downstream transactions and watershed externalities experimental evidence from kenya abstract where environmental policies or projects seek behavioral change understanding underlying norms and preferences is essential to securing environmental outcomes this study models a payment for environmental services intervention in an experimental field laboratory in nyanza province kenya upstream and downstream individuals are paired in a standard investment game in which the upstream mover s investment represents land use decisions and the downstream mover responds with a choice of compensation payment the experimental intervention introduces an enforcement treatment on the downstream movers compensation decisions for a single round underlying social preferences and identity appear to shape individual transactions between upstream and downstream individuals upstream first movers are sensitive to the removal of the enforcement on their downstream partners in the second round and make decisions consistent with crowding out of social preferences the results suggest that environmental interventions may affect resource decisions for individuals who are not themselves direct targets of enforcement

oil and the macroeconomy since the 1970s economists have long been intrigued by empirical evidence that suggests that oil price shocks may be closely related to macroeconomic performance this interest dates back to the 1970s the 1970s were a period of growing dependence on imported oil unprecedented disruptions in the global oil market and poor macroeconomic performance in the united states thus it was natural to suspect a causal relationship from oil prices to u s macroeconomic aggregates since then a large body of work has accumulated that purports to establish this link on theoretical grounds and to provide empirical evidence in its support we do not attempt a comprehensive survey of this literature but rather provide an idiosyncratic synthesis of what we view as the key issues in this debate and the insights gained over the last 30 years the timing seems right for such an account although the experience of the 1970s continues to play an important role in discussions of the link between oil and the macroeconomy there have been a number of new oil price shocks since the 1970s notably the 1986 collapse of oil prices and the 2000 boom in oil prices as well as the oil price increases associated with the 1990 1991 gulf war and the 2003 iraq war given this richer case history we are arguably in a better position than two decades ago to distinguish the idiosyncratic features of each oil crisis from the systematic effects increases in oil prices have been held responsible for recessions periods of excessive inflation reduced productivity and lower economic growth in this paper we review the arguments supporting such views first we highlight some of the conceptual difficulties in assigning a central role to oil price shocks in explaining

can a common currency foster a shared social identity across different nations the case of the euro fostering the emergence of a european identity was one of the declared goals of the euro adoption now years after the physical introduction of the common currency we investigate whether there has been an effect on a shared european identity we use two different datasets in order to assess the impact of the euro adoption on the fostering of a self declared european identity we find that the effect of the euro is statistically insignificant we interpret this result as suggesting that the euro did not have the desired positive effect on feelings of european identity this result holds important implications for european policy makers it also sheds new light on the formation of social identities

a theory of dual labor markets with application to industrial policy discrimination and keynesian unemployment this paper develops a model of dual labor markets based on employers need to motivate workers in order to elicit effort from their workers employers may find it optimal to pay more than the going wage this changes fundamentally the character of labor markets the model is applied to a wide range of labor market phenomena it provides a coherent framework for understanding the claims of industrial policy advocates it also can provide the basis for a theory of occupational segregation and discrimination that will not be eroded by market forces finally the model provides the basis for a theory of involuntary unemployment

can gender quotas break down negative stereotypes evidence from changes in electoral rules abstract in this paper we analyze the effect of gender quotas on women s involvement in political activity by using a rich data set providing information on all italian local administrators who were elected from 1985 to 2007 gender quotas were introduced by law in italy in 1993 and were in force until 1995 because of the short period covered by the reform some municipalities never voted under the gender quota regime this allows us to identify a treatment and a control group and to estimate the effects of gender quotas by using a difference in differences estimation strategy our estimates show that women s representation in politics after the reform increased significantly more in municipalities that were affected by the reform than in municipalities that were not affected this result also holds true if we exclude from our analysis elections which took place during the period in which the reform was in force moreover the higher women s representation in gender quota municipalities is not related to the advantages that women who were elected during the reform have obtained from incumbency and does not seem to be driven by differences in temporal trends between southern and northern regions these findings suggest that affirmative actions can be of use in breaking down stereotypes against women

economics and identity this paper considers how identity a person s sense of self affects economic outcomes we incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior in the utility function we propose identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave we then construct a simple game theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions the paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace the economics of poverty and social exclusion and the household division of labor in each case the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis

social norms savings behavior and growth we argue that many goods and decisions are not allocated or made through markets we interpret an agent s status as a ranking device that determines how well he or she fares in the nonmarket sector the existence of a nonmarket sector can endogenously generate a concern for relative position in for example the income distribution so that higher income implies higher status moreover it can naturally yield multiple equilibria it is thus possible to explain differences in growth rates across countries without recourse to differences in underlying preferences technologies or endowments different social organizations lead to different reduced form preferences which lead to different growth rates

outside offers and the gender pay gap empirical evidence from the uk academic labour market using a unique data source on academic economist labour market experiences we explore gender pay and promotions in addition to earnings and productivity measures we have information on outside offers and perceptions of discrimination we find both a gender promotions gap and a within rank gender pay gap a driving factor may be outside offers men receive more outside offers than women of comparable characteristics and gain higher pay increases in response this may arise due to discrimination we find that perceptions of discrimination and also outside job applications correlate with an individual receiving earnings below that expected given their characteristics

how sensitive are consumer expenditures to retail energy prices abstract there is growing evidence that the primary effect of energy price shocks on the u s economy involves a reduction in consumer spending we quantify the direct effect on real consumption of unanticipated changes in discretionary income shifts in precautionary savings and changes in the operating cost of energy using durables the possibility of asymmetries in the response of real consumption to energy price shocks is also considered we demonstrate that linear models are consistent with the symmetric behavior of real consumption in 1979 when energy prices increased sharply and in 1986 when they fell sharply it is shown that historically energy price shocks have been an important factor in explaining u s real consumption growth but by no means the dominant factor

cultural identities and resolution of social dilemmas we report an experiment on payoff equivalent sequential provision and appropriation games with high and low caste indian villagers a central question is whether caste identities affect resolution of social dilemmas making caste salient elicits striking changes in behavior compared to baseline treatment with no information about others castes homogenous groups with high caste villagers are more successful in resolving social dilemmas than homogenous groups with low caste villagers the success of mixed caste groups is somewhere between which is inconsistent with a group identity model absent salient information on caste behavior is inconsistent with unconditional social preferences but as predicted by reciprocity jel c93 h41 z13

viewpoint on the generalizability of lab behaviour to the field abstract we can think of no question more fundamental to experimental economics than understanding whether and under what circumstances laboratory results generalize to naturally occurring environments in this paper we extend levitt and list 2006 to the class of games in which financial payoffs and doing the right thing are not necessarily in conflict we argue that behaviour is crucially linked to not only the preferences of people but also the properties of the situation by doing so we are able to provide a road map of the psychological and economic properties of people and situations that might interfere with generalizability of laboratory result from a broad class of games

distributive politics in china regional favouritism and expansion of construction land land conversion control in china remains in the shadow of the planned economy highly hierarchical governments fully control both land quotas and land approval which are indispensable for each add

a model of redistribution under social identification in heterogeneous federations abstract redistribution of resources to accommodate income heterogeneity within a federation is often fiercely debated e g belgium germany or the european union to help elucidate potential drivers behind such debates this article builds on social identity theory to develop a theoretical framework linking jurisdictional identification and preferences towards intra federation redistributive financial flows we show that federal rather than local identification can lead individuals to shift their redistribution preferences against their narrowly defined personal economic interest in contrast to predictions of standard models the sign and strength of this effect depends crucially not only upon individuals characteristics but also upon the social groups i e regions to which they belong we furthermore illustrate that federal rather than regional identification should be more widespread in poorer and or more populous regions within a federation but less common in regions which are very homogeneous internally or very dissimilar from the rest of the federation

order imbalance liquidity and market returns traditionally volume has provided the link between trading activity and returns we focus on a hitherto unexplored but intuitive measure of trading activity the aggregate daily order imbalance on the new york stock exchange signed order imbalances increase decrease following market declines rises which reveals that investors are contrarians on aggregate order imbalances in either direction either excess buy or sell orders reduce liquidity market wide returns are strongly affected by contemporaneous and lagged order imbalances market wide returns reverse themselves after high negative imbalance large negative return days the magnitude of this reversal is partially predictable from the level of the imbalance and return even after controlling for aggregate market volume and liquidity market returns are affected by order imbalance

the impact of oil price shocks on u s bond market returns abstract this paper examines the effect of the demand and supply shocks driving the global crude oil market on aggregate u s bond index real returns a positive oil market specific demand shock is associated with significant decreases in aggregate bond index real returns for 8 months following the shock a positive innovation in aggregate demand has a negative effect on real bond return that is statistically significant and becomes more adverse over 24 months structural shocks driving the global oil market jointly account for 27 1 of the variation in real bond returns at 24 month horizon a spillover index from rolling svar models is used to identify the interdependence between the oil market and bond returns the mean for this spillover index is 0 381 over 2001 01 2011 12 and 0 476 over september through december 2008 during the height of the global financial crisis

money or friends social identity and deception in networks abstract strategic communication occurs in virtually all committee decision environments theory suggests that small differences in monetary incentives between committee members can leave deception a strategically optimal decision crawford and sobel 1982 galeotti et al 2013 at the same time in natural environments social incentives can also play an important role in determining the way people share or withhold truthful information unfortunately little is known about how monetary and social incentives interact to determine truth telling we investigate this issue by first building a novel model and then testing its equilibrium predictions using laboratory data in the absence of social identity the model s predictions are supported there is more truthful communication between those who share monetary incentives than those who do not we find that the effect of identity is asymmetric sharing the same identity does not promote truth telling but holding different identities reduces truthfulness overall as compared to environments lacking social identity committees with both monetary and social incentives exhibit truthful communication substantially less frequently

fundraising intermediaries inhibit quality driven charitable donations charitable donations are frequently raised by an intermediary which accepts donations and subsequently sends the proceeds to the chairty for example a workplace campaign for united way a 5 km walk for susan g komen or buying cookies from a local troop for the girl scouts these fundraisers can greatly increase donations received by a given charity but how do they affect what types of charities we support this article shows intermediary fundraisers can make donors insensitive to differences in charity quality unattractive charities can receive the same financial support as an attractive charity in a series of across subject experiments when donations are framed as going directly to the charity unattractive charities receive fewer and smaller contributions relative to attractive charities however when donations for the same charities are collected by meaningless intermediary fundraising campaigns donations become indistinguishable across charities the fundraising campaign does not affect donor recall of charity identity or evaluation of charity quality it simply precludes donors from using these data in the donation decision follow up experiments suggest the results are driven by information overload jel a13 c91 c93 d61 d64 h41

cultural constraints on innovation based growth to what extent does the cultural composition of a society impose a constraint on its long run growth potential we study this question in the context of an innovation based model of growth where cultural attitudes are endogenously transmitted from one generation to the next focusing on attitudes regarding patience we analyze the two way interaction between economic growth and the intergenerational transmission of patience exploiting this interaction we compare the long run growth performance of a culturally heterogeneous society where patience is initially underrepresented in the population with a culturally homogeneous society where all agents are perfectly patient our main result is that in the absence of any intrinsic preferences of patient parents to transmit their attitudes to their children the development paths of the two societies are bound to diverge with the culturally heterogeneous society experiencing lower growth rates yet if patient parents ceteris paribus prefer their children to be patient like them we show that the two societies can in the long run grow at the same rate jel d91 e24 o30 o40 z10

gender biases in student evaluations of teaching abstract this article uses data from a french university to analyze gender biases in student evaluations of teaching sets the results of fixed effects and generalized ordered logit regression analyses show that male students express a bias in favor of male professors also the different teaching dimensions that students value in male and female professors tend to match gender stereotypes men are perceived by both male and female students as being more knowledgeable and having stronger class leadership skills which are stereotypically associated with males despite the fact that students appear to learn as much from women as from men

kinship incentives and evolution we analyze how family ties affect incentives with focus on the strategic interaction between two mutually altruistic siblings the siblings exert effort to produce output under uncertainty and they may transfer output to each other with equally altruistic siblings their equilibrium effort is non monotonic in the common degree of altruism and it depends on the harshness of the environment we define a notion of local evolutionary stability of degrees of sibling altruism and show that this degree is lower than the kinship relatedness factor numerical simulations show how family ties vary with the environment and how this a ects economic outcomes

a memoir and reflection knowledge and an evolutionary theory of the multinational firm 10 years later the production of the 1993 article awarded the jibs decade award was written during a time when ideas regarding knowledge and the international expansion of the firm confronted a hostile audience the sources of these ideas were directly related in winter s and roger s prior work but also to a broader literature on category errors and technology transfer the theory of the firm as a social community is a distinctly sociological theory and though sharing many key ideas with the resource based view that developed at the same time is deeply opposed to engineering conceptions of firms as legomodular pieces that can be easily shifted bought and sold we describe our individual biographies and the subsequent intellectual development of the

whose money is it anyway ingroups and distributive behavior abstract price theory is often used to explain reactions to rebates and subsidies that are meant to encourage charitable giving this paper describes the results of a laboratory experiment that tests standard price theory alongside an alternative perspective based on research on the perceptions and behavior of ingroups using a modified dictator game we find that rebates that decrease the price of giving only increase amounts given when they are exogenously funded by the experimenters when rebates are funded by members of one s group the decreased price of giving does not lead to increased amounts given the result suggests that the presence of an ingroup mentality can mediate the relationship between giving and price

competitive advantage through take back of used products abstract motivated by a recent antitrust ruling against hill rom one of the two dominant american suppliers of hospital beds we develop a stylized model to investigate the consequences of used product take back on firms industry and customers our findings suggest that by taking back and reselling refurbished products a manufacturer can increase both profit margins and sales to the detriment of a non interfering competitor in our model customers are always better off under product take back but it depends on the degree of competition whether firms use the benefits of take back primarily to increase their margins or to pass them on to the customers by lowering their prices the first firm to offer take back in some cases can deter its competitors from following this profitable strategy especially if it has an existing advantage in terms of lower production cost or higher market share contrary to the claim of hill rom s competitor we find a legitimate business justification for hill rom s reduction of new product prices

male female wage differentials in job ladders much of the male female wage differential exists because men and women are assigned to different jobs within narrow job categories there is no male female differential only a tortured taste theory of discrimination can reconcile these facts we argue that differential movement along job ladders entails comparative advantage so the ability standard for promotion is higher for women this implies that more able women will be passed over in favor of less able men women assumed to have the same ability distribution as men earn less the differential reflects females lower promotion probability not within job discrimination

cultural integration and its discontents a community s culture is defined by the preferences and equilibrium behaviours of its members contacts among communities alter individual cultures through two interrelated mechanisms behavioural adaptations driven by pay offs to coordination and preference changes shaped by socialization and self persuasion this paper explores the workings of these mechanisms through a model of cultural integration in which preferences and behaviours vary continuously it identifies a broad set of conditions under which cross cultural contacts promote cultural hybridization the analysis suggests that policies to support social integration serve to homogenize preferences across communities thereby undermining a key objective of multiculturalism yielding fresh insights into strategies pursued to influence cultural trends it also shows that communities benefit from having other communities adjust their behaviours

the culture of entrepreneurship abstract we study the cultural process through which a society inculcates an entrepreneurial spirit people work for a guaranteed wage or operate a firm whose risky return depends on business expertise the latter is culturally acquired within the family or outside and people may choose an occupation different from the one they were socialized into a cultural bias towards safer occupations from colonial and post colonial policies leads to stagnation where entrepreneurs do not upgrade technology because of their proficiency with existing methods an aggregate productivity shock can tip this economy towards growth led by established businesses a human capital shock where existing business expertise is less useful is more disruptive growth occurs through the emergence of a new class of entrepreneurs we conclude that culture is not destiny it adapts even when some cultural traits do not

historic sex ratio imbalances predict female participation in the market for politicians we analyze the long term effects of gender imbalances on female labor force participation in particular in the market for politicians we exploit variation in sex ratios the number of men divided by the number of women in a region across germany induced by wwii in the 1990 elections women were more likely to run for office in constituencies that had relatively fewer men in 1946 we do not find a significant effect of the sex ratio on the likelihood of a woman winning the election these results suggest that while women were more likely to run for a seat in parliament in constituencies with lower historical sex ratios voters were not more inclined to vote for them voter demand effects thus do not appear to be as strong as candidate supply effects

separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market this paper introduces the separate spheres bargaining model a new model of distribution within marriage it differs from divorce threat bargaining models e g manser brown mcelroy horney in that the threat point is not divorce but a noncooperative equilibrium within marriage this noncooperative equilibrium reflects traditional gender roles the predictions of our model thus differ from those of divorce threat bargaining models in the separate spheres model cash transfer payments to the mother and payments to the father can but need not imply different equilibrium distributions in existing marriages in the long run the distributional effects of transfer policies may be substantially altered by changes in the marriage market equilibrium

collective trust behavior this paper investigates trust behavior in situations where decision makers are large groups and the decision mechanism is collective theories from behavioral economics and psychology suggest that

energy conservation nudges and environmentalist ideology evidence from a randomized residential electricity field experiment nudges are being widely promoted to encourage energy conservation we show that while the electricity conservation nudge of providing feedback to households on own and peers home electricity usage works with liberals it can backfire with conservatives our regression estimates predict that a democratic household that pays for electricity from renewable sources that donates to environmental groups and that lives in a liberal neighborhood reduces its consumption by 3 percent in response to this nudge a republican household that does not pay for electricity from renewable sources and that does not donate to environmental groups increases its consumption by 1 percent

endophilia or exophobia beyond discrimination the discrimination literature treats outcomes as relative but does a differential arise because agents discriminate against others exophobia or because they favour their own kind endophilia using a field experiment that assigned graders randomly to students examinations that did did not contain names we find favouritism but no discrimination by nationality nor by gender we are able to identify these preferences under a wide range of behavioural scenarios regarding the graders that endophilia dominates exophobia alters how we should measure discriminatory wage differentials and should inform the formulation of anti discrimination policy

public goods provision and redistributive taxation abstract this paper studies the relationship between redistributive taxation and tax deductible charitable contributions redistribution has two opposite effects on voluntary giving the price of charitable giving decreases with the degree of redistribution and this has a positive effect on the total amount of giving substitution effect however redistribution leads to lower consumption for the contributors and therefore has a negative effect on contributions to the charity income effect the theoretical model developed in this paper demonstrates that under a general class of utility functions the substitution effect dominates the income effect hence charitable giving increases with the tax rate in purely egalitarian societies the public good is provided efficiently and the total welfare is maximized independent of the ex ante income inequality however the positive impact of taxation on charitable giving and welfare may disappear if individuals generate their income levels in anticipation of taxation and redistribution does not take into account the cost of effort

presidential address institutions and culture how and why does distant political and economic history shape the functioning of current institutions this paper argues that individual values and convictions about the scope of application of norms of good conduct provide the missing link evidence from a variety of sources points to two main findings first individual values consistent with generalized as opposed to limited morality are widespread in societies that were ruled by non despotic political institutions in the distant past second well functioning institutions are often observed in countries or regions where individual values are consistent with generalized morality and under different identifying assumptions this suggests a causal effect from values to institutional outcomes the paper ends with a discussion of the implications for future research jel a10 d7 e00

social comparisons status and driving behavior abstract the establishment of desirable social norms is an integral part of a well functioning civil society while recent evidence has demonstrated that social comparison can affect behavior in a variety of contexts it is not clear what type of comparative social information is most effective using a large scale field experiment to study driving practices we sent text messages containing different types of social information to drivers in tsingtao china we find two types of social information to be particularly effective in reducing traffic violations the driving behavior of those similar to oneself and the driving behavior of those with high status cars our results indicate that the combination of descriptive norms with social status is a cost effective yet powerful intervention for establishing better driving behavior in emerging markets

acting wife marriage market incentives and labor market investments do single women avoid career enhancing actions because these actions signal undesirable traits like ambition to the marriage market while married and unmarried female mba students perform similarly when their performance is unobserved by classmates on exams and problem sets unmarried women have lower participation grades in a field experiment single female students reported lower desired salaries and willingness to travel and work long hours on a real stakes placement questionnaire when they expected their classmates to see their preferences other groups responses were unaffected by peer observability a second experiment indicates the effects are driven by observability by single male peers