overreaction and underreaction in analysts forecasts abstract we examine hypotheses derived from behavioral decision theory regarding conditions that lead to overreaction and conditions that lead to underreaction in analysts earnings forecasts we argue that three heuristics jointly influence earnings forecasts leniency representativeness and anchoring and adjustment we present a model for the concurrent influence of these heuristics on forecast errors and examine three predictions of this model 1 that there is a tendency towards overreaction in forecast changes and underreaction in forecast revisions 2 that there is overreaction to positive forecast modifications and underreaction to negative forecast modifications and 3 that these biases increase with the forecast horizon

income generating effects of biofuel policies a meta analysis of the cge literature abstract while the production of biofuels has expanded in recent years findings in the literature on its impact on economic growth and development remain contradictory this paper presents a meta analysis of computable general equilibrium cge studies published between 2006 and 2017 on the effect of biofuel production on economic development worldwide using 30 cge studies we found that biofuel supportive policies generated significant impacts on gdp and household incomes cge studies included in our database reported an average 0 25 percentage point increase in gdp and a 0 49 percentage point increase in household incomes we also found that results were driven by several key features of the cge studies included in our database we investigated features such as biofuel type geographic area and characteristics of the cge models employed we found that biofuel expansion has heterogeneous effects in developed versus emerging countries simulations on longer time periods and in multi country studies led to results that indicate higher impacts of biofuel expansion on gdp growth and household incomes moreover simulations with an increase in agricultural productivity indicate positive welfare impact gains unlike simulations with land expansion lastly we found that biodiesel development leads to higher welfare impact gains than that of bioethanol

the use and abuse of meta analysis in environmental and natural resource economics an assessment motivated by the 2006 report of a work group appointed by the environmental protection agency epa this paper examines the present state of meta analysis in environmental economics and offers recommendations for its future use to this end we summarize and assess 140 meta analyses from 125 published and unpublished studies covering 17 topical categories in environmental and resource economics first we provide several generic meta analysis models as reference points and discuss major estimation issues five econometric issues are identified as part of a complete analysis 1 sample selection criteria 2 basic data summary 3 primary data heterogeneity 4 heteroskedasticity and 5 non independence of multiple observations from primary studies second a tabular summary is presented for the 140 meta analyses with respect to estimation methods third a narrative summary is presented for 19 meta analyses including the three value of statistical life studies examined by the epa work group and one analysis from each of 16 other categories fourth we offer a set of best practice guidelines for future meta analyses in this and other areas of economics last the paper comments on the use of meta analytic methods for benefit transfers of environmental values

cointegration relationships and hedonic pricing of differentiated commodities an application to price dynamics in the us dairy sector this study investigates the implications of hedonic pricing for price dynamics of differentiated commodities a conceptual model of hedonic pricing is developed under a leontief technology showing how commodity prices reflect the underlying value of their components implications for the existence of cointegration relationships among commodity prices are derived an application to the pricing and dynamics of selected us dairy commodities is presented it provides evidence on the role of component valuation in the dynamics of dairy commodity prices in the short run as well as in the long run distinguishing between market regime and government regime when the government price support is active the analysis finds significant differences in dairy price dynamics between the two regimes

family firm performance over the business cycle a meta analysis the financial performance of family firms has been widely studied in the literature combining the results of 155 primary studies from 35 countries with data about business cycles we investigate how family firm performance changes over the business cycle using meta analytic estimation methods we find that family firms outperform nonfamily firms in developed markets irrespective of economic circumstances this outperformance although statistically significant is very small and practically negligible with regard to the business cycle we find evidence for a procyclical effect in which the relative performance of family firms is lower in economically difficult times our study extends the literature on how family firm performance depends on macroeconomic factors

expert opinion and cuisine reputation in the market for restaurant meals as food is an experience good the market for restaurant meals is a market where the cost of acquiring information regarding quality is relatively high in such markets consumers often turn to reputation measures to guide purchase decisions as australia does not have a longstanding cuisine style of its own and given australia has been open to substantial immigration inflows since federation it represents an especially appropriate market to study regarding the impact of individual restaurant reputation and collective cuisine reputation on meal prices the following study uses the hedonic price approach to investigate the implicit price of individual reputation indicators cuisine type reputation indicators and other objective indicators in the market for restaurant meals the empirical findings presented suggest that both individual restaurant reputation and cuisine type reputation are important other important factors are shown to include the quality of the restaurant wine list the availability of pr

a meta analysis of the effects of remittances on household education expenditure abstract as a source of income remittances can be spent on consumption and investment the aim of this study is to quantify the effect of remittances on investment in education do remittances increase household education expenditure to answer this question we apply meta regression analysis to 1343 estimates of this effect drawn from 73 studies covering 30 countries our findings confirm the importance of economic resources to educational choices when the evidence base is corrected for sample selection reverse causality and research design differences the incidence of international remittances increases education expenditure by about 35 in most countries and by about 53 in latin america though remittances have no effect in eastern europe and east asia remittances from domestic migration have smaller effects on education expenditure than international remittances we find no differences in the effect between males and females

beyond publication bias abstract this review considers several meta regression and graphical methods that can differentiate genuine empirical effect from publication bias publication selection exists when editors reviewers or researchers have a preference for statistically significant results because all areas of empirical research are susceptible to publication selection any average or tally of significant insignificant studies is likely to be biased and potentially misleading meta regression analysis can see through the murk of random sampling error and selected misspecification bias to identify the underlying statistical structures that characterize genuine empirical effect meta significance testing and precision effect testing pet are offered as a means to identify empirical effect beyond publication bias and are applied to four areas of empirical economics research minimum wage effects union productivity effects price elasticities and tests of the natural rate hypothesis

meta analysis of economics research reporting guidelines meta regression analysis mra can provide objective and comprehensive summaries of economics research their use has grown rapidly over the last few decades to improve transparency and to raise the quality of mra the meta analysis of economics research network maer net has created the below reporting guidelines future meta analyses in economics will be expected to follow these guidelines or give valid reasons why a meta analysis must deviate from them

heterogeneity and fine wine prices application of the quantile regression approach this study addresses the price heterogeneity of the five first growths of bordeaux we apply the quantile regression qr approach with market segmentation based on wine bottle price quantiles we

successful in the long run a meta regression analysis of persistent firm profits we study the profit persistence literature by applying meta regression analysis mra to a set of 36 empirical papers which analyze the persistence of abnormal firm profits over time the analyzed literature provides evidence for a mediocre degree of persistence in abnormal profits an initial analysis of the distribution of reported profit persistence estimates reveals some degree of excess variation this points toward publication bias that favors significant results independent of their algebraic sign the mra however reveals that publication bias is particularly favoring results that indicate profit persistence and thus contradict the neoclassical model of perfect competition moreover the mra enables to control for heterogeneity driven by the study design we find that the analyzed country developing vs developed the applied econometric approach as well as the analyzed period of time are significant drivers of heterogeneity in reported persistence estimates

does fdi actually affect income inequality insights from 25 years of research while there are 25 years of empirical research on how fdi may affect income inequality there is surprisingly no consensus on this issue in this paper we conduct a meta analysis on the effect of fdi on inequality using 543 empirical studies from 1995 to 2019 among various factors we find that the development level of the study country has the strongest influence on the direction in which fdi affects income inequality when the primary studies are sorted into three groups based on the gdp per capita of their sample areas the within group estimates on the effect of fdi on income inequality become strongly consistent with each other particularly we find that fdi is associated with higher inequality for the low income group has no statistically significant effect for the middle income group and is associated with lower inequality for the high income group this observation suggests that fdi may increase income inequality as a country initially develops but reduce inequality as development deepens

income inequality education expenditures and growth abstract recent studies have reported a negative association between income inequality and economic growth if true what accounts for this finding what are possible transition mechanisms that might link the two this paper explores one such mechanism income inequality raises expenditures for public education as a fraction of gross domestic product gdp although public education expenditures are positively associated with future economic growth the contemporaneous effect upon growth is negative given this cost upon current growth these findings may help to explain the lack of a large positive effect from the growth of human capital upon economic growth as reported in the literature

meta regression analysis a quantitative method of literature surveys abstract pedagogically literature reviews are instrumental they summarize the large literature written on a particular topic give coherence to the complex often disparate views expressed about an issue and serve as a springboard for new ideas however literature surveys rarely establish anything approximating unanimous consensus ironically this is just as true for the empirical economic literature to harmonize this dissonance we offer a quantitative methodology for reviewing the empirical economic literature meta regression analysis mra is the regression analysis of regression analyses mra tends to objectify the review process it studies the processes that produce empirical economic results as though they were any other social scientific phenomenon mra provides a framework for replication and offers a sensitivity analysis for model specification in this brief essay we propose a new method of reviewing economic literature mra and discuss its potential

education democracy and growth abstract this note presents a model of endogenous growth where redistribution determined by a political equilibrium is in the form of public education it is shown that there need not be a negative relationship between growth and redistribution as public education increases the level of human capital in the conomy and at the same time tends to produce a more even income distribution

the power of bias in economics research we investigate two critical dimensions of the credibility of empirical economics research statistical power and bias we survey 159 empirical economics literatures that draw upon 64 076 estimates of economic parameters reported in more than 6 700 empirical studies half of the research areas have nearly 90 of their results under powered the median statistical power is 18 or less a simple weighted average of those reported results that are adequately powered power 80 reveals that nearly 80 of the reported effects in these empirical economics literatures are exaggerated typically by a factor of two and with one third inflated by a factor of four or more

does government spending affect income poverty a meta regression analysis summary this paper presents the results of a meta regression analysis of the relationship between government spending and income poverty with a focus on low and middle income countries through a comprehensive search and screening process we identify a total of 19 cross country econometric studies containing 169 estimates of this relationship we find that the size and direction of the estimated relationship are affected by a range of factors most notably the composition of the sample used for estimation the control variables included in the regression model and the type of government spending overall we find no clear evidence that higher government spending has played a significant role in reducing income poverty in low and middle income countries this is consistent with the view that fiscal policy plays a much more limited redistributive role in developing countries in comparison with oecd countries in addition we find that the relationship between government spending and poverty is on average less negative for countries in sub saharan africa and more negative for countries in eastern europe and central asia compared to other regions we also find that the relationship is less negative for government consumption spending in comparison with other sectors finally we find some evidence indicating the possibility of publication bias

the approach of institutional economics this paper assesses the old institutional economics it emphasizes the importance of key old institutionalist themes concerning the necessity of habits and rules and the role of institutions a problem in the alternative theoretical program of the new institutionalism is the untenability of its assumption of an original institution free market or state of nature even optimizing behavior requires the prior existence of habits and rules although it still lacks a complete and systematic theory the evolutionary approach of the old institutionalists tackles the problem of the interactive relationship of actor to structure without analytical reduction to one or the other

wheat from chaff meta analysis as quantitative literature review abstract this paper presents and develops a quantitative method of literature reviewing and evaluating empirical research meta regression analysis or mra economics is theory driven yet we must learn empirically if economics is to advance mra offers a more objective statistical method to summarize our empirical knowledge and to explain the wide study to study variation in economic research mra is used to assess the evidence for ricardian equivalence and its findings are contrasted to those of conventional narrative review furthermore mra establishes a platform from which to distinguish genuine empirical effect from the exploitable specification error that infests applied econometrics

child care prices and maternal employment a meta analysis the literature estimates for labor force participation elasticity with regard to child care prices are extensive and varying while some estimates imply substantial gains from child care subsidies others find insignificant effects to determine the causes of the variance this paper reviews and analyzes the elasticity sizes using estimates from 36 peer reviewed articles and working papers in the literature we start by reviewing the theoretical and empirical aspects related to participation elasticity with regard to child care costs paying special attention to sample characteristics methodological aspects and macro level factors we conclude by providing a meta regression using control variables based on our review of the literature to explain some of the differences between the estimates as research builds on and improves the methods and assumptions in prior works elasticity estimates have become smaller over time this decline might also be partially explained by changes in labor market characteristics in countries with high rates of part time work and very high or very low rates of female labor force participation we find elasticity rates to be smaller

financial development and economic growth a meta analysis we analyze 1334 estimates from 67 studies that examine the effect of financial development on economic growth taken together the studies imply a positive and statistically significant effect but the individual estimates vary widely we find that both research design and heterogeneity in the underlying effect play a role in explaining the differences in results studies that do not address endogeneity tend to overstate the effect of finance on growth while the effect seems to be weaker in less developed countries the effect decreases worldwide after the 1980s our results also suggest that stock markets support faster economic growth than other financial intermediaries

governance and deforestation a meta analysis in economics abstract understanding which aspects of forest governance have the potential to effectively reduce deforestation is central to reversing trends in global deforestation there is a multitude of empirical studies examining this relationship using various measures of governance and study designs coming to diverse conclusions in order to identify the source of variation across studies this article conducts a meta analysis of 32 empirical cross country studies in the field of economics containing 227 estimates of the impact of different governance measures on deforestation using an ordered probit model we find that the choice of the governance measure is the main factor in explaining variations in the outcomes of the studies in particular studies using environmental policy ownership rights presence of environmental ngos and rule of law as measures of governance are more likely to find that better governance reduces deforestation in contrast studies using democracy and rights as a measure of governance are more likely to find that deforestation increases when governance is improved the finding that not all aspects of governance improvements are equally supportive of forest conservation suggests that more nuanced analyses of specific aspects of environmental governance are required to guide evidence based policy making

price determinants in top quality e auctioned specialty coffees we analyze the price determinants of specialty coffees traded at e auctions we hypothesize that since specialty coffees are a highly differentiated product prices will be determined by both sensory and reputation attributes to test our hypotheses we estimate a hedonic price function using data from central and south american e auctions and calculate the implicit prices of sensory and reputation attributes the results show that market clearing prices are a function of sensory characteristics and reputation variables including third party quality ranking country of origin coffee variety and quantity the additional attribute information disclosed at e auctions results in substantially higher prices relative to conventional commodity coffee market prices

international corporate tax avoidance a review of the channels magnitudes and blind spots this paper reviews the rapidly growing empirical literature on international tax avoidance by multinational corporations it surveys evidence on main channels of corporate tax avoidance including transfer mispricing international debt shifting treaty shopping tax deferral and corporate inversions moreover it performs a meta analysis of the extensive literature that estimates the overall size of profit shifting we find that the literature suggests that for the most recent year a 1 percentage point lower corporate tax rate compared to other countries will expand before tax income by 1 5 percent an effect that is larger than reported as the consensus estimate in previous surveys and tends to be increasing over time the literature on tax avoidance still has several unresolved puzzles and blind spots that require further research

a meta analysis of fdi and productivity spillovers in developing countries markdownabstractthis meta analysis reviews the intrasector heterogeneity of productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment fdi in 31 developing countries through a larger more comprehensive data set we investigate how the inconsistencies in the reported spillover findings are affected by publication bias characteristics of the data estimation techniques and empirical specification analyzing 1450 spillover estimates from 69 empirical studies published in 1986 2013 our findings suggest that reported fdi spillover estimates are affected by publication bias in combination with model misspecification of the primary studies the bias overstates the genuine underlying meta effect but the meta effect remains economically and statistically significant our results emphasize that spillovers and their sign largely depend systematically on specification characteristics of the primary studies and publication bias publication bias is not caused by best practice choices future research needs to cover more developing countries and to investigate not only whether spillovers occur but also to explore inside the black box of how spillovers actually emerge

loss function assumptions in rational expectations tests on financial analysts earnings forecasts abstract prior research concludes that financial analysts do not process public information efficiently in generating their earnings forecasts the ordinary least squares ols regression based tests used in prior studies assume implicitly that analysts face a quadratic loss function in contrast we argue that analysts likely face a linear loss function and hence try to minimize their absolute forecast errors we conduct and compare rational expectations tests using these two alternative loss functions we reproduce most prior findings of forecast inefficiency with ols regressions but find virtually no evidence of forecast inefficiency with least absolute deviation regressions where we explicitly assume a linear loss function

motivations to remit evidence from botswana in this article a theory of motivations to send remittances is described and tested with data from botswana altruism is one of the motivations tested and found to be an insufficient explanation for remittances among migrants in botswana a refinement of the model stipulates a modified altruism or enlightened self interest in this model the relationship between the migrant and family is tempered by an implicit understanding of mutual benefit the household strategy may be to encourage some members to migrate as a means of spreading risk and sharing gains the household strategy is similar to an insurance policy where migration is to places where market potential is high the risks incurred might be high the example is given of migration during a drought in botswana migrant remittances were greater in households with more cattle or households with more to lose drought alone was not statistically related to remittances increases in remittances were related to increased levels of education it is suggested that repayment was the motive for parents investment in migrants education migrants gains are identified as the potential for an inheritance the security of channeling investments through a trusted family member and security in having a home to return to it is pointed out that the altruism and family remittances from urban migration were strategies that bridged the simple dynamic of either urban development or rural development impacting on family welfare it is suggested that household models of economy adopt some measure to express the relationship of household wealth to remittances from urban migrants

returns to education in china a meta analysis within labour economics returns to education is an area of focused research moreover amongst studies looking at emerging economies china is the most widely studied economy while there is a gen

the value of multiple reviews expert opinion aids consumers purchasing a good they have no personal experience with previous research has found little to no impact of expert opinion on price evidence from panels of cigar reviewers shows that the explanatory power of the experts rating improves as more reviews are used

education and economic growth a meta regression analysis summary this paper surveys the literature which examines the effect of education on economic growth specifically we apply meta regression analysis to 57 studies with 989 estimates and show that there is substantial publication selection bias toward a positive impact of education on growth once we account for this the genuine growth effect of education is not homogeneous across studies but varies according to several factors specifically it is attributed to differences in education measurement and study characteristics mainly model specification as well as type of data used and the quality of research outlets where studies are published e g academic journals vs working papers

bank competition and financial stability much ado about nothing the theoretical literature gives conflicting predictions on how bank competition should affect financial stability and dozens of researchers have attempted to evaluate the relationship empirically we collect 598 estimates of the competition stability nexus reported in 31 studies and analyze the literature using meta analysis methods we control for 35 aspects of study design and employ bayesian model averaging to tackle the resulting model uncertainty our findings suggest that the definition of financial stability and bank competition used by researchers influences their results in a systematic way the choice of data estimation methodology and control variables also affects the reported coefficient we find evidence for moderate publication bias taken together the estimates reported in the literature suggest little interplay between competition and stability even when corrected for publication bias and potential misspecifications this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

taste or reputation what drives market prices in the wine industry estimation of a hedonic model for italian premium wines the aim of this article is to provide new evidence on the factors affecting wine prices on both methodological and factual grounds on the methodological ground this study is the first to apply a general box cox transformation within the context of hedonic models which exploit all the variables objective and sensorial characteristics reputation pointed out by previous literature as relevant in driving market prices on the factual ground the article fills the lack of empirical evidence on the issue for italy one of the leading wine producers by using a large data set on two premium quality wines barolo and barbaresco covering the 1995 1998 vintages our results support the evidence obtained using data from other countries showing that sensorial traits the reputation of wines and producers as well as objective variables are all important factors influencing the consumers willingness to pay more importantly by resorting to a nonnested statistical test vuong 1989 we compare two alternative

key market values for bottled wine in an emerging market product attributes or business strategy this article focuses on the emerging bottled chilean red wine market and studies the main determinants of the consumer price of wine sold on the domestic market a hedonic price function was estima

do jurisdictions compete on taxes a meta regression analysis a sizable empirical literature examines government fiscal interactions however the empirical evidence is very mixed we apply meta regression analysis to quantify the size of inter jurisdictional fiscal interactions and to explain the heterogeneity in empirical estimates several robust results emerge while there are significant country differences tax interactions exist in all countries studied and they are strongest in terms of total tax and weakest in terms of income tax interactions differ according to level of government compared to the municipal level horizontal tax competition is stronger when the jurisdiction is a county or a nation we show that tax competition has actually not grown over time and that econometric specifications and estimation strategies influence reported fiscal interactions

reporting guidelines for meta analysis in economics meta analysis has become the conventional approach to synthesizing the results of empirical economics research to further improve the transparency and replicability of the reported results and to raise the quality of meta analyses the meta analysis of economics research network has updated the reporting guidelines that were published by this journal in 2013 future meta analyses in economics will be expected to follow these updated guidelines or give valid reasons why a meta analysis should deviate from them

estimation of a hedonic price equation for burgundy wine a hedonic price equation and two jury grade equations are estimated for burgundy wine the approach is the same as in an earlier bordeaux wine paper combris et al 1997 the data come from an experimental study that is very similar to the study on bordeaux wines the results for the two wine growing regions are compared and discussed

publication selection and the income elasticity of the value of a statistical life abstract estimates of the value of a statistical life vsl establish the price government agencies use to value fatality risks transferring these valuations to other populations often utilizes the income elasticity of the vsl which typically draw on estimates from meta analyses using a data set consisting of 101 estimates of the income elasticity of vsl from 14 previously reported meta analyses we find that after accounting for potential publication bias the income elasticity of value of a statistical life is clearly and robustly inelastic with a value of approximately 0 25 0 63 there is also clear evidence of the importance of controlling for levels of risk differential publication selection bias and the greater income sensitivity of vsl from stated preference surveys

income elasticity of gasoline demand a meta analysis abstract in this paper we quantitatively synthesize empirical estimates of the income elasticity of gasoline demand reported in previous studies the studies cover many countries and report a mean elasticity of 0 28 for the short run and 0 66 for the long run we show however that these mean estimates are biased upwards because of publication bias the tendency to suppress negative and insignificant estimates of the elasticity we employ mixed effects multilevel meta regression to filter out publication bias from the literature our results suggest that the income elasticity of gasoline demand is on average much smaller than reported in previous surveys the mean corrected for publication bias is 0 1 for the short run and 0 23 for the long run

estimation of a hedonic price equation for bordeaux wine does quality matter in this paper the hedonic price technique is applied to bordeaux wine in the hedonic price function we include not only the objective characteristics appearing on the label of the bottle but also the sensory characteristics of the wine our data come from an experimental study in which juries have evaluated and graded a sample of bordeaux wines the estimation of the hedonic price equation shows that the market price is essentially determined by the objective characteristics the estimation of a jury grade equation shows that quality unlike the market price is essentially determined by the sensory characteristics

testing the rationality of japanese gdp forecasts the sign of forecast revision matters abstract this paper analyzes the rationality of japanese gdp forecasts of individual economists it finds that japanese forecasters are pessimistic optimistic when their forecast revisions frs are positive negative and that they always over react to new information across forecasters the magnitude of average fr is not correlated with the magnitude of average forecast errors fe these results together are consistent with neither the rational expectations hypothesis nor reputation models with rational and strategic forecasters

what to show on the wine labels a hedonic analysis of price drivers of sicilian wines unlike previous literature we construct a hedonic model of wine price that incorporates all the main categories of variables simultaneously to enable a better evaluation of their importance on wine price formation a comprehensive model has the advantage of providing more reliable estimates of the attributes implicit prices thereby facilitating firms pricing and improving effectiveness of wine production and marketing decisions we utilize two different datasets of sicilian wines collecting data from influential wine guides our results suggest that wine price strongly depends on objective features such as vintage alcoholic content geographical origin grape variety producer size and cellaring potential in addition use of containers like tonneaux and barrique positively affects prices whereas use of concrete containers has a negative influence no univocal indications emerge with regard to the effect of the type of company type of viticulture and firm age as for sensorial characteristics our a

impact of informal institutions on the prevalence strategy and performance of family firms a meta analysis family controlled firms fcfs prevalence strategies and performance differ across countries we explain these differences through the lens of informal institutions suggesting that different countries have different levels of appreciation for family business to capture this effect we introduce the construct of family business legitimacy fbl and an associated index fbli we empirically measure fbli scores for 83 countries spanning both developed and emerging economies by combining meta analytic and archival data we show that fcfs prevail follow unique strategies and outperform non fcfs in countries with high fbli scores as a new contingency variable fbl advances the literature on the informal institutional embeddedness of organizations and family business

does ict generate economic growth a meta regression analysis despite phenomenal technological progress and exponential growth in computing power economic growth remains comparative sluggish in this paper we investigate two core issues 1 is there really no connection between ict and national economic growth and 2 what factors moderate the ict growth relationship we apply meta regression analysis to 466 estimates drawn from 59 econometric studies that explore the solow or productivity paradox that there is little impact of ict on economic growth and productivity we explore the differential impact of ict on developed and developing countries and the differential impact of different types of ict landlines cell phones computer technology and internet access after accommodating potential econometric misspecification bias and publication selection bias we detect evidence that ict has indeed contributed positively to economic growth at least on average both developed and developing countries benefit from landline and cell technologies with cell technologies growth effect approximately twice as strong as landlines however developed countries gain significantly more from computing than do developing countries in contrast we find little evidence that the internet has had a positive impact on growth

which fiscal multipliers are regime dependent a meta regression analysis we analyse whether estimated multiplier effects are systematically higher if the economy suffers a downturn for that purpose we conduct a meta regression analysis on a unique data set of 98 empirical studies with more than 1800 observations on multiplier effects and control for regime dependence of the multiplier we find that spending multipliers are much higher by about 0 7 0 9 units during a downturn tax multipliers are not sensitive to the economic regime and generally lower than spending multipliers finally for all spending categories other than government consumption the multiplier significantly exceeds one during downturns

micro data heterogeneity and the evaluation of public policy nobel lecture this paper summarizes the contributions of microeconometrics to economic knowledge four main themes are developed 1 microeconometricians developed new tools to respond to econometric problems raised by the analysis of the new sources of micro data produced after the second world war 2 microeconometrics improved on aggregate time series methods by building models that linked economic models for individuals to data on individual behavior 3 an important empirical regularity detected by the field is the diversity and heterogeneity of behavior this heterogeneity has profound consequences for economic theory and for econometric practice 4 microeconometrics has contributed substantially to the scientific evaluation of public policy

the financial development and growth nexus a meta analysis this is the accepted manuscript the final version is available from wiley at http onlinelibrary wiley com doi 10 1111 joes 12086 abstract

are women really more risk averse than men a re analysis of the literature using expanded methods while a substantial literature in economics and finance has concluded that women are more risk averse than men this conclusion merits investigation after briefly clarifying the difference between making generalizations about groups on the one hand and making valid inferences from samples on the other this essay suggests improvements to how economists communicate our research results supplementing findings of statistical significance with quantitative measures of both substantive difference cohen s d a measure in common use in non economics literatures and of substantive overlap the index of similarity newly proposed here adds important nuance to the discussion of sex differences these measures are computed from the data on men women and risk used in 35 scholarly works from economics finance and decision science the results are considerably more mixed and overlapping than would commonly be inferred from the broad claims made in the literature with standardized differences in means mostly amounting to considerably less than one standard deviation and the degree of overlap between male and female distributions generally exceeding 80 in addition studies that look at contextual influences suggest that these contribute importantly to observations of differences both between and within the sexes

the effect of fdi on environmental emissions evidence from a meta analysis one important and frequently raised issue about foreign direct investment fdi is the potentially negative consequences for the environment the potential environmental cost due to increased emissions may undermine the economic gains associated with increases in fdi inflow although the literature is dominated with this adverse view of fdi on the environment there is also a possibility that fdi can contribute to a cleaner environment especially if fdi comes with green technologies and this creates spillovers for domestic industries theoretically the effect of fdi on the environment can be negative or positive to deal with the theoretical ambiguity about the fdi environment nexus many empirical studies have been conducted but their results only reinforce the controversy as they produce contrasting results we conduct a meta analysis of the effect of fdi on environmental emissions using 65 primary studies that produce 1006 elasticities our results show that the underlying effect of fdi on environmental emissions is close to zero however after accounting for heterogeneity in the studies we find that fdi significantly reduces environmental emissions results remain robust after disaggregating the effect for countries at different levels of development as well as for different pollutants

how auctions work for wine and art interview auctioneers and even to buy a little wine in the meantime i have also had the opportunity with john abowd 1988 to observe and collect data on the auction sale of impressionist and contemporary paintings this paper reports on some of the empirical regularities that i and others have observed in the actual operation of the auction markets for these items in view of the rich and diverse array of theoretical literature on auctions it seems high time economists began to spell out precisely what facts it is meant to explain 2

quality indicators in theory and in fact abstract in recent literature it has been suggested that consumers need have no knowledge of product quality as a number of quality indicators or signals may be used as substitutes very little attention has been paid to the empirical verification of these studies the present paper is devoted to the issue of how well these indicators perform using market data provided by consumer magazines from 3 countries the results strongly indicate that price is a poor quality indicator the paper also presents some evidence which suggests that seller reputation and easily observable characteristics are also poor indicators

the threat effect of active labor market programs a systematic review this paper is a systematic review of the threat effect of active labor market programs for unemployed individuals the threat effect is the induced change in the hazard rate of leaving unemployment prior to program participation studies included in the review all estimated a threat effect with the participants in all cases being unemployed individuals in receipt of benefit of some kind during their tenure of unemployment eight of these studies have been included in a meta analysis the meta analysis which has been carried out using a random effects model to account for heterogeneity indicated a hazard ratio of 1 25 for the pooled estimate we conclude that active labor market programs constitute a statistically significant threat effect although it is modest

the pricing of experience goods the example of en primeur wine the market for primeur wine in the bordeaux region allows producers to sell wine that is still in barrels as with all experience goods producers send quality signals to uninformed buyers using original data on bordeaux wines we show that the pricing behavior of producers depends to a large extent on their reputation and much less on short term changes in quality as measured by experts grades we also find that the primeur price has an informative role since a 10 increase in primeur price leads to a 3 increase in prices on the market for bottled wine

which agglomeration externalities matter most and why this paper revisits the ongoing discussion on the importance of agglomeration externalities specifically specialization diversity and competition effects that may contribute to innovation productivity and urban employment growth previous meta analyses suggested that the evidence on agglomeration externalities is strongly context specific expanding an earlier analysis of 31 articles we seek to draw in this paper more robust conclusions by means of the statistical evidence for agglomeration externalities presented in 73 scientific articles all building on the seminal work of glaeser et al 1992 our results confirm that the heterogeneity among studies is huge and can only be partially accounted for by means of an ordered probit analysis additionally some evidence of publication bias is found we conclude that the conventional lines of inquiry in this literature may now have reached strongly diminishing returns new lines of inquiry using rich micro level data on firms and workers dynamic general equilibrium models at the macro level more attention for spatial and temporal variation in the impacts of agglomeration and further investigations into the spatial scope of externalities are promising avenues for further research that can enhance our understanding of how agglomeration externalities continue to fuel our increasingly urbanized world

is food and drug administration policy governing artisan cheese consistent with consumers preferences abstract united states government policy prohibits the sale of cheese made from unpasteurized milk aged less than 60 days despite contested science behind the policy we use experimental auctions for artisan cheese to estimate the value of pasteurization and age as food safety attributes which is the rationale for the policy we also look at consumers perception of the tradeoff between safety and quality a survey was conducted with participants at farmers markets including experimental auctions and sensory analysis of pasteurized and unpasteurized cheese and questions concerning attitudes about food safety there is no evidence of positive demand for pasteurization and there is no evidence of a tradeoff between safety and quality on average artisan cheese consumers make purchasing decisions based on taste not their attitude toward food safety the results of this study raise questions about the possible extension of a minimum aging period for cheese made from unpasteurized milk

how closely do top income shares track other measures of inequality in recent years researchers have used taxation statistics to estimate the share of total income held by the richest groups such as the top 10 or the top 1 compiling a standardised top income shares dataset for 13 developed countries i find that there is a strong and significant relationship between top income shares and broader inequality measures such as the gini coefficient this suggests that panel data on top income shares may be a useful substitute for other measures of inequality over periods when alternative income distribution measures are of low quality or unavailable

understanding how experts rate cigars a havanometric analysis drawing on data from an annual french guidebook published in 2004 this article focuses on the determinants of experts ratings on cuban cigars we find that high quality cigars are more likely to be recommended to more experienced cigar lovers both the self assessed quality and recommendation depend on the length and diameter of the cigars but also on more subjective characteristics like number and type of aromas results from a fields decomposition show that the quality of cigars is much more sensitive to the presence of a defect and number of aromas than the experts recommendation which is more influenced by the rarity of cigars finally it is essentially the cigars objective characteristics that have an influence on their prices meaning that consumers truly benefit from additional qualitative information when reading experts advice and ratings

measuring consumption efficiency with utility theory and stochastic frontier analysis the concept of production efficiency has been studied since the 1960s but consumption activity as well may be inefficient for various reasons such as product complexity lack of information the bounded rationality of the consumer and imperfect markets to name a few this study proposes a conceptual framework for measuring the consumption efficiency of differentiated products based on traditional utility theory it employs stochastic frontier analysis sfa in an empirical analysis it makes use of hedonic price theory to link traditional utility theory and the sfa framework when the developed model is applied to the korean personal computer market empirical results indicate the levels and distribution of consumption efficiency in that market the findings afford us a better understanding of the characteristics of the innovation process in that market

does government spending affect income inequality a meta regression analysis in this paper findings of a meta regression analysis are presented exploring the effects of government spending on income inequality with a particular focus on low and middle income countries we identify a total of 84 separate studies containing over 900 estimates of the effect of one or more measures of spending on one or more measures of income inequality the results show some evidence of a moderate negative relationship between government spending and income inequality which is strongest for social welfare and other social spending and when using the gini coefficient or the top income share as the measure of inequality however both the size and direction of the estimated relationship between government spending and income inequality is affected by a range of other factors including the control variables and estimation method used we also find evidence of publication bias in that negative estimates of the relationship appear to be under reported in the literature

does education reduce income inequality a meta regression analysis this paper reexamines the effects of education on inequality through a comprehensive meta regression analysis of the extant empirical literature we find that education affects the two tails of the distribution of income education reduces the income share of top earners and increases the share of the bottom earners education has been particularly effective in reducing inequality in africa some of the results suggest that secondary schooling appears to have a stronger effect than primary schooling though this finding is not always robust the heterogeneity in reported estimates can be largely explained by differences in the specification of the econometric model and measure of inequality and education

the effectiveness of r d subsidies a meta regression analysis of the evaluation literature widespread and increasing public subsidy for research and development r d has given rise to a large and growing number of evaluation studies while economic theory identifies market failures that justify public support theory also suggests reasons why returns might be disappointing similarly the empirical literature investigated 52 micro level studies published since 2000 on either input or output r d reports a wide range of findings the lack of conclusiveness both of theory and of the evaluation literature motivate this meta regression analysis mra this study contributes to policy debate by identifying a representative subsidy effect after controlling for publication selection bias and for a wide range of sample and study heterogeneities mra findings reject crowding out of private investment by public subsidy but reveal no evidence of substantial additionality in addition among the research practices explaining the heterogeneous effects reported in this literature those related to the treatment of unobservable firm heterogeneity are particularly important

time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis author s david card and alan b krueger reviewed work s source the american economic review vol 85 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundredth and seventh annual meeting of the american economic association washington dc january 6 8 1995 may 1995 pp 238 243 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2117925 accessed 04 11 2011 15 46

the impacts of energy efficiency policies meta analysis abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively summarize the existing empirical evidence on the effects of energy efficiency policies on energy demand and on the price of associated durable goods as well as to identify the main factors that systematically affect the estimated impacts to this end a meta regression analysis of the effects of energy efficiency policies is carried out on the basis of an extensive review of the existing literature selecting those studies that analyze the impact of energy efficiency policies with respect to a business as usual setting taking into account the econometric problems associated with this type of analysis intra class correlation cross sectional dependence publication bias in pursuit of robust outcomes the results show that the studies analyzing the effects of energy efficiency policies estimate a significant impact of these policies on energy demand 10 5 8 8 and the price of related durable goods 7 9 6 the main factors that influence results are the policy instrument the targeted sector the type of country the analyzed period the consideration of free riders and the type of analysis data and publication energy demand and the sector and analyzed period price of durables

remittances household expenditure and investment in guatemala the author uses a large household data set from guatemala to analyze how the receipt of internal remittances from guatemala and international remittances from the united states affects the marginal spending behavior of households on various consumption and investment goods contrary to other studies the author finds that households receiving remittances actually spend less at the margin on consumption food and consumer goods and durables than do households receiving no remittances instead of spending on consumption households receiving remittances tend to spend more on investment goods like education health and housing the analysis shows that a large amount of remittance money goes into education at the margin households receiving internal and international remittances spend 45 and 58 percent more respectively on education than do households with no remittances these increased expenditures on education represent investment in human capital like other studies the author finds that remittance receiving households spend more at the margin on housing these increased expenditures on housing represent a type of investment for the migrant as well as a means for boosting local economic development by creating new income and employment opportunities for skilled and unskilled workers

testing bayesian updating with the associated press top 25 most studies of bayesian updating use experimental data this article uses a non experimental data source the voter ballots of the associated press college football poll a weekly subjective ranking of the top 25 teams to test bayes rule as a descriptive model i find that voters sometimes underreact to new information sometimes overreact and at other times their behavior is consistent with estimated bayesian updating a unifying explanation for the disparate results is that voters are more responsive to information that is more salient i e noticeable in particular voters respond in a more bayesian way to losses and wins over ranked teams as compared to wins over unranked teams and voters seem unaware of subtle variation in the precision of priors jel d80 d83 d84

the effectiveness of active labour market policies a meta analysis this paper provides a meta analysis of microeconometric evaluation studies on the effectiveness of active labor market policies the analysis is built upon a systematically assembled data set of causal impact estimates from 57 experimental and quasi experimental studies providing 654 estimates published between january 1990 and december 2017 we distinguish between the short and longer term impacts in our analysis at 6 12 24 and 36 months after program start after correcting for publication bias and country specific macroeconomic characteristics subsidized labor and public employment programs have negative short term impacts which gradually turn positive in the longer run schemes with enhanced services including job search assistance and training programs do not have these negative short term effects and stay positive from 6 until 36 months after program start

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

financial markets forecasts revisited are they rational stubborn or jumpy this paper evaluates professional forecasters behavior using a panel data of individual forecasts we find that i professional forecasts are behavioral and ii there exists a stock bond dissonance the forecasting behavior seems to be stubborn in the stock market but jumpy in the bond market even in the same country forecasting behavior is quite different by market

did fdi really cause chinese economic growth a meta analysis summary foreign direct investment fdi has been linked to economic growth in a number of countries productivity spillovers at the firm level have been identified as a key element in the process by which fdi stimulates economic growth moreover there is evidence of fdi related productivity spillovers in china whether these spillovers have been of sufficient size to affect growth at the aggregate level however is an empirical question we apply meta analysis to the corresponding empirical literature to find an answer our main finding is that the effect of fdi on chinese economic growth is much smaller than one would expect from a naive aggregation of existing estimates publication bias and a profusion of estimates based on less preferred study and sample characteristics have served to inflate observed estimates once these effects are accounted for the estimated effect of fdi on chinese economic growth is reduced to statistical insignificance this suggests that the cause s of the chinese economic miracle likely lie elsewhere

do stock markets react to soccer games a meta regression analysis this study applies meta regression analysis to aggregate a sample of 1126 empirical estimates of the stock market reaction to soccer matches collected from 37 primary studies our results indicate

enhanced geospatial validity for meta analysis and environmental benefit transfer an application to water quality improvements meta regression models are commonly used within benefit transfer to estimate willingness to pay wtp for environmental quality improvements theory suggests that these estimates should be sensitive to geospatial factors including resource scale market extent and the availability of substitutes and complements valuation meta regression models addressing the quantity of non market commodities sometimes incorporate spatial variables that proxy for a subset of these effects however meta analyses of wtp for environmental quality generally omit geospatial factors such as these leading to benefit transfers that are invariant to these factors this paper reports on a meta regression model for water quality benefit transfer that incorporates spatially explicit factors predicted by theory to influence wtp the metadata are drawn from stated preference studies that estimate per household wtp for water quality changes in united states water bodies and combine primary study information with extensive geospatial data from external sources results find that geospatial variables are associated with significant wtp variations as predicted by theory and that inclusion of these variables reduces transfer errors

natural resources and economic growth a meta analysis summary an important question in development studies is how natural resources richness affects long term economic growth no consensus answer however has yet emerged with approximately 40 of empirical papers finding a negative effect 40 finding no effect and 20 finding a positive effect does the literature taken together imply the existence of the so called natural resource curse in a quantitative survey of 605 estimates reported in 43 studies we find that overall support for the resource curse hypothesis is weak when potential publication bias and method heterogeneity are taken into account our results also suggest that four aspects of study design are especially effective in explaining the differences in results across studies 1 controlling for institutional quality 2 controlling for the level of investment activity 3 distinguishing between different types of natural resources and 4 differentiating between resource dependence and abundance

interest rate pass through a meta analysis of the literature the interest rate pass through describes how changes in a reference rate the monetary policy money market or t bill rate transmit to bank lending rates this paper reviews the empirical literature on the interest rate pass through and systematizes it by means of meta analysis and meta regressions the paper finds systematically lower estimated pass through coefficients in studies that focus on transmission to long term lending rates consumer lending rates and average lending rates the interest rate pass through is significantly influenced by country macro financial and institutional factors the estimated pass through tends to be stronger for economies with deeper capital markets measured by market capitalization interestingly central bank independence rising from lower levels can reduce interest rate pass through while central bank independence rising from already high levels can boost the pass through

international migration remittances and household investment evidence from philippine migrants exchange rate shocks how do households respond to overseas members economic shocks overseas filipinos in dozens of countries experienced sudden heterogeneous changes in exchange rates during the 1997 asian financial crisis appreciation of a migrant s currency against the philippine peso leads to increases in household remittances from overseas the estimated elasticity of philippine peso remittances with respect to the exchange rate is 0 60 positive migrant shocks lead to enhanced human capital accumulation and entrepreneurship in origin households child schooling and educational expenditure rise while child labour falls households also work more hours in self employment and become more likely to start relatively capital intensive household enterprises

educational expansion and the kuznets effect the objective in this note is to show the change in wage dispersion in response to increases in the relative supply of educated workers in two low income countries we also measure the relative contributions to that change of its two components the effect of the educational expansion on the educational composition of the labor force holding the educational structure of wages constant and the resultant compression of that structure holding composition constant the paper s analysis is based on three precisely comparable surveys of wage employees conducted in tanzania in 1971 and 1980 and in kenya in 1980

inflation targeting genuine effects or publication selection bias abstract this paper uses a meta regression analysis mra to evaluate the impact of publication selection bias as for the macroeconomic effects of inflation targeting it a popular approach to implementing monetary policy documented in the existing literature using 8 059 point estimates from 113 studies we show that a significant part of the documented positive effects of it on inflation and to some extent output growth volatility is in fact due to publication selection bias in particular results pointing to lower inflation volatility and higher real gdp growth tend to be favored by researchers as well as those pointing to statistically significant macroeconomic effects however even after controlling for these two types of biases we find it to be correlated with lower inflation and higher real gdp growth differently the evidence on the it inflation volatility relationship is found to be less clear

when do the usda forecasters make mistakes this study analysed forecasts for all us corn soya bean and wheat categories published within the world agricultural supply and demand estimates wasde reports over the 1987 88 through 2009 10 marketing years in an attempt to identify patterns and better understand when the usda forecasters make mistakes two general sources of errors were investigated behavioural and macroeconomic factors the first objective was to examine how these factors affect the size of the forecast error and the second concentrated on the direction of the error due to these effects our findings suggest that the largest increase in the size of usda forecast errors was associated with structural changes in commodity markets that took place in the mid 2000s corn soya bean and wheat forecast errors also grew during the periods of economic growth and with changes in exchange rates while inflation and changes in oil price had a much smaller impact with respect to behavioural sources we identified patterns consistent with leni

wine prices and quality ratings a meta regression analysis this article examines the empirical support for the hypothesized hedonic theoretical relation between the price of wine and its quality the examination considers over 180 hedonic wine price models developed over 20 years covering many countries the research identifies that the relation between the price of wine and its sensory quality rating is a moderate partial correlation of 0 30 this correlation exists despite the lack of information held by consumers about a wine s quality and the inconsistency of expert tasters when evaluating wines the results identify a moderate price quality correlation which suggests the existence of strategic buying opportunities for better informed consumers strategic price setting possibilities may also exist for wine producers given the incomplete quality information held by consumers the results from the meta regression analysis point to the absence of any publication bias and attribute the observed asymmetry in estimates to study heterogeneity the analysis suggests the observed heterogeneity is explained by the importance of a wine s reputation the use of the 100 point quality rating scale the analysis of a single wine variety style and the employed functional form the most important implication from the analysis is the relative importance of a wine s reputation over its sensory quality inferring that producers need to sustain the sensory quality of a wine over time to extract appropriate returns the reputation of the wine producer is found not to influence the strength of the price quality relationship this finding does not contradict the importance of wine producer reputation in directly influencing prices

a meta analysis of the indirect impact of foreign direct investment in old and new eu member states understanding productivity spillovers in this paper we summarise combine and explain recent findings from firm level empirical literature focusing on the indirect impact of foreign direct investment fdi on economic performance measured as productivity in the enlarged europe we have reviewed 52 quantitative studies released between 2000 and 2015 and codified 1 133 estimates we run a regression of regressions which measures the strength of the fdi productivity relationship taking advantage of large number of high quality studies on fdi and its role in explaining the growth in firms productivity in europe we adopt recent meta regression analysis methods funnel asymmetry and precision estimate tests and precision effect estimate with standard errors to explain the heterogeneous impact of fdi this paper assesses the country specific impact of fdi on firms performance after taking publication selection bias econometric modelling and the individual studies characteristics fully into account our results show that on average fdi has a positive indirect impact on productivity the impact is especially significant in selected european countries and we interpret this as a sign of better absorptive capacities in those countries