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

does financial education impact financial literacy and financial behavior and if so when in a meta analysis of 126 impact evaluation studies we find that financial education significantly impacts financial behavior and to an even larger extent financial literacy these results also hold for the subsample of randomized experiments rcts however intervention impacts are highly heterogeneous financial education is less effective for low income clients as well as in low and lower middle income economies specific behaviors such as the handling of debt are more difficult to influence and mandatory financial education tentatively appears to be less effective thus intervention success depends crucially on increasing education intensity and offering financial education at a teachable moment

sovereign default risk and the u s equity market i develop a two country general equilibrium model with firms governments and endogenous default decisions this paper shows that the risk of sovereign default abroad is important in the explanation of the level and the volatility of u s equity returns the intuition is that negative economic shocks deteriorate the fiscal situation of foreign governments thereby increasing the risk of a sovereign default that would trigger a local contraction in economic growth the rise in the risk of an economic slowdown abroad amplifies the direct eect of these shocks on the level and the volatility of equity returns in the u s through i a decrease in the present value of future firm earnings due to the unfavorable adjustment of the real exchange rate for u s exporters and ii a fall in u s equity prices that originates from the investors incentive to rebalance their portfolio towards risk free securities the amplification eect is strongest during periods of financial distress when the risk of corporate default is high in the u s a structural estimation of the model provides strong support for this prediction using monthly data for brazil and the u s over the period 1994 2008

group lending repayment incentives and social collateral abstract in this paper we investigate the impact on repayment rates of lending to groups which are made jointly liable for repayment this type of scheme especially in the guise of the grameen bank in bangladesh has received increasing attention we set up and analyze the repayment game which group lending gives rise to our analysis suggests that such schemes have both positive and negative effects on repayment rates the positive effect is that successful group members may have an incentive to repay the loans of group members whose projects have yielded insufficient return to make repayment worthwhile the negative effect arises when the whole group defaults even when some members would have repaid under individual lending we also show how group lending may harness social collateral which serves to mitigate its negative effect

on corporate borrowing credit spreads and economic activity in emerging economies an empirical investigation abstract we document a considerable increase in foreign financing by the corporate sector in emerging economies emes since the early 2000s mainly in the form of bond issuance and claim that it has opened up an important channel by which external financial factors can drive economic activity in these economies such claim is substantiated by a strong negative relationship between economic activity and an external financial indicator that we construct for several emes using micro level data on spreads of bonds issued by emes corporations in foreign capital markets three salient features characterize such a negative relationship first the financial indicator has considerable predictive power on future economic activity in these economies even after controlling for other potential drivers of business cycles such as movements in sovereign spreads and global financial risk among others second on average an identified adverse shock to the financial indicator generates a large and protracted fall of real output growth in these economies and up to 14 of its forecast error variance is associated to this shock lastly fluctuations in this indicator also respond strongly to shocks in global financial risk emanating from world capital markets thereby implying that changes in corporate spreads also serve as a powerful propagating mechanism of the effect of changes in global investors risk appetite in emerging markets

weaving straw into gold managing organizational tensions between standardization and flexibility in microfinance this article explores how organizations balance the pressures to pursue efficiency through standardization with the need to remain responsive to local needs the study combines rich ethnography with detailed loan data to show that both standardization and flexibility through relational ties provide substantial organizational benefits but also carry significant costs thus no strategy is inherently superior and their coexistence generates the best results such coexistence however creates contradictions that must be managed here i use microfinance as a strategic setting and gain analytic leverage from the random assignment across branches of loan officers who exhibit significant heterogeneity in rule enforcement styles some enforce rules strictly whereas others frequently bend them to respond to client needs i find that loan officers with relational styles exercise discretion productively to enhance organizational performance yet their effectiveness is contingent on the presence of rule enforcing peers as evidenced by the significant underperformance of branches with a high concentration of officers of either type in contrast branches that contain discretionary diversity or a balance between enforcement styles perform best this is not due to diversity per se but because loan officers process decisions in local credit committees committees that contain discretionary diversity generate a productive tension that induces participants to justify decisions along broader organizational goals thus maintaining a productive balance between standardization and flexibility implications for organizational theory and practice are discussed

the robust result in meta analysis of aid effectiveness a response to mekasha and tarp in this response to mekasha and tarp 2013 we show that contrary to what they state their study validates our basic analysis they confirm that the literature finds that aid is of little economic importance in generating growth the results also show that the literature systematically selects control variables for their effect on aid effectiveness we argue that their choice of the random effects model is not appropriate for the problem at hand and that the way they use multiple meta regression analysis contradicts the robust results reached at the basic analysis

computer automation of general to specific model selection procedures abstract disputes about econometric methodology partly reflect a lack of evidence on alternative approaches we reconsider econometric model selection from a computer automation perspective focusing on general to specific reductions embodied in pcgets starting from a general congruent model standard testing procedures eliminate statistically insignificant variables with diagnostic tests checking the validity of reductions ensuring a congruent final selection since jointly selecting and diagnostic testing has eluded theoretical analysis we study modelling strategies by simulation the monte carlo experiments show that pcgets recovers the dgp specification from a general model with size and power close to commencing from the dgp itself

aid and growth what meta analysis reveals abstract recent literature in the meta analysis category where results from a range of studies are brought together throws doubt on the ability of foreign aid to foster economic growth and development this article assesses what meta analysis has to contribute to the literature on the effectiveness of foreign aid in terms of growth impact we re examine key hypotheses and find that the effect of aid on growth is positive and statistically significant this significant effect is genuine and not an artefact of publication selection we also show why our results differ from those published elsewhere

the dynamics of international capital flows results from a dynamic hierarchical factor model abstract the present paper examines the degree of comovement of gross capital inflows which is a highly sensitive issue for policy makers we estimate a dynamic hierarchical factor model that is able to decompose inflows in a sample of 47 economies into i a global factor common to all types of flows and all recipient countries ii a factor specific to a given type of capital inflows iii a regional factor and iv a country specific component we find that the latter explains by far the largest fraction of fluctuations in capital inflows followed by regional factors which are particularly important for emerging markets fdi and portfolio inflows as well as bank lending to emerging europe the global factor however explains only a small share of the overall variation we also employ dynamic panel and time series regressions to explain the determinants of the estimated components the global factor is shown to reflect u s financial conditions

default risk and risk averse international investors abstract this paper develops an endogenous default risk model for small open economies that interact with risk averse international investors whose preferences exhibit decreasing absolute risk aversion dara by incorporating risk averse investors who trade with an emerging economy the present model explains a larger proportion and volatility of the spread between sovereign bonds and riskless assets than the standard model with risk neutral investors the paper shows that if investors have dara preferences then the emerging economy s default risk capital flows and bond prices are a function not only of the fundamentals of the economy but also of the level of financial wealth and risk aversion of international investors in particular as investors become wealthier or less risk averse the emerging economy becomes less credit constrained as a result the emerging economy s default risk is lower and its bond prices and capital inflows are higher additionally with risk averse investors the risk premium in the asset prices of the sovereign countries can be decomposed into two components a base premium that compensates the investors for the probability of default and an excess premium that compensates them for taking the risk of default

global factors and emerging market spreads this paper shows that a large fraction of the variability of emerging market bond spreads is explained by the evolution of global factors such as risk appetite as reflected in the spread of high yield corporate bonds in developed markets global liquidity measured by the international interest rates and contagion from systemic events like the russian default this link has remained relatively stable over the history of the emerging market class is robust to the inclusion of country specific factors and helps provide accurate long run predictions overall the results highlight the critical role played by exogenous factors in the evolution of the borrowing cost faced by emerging economies

what have we learned since hotelling s letter a meta analysis abstract this paper reports the results of a meta analysis of the estimates of the price elasticity of demand for recreation sites using the travel cost method by using econometric methods to summarize empirical literature meta analysis assists in identifying research conclusions despite the non experimental nature of most empirical research in economics in this application the results suggest that modeling decisions based on theory as well as those relying on fitting criteria were important influences to the estimated price elasticities across studies

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

evaluating the evidence on union employment and wages using current population survey data for the years 1973 86 this study tests the hypothesis that the steep decline of union employment shares since 1973 is related to increases in union wages relative to nonunion wages the authors show that although the aggregate union wage premium has changed little since 1973 some industry specific premiums have risen substantially and the industries with the rising premiums are those experiencing declines in union employment shares the increase in the premium explains from 21 to 64 of the decline in union shares depending on the equation specification the paper also presents a detailed set of union wage premiums and employment shares for the sample period

on the empirics of foreign aid and growth the present paper re examines the effectiveness of foreign aid theoretically and empirically using a standard olg model we show that aid inflows will in general affect long run productivity the size and direction of the impact may depend on policies deep structural characteristics and the size of the inflow the empirical analysis investigates these possibilities overall we find that aid has been effective in spurring growth but the magnitude of the effect depends on climate related circumstances finally we argue that the collier dollar allocation rule should be seriously reconsidered by donor agencies if aid effectiveness is related to climate the usefulness of foreign aid in promoting growth in developing countries has been an area of controversy ever since rosenstein rodan in 1943 advocated for aid to eastern and south eastern europe browsing through successive editions of a leading textbook in development economics provides a telling illustration of how the confidence in aid effectiveness dwindled over the years in the first edition of leading issues in economic development meier 1964 dedicated a full 18 page section to the issue of foreign aid he started out asking how much aid by the time of the sixth edition meier 1995 the treatment of foreign aid had been cut into half and the questions in focus were why official assistance and does aid work in the 2000 edition meier and rauch 2000 foreign aid is not even listed in the index

interfirm relationships and informal credit in vietnam trading relations in vietnam s emerging private sector are shaped by two market frictions the difficulty of locating trading partners and the absence of legal enforcement of contracts examining relational contracting we find that a firm trusts its customer enough to offer credit when the customer finds it hard to locate an alternative supplier a longer duration of trading relationship is associated with larger credit as is prior information gathering customers identified through business networks receive more credit these network effects are enduring suggesting that networks are used to sanction defaulting customers

the last word on the wage curve abstract since 1990 there has been extensive international research on the responsiveness of wages of individuals to changing local labour market conditions for many countries an inverse relationship between wages and local unemployment rates has been found in their book the wage curve blanchflower and oswald argued that the unemployment elasticity of pay is around 0 1 in most countries in a 1995 literature survey card referred to this striking empirical regularity as being close to an empirical law of economics nonetheless reported elasticities do vary even excluding outliers between about 0 5 and 0 1 there is also considerable heterogeneity among wage curve studies in terms of data and model specification this paper carries out meta analytic techniques on a sample of 208 elasticities derived from the literature to uncover the reasons for the differences in empirical results across studies several causes of variation are identified there is also clear evidence of downward publication bias in addition many reported t statistics are biased upwards due to the use of aggregate unemployment rates a maximum likelihood method and a trimming procedure are used to correct for these biases both methods give similar results for our sample an unbiased estimate of the wage curve elasticity at the means of study characteristics is about 0 07

hazards of the market the continuity and dissolution of interorganizational market relationships the authors propose a theory of the market as an intertemporal process that integrates multiple theoretical perspectives using event history methods thery analyze the dissolution of interorganizational market ties between advertising agencies and their clients as a function of three forces competition power and institutional forces the informal rules of exchange institutionalized in the emergence phase of the advertising services market include exclusivity sole source and loyalty infrequent switching they find that most exchange relationships between advertising agencies and their clients are indeed exclusive and most last for several years but competition power and institutional forces support or undermine these rules most institutional forces reduce the risk of dissolution of agency client ties powerful advertising agencies mobilize resources to increase tie stability but powerful clients mobilize resources to increase or decrease stability competition is the weakest market force but it has a consistent and substantial effect on tie dissolution competition always increases the risk of dissolution they conclude that the market is institutionalized as imperfectly repeated patterns of exchange because competition and changing norms about the duration of market ties destabilize market relationships

who benefits from aid for trade comparing the effects on recipient versus donor exports recent studies offer an ambiguous picture on the effectiveness of foreign aid in strengthening the export capacity of recipient countries moreover the literature on aid for trade aft has often neglected that exporters in the donor countries may be among the main beneficiaries we hypothesize that aft is as much in the self interest of donor countries as it may have promoted the exports of recipient countries we simultaneously estimate and compare the effects of aft on trade in both directions we find that aft increases recipient exports to donors as well as recipient imports from donors the first effect tends to dominate the latter which contradicts the skeptical view that donors grant aft primarily to promote their own export interests

unconditional aid and green growth abstract environmentally motivated aid can help developing countries to achieve economic growth while mitigating the impact on emission levels we argue that the usual practice of giving aid conditionally is not effective and we therefore study aid that is given unconditionally our framework is a differential open loop stackelberg game between a fully developed leader country and a developing follower country the leader chooses the amount of mitigation aid given to the follower which the follower either consumes or invests in either costly non polluting capital or cheap high emission capital we show that giving aid conditionally is only rarely effective and if so is based on a forced intertemporal savings effect in all other cases it is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst moreover we find that the leader gives unconditional mitigation aid only when sufficiently rich or when caring sufficiently about environmental quality if unconditional aid is given in steady state it decreases the steady state level of high emission capital and capital investments in the recipient country as well as the global pollution stock but it has no effect on the levels of non polluting capital and non polluting investments transitional aid accelerates the economic growth of the follower moreover we find that the increase in growth takes place in the non polluting sector

testing ricardian equivalence a reconsideration empirical evidence on the determinants of private consumption in 52 countries over the period 1979 88 indicates that in contrast to the ricardian equivalence proposition a significant relationship exists between consumption and the variable the ratio of tax revenue to changes in government debt which measures the extent of substituting debt for tax financing the results obtained from estimating euler equations for the representative individual s stochastic dynamic optimization problem are favourable to the proposition that the choice between current taxation and debt issuance to finance a given government expenditure stream is relevant to the determination of the level of aggregate demand

subjective performance measures in optimal incentive contracts objective measures of performance are seldom perfect in response incentive contracts often include important subjective components that mitigate incentive distortions caused by imperfect objective measures this paper explores the combined use of subjective and objective performance measures in respectively implicit and explicit incentive contracts naturally objective and subjective measures often are substitutes sometimes strikingly so we show that if objective measures are sufficiently close to perfect then no implicit contracts are feasible because the firm s fallback position after reneging on an implicit contract is too attractive we also show however that objective and subjective measures can reinforce each other if objective measures become more accurate then in some circumstances the optimal contract puts more weight on subjective measures because the improved objective measures increase the value of the ongoing relationship and so reduce the firm s incentive to renege we also analyze the use of subjective weights on objective performance measures and provide case study evidence consistent with our analyses

the income lever and the allocation of aid the paper develops a concept and a measure of the monetary capacity of a country to reduce its own poverty and shows how these tools can be used to guide budget allocations or the allocation of aid the authors call this concept the income lever making use of tax and distributive theory the paper shows how different redistributive criteria correspond to the different normative criteria of the income lever it then constructs various income lever indexes based on these criteria and uses such indexes to rank countries according to their own capacity to reduce poverty as shown in the empirical application this methodology can provide an equitable tool to rank countries or regions when it comes to budget or aid allocations whether it is the allocation of social funds within the european union north north transfers or the allocation of aid from rich to poor countries north south transfers the findings indicate that the allocation of social funds in the european union follows closely the rank that results from the income lever indexes proposed while the allocation of aid to sub saharan african countries does not

relational contracts and the theory of the firm relational contracts informal agreements sustained by the value of future relationships are prevalent within and between firms we develop repeated game models showing why and how relational contracts within firms vertical integration differ from those between nonintegration we show that integration affects the parties temptations to renege on a given relational contract and hence affects the best relational contract the parties can sustain in this sense the integration decision can be an instrument in the service of the parties relationship our approach also has implications for joint ventures alliances and networks and for the role of management within and between firms

sharing a ride on the commodities roller coaster common factors in business cycles of emerging economies fluctuations in commodity prices are an important driver of business cycles in small emerging market economies emes this paper documents how these fluctuations correlate strongly with the business cycle in emes a commodity sector is then embedded into a multi country emes business cycle model where exogenous fluctuations in commodity prices follow a common dynamic factor structure and coexist with other driving forces the estimated model assigns to commodity shocks 42 percent of the variance in income of which a considerable part is linked to the common factor a further amplification mechanism is a spillover effect from commodity prices to risk premia

examining the heterogeneity in calorie income elasticities a meta analysis abstract several studies conducted over the past three decades on calorie income relationship appear to give inconclusive results this paper reviews these studies and employs meta regression analysis to examine the potential publication bias in the calorie income elasticity as well as the impact of specific study attributes on the elasticities that have been reported in the empirical literature a total of 40 empirical studies which yielded 99 estimated elasticities were considered the results indicate the presence of publication bias in the reported elasticities besides the estimates revealed evidence of positive and significant empirical effect of income on calorie intake from all the studies that goes beyond publication bias study attributes such as ranking of the journal panel data used in the analysis whether expenditure was used as proxy for income year of primary survey sample size and numbers of the years of primary data were found to have statistically significant impacts on the reported calorie income elasticities in the literature

leverage cycles and the anxious economy ing opportunities for emerging economies their access to international markets has turned out to be very volatile with frequent periods of market closures even worse as we will show emerging economies with sound fundamentals are the ones that issue less debt during these closures the goal of this paper is to present a theory of asset pricing that will shed light on the problems of emerging assets like emerging markets that are not yet mature enough to be attractive to the general public their marginal buyers are liquidity constrained investors with small wealth relative to the whole economy who are also marginal buyers of other risky assets we will use our theory to argue that the periodic problems faced by emerging asset classes are sometimes symptoms of what we call a global anxious economy rather than of their own fundamental weaknesses

debt dilution and sovereign default risk we measure the effects of debt dilution on sovereign default risk and study debt covenants that could mitigate these effects we calibrate a baseline model with endogenous debt duration and default risk in which debt can be diluted using data from spain we find that debt dilution accounts for 78 percent of the default risk in the baseline economy and that eliminating dilution increases the optimal duration of sovereign debt by almost 2 years eliminating dilution also increases consumption volatility but still produces welfare gains the debt covenants we study could help enforcing fiscal rules

a meta analysis of the international gender wage gap abstract since the early 1970s a number of authors have calculated gender wage differentials between women and men of equal productivity this meta study provides a new quantitative review of this vast amount of empirical literature on gender wage differentials as it concerns not only differences in methodology data and time periods but also different countries we place particular emphasis on a proper consideration of the quality of the underlying study which is done by a weighting with quality indicators the results show that data restrictions i e the limitation of the analysis to new entrants never marrieds or one narrow occupation only have the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap moreover we are able to show what effect a misspecification of the underlying wage equation like the frequent use of potential experience has on the calculated gender wage gap over time raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially however most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females

limits of floating exchange rates the role of foreign currency debt and import structure abstract a traditional argument in favor of flexible exchange rates is that they insulate output better from real shocks because the exchange rate can adjust and stabilize demand for domestic goods through expenditure switching this argument is weakened in models with high foreign currency debt and low exchange rate pass through to import prices the present study evaluates the empirical relevance of these two factors we analyze the transmission of real external shocks to the domestic economy under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes for a broad sample of countries in a panel var and let the responses vary with foreign currency debt and import structure we find that flexible exchange rates do not insulate output better from external shocks if the country imports mainly low pass through goods and foreign indebtedness is high

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

gasoline demand revisited an international meta analysis of elasticities meta analysis is used to determine if there are factors that systematically affect price and income elasticity estimates in studies of gasoline demand four econometric models are estimated using long run and short run price and income elasticity estimates from previous studies as the dependent variables explanatory variables include functional form lag structure time span national setting estimation technique and other features of the model structure elasticity estimates are found to be sensitive to the inclusion or exclusion of some measure of vehicle ownership static models appear to overestimate short run elasticities underestimate long run price elasticities but pick up the full long run income responsiveness there is variation in the elasticity of demand across countries especially in the short run and gasoline demand appears to be getting more price elastic and less income elastic over time

inertia and change in the early years employment relations in young high technology firms this paper considers processes of organizational imprinting in a sample of 100 young high technology companies it examines the effects of a pair of initial conditions the founders models of the employment relation and their business strategies our analyses indicate that these two features were well aligned when the firms were founded however the alignment has deteriorated over time due to changes in the distribution of employment models in particular the star model and commitment model are less stable than the engineering model and the factory model despite their instability these two blueprints for the employment relation have strong effects in shaping the early evolution of these firms in particular firms that embark with these models have significantly higher rates of replacing the founder chief executive with a non founder as well as higher rates of completing an initial public stock offering some implications of these findings for future studies of imprinting and inertia in organizations are discussed

the ricardian approach to budget deficits persistent budget deficits have increased economists interest in theories and evidence about fiscal policy this paper develops the ricardian approach and contrasts it with standard models the discussion considers from major theoretical objections to ricardian equivalence finite lifetimes imperfect capital markets uncertainty about future taxes and incomes and the distorting effects of taxation the paper then considers empirical evidence on interest rates consumption and saving and current account deficits the conclusion is that the ricardian approach is a useful first order approximation and that this approach will probably become the benchmark model for assessing fiscal policy this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

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

macroeconomic impacts of fdi in transition economies a meta analysis summary in this paper we conduct a meta analysis of the literature that empirically examines the impact of foreign direct investment fdi on economic growth in central and eastern europe and the former soviet union we found that existing studies indicate a growth enhancing effect of fdi in the region as a whole the results of our meta regression analysis suggest that the effect size and statistical significance of the reported estimates strongly depend on study conditions we also found that the relevant studies fail to present genuine evidence of a non zero fdi effect more research is necessary to identify the true effect

what is the aggregate economic rate of return to foreign aid in recent years academic studies have been converging towards the view that foreign aid promotes aggregate economic growth we employ a simulation approach to i validate the coherence of empirical aid growth studies published since 2008 and ii calculate plausible ranges for the rate of return to aid our results highlight the long run nature of aid financed investments and the importance of channels other than accumulation of physical capital we find the return to aid lies in ranges commonly accepted for public investments and there is little to justify the view that aid has had a significant pernicious effect on productivity

why the gender gap in wages narrowed in the 1980s since 1976 the gender gap in wages on average declined by about 1 per year this article focuses on identifying the factors underlying this trend three data sets are analyzed the current population survey the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we find that convergence in measurable work related characteristics schooling and work experience explains one third to one half the narrowing the remainder is attributable to a relative increase in women s returns to experience as well as to declining wages in blue collar work and other factors

the paradigm of agricultural efficiency and its implication on food security in africa what does meta analysis reveal summary the study investigates whether african agricultural efficiency levels have been improving or not and what drives them over the years based on 442 frontier studies using meta regression analysis the results show that the mean efficiency estimates from studies decrease significantly as year of survey in the primary study increases also studies published in journals with parametric specification and with panel data produced significantly higher efficiency estimates while those with a focus on grain crops reported significantly lower efficiency estimates other results show that education followed by experience extension and credit are the major drivers of agricultural efficiency levels in africa

cooperation in microcredit borrowing groups identity sanctions and reciprocity in the production of collective goods cooperation to produce collective goods is widespread in society and yet so is its failure theorists have identified competing mechanisms for facilitating group cooperation including group identity sanctions and reciprocity here i use empirical data to explore how these mechanisms influence cooperation in the natural laboratory of microcredit borrowing groups microcredit makes loans to high risk borrowers through borrowing groups in which individuals access to credit is dependent on the behavior of other members of the group thereby creating a social dilemma for members and an opportunity to observe cooperation in real world groups by analyzing both collective goods production loans and compliance repayment i find that the competing mechanisms have differential effects group identity sanctions and reciprocity are all associated with more borrowing in the group only reciprocity however limits loan delinquency and is associated with group longevity suggesting both that collective goods p

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

a meta analysis of the union nonunion wage gap the authors use meta regression analysis a new method for synthesizing empirical results reported in the economic literature to corroborate and extend h gregg lewis s landmark 1986 research on t

aid policies and growth the authors of this paper use a new database on foreign aid to examine the relationships among foreign aid economic policies and growth of per capita gdp in panel growth regressions for 56 developing countries and 6 four year periods 1970 93 they find that the policies that have a great effect on growth are those related to fiscal surplus inflation and trade openness they construct an index for those three policies and have that index interact with foreign aid they have instruments for both aid and aid interacting with policies they find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal monetary and trade policies in the presence of poor policies aid has no positive effect on growth this result is robust in a variety of specifications which include or exclude middle income countries include or exclude outliers and treat policies as exogenous or endogenous they examine the determinants of policy and find no evidence that aid has systematically affected policies either for good or for ill they estimate an aid allocation equation and show that any tendency for aid to reward good policies has been overwhelmed by donors pursuit of their own strategic interests in a counterfactual they reallocate aid reduce the role of donor interests and increasing the importance of policy such a reallocation would have a large positive effect on developing countries growth rates

on the design of a credit agreement with peer monitoring this paper analyses the optimal design of collective credit agreements with joint responsibility first we demonstrate that these agreements can potentially induce peer monitoring reduce the incidence of strategic default and enhance the lender s ability to elicit debt repayments the resulting benefits in terms of extended credit should however be weighted against the higher monitoring effort that such agreements impose upon participant borrowers second we show that the relative benefits from peer monitoring are maximized when risks are positively correlated across borrowers and also when the size of the group is neither too small due to a joint responsibility cost sharing and commitment effects nor too large due to a free riding effect third we compare among different monitoring structures

uncertainty capital flows and maturity mismatch abstract this paper explores a how the financial uncertainty generated by volatile international capital flows interacts with maturity mismatch on the balance sheets of nonfinancial firms to increase the volatility of output investment and total factor productivity tfp in emerging market economies i build a model of a small open economy in which financial frictions force firms to fund long term projects with short term debt in response to changes in the level of uncertainty regarding the availability of foreign borrowing firms adjust their long term investment contributing to the volatility of investment and output as well as generating endogenous fluctuations in aggregate productivity using data from a panel of major emerging markets i show that the volatility of portfolio debt flows negatively affects output by dampening investment while the volatility of equity flows which do not generate maturity mismatch has no effect consistent with the mechanism in the model the negative impact of capital flow volatility is larger at low levels of financial development and in industries with longer time to build lags my estimates imply that shocks to capital flow volatility account for one fifth of the excess output volatility of the emerging markets in my sample relative to a set of small open advanced economies

determinants of price elasticities for private labels and national brands of cheese an almost ideal demand system model is developed and used to estimate price elasticities for us cheese sold at retail growing consumption of cheese coupled with fierce competition between private labels and national brands serves as motivating factors for this study per capita consumption of cheese grew by 75 during 1980 2004 and private labels captured a rising share of this growth private labels today account for 35 of market share national brands for the remaining 65 kraft accounts for 45 of national brands but price increases for kraft brands led to a sizeable price gap between its brands and private labels this gap helped to stimulate growth of private labels marketing managers seek to capitalize on both growing cheese sales and price gaps for brands relevant information for marketing managers is consumer sensitivity to price changes this study uses 69 weeks of scanner data with consumers segmented by income levels to derive price elasticities for both lower and higher income consumer

housing cycles and macroeconomic fluctuations a global perspective abstract this paper investigates the international spillovers of housing demand shocks on real economic activity the global economy is modeled using a global var with a novel house price data set for both advanced and emerging economies the impulse responses to an identified u s housing demand shock confirm the existence of strong international spillovers to advanced economies in contrast the response of some major emerging economies is not significantly different from zero moreover the analysis of synchronized housing demand shocks speaks in favor of the recent evidence of increased resilience of emerging economies to shocks originating in advanced economies and it also suggests that a close monitoring of housing cycles in advanced economies as well as in emerging economies should be of interest for policy makers

comovement or safe haven the effect of corruption on the market risk of sovereign bonds of emerging economies during financial crises in this study i explore the role of corruption in the cross market time varying linkage between sovereign bonds of emerging markets and the us stock market it shows that corruption plays a prominent role in the behaviour of capm beta under different market conditions the sensitivity of sovereign bonds issued by countries perceived as more corrupt to systematic shocks increases during financial crises the prices of bonds issued by less corrupt countries are determined more idiosyncratically under extreme market conditions and realize more hedging benefits against s p 500 risk to explain these findings i integrate results from behavioural finance i propose a comovement model built on barberis et al 2005 where investors load more worldwide news on sovereign bonds issued by more corrupt countries when their sentiment deteriorates

survey article publication bias in the literature on foreign direct investment spillovers abstract in this article we conduct a large quantitative survey of the literature on horizontal and vertical spillovers from foreign direct investment fdi we create a unique database of spillover estimates for each country examined in the literature next we estimate the average effect corrected for publication selection bias the preferential selection of positive and significant estimates for publication our results suggest that an average reported estimate of backward spillovers is statistically significant publication selection is evident only among studies published in peer reviewed journals and only among the estimates that authors consider most important authors with small data sets engage in more publication selection the intensity of selection in the literature decreases over time which supports the economics research cycle hypothesis

repayment frequency and default in microfinance evidence from india in stark contrast to bank debt contracts most micro finance contracts require that repayments start nearly immediately after loan disbursement and occur weekly thereafter even though economic theory suggests that a more flexible repayment schedule would benefit clients and potentially improve their repayment capacity micro finance practitioners argue that the fiscal discipline imposed by frequent repayment is critical to preventing loan default in this paper we use data from a field experiment which randomized client assignment to a weekly or monthly repayment schedule and find no significant effect of type of repayment schedule on client delinquency or default our findings suggest that among micro finance clients who are willing to borrow at either weekly or monthly repayment schedules a more flexible schedule can significantly lower transaction costs without increasing client default jel 012 016 022

nation building and economic growth nation building the joint provision of economic and military aid in conflict or postconflict areas has been used as an important and expensive foreign policy tool yet despite the huge costs of these investments the growth effects of nation building operations for recipient nations remain underexplored while recent literature documents the negative growth effects of conflict yamarik johnson and compton 2010 and the positive effects of economic aid after conflict collier and hoeffler 2002 very little has been done on the confluence of different kinds of aid and the effectiveness of such joint efforts during times of turmoil this paper attempts to answer the following three questions regarding the growth effects of nation building operations does the joint provision of economic and military assistance help a country grow when it is embroiled in conflict does such joint provision

explanatory meta analysis for the comparison and transfer of regional tourist income multipliers baaijens s r nijkamp p and van montfort k 1998 explanatory meta analysis for the comparison and transfer of regional tourist income multipliers reg studies 32 839 849 this paper aims to demonstrate the potential of quantitative research synthesis in particular meta analysis as a methodology for comparative research with a particular view on tourist impact analysis the attention is focused on regional tourist multipliers which measure the effects of tourist expenditure on the economy of a given area on the basis of a varied sample of studies on tourist multipliers differences among tourist income multipliers are ex post examined the preliminaries of this investigation are discussed in order to elucidate some important issues meta analysis may be confronted with in addition the results of the comparative analysis of previous studies are transferred to the greek island of lesvos this area was estimated to have an average tourist income multiplier falling in between 0 55 and 0 67 baaije

leaving a legacy position imprints and successor turnover in young firms this article considers how local firm histories influence individual turnover rates in organizations we argue that position imprints the legacies left by the first incumbents of particular functional positions constrain subsequent position holders we show that the functional experience of the person who creates a position influences the turnover rate of successors who later occupy that position when the first position holder has an atypical background all successors experience high turnover rates individuals who are both typical with respect to the normative environment and similar to the position imprint have the lowest turnover rates surprisingly we find lower turnover rates among individuals who match the position imprint even if they violate normative expectations thus contrary to institutional theory predictions we find that local firm histories dominate in revealing how social structures emerge within firms and affect individual outcomes our research revisits core topics of bureaucratiza

peer monitoring and credit markets a major problem for institutional lenders is ensuring that borrowers exercise prudence in the use of the funds so that the likelihood of repayment is enhanced one partial solution is peer monitoring having neighbors who are in a good position to monitor the borrower be required to pay a penalty if the borrower goes bankrupt peer monitoring is largely responsible for the successful financial performance of the grameen bank of bangladesh and of similar group lending programs elsewhere but peer monitoring has a cost it transfers risk from the bank which is in a better position to bear risk to the cosigner in a simple model of peer monitoring in a competitive credit market this article demonstrates that the transfer of risk leads to an improvement in borrowers welfare

debt levels debt composition and sovereign spreads in emerging and advanced economies this paper studies the relationship between sovereign spreads and the interaction between debt composition and debt levels in advanced and emerging market countries it finds that in emerging market countries there is a significant correlation between spreads and debt levels this correlation however is not statistically significant in countries where most public debt is denominated in local currency in advanced economies the magnitude of the correlation between debt levels and spreads is about one fifth of the corresponding correlation for emerging market economies in eurozone countries however the correlation between spreads and debt ratios is similar to that of emerging market countries the paper also shows that the financial crisis amplified the relationship between spreads and debt levels within the eurozone but had no effect on the relationship between spreads and debt in stand alone countries finally the paper shows that the relationship between debt levels and spreads is amplified by the presence of large net foreign liabilities this amplifying effect of net foreign liabilities is larger in the eurozone than in stand alone advanced economies the paper concludes that debt composition matters and corroborates the original sin hypothesis that rather than being a mere reflection of institutional weakness the presence of foreign currency debt increases financial fragility and leads to suboptimal macroeconomic policies copyright 2013 oxford university press

assessing foreign aid s long run contribution to growth in development this paper confirms recent evidence of a positive impact of aid on growth and widens the scope of evaluation to a range of outcomes including proximate sources of growth e g physical and human capital indicators of social welfare e g poverty and infant mortality and measures of economic transformation e g share of agriculture and industry in value added focusing on long run cumulative effects of aid in developing countries and taking due account of potential endogeneity a coherent and favorable pattern of results emerges aid has over the past forty years stimulated growth promoted structural change improved social indicators and reduced poverty

aid econometrics lessons from a stochastic growth model abstract this paper evaluates the standard empirical methods employed in the study of foreign aid when the data generating process is a calibrated stochastic growth model in which aid recipients make optimal investment and consumption decisions when recipients receive a stochastic flow of aid and wish to smooth consumption standard methods fail to distinguish between the response to transient and permanent aid shocks and hence yield misleading results concerning the object of interest to policy makers the long run impact of aid

uncertainty risk and trust russian and american credit card markets compared the strategies that russian and american banks use to evaluate the creditworthiness of prospective credit card holders are compared drawing on knight s theory of risk and uncertainty the authors argue that uncertainty inherent in any credit transaction can only be reduced to measurable risk if there are institutions that create stability over time categorize events properly and allow for verification and accumulation of information in the united states the gradual evolution of institutions underpinning rational calculation permits the transformation of uncertainty into risk in russia however such institutions are absent and a great degree of uncertainty prevails in consumer credit using data from original fieldwork in moscow this study demonstrates that when actors face uncertainty and are unable to calculate risk they rely on trust russian banks use and extend their existing social ties or in some cases build new ties they also exploit cardholders own networks unrelated to the bank to increase their accountability through anchoring these strategies however keep the market embedded limited in size and uninsurable the authors conclude that calculation of probabilities and economic rationality in its formal sense is not an innate human ability but a social capacity that exists courtesy of institutional arrangements

land tenure and investment incentives evidence from west africa abstract the existing literature on the relationship between property rights in land and agricultural investment in africa has given results that are often confusing and contradictory i make two clarifying contributions to this literature first i pull together existing studies and investigate whether the results they find have been affected by research methods or local contexts studies with small sample sizes those that use binary investment measures and those that control for household fixed effects are less likely to find a statistically significant link between land tenure and investment self reported tenure security has been a poor predictor of investment outcomes second i test for a relationship between land tenure and agricultural investment in nine data sets from west africa while the link between tenure and investment is significant for fallow and tree planting it is less robust for labor use and other inputs such as manure or chemical fertilizer

why do emerging economies borrow short term the authors argue that emerging economies borrow short term due to the high risk premium charged by international capital markets on long term debt they first present a model where the debt maturity structure is the outcome of a risk sharing problem between the government and bondholders by issuing long term debt the government lowers the probability of a liquidity crisis transferring risk to bondholders in equilibrium this risk is reflected in a higher risk premium and borrowing cost therefore the government faces a tradeoff between safer long term borrowing and cheaper short term debt second the authors construct a new database of sovereign bond prices and issuance they show that emerging economies pay a positive term premium a higher risk premium on long term bonds than on short term bonds during crises the term premium increases with issuance shifting toward shorter maturities this suggests that changes in bondholders risk aversion are important to understand emerging market crises

the effect of state and local taxes on economic development a meta analysis economists and policy makers have long questioned the effect of state and local taxes on economic development according to schmenner 55 economists have long argued that taxes had little impact on business location decisions while development practitioners and elected officials ignored this advice and aggressively pursued development by using tax incentives more recent research using improved data and methodologies has begun to show that taxes can make a difference and the emerging consensus among economists now says that taxes do matter this changing view among researchers is perhaps best exemplified in a 1991 study by timothy j bartik 2 bartik examined 84 econometric studies completed since 1979 which assess the impact of state and local taxes on economic growth in the u s he concluded that the long run elasticity of business activity with respect to state and local taxes was between 10 and 60 for studies focusing on intermetropolitan or interstate business economic activity and between 1 0 and 3 0 for intrametropolitan areas however bartik s study did not control for a variety of study characteristics that may have influenced the measured elasticity this study builds upon bartik s analysis by performing a meta analysis of the studies bartik reviewed meta analysis is a method for statistically analyzing results across empirical studies though it has been little used by economists researchers in psychology education and health sciences have used meta analysis extensively this study uses a meta analytic technique suggested by stanley and jarrell 57 to analyze the studies reviewed by bartik the technique yields increased precision for our understanding of the relationship between state and local taxes and economic development the objective of this study is two fold first to derive a more precise estimate of the tax elasticity and second to determine how the inclusion and omission of key variables in the estimated equations influences the elasticity estimates

the benefits of lending relationships evidence from small business data this paper empirically examines how ties between a firm and its creditors affect the availability and cost of funds to the firm we analyze data collected in a survey of small firms by the small business administration the primary benefit of building close ties with an institutional creditor is that the availability of financing increases we find smaller effects on the price of credit attempts to widen the circle of relationships by borrowing from multiple lenders increases the price and reduces the availability of credit in sum relationships are valuable and appear to operate more through quantities rather than prices

building sustainable hybrid organizations the case of commercial microfinance organizations we explore how new types of hybrid organizations organizations that combine institutional logics in unprecedented ways can develop and maintain their hybrid nature in the absence of a ready to w

income inequality and sovereign default abstract in this paper we study how income inequality matters for government borrowing and default decisions we extend a standard endogenous sovereign debt default model to allow for heterogeneous agents and stochastic variability in the dispersion of income we calibrate the model to match a number of stylized facts for argentina we show that i rising income inequality within a country increases the probability of default significantly ii the effect of output shocks is larger than the effect of inequality shocks iii the joint effect of these two shocks can generate a high default probability consistent with the argentine data iv the model can match the high volatility of consumption by the poor relative to the rich and v more progressive income taxes lead to lower default risk

aid and growth what does the cross country evidence really show abstract we examine the effects of aid on growth in cross sectional and panel data after correcting for the possible bias that poorer or stronger growth may draw aid contributions to recipient co

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

aid and growth regressions this paper examines the relationship between foreign aid and growth in real gdp per capita as it emerges from simple augmentations of popular cross country growth specifications it is shown that aid in all likelihood increases the growth rate and this result is not conditional on good policy there are however decreasing returns to aid and the estimated effectiveness of aid is highly sensitive to the choice of estimator and the set of control variables when investment and human capital are controlled for no positive effect of aid is found yet aid continues to impact on growth via investment we conclude by stressing the need for more theoretical work before this kind of cross country regressions are used for policy purposes

a matter of relational style loan officer consistency and exchange continuity in microfinance social scientists have long considered what mechanisms underlie repeated exchange three mechanisms have garnered the majority of this attention formal contracts relational contracts and relationally embedded social ties although each mechanism has its virtues all three exhibit a common limitation an inability to fully explain the continuation and stability of intertemporal exchange between individuals and organizations in the face of change drawing on extensive quantitative data on approximately 450 000 microfinance loans made by a microfinance institution in mexico from 2004 to 2008 that include random assignment of loan officers this research proposes the concept of relational styles to help explain how repeated exchange is possible in the face of personnel change we define relational styles as systematically reoccurring patterns of interaction employed by social actors within and across exchange relationships in this paper between microfinance clients and loan officers we show that relati

citizens consumers and farm animal welfare a meta analysis of willingness to pay studies the sustainable intensification of animal production systems is increasing as a consequence of increased demand for foods originating from animals production diseases are particularly endemic in intensive production systems and can negatively impact upon farm animal welfare there is an increasing need to develop policies regarding animal production diseases sustainable intensification and animal welfare which incorporate consumer priorities as well as technical assessments of farm animal welfare consumers and or citizens may have concerns about intensive production systems and whether animal production disease represent a barrier to consumer acceptance of their increased use there is a considerable body of research focused on consumer willingness to pay wtp for improved animal welfare it is not clear how this relates specifically to a preference for reduced animal production disease incidence in animal production systems a systematic review and meta analysis were conducted to establish the publics wtp for farm animal welfare with a focus on production diseases which arise in intensive systems systematic review methodology combined with data synthesis was applied to integrate existing knowledge regarding consumer wtp for animal welfare and reduced incidence of animal production diseases multiple databases were searched to identify relevant studies a screening process using a set of pre determined inclusion criteria identified 54 studies with the strength of evidence and uncertainty for each study being assessed a random effects meta analysis was used to explore heterogeneity in relation to a number of factors with a cumulative meta analysis conducted to establish changes in wtp over time the results indicated a small positive wtp 0 63 standard deviations for farm animal welfare varying in relation to a number of factors including animal type and region socio demographic characteristics explained the most variation in the data an evidence gap was highlighted in relation to reduced wtp for specific production diseases associated with the intensification of production with only 4 of the 54 studies identified being related to this a combination of market and government based policy solutions appears to be the best solution for improving farm animal welfare standards in the future enabling the diverse public preferences to be taken into consideration