pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
The Long-Run Impact of Electoral Violence on Health and Human Capital in Kenya
Authors: Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero
Date: 2021-12-27 00:00:00

This paper examines the long-term effects of prenatal, childhood, and teen exposure to electoral violence on health and human capital. Furthermore, it investigates whether these effects are passed down to future generations. We exploit the temporal and spatial variation of electoral violence in Kenya between 1992 and 2013 in conjunction with a nationally representative survey to identify people exposed to such violence. Using coarsened matching, we find that exposure to electoral violence between prenatal and the age of sixteen reduces adult height. Previous research has demonstrated that protracted, large-scale armed conflicts can pass down stunting effects to descendants. In line with these studies, we find that the low-scale but recurrent electoral violence in Kenya has affected the height-for-age of children whose parents were exposed to such violence during their growing years. Only boys exhibit this intergenerational effect, possibly due to their increased susceptibility to malnutrition and stunting in Sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast to previous research on large-scale conflicts, childhood exposure to electoral violence has no long-term effect on educational attainment or household consumption per capita. Most electoral violence in Kenya has occurred during school breaks, which may have mitigated its long-term effects on human capital and earning capacity.
Economics of Innovation and Perceptions of Renewed Education and Curriculum Design in Bangladesh
Authors: Shifa Taslim Chowdhury, Mohammad Nur Nobi, Anm Moinul Islam
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Memorization

The creative Education system is one of the effective education systems in many countries like Finland, Denmark, and South Korea. Bangladesh Government has also launched the creative curriculum system in 2009 in both primary and secondary levels, where changes have been made in educational contents and exam question patterns. These changes in the previous curriculum aimed to avoid memorization and less creativity and increase the students' level of understanding and critical thinking. Though the Government has taken these steps, the quality of the educational system in Bangladesh is still deteriorating. Since the curriculum has been changed recently, this policy issue got massive attention of the people because the problem of a substandard education system has arisen. Many students have poor performances in examinations, including entrance hall exams in universities and board examinations. This deteriorating situation is mostly for leakage of question paper, inadequate equipment and materials, and insufficient training. As a result, the existing education system has failed to provide the standard level of education. This research will discuss and find why this creative educational system is getting impacted by these factors. It will be qualitative research. A systematic questionnaire will interview different school teachers, parents, experts, and students.
Should transparency be (in-)transparent? On monitoring aversion and cooperation in teams
Authors: Michalis Drouvelis, Johannes Jarke-Neuert, Johannes Lohse
Date: 2021-12-23 00:00:00

Many modern organisations employ methods which involve monitoring of employees' actions in order to encourage teamwork in the workplace. While monitoring promotes a transparent working environment, the effects of making monitoring itself transparent may be ambiguous and have received surprisingly little attention in the literature. Using a novel laboratory experiment, we create a working environment in which first movers can (or cannot) observe second mover's monitoring at the end of a round. Our framework consists of a standard repeated sequential Prisoner's Dilemma, where the second mover can observe the choices made by first movers either exogenously or endogenously. We show that mutual cooperation occurs significantly more frequently when monitoring is made transparent. Additionally, our results highlight the key role of conditional cooperators (who are more likely to monitor) in promoting teamwork. Overall, the observed cooperation enhancing effects are due to monitoring actions that carry information about first movers who use it to better screen the type of their co-player and thereby reduce the risk of being exploited.
Product traits, decision-makers, and household low-carbon technology adoptions: moving beyond single empirical studies
Authors: Emily Schulte, Fabian Scheller, Wilmer Pasut, Thomas Bruckner
Date: 2021-12-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

Although single empirical studies provide important insights into who adopts a specific LCT for what reason, fundamental questions concerning the relations between decision subject (= who decides), decision object (= what is decided upon) and context (= when and where it is decided) remain unanswered. In this paper, this research gap is addressed by deriving a decision framework for residential decision-making, suggesting that traits of decision subject and object are determinants of financial, environmental, symbolic, normative, effort and technical considerations preceding adoption. Thereafter, the decision framework is initially verified by employing literature on the adoption of photovoltaic systems, energy-efficient appliances and green tariffs. Of the six proposed relations, two could be confirmed (financial and environmental), one could be rejected (effort), and three could neither be confirmed nor rejected due to lacking evidence. Future research on LCT adoption could use the decision framework as a guidepost to establish a more coordinated and integrated approach, ultimately allowing to address fundamental questions.
The co-evolutionary relationship between digitalization and organizational agility: Ongoing debates, theoretical developments and future research perspectives
Authors: Francesco Ciampi, Monica Faraoni, Jacopo Ballerini, Francesco Meli
Date: 2021-12-22 00:00:00

This study is the first to provide a systematic review of the literature focused on the relationship between digitalization and organizational agility (OA). It applies the bibliographic coupling method to 171 peer-reviewed contributions published by 30 June 2021. It uses the digitalization perspective to investigate the enablers, barriers and benefits of processes aimed at providing firms with the agility required to effectively face increasingly turbulent environments. Three different, though interconnected, thematic clusters are discovered and analysed, respectively focusing on big-data analytic capabilities as crucial drivers of OA, the relationship between digitalization and agility at a supply chain level, and the role of information technology capabilities in improving OA. By adopting a dynamic capabilities perspective, this study overcomes the traditional view, which mainly considers digital capabilities enablers of OA, rather than as possible outcomes. Our findings reveal that, in addition to being complex, the relationship between digitalization and OA has a bidirectional character. This study also identifies extant research gaps and develops 13 original research propositions on possible future research pathways and new managerial solutions.
Forecasting pandemic tax revenues in a small, open economy
Authors: Fabio Ashtar Telarico
Date: 2021-12-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Econometrics

Tax analysis and forecasting of revenues are of paramount importance to ensure fiscal policy's viability and sustainability. However, the measures taken to contain the spread of the recent pandemic pose an unprecedented challenge to established models and approaches. This paper proposes a model to forecast tax revenues in Bulgaria for the fiscal years 2020-2022 built in accordance with the International Monetary Fund's recommendations on a dataset covering the period between 1995 and 2019. The study further discusses the actual trustworthiness of official Bulgarian forecasts, contrasting those figures with the model previously estimated. This study's quantitative results both confirm the pandemic's assumed negative impact on tax revenues and prove that econometrics can be tweaked to produce consistent revenue forecasts even in the relatively-unexplored case of Bulgaria offering new insights to policymakers and advocates.
Perspectives in Public and University Sector Co-operation in the Change of Higher Education Model in Hungary, in Light of China's Experience
Authors: Attila Lajos Makai, Szabolcs Ramhap
Date: 2021-12-21 00:00:00

The model shift of higher education in Hungary brought not only the deepening of university-industry relations and technology transfer processes, but also contribute the emerging role of universities in shaping regional innovation policy. This process provides a new framework for cooperation between actors in regional innovation ecosystems and raises the relationship between economic-governmental-academic systems to a new level. Active involvement of government, the predominance of state resources, and the strong innovation-organizing power of higher education institutions are similarities that characterize both the Hungarian and Chinese innovation systems. This paper attempts to gather Chinese good practices whose adaptation can contribute to successful public-university collaboration. In the light of the examined practices, the processes related to the university model shift implemented so far can be placed in a new context, which are presented through the example of the Sz\'echenyi Istv\'an University of Gy\H{o}r.
The Changing Role of Entrepreneurial Universities in the Altering Innovation Policy: Opportunities Arising from the Paradigm Change in Light of the Experience of Széchenyi István University
Authors: Attila Lajos Makai, Szabolcs Rámháp
Date: 2021-12-21 00:00:00
Tasks: Transfer Learning

The progress made by the entrepreneurial university, which is a newly emerging category in Hungarian higher education after its change of model, has not only deepened relations between universities and the industry and intensified the technology and knowledge transfer processes, but also increased the role of universities in shaping regional innovation policy. This transformation places co-operation between the actors of the regional innovation ecosystem and the relationships between the economic, governmental and academic systems into a new framework. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of the change in the model through a specific example, and to outline the future possibilities of university involvement in the currently changing Hungarian innovation policy system.
Estimating economic severity of Air Traffic Flow Management regulations
Authors: Luis Delgado, Gérald Gurtner, Tatjana Bolić, Lorenzo Castelli
Date: 2021-12-21 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Management

The development of trajectory-based operations and the rolling network operations plan in European air traffic management network implies a move towards more collaborative, strategic flight planning. This opens up the possibility for inclusion of additional information in the collaborative decision-making process. With that in mind, we define the indicator for the economic risk of network elements (e.g., sectors or airports) as the expected costs that the elements impose on airspace users due to Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) regulations. The definition of the indicator is based on the analysis of historical ATFM regulations data, that provides an indication of the risk of accruing delay. This risk of delay is translated into a monetary risk for the airspace users, creating the new metric of the economic risk of a given airspace element. We then use some machine learning techniques to find the parameters leading to this economic risk. The metric is accompanied by an indication of the accuracy of the delay cost prediction model. Lastly, the economic risk is transformed into a qualitative economic severity classification. The economic risks and consequently economic severity can be estimated for different temporal horizons and time periods providing an indicator which can be used by Air Navigation Service Providers to identify areas which might need the implementation of strategic measures (e.g., resectorisation or capacity provision change), and by Airspace Users to consider operation of routes which use specific airspace regions.
Can large-scale R&I funding stimulate post-crisis recovery growth? Evidence for Finland during COVID-19
Authors: Timo Mitze, Teemu Makkonen
Date: 2021-12-20 00:00:00

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health restrictions led to a significant slump in economic activities around the globe. This slump has met by various policy actions to cushion the detrimental socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis and eventually bring the economy back on track. We provide an ex-ante evaluation of the effectiveness of a massive increase in research and innovation (R&I) funding in Finland to stimulate post-crisis recovery growth through an increase in R&I activities of Finnish firms. We make use of the fact that novel R&I grants for firms in disruptive circumstances granted in 2020 were allocated through established R&I policy channels. This allows us to estimate the structural link between R&I funding and economic growth for Finnish NUTS-3 regions using pre-COVID-19 data. Estimates are then used to forecast regional recovery growth out of sample and to quantify the growth contribution of R&I funding. Depending on the chosen scenario, our forecasts point to a mean recovery growth rate of GDP between 2-4% in 2021 after a decline of up to -2.5% in 2020. R&I funding constitutes a significant pillar of the recovery process with mean contributions in terms of GDP growth of between 0.4% and 1%.
Associational and plausible causal effects of COVID-19 public health policies on economic and mental distress
Authors: Reka Sundaram-Stukel, Richard J Davidson
Date: 2021-12-20 00:00:00

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has increased mental distress globally. The proportion of people reporting anxiety is 26%, and depression is 34% points. Disentangling associational and causal contributions of behavior, COVID-19 cases, and economic distress on mental distress will dictate different mitigation strategies to reduce long-term pandemic-related mental distress. Methods We use the Household Pulse Survey (HPS) April 2020 to February 2021 data to examine mental distress among U.S. citizens attributable to COVID-19. We combined HPS survey data with publicly available state-level weekly: COVID-19 case and death data from the Centers for Disease Control, public policies, and Apple and Google mobility data. Finally, we constructed economic and mental distress measures to estimate structural models with lag dependent variables to tease out public health policies' associational and causal path coefficients on economic and mental distress. Findings From April 2020 to February 2021, we found that anxiety and depression had steadily climbed in the U.S. By design, mobility restrictions primarily affected public health policies where businesses and restaurants absorbed the biggest hit. Period t-1 COVID-19 cases increased job loss by 4.1% and economic distress by 6.3% points in the same period. Job-loss and housing insecurity in t-1 increased period t mental distress by 29.1% and 32.7%, respectively. However, t-1 food insecurity decreased mental distress by 4.9% in time t. The pandemic-related potential causal path coefficient of period t-1 economic distress on period t depression is 57.8%, and anxiety is 55.9%. Thus, we show that period t-1 COVID-19 case information, behavior, and economic distress may be causally associated with pandemic related period t mental distress.
Double Standards: The Implications of Near Certainty Drone Strikes in Pakistan
Authors: Shyam Raman, Paul Lushenko, Sarah Kreps
Date: 2021-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Descriptive

In 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a policy to minimize civilian casualties following drone strikes in undeclared theaters of war. The policy calibrated Obamas approval of strikes against the near certainty of no civilian casualties. Scholars do not empirically study the merits of Obamas policy. Rather, they rely on descriptive trends for civilian casualties in Pakistan to justify competing claims for the policys impact. We provide a novel estimate for the impact of Obamas policy for civilian casualties in Pakistan following U.S. drone strikes. We employ a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of Obamas policy for civilian casualties, strike precision, and adverted civilian casualties. We find a discontinuity in civilian casualties approximately two years before Obamas policy announcement, corroborating our primary research including interviews with senior officials responsible for implementing the near certainty standard. After confirming the sharp cutoff, we estimate the policy resulted in a reduction of 12 civilian deaths per month or 2 casualties per strike. The policy also enhanced the precision of U.S. drone strikes to the point that they only killed the intended targets. Finally, we use a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate that the policy adverted 320 civilian casualties. We then conduct a Value of Statistical Life calculation to show that the adverted civilian casualties represent a gain of 80 to 260 million U.S. dollars. In addition to conditioning social and political outcomes, then, the near certainty standard also imposed economic implications that are much less studied.
Paternalism, Autonomy, or Both? Experimental Evidence from Energy Saving Programs
Authors: Takanori Ida, Takunori Ishihara, Koichiro Ito, Daido Kido, Toru Kitagawa, Shosei Sakaguchi, Shusaku Sasaki
Date: 2021-12-18 00:00:00

Identifying who should be treated is a central question in economics. There are two competing approaches to targeting - paternalistic and autonomous. In the paternalistic approach, policymakers optimally target the policy given observable individual characteristics. In contrast, the autonomous approach acknowledges that individuals may possess key unobservable information on heterogeneous policy impacts, and allows them to self-select into treatment. In this paper, we propose a new approach that mixes paternalistic assignment and autonomous choice. Our approach uses individual characteristics and empirical welfare maximization to identify who should be treated, untreated, and decide whether to be treated themselves. We apply this method to design a targeting policy for an energy saving programs using data collected in a randomized field experiment. We show that optimally mixing paternalistic assignments and autonomous choice significantly improves the social welfare gain of the policy. Exploiting random variation generated by the field experiment, we develop a method to estimate average treatment effects for each subgroup of individuals who would make the same autonomous treatment choice. Our estimates confirm that the estimated assignment policy optimally allocates individuals to be treated, untreated, or choose themselves based on the relative merits of paternalistic assignments and autonomous choice for individuals types.
More Reviews May Not Help: Evidence from Incentivized First Reviews on Airbnb
Authors: Andrey Fradkin, David Holtz
Date: 2021-12-17 00:00:00
Tasks: Selection bias

Online reviews are typically written by volunteers and, as a consequence, information about seller quality may be under-provided in digital marketplaces. We study the extent of this under-provision in a large-scale randomized experiment conducted by Airbnb. In this experiment, buyers are offered a coupon to review listings that have no prior reviews. The treatment induces additional reviews and these reviews tend to be more negative than reviews in the control group, consistent with selection bias in reviewing. Reviews induced by the treatment result in a temporary increase in transactions but these transactions are for fewer nights, on average. The effects on transactions and nights per transaction cancel out so that there is no detectable effect on total nights sold and revenue. Measures of transaction quality in the treatment group fall, suggesting that incentivized reviews do not improve matching. We show how market conditions and the design of the reputation system can explain our findings.
Cultural Diversity and Its Impact on Governance
Authors: Tomáš Evan, Vladimír Holý
Date: 2021-12-15 00:00:00
Tasks: Cultural Vocal Bursts Intensity Prediction, Diversity

Hofstede's six cultural dimensions make it possible to measure the culture of countries but are criticized for assuming the homogeneity of each country. In this paper, we propose two measures based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions which take into account the heterogeneous structure of citizens with respect to their countries of origin. Using these improved measures, we study the influence of heterogeneous culture and cultural diversity on the quality of institutions measured by the six worldwide governance indicators. We use a linear regression model allowing for dependence in spatial and temporal dimensions as well as high correlation between the governance indicators. Our results show that the effect of cultural diversity improves some of the governance indicators while worsening others depending on the individual Hofstede cultural dimension.
Finding the Instrumental Variables of Household Registration: A discussion of the impact of China's household registration system on the citizenship of the migrant population
Authors: Jingwen Tan, Shixi Kang
Date: 2021-12-14 00:00:00
Tasks: Specificity

Due to the specificity of China's dualistic household registration system and the differences in the rights and interests attached to it, household registration is prevalent as a control variable in the empirical evidence. In the context of family planning policies, this paper proposes to use family size and number of children as instrumental variables for household registration, and discusses qualitatively and statistically verifies their relevance and exogeneity, while empirically analyzing the impact of the household registration system on citizenship of the mobile population. After controlling for city, individual control variables and fixed effects, the following conclusions are drawn: family size and number of children pass the over-identification test when used as instrumental variables for household registration; non-agricultural households have about 20.2% lower settlement intentions and 7.28% lower employment levels in inflow cities than agricultural households; the mechanism of the effect of the nature of household registration on employment still holds for the non-mobile population group.
The road to safety- Examining the nexus between road infrastructure and crime in rural India
Authors: Ritika Jain, Shreya Biswas
Date: 2021-12-14 00:00:00
Tasks: Survey

This study examines the relationship between road infrastructure and crime rate in rural India using a nationally representative survey. On the one hand, building roads in villages may increase connectivity, boost employment, and lead to better living standards, reducing criminal activities. On the other hand, if the benefits of roads are non-uniformly distributed among villagers, it may lead to higher inequality and possibly higher crime. We empirically test the relationship using the two waves of the Indian Human Development Survey. We use an instrumental variable estimation strategy and observe that building roads in rural parts of India has reduced crime. The findings are robust to relaxing the strict instrument exogeneity condition and using alternate measures. On exploring the pathways, we find that improved street lighting, better public bus services and higher employment are a few of the direct potential channels through which road infrastructure impedes crime. We also find a negative association between villages with roads and various types of inequality measures confirming the broad economic benefits of roads. Our study also highlights that the negative impact of roads on crime is more pronounced in states with weaker institutions and higher income inequality.