pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Examining norms and social expectations surrounding exclusive breastfeeding: Evidence from Mali
Authors: Cristina Bicchieri, Upasak Das, Samuel Gant, Rachel Sander
Date: 2021-03-17 00:00:00

Why do people engage in certain behavior. What are the effects of social expectations and perceptions of community behavior and beliefs on own behavior. Given that proper infant feeding practices are observable and have significant health impacts, we explore the relevance of these questions in the context of exclusive infant breastfeeding behavior using social norms theory. We make use of a primary survey of mothers of children below the age of two years in the Kayes and Sikasso region of Mali, which have a historically lower prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding. The findings from regression estimations, controlling for a host of potential confounding factors, indicate that expectations about the behavior of other community members can strongly predict individual exclusive breastfeeding. Beliefs about approval of the infant feeding behavior of the community though are found to be only modestly associated with it. In addition, mothers who hold false but positive beliefs about the community are found to exclusively breastfeed their kids. Further, using responses from randomly assigned vignettes where we experimentally manipulated the levels of social expectations, our data reveal a strong relationship between perceived prevalence of community level exclusive breastfeeding and individual behavior. This result indicates the existence of a potential causal relationship. We argue that our findings represent an important foundation for the design of policy interventions aimed at altering social expectations, and thus effecting a measurable change in individual behaviors. This type of intervention, by using social norm messaging to end negative behavior, avoids the use of coercive measures to effect behavior change in a cost-effective and efficient way.
Decentralising the United Kingdom: the Northern Powerhouse strategy and urban ownership links between firms since 2010
Authors: Natalia Zdanowska, Robin Morphet
Date: 2021-03-15 00:00:00

This paper explores a decentralisation initiative in the United Kingdom - the Northern Powerhouse strategy (NPS) - in terms of its main goal: strengthening connectivity between Northern cities of England. It focuses on economic interactions of these cities, defined by ownership linkages between firms, since the NPS's launch in 2010. The analysis reveals a relatively weak increase in the intensity of economic regional patterns in the North, in spite of a shift away from NPS cities' traditional manufacturing base. These results suggest potential directions for policy-makers in terms of the future implementation of the NPS.
A Microsimulation Analysis of the Distributional Impact over the Three Waves of the COVID-19 Crisis in Ireland
Authors: Cathal O'Donoghue, Denisa M. Sologon, Iryna Kyzyma, John McHale
Date: 2021-03-15 00:00:00
Tasks: Survey

This paper relies on a microsimulation framework to undertake an analysis of the distributional implications of the COVID-19 crisis over three waves. Given the lack of real-time survey data during the fast moving crisis, it applies a nowcasting methodology and real-time aggregate administrative data to calibrate an income survey and to simulate changes in the tax benefit system that attempted to mitigate the impacts of the crisis. Our analysis shows how crisis-induced income-support policy innovations combined with existing progressive elements of the tax-benefit system were effective in avoiding an increase in income inequality at all stages of waves 1-3 of the COVID-19 emergency in Ireland. There was, however, a decline in generosity over time as benefits became more targeted. On a methodological level, our paper makes a specific contribution in relation to the choice of welfare measure in assessing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on inequality.
What are the key components of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in a developing economy? A longitudinal empirical study on technology business incubators in China
Authors: Xiangfei Yuan, Haijing Hao, Chenghua Guan, Alex Pentland
Date: 2021-03-15 00:00:00

Since the 1980s, technology business incubators (TBIs), which focus on accelerating businesses through resource sharing, knowledge agglomeration, and technology innovation, have become a booming industry. As such, research on TBIs has gained international attention, most notably in the United States, Europe, Japan, and China. The present study proposes an entrepreneurial ecosystem framework with four key components, i.e., people, technology, capital, and infrastructure, to investigate which factors have an impact on the performance of TBIs. We also empirically examine this framework based on unique, three-year panel survey data from 857 national TBIs across China. We implemented factor analysis and panel regression models on dozens of variables from 857 national TBIs between 2015 and 2017 in all major cities in China and found that a number of factors associated with people, technology, capital, and infrastructure components have various statistically significant impacts on the performance of TBIs at either national model or regional models.
Risks for Academic Research Projects, An Empirical Study of Perceived Negative Risks and Possible Responses
Authors: P. Alison Paprica
Date: 2021-03-14 00:00:00
Tasks: Management

Academic research projects receive hundreds of billions of dollars of government investment each year. They complement business research projects by focusing on the generation of new foundational knowledge and addressing societal challenges. Despite the importance of academic research, the management of it is often undisciplined and ad hoc. It has been postulated that the inherent uncertainty and complexity of academic research projects make them challenging to manage. However, based on this study's analysis of input and voting from more than 500 academic research team members in facilitated risk management sessions, the most important perceived risks are general, as opposed to being research specific. Overall participants' top risks related to funding, team instability, unreliable partners, study participant recruitment, and data access. Many of these risks would require system- or organization-level responses that are beyond the scope of individual academic research teams.
Real GDP per capita: global redistribution of economic power
Authors: Ivan Kitov
Date: 2021-03-14 00:00:00

Growth rate of real GDP per capita, GDPpc, is represented as a sum of two components, a monotonically decreasing economic trend and fluctuations related to population change. The economic trend is modelled by an inverse function of GDPpc with a constant numerator which varies for the largest developed economies. In 2006, a statistical analysis conducted for 19 selected OECD countries for the period between 1950 and 2003 showed a very weak linear trend in the annual GDPpc increment for the largest economies: the USA, Japan, France, Italy, and Spain. The UK, Australia, and Canada showed a slightly steeper positive linear trend. The 2012 revision showed that the positive trends became much lower and some of them fell below zero due to the Great Recession. The fluctuations around the trend values are characterized by a quasi-normal distribution with heavy and asymmetric tails. This research revises the previous estimates and extends the set of studied countries by economies in East Europe, Latin America, BRICS, Africa, and Asia including several positive outliers with extremely fast growth. The change in GDP definitions and measuring procedures with time and economic source is discussed in relation to the statistical significance of the trend estimates and data quality requirements for a consistent economic model. The relative performance of all counties since 1960 is compared according to the predicted total GDPpc growth as a function of the initial value. The performance in the 21st century is analyzed separately as revealing potential and actual shifts in the global economic powers.
Modern risks of small businesses
Authors: A. R Baghirzade
Date: 2021-03-12 00:00:00

An important area of anti-crisis public administration is the development of small businesses. They are an important part of the economy of developed and developing countries, provide employment for a significant part of the population and tax revenues to budgets, and contribute to increased competition and the development of entrepreneurial abilities of citizens. Therefore, the primary task of the state Federal and regional policy is to reduce administrative barriers and risks, time and resources spent on opening and developing small businesses, problems with small businesses ' access to Bank capital [8], etc. Despite the loud statements of officials, administrative barriers to the development of small businesses in trade and public catering are constantly increasing, including during the 2014-2016 crisis.
Equilibrium Price Formation with a Major Player and its Mean Field Limit
Authors: Masaaki Fujii, Akihiko Takahashi
Date: 2021-02-22 00:00:00

In this article, we consider the problem of equilibrium price formation in an incomplete securities market consisting of one major financial firm and a large number of minor firms. They carry out continuous trading via the securities exchange to minimize their cost while facing idiosyncratic and common noises as well as stochastic order flows from their individual clients. The equilibrium price process that balances demand and supply of the securities, including the functional form of the price impact for the major firm, is derived endogenously both in the market of finite population size and in the corresponding mean field limit.
A new method for identifying what Cupid's invisible hand is doing. Is it spreading color blindness while turning us more "picky'' about spousal education?
Authors: Anna Naszodi, Francisco Mendonca
Date: 2021-03-11 00:00:00

We develop a method suitable for detecting whether racial homophily is on the rise and also whether the economic divide (i.e., the gap between individuals with different education levels and thereby with different abilities to generate income) is growing in a society. We identify these changes with the changing aggregate marital preferences over the partners' race and education level through their effects on the share of inter-racial couples and the share of educationally homogamous couples. These shares are shaped not only by preferences, but also by the distributions of marriageable men and women by traits. The method proposed is designed to control for changes in the trait distributions from one generation to another. By applying the method, we find the economic divide in the US to display a U-curve pattern between 1960 and 2010 followed by its slightly negative trend between 2010 and 2015. The identified trend of racial homophily suggests that the American society has become more and more permissive towards racial intermarriages since 1970. Finally, we refute the aggregate version of the status-cast exchange hypothesis based on the joint dynamics of the economic divide and the racial homophily.
Robust Mathematical Formulation and Probabilistic Description of Agent-Based Computational Economic Market Models
Authors: Maximilian Beikirch, Simon Cramer, Martin Frank, Philipp Otte, Emma Pabich, Torsten Trimborn
Date: 2019-04-10 00:00:00

In science and especially in economics, agent-based modeling has become a widely used modeling approach. These models are often formulated as a large system of difference equations. In this study, we discuss two aspects, numerical modeling and the probabilistic description for two agent-based computational economic market models: the Levy-Levy-Solomon model and the Franke-Westerhoff model. We derive time-continuous formulations of both models, and in particular we discuss the impact of the time-scaling on the model behavior for the Levy-Levy-Solomon model. For the Franke-Westerhoff model, we proof that a constraint required in the original model is not necessary for stability of the time-continuous model. It is shown that a semi-implicit discretization of the time-continuous system preserves this unconditional stability. In addition, this semi-implicit discretization can be computed at cost comparable to the original model. Furthermore, we discuss possible probabilistic descriptions of time continuous agent-based computational economic market models. Especially, we present the potential advantages of kinetic theory in order to derive mesoscopic desciptions of agent-based models. Exemplified, we show two probabilistic descriptions of the Levy-Levy-Solomon and Franke-Westerhoff model.
A Universal Basic Income For Brazil: Fiscal and Distributional Effects of Alternative Schemes
Authors: Rozane Bezerra de Siqueira, Jose Ricardo Bezerra Nogueira
Date: 2021-03-10 00:00:00

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increasing interest in Universal Basic Income (UBI) proposals as it exposed the inadequacy of traditional welfare systems to provide basic financial security to a large share of the population. In this paper, we use a static tax-benefit microsimulation model to analyse the fiscal and distributional effects of the hypothetical implementation in Brazil of alternative UBI schemes which partially replace the existing tax-transfer system. The results indicate that the introduction of a UBI/Flat Tax system in the country could be both extremely effective in reducing poverty and inequality and economically viable.
Environmental performance of shared micromobility and personal alternatives using integrated modal LCA
Authors: Anne de Bortoli
Date: 2021-03-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

The environmental performance of shared micromobility services compared to private alternatives has never been assessed using an integrated modal Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) relying on field data. Such an LCA is conducted on three shared micromobility services in Paris - bikes, second-generation e-scooters, and e-mopeds - and their private alternatives. Global warming potential, primary energy consumption, and the three endpoint damages are calculated. Sensitivity analyses on vehicle lifespan, shipping, servicing distance, and electricity mix are conducted. Electric micromobility ranks between active modes and personal ICE modes. Its impacts are globally driven by vehicle manufacturing. Ownership does not affect directly the environmental performance: the vehicle lifetime mileage does. Assessing the sole carbon footprint leads to biased environmental decision-making, as it is not correlated to the three damages: multicriteria LCA is mandatory to preserve the planet. Finally, a major change of paradigm is needed to eco-design modern transportation policies.
Mining the Relationship Between COVID-19 Sentiment and Market Performance
Authors: Ziyuan Xia, Jeffery Chen, Anchen Sun
Date: 2021-01-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Relation, Sentiment Analysis

At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in March, we observed one of the largest stock market crashes in history. Within the months following this, a volatile bullish climb back to pre-pandemic performances and higher. In this paper, we study the stock market behavior during the initial few months of the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to COVID-19 sentiment. Using text sentiment analysis of Twitter data, we look at tweets that contain key words in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and the sentiment of the tweet to understand whether sentiment can be used as an indicator for stock market performance. There has been previous research done on applying natural language processing and text sentiment analysis to understand the stock market performance, given how prevalent the impact of COVID-19 is to the economy, we want to further the application of these techniques to understand the relationship that COVID-19 has with stock market performance. Our findings show that there is a strong relationship to COVID-19 sentiment derived from tweets that could be used to predict stock market performance in the future.
The Determinants of Democracy Revisited: An Instrumental Variable Bayesian Model Averaging Approach
Authors: Sajad Rahimian
Date: 2021-03-07 00:00:00

Identifying the real causes of democracy is an ongoing debate. We contribute to the literature by examining the robustness of a comprehensive list of 42 potential determinants of democracy. We take a step forward and employ Instrumental Variable Bayesian Model Averaging (IVBMA) method to tackle endogeneity explicitly. Using the data of 111 countries, our IVBMA results mark arable land as the most persistent predictor of democracy with a posterior inclusion probability (PIP) of 0.961. Youth population (PIP: 0.893), life expectancy (PIP: 0.839), and GDP per capita (PIP: 0.758) are the next critical independent variables. In a subsample of 80 developing countries, in addition to arable land (PIP: 0.919), state fragility proves to be a significant determinant of democracy (PIP: 0.779).
Signaling and Employer Learning with Instruments
Authors: Gaurab Aryal, Manudeep Bhuller, Fabian Lange
Date: 2021-03-06 00:00:00

This paper considers the use of instruments to identify and estimate private and social returns to education within a model of employer learning. What an instrument identifies depends on whether it is hidden from, or transparent (i.e., observed) to, the employers. A hidden instrument identifies private returns to education, and a transparent instrument identifies social returns to education. We use variation in compulsory schooling laws across non-central and central municipalities in Norway to, respectively, construct hidden and transparent instruments. We estimate a private return of 7.9%, of which 70% is due to increased productivity and the remaining 30% is due to signaling.
Automation and Taxation
Authors: Kerstin Hötte, Angelos Theodorakopoulos, Pantelis Koutroumpis
Date: 2021-03-06 00:00:00

Decomposing taxes by source (labor, capital, sales), we analyze the impact of automation on tax revenues and the structure of taxation in 19 EU countries during 1995-2016. Pre-2008, robot diffusion lead to decreasing factor and tax income, and a shift from taxes on capital to goods. ICTs changed the structure of taxation from capital to labor, with decreasing employment, but increasing wages and labor income. Post-2008, we find an ICT-induced increase in capital income and services, but no effect on taxation from ICT/robots. Overall, automation goes through various phases with heterogeneous economic effects which impact the amount and structure of taxes. Whether automation erodes taxation depends on the technology and stage of diffusion, and thus concerns about public budgets might be myopic when focusing on the short-run and ignoring relevant technological trends.
Beyond Unbounded Beliefs: How Preferences and Information Interplay in Social Learning
Authors: Navin Kartik, SangMok Lee, Tianhao Liu, Daniel Rappoport
Date: 2021-03-03 00:00:00

When does society eventually learn the truth, or take the correct action, via observational learning? In a general model of sequential learning over social networks, we identify a simple condition for learning dubbed excludability. Excludability is a joint property of agents' preferences and their information. We develop two classes of preferences and information that jointly satisfy excludability: (i) for a one-dimensional state, preferences with single-crossing differences and a new informational condition, directionally unbounded beliefs; and (ii) for a multi-dimensional state, intermediate preferences and subexponential location-shift information. These applications exemplify that with multiple states "unbounded beliefs" is not only unnecessary for learning, but incompatible with familiar informational structures like normal information. Unbounded beliefs demands that a single agent can identify the correct action. Excludability, on the other hand, only requires that a single agent must be able to displace any wrong action, even if she cannot take the correct action.
Automation-driven innovation management? Toward Innovation-Automation-Strategy cycle
Authors: Piotr Tomasz Makowski, Yuya Kajikawa
Date: 2021-03-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Management

There is a resurging interest in automation because of rapid progress of machine learning and AI. In our perspective, innovation is not an exemption from their expansion. This situation gives us an opportunity to reflect on a direction of future innovation studies. In this conceptual paper, we propose a framework of innovation process by exploiting the concept of unit process. Deploying it in the context of automation, we indicate the important aspects of innovation process, i.e. human, organizational, and social factors. We also highlight the cognitive and interactive underpinnings at micro- and macro-levels of the process. We propose to embrace all those factors in what we call Innovation-Automation-Strategy cycle (IAS). Implications of IAS for future research are also put forward. Keywords: innovation, automation of innovation, unit process, innovation-automation-strategy cycle
Multi-level Adaptation of Distributed Decision-Making Agents in Complex Task Environments
Authors: Darío Blanco-Fernández, Stephan Leitner, Alexandra Rausch
Date: 2021-03-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Management

To solve complex tasks, individuals often autonomously organize in teams. Examples of complex tasks include disaster relief rescue operations or project development in consulting. The teams that work on such tasks are adaptive at multiple levels: First, by autonomously choosing the individuals that jointly perform a specific task, the team itself adapts to the complex task at hand, whereby the composition of teams might change over time. We refer to this process as self-organization. Second, the members of a team adapt to the complex task environment by learning. There is, however, a lack of extensive research on multi-level adaptation processes that consider self-organization and individual learning as simultaneous processes in the field of management science. We introduce an agent-based model based on the NK-framework to study the effects of simultaneous multi-level adaptation on a team's performance. We implement the multi-level adaptation process by a second-price auction mechanism for self-organization at the team level. Adaptation at the individual level follows an autonomous learning mechanism. Our preliminary results suggest that, depending on the task's complexity, different configurations of individual and collective adaptation can be associated with higher overall task performance. Low complex tasks favour high individual and collective adaptation, while moderate individual and collective adaptation is associated with better performance in case of moderately complex tasks. For highly complex tasks, the results suggest that collective adaptation is harmful to performance.
Measuring Vacancies: Firm-level Evidence from Two Measures
Authors: Niels-Jakob Harbo Hansen, Hans Henrik Sievertsen
Date: 2021-03-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Survey, Vocal Bursts Valence Prediction

Using firm-level survey- and register-data for both Sweden and Denmark we show systematic mis-measurement in both vacancy measures. While the register-based measure on the aggregate constitutes a quarter of the survey-based measure, the latter is not a super-set of the former. To obtain the full set of unique vacancies in these two databases, the number of survey vacancies should be multiplied by approximately 1.2. Importantly, this adjustment factor varies over time and across firm characteristics. Our findings have implications for both the search-matching literature and policy analysis based on vacancy measures: Observed changes in vacancies can be an outcome of changes in mis-measurement, and are not necessarily changes in the actual number of vacancies.