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Sequential vote buying
Chen, Y.; Zápal, Jan
2021 - English
To enact a policy, a leader needs votes from committee members with heterogeneous opposition intensities. She sequentially offers transfers in exchange for votes. The transfers are either promises paid only if the policy passes or paid up front. With transfer promises, a vote costs nearly zero. With up-front payments, a vote can cost significantly more than zero, but the leader is better off with up-front payments. The leader does not necessarily buy the votes of those least opposed. The opposition structure most challenging to the leader involves either a homogeneous committee or a committee with two homogenous groups. Our results provide an explanation for several empirical regularities: lobbying of strongly opposed legislators, the Tullock Paradox and expansion of the whip system in the U.S. House concurrent with ideological homogenization of parties. We also discuss several extensions including private histories and simultaneous offers.
Keywords:
vote buying; legislative bargaining; coalition building
Fulltext is available at external website.
Sequential vote buying
To enact a policy, a leader needs votes from committee members with heterogeneous opposition intensities. She sequentially offers transfers in exchange for votes. The transfers are either promises ...
Paternal circular migration and development of socio-emotional skills of children left behind
Adunts, Davit
2021 - English
This study investigates the short-run effect of paternal absence due to circular migration on the socio-emotional skills of their children left behind. To address the endogeneity of the migration decision, and building on previous studies, this study focuses on children whose fathers have all engaged in circular migration. Furthermore, using quasi-exogenous variation in the timing of return migration induced by bilateral migration laws between Ukraine and Poland, I circumvent the bias related to the return migration decision. The findings of this study suggest that current paternal absence due to circular migration negatively affects the socioemotional skills of children left behind. Overall, this result suggests that circular migration is not necessarily a „triple-win“ solution that benefits all involved parties.
Keywords:
circular migration; children left behind; perseverance skills
Fulltext is available at external website.
Paternal circular migration and development of socio-emotional skills of children left behind
This study investigates the short-run effect of paternal absence due to circular migration on the socio-emotional skills of their children left behind. To address the endogeneity of the migration ...
A note on Jain's digital piracy model: horizontal vs vertical product differentiation
Kúnin, Michael; Žigić, Krešimir
2021 - English
We study how private intellectual property rights protection affects equilibrium prices and profits in a duopoly competition between firms that offer a product variety of distinct qualities (vertical product differentiation) in a setup that is closely related to that put forward by Jain (2008), where firms offer the same qualities in equilibrium (horizontal product differentiation). Consumers may make a choice to buy a legal version, use an illegal copy (if they want to and can), or not use a product at all. Using an illegal version violates intellectual property rights protection and is thus punishable when disclosed. Thus, both private and public (copyright) intellectual property rights protection are available on scene.
Keywords:
vertical and horizontal product differentiation; software piracy; Bertrand competition
Fulltext is available at external website.
A note on Jain's digital piracy model: horizontal vs vertical product differentiation
We study how private intellectual property rights protection affects equilibrium prices and profits in a duopoly competition between firms that offer a product variety of distinct qualities (vertical ...
Environmental regulations, air pollution, and infant mortality in India: a reexamination
Kyrychenko, Olexiy
2021 - English
This paper reexamines empirical evidence on the effectiveness of environmental regulations in India from a recent study by Greenstone and Hanna (GH, 2014). GH report that air pollution control policies in India were effective in improving air quality but had a modest and statistically insignificant effect on infant mortality. These somewhat counterintuitive findings are likely to stem from the limited availability of ground-based air pollution data used in GH and the absence of critical meteorological confounders. I leverage recent advances in satellite technology and GH’s methodology to test the sensitivity of their findings to revised air pollution outcomes, an extended number of observations, and meteorological controls. Despite striking differences between the two datasets, reexamination using satellite-based data confirms the conclusions drawn from GH’s data. The effects of the policies are, however, substantially weaker. The paper urges further research on the effectiveness of environmental regulations in developing countries and the use of satellite imagery in the examination of this important question.
Keywords:
air pollution; infant mortality; environmental regulation
Fulltext is available at external website.
Environmental regulations, air pollution, and infant mortality in India: a reexamination
This paper reexamines empirical evidence on the effectiveness of environmental regulations in India from a recent study by Greenstone and Hanna (GH, 2014). GH report that air pollution control ...
Air pollution and migration: exploiting a natural experiment from the Czech Republic
Mikula, Š.; Pytliková, Mariola
2021 - English
This paper examines the causal effects of air pollution on migration by exploiting a natural experiment in which desulfurization technologies were rapidly implemented in coal-burning power plants in the Czech Republic in the 1990s. These technologies substantially decreased air pollution levels without per se affecting economic activity. The results based on a difference-in-differences estimator imply that improvements in air quality reduced emigration from previously heavily polluted municipalities by 24%. We find that the effect of air pollution on emigration tended to be larger in municipalities with weaker social capital and fewer man-made amenities. Thus, our results imply that strengthening social capital and investing in better facilities and public services could partially mitigate depopulation responses to air pollution. Finally, we look at heterogeneous migratory responses to air pollution by education and age and find some evidence that the more educated tend to be more sensitive to air pollution in their settlement behavior.
Keywords:
air pollution; migration; natural experiment
Fulltext is available at external website.
Air pollution and migration: exploiting a natural experiment from the Czech Republic
This paper examines the causal effects of air pollution on migration by exploiting a natural experiment in which desulfurization technologies were rapidly implemented in coal-burning power plants in ...
Sick pay and absence from work: evidence from flu exposure
Grossmann, Jakub
2021 - English
The system of sick-pay is critical for balancing the economic and health costs of infectious diseases. Surprisingly, most research on sick-pay reforms does not rely on variation in worker exposure to diseases when investigating absences from work. This paper studies the effects on absences from work of changes in health-insurance coverage of the first three days of sickness. We explore geographic variation in the prevalence of infectious diseases, primarily the seasonal flu, to provide variation in the need for sickness insurance. Estimates based on the Czech Structure of Earnings Survey imply that when sickness insurance is not available, total hours of work missed are not affected, but employees rely on paid and unpaid leave instead of sick-leave to stay home. The substitution effects are heterogenous across occupations and socio-demographic characteristics of employees, and suggest that workers do not spread infectious diseases at the workplace as a result of the absence of sickness insurance coverage in the first three days of sickness.
Keywords:
sickness insurance; exposure to sickness; policy reform
Fulltext is available at external website.
Sick pay and absence from work: evidence from flu exposure
The system of sick-pay is critical for balancing the economic and health costs of infectious diseases. Surprisingly, most research on sick-pay reforms does not rely on variation in worker exposure to ...
Shrinkage for Gaussian and t copulas in ultra-high dimensions
Anatolyev, Stanislav; Pyrlik, Vladimir
2021 - English
Copulas are a convenient framework to synthesize joint distributions, particularly in higher dimensions. Currently, copula-based high dimensional settings are used for as many as a few hundred variables and require large data samples for estimation to be precise. In this paper, we employ shrinkage techniques for large covariance matrices in the problem of estimation of Gaussian and t copulas whose dimensionality goes well beyond that typical in the literature. Specifically, we use the covariance matrix shrinkage of Ledoit and Wolf to estimate large matrix parameters of Gaussian and t copulas for up to thousands of variables, using up to 20 times lower sample sizes. The simulation study shows that the shrinkage estimation significantly outperforms traditional estimators, both in low and especially high dimensions. We also apply this approach to the problem of allocation of large portfolios.
Keywords:
Gaussian copula; t copula; high dimensionality
Fulltext is available at external website.
Shrinkage for Gaussian and t copulas in ultra-high dimensions
Copulas are a convenient framework to synthesize joint distributions, particularly in higher dimensions. Currently, copula-based high dimensional settings are used for as many as a few hundred ...
Sentencing decisions around quantity thresholds: theory and experiment
Drápal, Jakub; Šoltés, Michal
2021 - English
We study the implications of the structure of criminal codes on sentencing decisions. To limit sentencing disparities, criminal codes typically divide offenses into subsections with specific sentencing ranges. The classification into corresponding subsections often depends on exceeding a given quantity threshold, such as drug amount. We study the consequences of these quantity thresholds on sentencing decisions and argue that the threshold effect can be decomposed into two opposing mechanisms: the severity mechanism and the reference one. An experiment with Czech prosecutors shows that thresholds drive substantial increases in sentences, leading to sentencing disparities. We further introduce empirical measures of (in)justice and quantify the consequences of quantity thresholds on the probability of imposing a just sentence.
Keywords:
sentencing; quantity threshold; sentencing disparities
Fulltext is available at external website.
Sentencing decisions around quantity thresholds: theory and experiment
We study the implications of the structure of criminal codes on sentencing decisions. To limit sentencing disparities, criminal codes typically divide offenses into subsections with specific ...
Checkmate! Losing with borders, winning with centers. The case of European integration
Kapanadze, Ketevani
2021 - English
This paper studies two major stages of European integration, the expansion of the European Union (EU) in 2004 and the Schengen Area in 2008, and their impacts on economic performance in subregions of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Using European regional data at the NUTS3 level and disaggregated synthetic control method, I construct counterfactuals for sub-regions of CEE countries. This approach allows me to assess regional treatment effects (RTEs) and to study the heterogeneous effects of European integration. I find that the benefits of EU and Schengen memberships to annual GDP per capita are approximately 10% less in border regions, relative to interior areas. The results expose regional economic disparities, as border regions lose relative to interior regions since European integration. Furthermore, integration facilitators in border regions such as fewer geographical barriers, more service employment, and positive attitudes toward the EU did not reduce economic disparities. The results show that the gap persists, regardless of some complementarities. Thus, the main implication of this paper is that sub-regions of CEE countries are far from being fully converged, and that European integration instead seems to have spurred sub-regional divergence.
Keywords:
CEE countries; European integration; RTEs
Fulltext is available at external website.
Checkmate! Losing with borders, winning with centers. The case of European integration
This paper studies two major stages of European integration, the expansion of the European Union (EU) in 2004 and the Schengen Area in 2008, and their impacts on economic performance in subregions of ...
Wages, minimum wages, and price pass-through: the case of McDonald's restaurants
Ashenfelter, O.; Jurajda, Štěpán
2021 - English
We use highly consistent national-coverage price and wage data to provide evidence on wage increases, labor-saving technology introduction, and price pass-through by a large low-wage employer facing minimum wage hikes. Based on 2016-2020 hourly wage rates of McDonald’s Basic Crew and prices of the Big Mac sandwich collected simultaneously from almost all US McDonald’s restaurants, we find that in about 25% of instances of minimum wage increases, restaurants display a tendency to keep constant their wage ‘premium’ above the increasing minimum wage. Higher minimum wages are not associated with faster adoption of touch-screen ordering, and there is near-full price pass-through of minimum wages, with little heterogeneity related to how binding minimum wage increases are for restaurants. Minimum wage hikes lead to increases in real wages (expressed in Big Macs an hour of Basic Crew work can buy) that are one fifth lower than the corresponding increases in nominal wages.
Keywords:
minimum wages; wage increases; McDonald’s
Fulltext is available at external website.
Wages, minimum wages, and price pass-through: the case of McDonald's restaurants
We use highly consistent national-coverage price and wage data to provide evidence on wage increases, labor-saving technology introduction, and price pass-through by a large low-wage employer facing ...
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