Economics Commons^™

Cross-Country Heterogeneity In Students’ Reporting Behavior: The Use Of The Anchoring Vignette Method, Hana Vonkova, Gema Zamarro, Collin Hitt

Gema Zamarro

Is College The New High School? Evidence From Vacancy Postings, Brad Hershbein

Brad J. Hershbein

Do firms demand more skilled workers in a slack labor market? We use a new database of job vacancy postings, containing a near-universe of electronic posts in U.S. metro areas, collected by the firm Burning Glass over the period 2010-2013. We find evidence of upskilling – firms demanding more skilled workers – when the local unemployment rate is higher, i.e., in places where the recovery following the Great Recession was slower. Our estimates imply that firms demand three-quarters of a year more schooling on average in a large recession compared to a boom. We find that at least two-thirds of …

Learning Through Experimentation: Creating An Authentic Experiment With Behavioral Economics Students, Stacie Bosley

Stacie Bosley

Don't Blame Faculty For High Tuition: The Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession, 2003-04, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The bottom line is that although faculty and staff salary in-creases obviously contribute to increases in tuition, other factors have played more important roles during the last quarter century. These factors include the escalating costs of benefits for all employees, reductions in state support of public institutions, growing institutional financial-aid costs, expansion of the science and research infrastructure at research universities, and the increasing costs of information technology. If tuition and fee increases had been held to the rate of average faculty salary increases during this period, average tuition and fees would be substantially lower today in both the …

Faith, Economics, And The Scholarly Vocation, Andrew Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

No abstract provided.

Ability Grouping And Academic Inequality: Evidence From Trinidad And Tobago, Clement (Kirabo) Jackson

C. Kirabo Jackson

In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools after fifth grade based on achievement tests, generating large differences in school and peer quality. Using instrumental variables to address self-selection bias, I find that being assigned to a school with high-achieving peers has large positive effects on examination performance, particularly for girls. This suggests that ability grouping (or school tracking) reinforces achievement differences by assigning the weakest students to schools that provide the least value-added. While students benefit from attending schools with brighter peers on average, the marginal effect is non-linear such that there are small benefits to attending …

Teaching Students And Teaching Each Other: The Importance Of Peer Learning For Teachers (With Elias Bruegmann), Clement (Kirabo) Jackson

C. Kirabo Jackson

Using student examination data linked to longitudinal teacher personnel data we document that a teacher’s students have larger test score gains when she experiences an improvement in the observable characteristics of her colleagues. Using within-school and within-teacher variation, we further show that a teacher’s students have larger test score gains when she has more effective colleagues (based on their own students’ achievement gains from an out-of-sample pre-period). A one standard deviation increase in average teacher peer quality is associated with an increase of 0.02 and 0.04 standard deviations in student test scores in reading and math respectively (about one third …

Student Demographics, Teacher Sorting And Teacher Quality: Evidence From The End Of School Desegregation, Clement (Kirabo) Jackson

C. Kirabo Jackson

The reshuffling of students due to the end of student busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg provides a unique opportunity to investigate the relationship between changes in student attributes and changes in teacher quality that is not confounded with changes in school or neighborhood characteristics. Comparisons of OLS and IV results suggest that the spatial correlation between teachers’ residences, students’ residences and schools could lead to spurious correlation between student attributes and teacher characteristics. The reshuffling of students led to teacher re-sorting so that schools that experienced a repatriation of black students experienced a decrease in various measures of teacher quality (including estimated …

Closed End Fund Discounts As Sentiment Indicies, Thomas Berry

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

The Disposition Effect And Individual Investor Decisions: The Role Of Regret And Counterfactual Alternatives, Thomas Berry, Suzanne Fogel

Thomas D Berry

Recent studies have documented a strong tendency for individual investors to delay realizing capital losses, while realizing gains prematurely (Odean [1996], Shefrin and Statman [1985], Weber and Camerer [1996]). This tendency has been termed the “disposition effect.” The disposition effect is inconsistent with normative approaches to stock sales, such as those based on tax losses (see, for example, Constantinides [1983]). We surveyed individual investors, and found that more respondents reported regret about holding on to a losing stock too long than about selling a winning stock too soon. This finding suggests that individual investors are consistently engaging in behavior that …

Congestion Pricing: The Answer To America's Traffic Woes?, Ryan Yeung

Ryan Yeung

Congestion results in losses in productivity, added delivery time, extra costs for consumers, as well as damage to the environment. The most obvious solution to traffic congestion is to build more roads, but the prevailing thought among experts is that adding supply is not an effective long-term solution. Another approach is congestion pricing, where motorists are charged different prices based on demand. A literature review supports congestion pricing’s effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. Perhaps most importantly, a number of case studies suggest that congestion pricing is politically feasible.

Private Information And Market Movements: New Evidence From The Wednesday Closings Of 1968, Thomas Berry

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

Public Information Arrival, Thomas Berry, Keith Howe

Thomas D Berry

The authors develop a measure of public information flow to financial markets and use it to document the patterns of information arrival, with an emphasis on the intraday flows. The measure is the number of news releases by Reuter's News Service per unit of time. The authors find that public information arrival is nonconstant, displaying seasonalities and distinct intraday patterns. Next they relate their measure of public information to aggregate measures of intraday market activity. The authors' results suggest a positive, moderate relationship between public information and trading volume but an insignificant relationship with price volatility. Copyright 1994 by American …

Rationalising The Economic Metaphor, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Contemporary critique of the developing trend towards education institutions being run as businesses, and for students to be treated as economic units.

A Multi-State Analysis Of The Tjtc, Thomas Berry, Julia Lane

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

Risk-Return And The Relative Pricing Of Darp, Thomas Berry, John Houston

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

Some Guidelines For Assessing The Size Of Lack-Of-Marketability Discounts, Thomas Berry, Don Shannon

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

A Survey Of Introductory Financial Managment Courses, Thomas Berry, Edward Farragher

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Of Corporate Policy Decisions And Financial Leverage: An Empirical Analysis, Thomas Berry, John Houston

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Federal Tax Changes Of The Cost Of Debt For State And Local Governments, Thomas Berry, Edward Farragher

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

Fnma Mortgage Commitments As Put Options: An Empirical Examination, Thomas Berry, Adam Gehr

Thomas D Berry

The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) auctions commitments to purchase mortgages. An examination of the terms of the commitment contract shows that these commitments are actually put options on mortgages. The contract is unusual, however, in that the price of the commitment is a fixed percentage of the value of the mortgages. In the auction, the dealers effectively bid the exercise price at which they would be willing to pay the fixed commitment price. In this paper, we study the economics of the FNMA auction. We use a two-state approximation to the American put pricing model for interest-dependent securities to …

State Variation In The Targeted Jobs Tax Credit Program, Thomas Berry, Julie Lane

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

A Short-Run Model Of Regional Housing Demand, Thomas Berry

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

Fnma Auction Results As A Forecaster Of Residential Mortgage Yields, Thomas Berry, Adam Gehr

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

An Alternative Methodology For Developing Certainty Equivalents, Thomas Berry, Bill Poppie

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

The Choice Of Money Market Fund, Thomas Berry

Thomas D Berry

No abstract provided.

A Socioeconomic Analysis Of Schooling In Ethiopia, Asayehgn Desta

Asayehgn Desta