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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Economic Theory
The Efficiency Of U.S. Public Space Utilization During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides
The Efficiency Of U.S. Public Space Utilization During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
The COVID-19 pandemic has called for and generated massive novel government regulations to increase social distancing for the purpose of reducing disease transmission. A number of studies have attempted to guide and measure the effectiveness of these policies, but there has been less focus on the overall efficiency of these policies. Efficient social distancing requires implementing stricter restrictions during periods of high viral prevalence and rationing social contact to disproportionately preserve gatherings that produce a good ratio of benefits to transmission risk. To evaluate whether U.S. social distancing policy actually produced an efficient social distancing regime, we tracked consumer preferences …
Rationing Social Contact During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Transmission Risk And Social Benefits Of Us Locations, Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides
Rationing Social Contact During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Transmission Risk And Social Benefits Of Us Locations, Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
To prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), some types of public spaces have been shut down while others remain open. These decisions constitute a judgment about the relative danger and benefits of those locations. Using mobility data from a large sample of smartphones, nationally representative consumer preference surveys, and economic statistics, we measure the relative transmission reduction benefit and social cost of closing 26 categories of US locations. Our categories include types of shops, entertainments, and service providers. We rank categories by their trade-off of social benefits and transmission risk via dominance across 13 dimensions of risk and …
Cognitive Reflection And The Diligent Worker: An Experimental Study Of Millennials, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hernán-González, Ricardo Mateo
Cognitive Reflection And The Diligent Worker: An Experimental Study Of Millennials, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hernán-González, Ricardo Mateo
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Recent studies have shown that despite crucially needing the creative talent of millennials (people born after 1980) organizations have been reluctant to hire young workers because of their supposed lack of diligence. We propose to help resolve this dilemma by studying the determinants of task performance and shirking behaviors of millennials in a laboratory work environment. We find that cognitive ability is a good predictor of task performance in line with previous literature. In contrast with previous research, personality traits do not consistently predict either task performance or shirking behaviors. Shirking behaviors, as measured by the time participants spent browsing …
Robust Determinants Of Bilateral Trade, Marianne Baxter, Jonathan Hersh
Robust Determinants Of Bilateral Trade, Marianne Baxter, Jonathan Hersh
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
What are the policies and country-level conditions which best explain bilateral trade flows between countries? As databases expand, an increasing number of possible explanatory variables are proposed that influence bilateral trade without a clear indication of which variables are robustly important across contexts, time periods, and which are not sensitive to inclusion of other control variables. To shed light on this problem, we apply three model selection methods – Lasso reguarlized regression, Bayesian Model Averaging, and Extreme Bound Analysis -- to candidate variables in a gravity models of trade. Using a panel of 198 countries covering the years 1970 to …
Firing Threats: Incentive Effects And Impression Management, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hérnan-Gonzalez, Stephen J. Rassenti
Firing Threats: Incentive Effects And Impression Management, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hérnan-Gonzalez, Stephen J. Rassenti
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
We study the effect of firing threats in a virtual workplace that reproduces features of existing organizations. We show that organizations in which bosses can fire up to one third of their workforce produce twice as much as organizations for which firing is not possible. Firing threats sharply decrease on-the-job leisure. Nevertheless, organizations endowed with firing threats underperformed those using individual incentives. In the presence of firing threats, employees engage in impression management activities to be seen as hard-working individuals in line with our model. Finally, production levels dropped substantially when the threat of being fired was removed, whereas on-the-job …
Resource Adequacy: Should Regulators Worry?, Hernan D. Bejarano, Lance Clifner, Carl Johnston, Stephen J. Rassenti, Vernon L. Smith
Resource Adequacy: Should Regulators Worry?, Hernan D. Bejarano, Lance Clifner, Carl Johnston, Stephen J. Rassenti, Vernon L. Smith
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Regulators have proposed various institutional alternatives to secure network resource adequacy and reasonably priced electric power for consumers. These alternatives prompt many difficult questions: Does the development of Demand Response reduce the need for new capacity? How effectively can a government-mandated Capacity Market foster efficient investment? How does centralized generator commitment (with revenue guarantees) compare to a system in which Generators voluntarily commit themselves with no revenue guarantees? If exclusive distribution contracts were replaced by unregulated retail competition, what would be the effects on investment and market prices? We use laboratory experiments to address these questions.
Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods And The Welfare Gains From Trade After 1492, Jonathan Hersh, Hans-Joachim Voth
Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods And The Welfare Gains From Trade After 1492, Jonathan Hersh, Hans-Joachim Voth
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
When did overseas trade start to matter for living standards? Traditional real-wage indices suggest that living standards in Europe stagnated before 1800. In this paper, we argue that welfare rose substantially, but surreptitiously, because of an influx of new goods as a result of overseas trade. Colonial luxuries such as tea, coffee, and sugar transformed European diets after the discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. These goods became household items in many countries by the end of the 18th century. We use three different methods to calculate welfare gains based on price data and …
The Alliance Formation Puzzle And Capacity Constraints, Kai A. Konrad, Dan Kovenock
The Alliance Formation Puzzle And Capacity Constraints, Kai A. Konrad, Dan Kovenock
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
The formation of an alliance in conflict situations is known to suffer from a collective action problem and from the potential of internal conflict. We show that budget constraints of an intermediate size can overcome this strong disadvantage and explain the formation of alliances.
Competition For Fdi With Vintage Investment And Agglomeration Advantages, Kai A. Konrad, Dan Kovenock
Competition For Fdi With Vintage Investment And Agglomeration Advantages, Kai A. Konrad, Dan Kovenock
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Countries compete for new FDI investment, whereas stocks of FDI generate agglomeration benefits and are potentially subject to extortionary taxation. We study the interaction between these aspects in a simple vintage capital framework with discrete time and an infinite horizon, focussing on Markov perfect equilibrium. We show that the equilibrium taxation destabilizes agglomeration advantages. The agglomeration advantage is valuable, but is exploited in the short run. The tax revenue in the equilibrium is substantial, and higher on “old” FDI than on “new” FDI, even though countries are not allowed to use discriminatory taxation. If countries can provide fiscal incentives for …
Capital Structure And Product-Market Rivalry: How Do We Reconcile Theory And Evidence?, Dan Kovenock, Gordon Phillips
Capital Structure And Product-Market Rivalry: How Do We Reconcile Theory And Evidence?, Dan Kovenock, Gordon Phillips
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
This paper presents empirical evidence on the interaction of capital structure decisions and product market behavior. We examine when firms recapitalize and increase the proportion of debt in their capital structure. The evidence in this paper shows that firms with low productivity plants in highly concentrated industries are more likely to recapitalize and increase debt financing. This finding suggests that debt plays a role in highly concentrated industries where agency costs are not significantly reduced by product market competition. Following the empirical evidence we introduce the "strategic investment" effects of debt and argue that this effect, in conjunction with agency …
Capital Gains Taxation In An Economy With An ‘Austrian Sector’, Dan Kovenock, Michael Rothschild
Capital Gains Taxation In An Economy With An ‘Austrian Sector’, Dan Kovenock, Michael Rothschild
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
This paper examines the effects of a proportional capital gains in an economy with an Austrian sector (with wine and trees) and an ordinary sector. We analyze the effect of capital gains taxation (on both an accrual and a realization basis) on the efficiency with which resources are used within the Austrian sector. Since time is the only input which can be varied in the Austrian sector, this amounts to looking at the effect of capital gains taxation on the harvesting time or selling time of assets. Accrual taxation decreases the selling time of Austrian assets. Realization taxation decreases the …