Digital Commons Network^™

An Introduction To The China Land Sales Data Set: The Universe Of Land-Use-Right Transfers In China 2000-2022, Yilin Hou, Lin Li, Qiang Ren

Center for Policy Research

The China Land Sales Data Set (2000-2022) includes the universe of land-use-right sales in China in the first 23 years of the 21st century, a period of the fastest mass urbanization and intense infrastructure construction in China’s history, that accompanied the rapid growth of China’s economy and household income. For this reason, this data set carries substance in many ways for anyone who needs to understand the occurrences in China of that period. The phrase “land sale” refers to the transfer of land-use right from the state as the sole owner of urban land to any individual, firm or entity …

Ai Adoption And Organizational Resilience In Turbulent Environments: The Mediating Role Of Employee Digital Literacy And The Moderating Role Of Innovation-Supportive Climate In The Iraqi Hospitality Sector, Hasan Mutashar Gbouri

Arab Economic and Business Journal

This study examines whether adopting artificial intelligence (AI) strengthens organizational resilience when the operating environment is hostile, and identifies the internal conditions an organization must satisfy before an AI investment translates into resilience. Two mechanisms anchor the argument: employee digital literacy, which carries the effect, and an innovation-supportive climate, which conditions it. We surveyed 400 employees across three premium hotels in Baghdad, Iraq, sampled by operational level, and tested the model with structural equation modeling in AMOS 26.0. The results show that AI adoption alone yields only a modest direct gain in resilience. Slightly more than half of its total …

When Auditors Trust Ai: A Qualitative Study Of Professional Judgment, Data Quality, And Adoption Barriers In Lebanon, Joseph Serghani

Arab Economic and Business Journal

This study explores auditors’ trust in AI in a limited-resource and turbulent context, namely Lebanon. Using semi-structured interviews with 14 junior and senior auditors in Lebanon, this study identifies the factors that make auditors either willing or unwilling to trust in AI-powered audit processes. The results indicate that auditors perceive the potential benefits of AI, such as increased speed, capacity, and ability to detect anomalies. Yet, trust in AI is limited by concerns about implementation costs, the erosion of professional judgment, blockchain complexity, data overload, and reliance on high-quality data. Instead of excluding AI from the equation, auditors perceive it …

Impact Of Trade And Financial Openness On The Efficiency Of The Nigerian Stock Market, Damian Chidozie Uzoma-Nwosu Dr, Samuel Orekoya Dr, Oluwatosin Adeniyi

The Indonesian Capital Market Review

The study investigates the impact of Financial Openness (FOp) or/and Trade Openness (TOp) on the efficiency of the Nigerian Stock Market (NSM). Applying auto-regressive distributed lag model on stock market data, the result revealed that either in individual models or when in one model, an increase in TOp significantly increased the efficiency of the NSM in both the short and long-run, while the contrary holds for a percentage increase in FOp over 2010-2020. This suggests that TOp rather than FOp, significantly contributed to the efficiency of the NSM. Thus, TOp and FOp have differentiated impacts on stock market efficiency. Policymakers …

Do Voters Understand The Benefits Of Taxes?, Benjamin Carter, Alessandro Del Ponte, Peter Discioli

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

We use economic experiments to study a fundamental question in political economy: Do voters understand the benefits of taxes? Participants play an economic game as members of a virtual society composed of computer players. In each round, the players earn low or high income, see the distribution of income, and then vote for low or high taxes. We test whether participants vote rationally for high taxes when poor and low taxes when rich, following a classic model in political economy, or whether they focus on the burden of taxes more than the benefits. Across three experiments, poor players voted against …

Modern Economic Analysis And Antitrust Law: A Guide, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This book presents a modern economics approach to antitrust law. It expands upon and supplements traditional legal analysis of antitrust law and policy. It does so by analyzing antitrust legal standards and case law through the lenses of industrial organization economics and decision theory. The work is intended to be a comprehensive introductory guide for students, practitioners, and anyone else interested in learning the core of modern antitrust economics. Understanding the economics of antitrust and decision theory and applying that reasoning to specific cases and issues are critical steps for successfully studying and practicing antitrust law and policy. It treats …

The Effect Of Retention Threat On Student Learning Gains: Evidence From Ohio, Sarah Souders, Robert Bifulco

Center for Policy Research

Grade retention policies create incentives for students to make adequate progress ahead of evaluation. The threat of retention thus has the potential to affect all students’ academic outcomes, increasing achievement especially among students with test scores near the retention policy’s threshold. By using unique data from Ohio which allows us to implement a regression discontinuity design, we find that students exposed to the threat of retention in Grade 3 experience larger learning gains than students who are not under retention threat. Gains in Grade 3 English Language Arts (ELA) are 0.077 SD and although effects partially fade over time, positive …

The Specifics Of Green Mortgages: A Case Study Of Poland, Mateusz Tomal, Ewa Gorlecka-Łabiak

Journal of Banking and Financial Economics

The green mortgage market in Poland has received limited research attention. Therefore, this article aims to present the specifics of the green mortgage market in Poland. To thoroughly investigate the issue, in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 banking sector representatives, each with varying experience and professional roles. The study’s findings revealed that there is no formal definition of green mortgages, which hinders both banks and their customers. Currently, green mortgages are rarely granted due to their limited economic benefit to borrowers and the small number of residential properties that qualify. For banks, green mortgages present an opportunity to expand their …

Addressing The ‘Chicken-And-Egg’ Dilemma: Pension Reform, Market Coordination, And Policy Design, Shujaat Khan, Bo Li, Yunhui Zhao

Journal of Banking and Financial Economics

Why do domestic stock markets in many emerging market economies fail to develop, even in the presence of high savings rates? In this paper, we argue that this may be a ‘chicken-and-egg’ problem, which we formalise as a market coordination failure. We first develop a stylised game-theoretical model, showing that when long-term equity investment is subject to network externalities, the Pareto-optimal, high-investment equilibrium is not robust to noise. Individual investors, fearing defection by others, will rationally choose a low-investment (or ‘run’) strategy, trapping the market in a state of underdevelopment. We then show how a specific institutional design – a …

Second-Layer Money Or Fiduciary Media? A Full-Reserve Critique Of Bitcoin Price Stabilization: A Comment On Blasco And García De Enterría, Philipp Bagus, Joel Serrano

Journal of New Finance

This article critically examines Blasco and García de Enterría’s proposal that certain Bitcoin-denominated second-layer instruments—real bills, private scrip, and cash notes—could reduce Bitcoin’s short-term volatility and function as media of exchange. From a full-reserve Austrian perspective, it argues that the relevant distinction is not between base money and higher layers as such, but, within those layers, between fully backed monetary certificates and fiduciary media. Although second-layer instruments may smooth short-term volatility, those that operate as fiduciary media introduce counterparty risk, redemption risk, and credit expansion unsupported by real saving, potentially generating long-term instability.

The Institutional Production Of Ethical War Across Modern Conflict, Katerina Udov

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

This paper argues that modern warfare operates through an ethical infrastructure that enables, rather than restrains, the use of violence. Contrary to the common assumption that moral frameworks such as Just War Theory function as safeguards against harm, the historical record shows that ethical language, humanitarian rhetoric, and democratic narratives serve as mechanisms to legitimize intervention, manufacture consent, and naturalize civilian suffering. Through case studies including Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, U.S.-backed coups in Latin America, and French intervention in Mali, the paper traces how political leaders, media institutions, and corporate actors frame war as a moral necessity while pursuing strategic and …

The Effectiveness Of Banks’ Influence On Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions In Eu Agriculture, Jan Koleśnik

Journal of Banking and Financial Economics

This article analyses the effectiveness of the banking sector in limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in European Union agriculture and the impact of EU banking groups‘ policies on their Polish subsidiaries. The study is based on data from 2019–2025 sourced from the Eurostat database, the European Banking Authority (EBA), and capital adequacy disclosures (CQ5 and CR1-B reports). The research sample included 14 EU countries with an agricultural share in GDP of between 1% and 3.6% and 62 EU banking groups at the highest level of consolidation. A linear regression model was employed, using the change in gas emissions as the …

The Asymmetric Effect Of The Rupiah Exchange Rate On Indonesia's Non-Oil And Gas Exports, Muhammad Sugiantoro, Diah Wahyuningsih, Ris Yuwono Yudo Nugroho, Widita Kurniasari, Ahmad Kamil

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Studi Pembangunan

This study aims to analyze the asymmetric effect of the rupiah exchange rate on Indonesia's non-oil and gas sector exports, by considering the control variables. As well as identifying whether Indonesia's non-oil and gas sector exports are more responsively influenced by rupiah exchange rate depreciation or rupiah exchange rate appreciation. The analysis technique used is Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) with quarterly data from 2016 to 2023. The results showed that the rupiah exchange rate has an asymmetric effect on Indonesia's non-oil and gas sector exports, both in the short and long term. Depreciation and appreciation of the rupiah exchange …

Measuring The Economic Effectiveness Of Climate Smart Agriculture In U.S. Rice Production Systems, Adriana Dimas

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation evaluates the economic performance and adoption potential of climate-smart irrigation practices in Louisiana rice production systems, with particular emphasis on Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD). Rice producers in the U.S. Mid-South face increasing challenges associated with rising input costs, water management constraints, and climate variability, creating interest in production practices that improve resilience and resource-use efficiency.

The first component of this study analyzes the profitability and risk efficiency of alternative irrigation systems using stochastic simulation and Stochastic Efficiency with Respect to a Function (SERF). Results indicate that Hybrid AWD systems in Morehouse Parish consistently generated the highest risk-adjusted …

Fast Online Inference On Semiparametric Models, Xiaohong Chen, Elie Tamer, Qingsong Yao

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper develops a framework for fast online inference on semiparametric models with large sample sizes and possibly many covariates. The computational algorithm itself is the object of statistical study: after a globally consistent warm start in the first phase, the path of averaged online iterates generated in the second phase automatically delivers estimators with optimal convergence rates and valid confidence sets. Both phases require only a single pass over the data stream and are well suited to streaming data or to settings with storage/privacy constraints. For semiparametric monotone index models, the averaged trajectory of the second phase lead to …

The Risk Protection Value Of “Moral Hazard”, Angie Acquatella, Victoria Marone

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Health insurance lowers the out-of-pocket price of healthcare, and it is well-established that this leads to higher utilization of care. This manifestation of “moral hazard” is typ ically viewed as a social cost of insurance. Within a standard model, this paper shows that a consumer’s ability to change her behavior in response to insurance can also play a central role in the ability of insurance to protect her from risk. We provide a theoretical characterization of this channel and quantify its importance empirically. Under stan dard parameterizations and estimates in the literature, we find that insurance-induced healthcare utilization can account …

Essays In Whistleblowing, Crime, And Experimental Economics, Danielle Nickeisha Purcell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation comprises three essays on how institutional strength, enforcement practices, and cognitive load affect behavior. The first essay presents a laboratory experiment that varies the extent to which an individual in a position of authority can interfere with the outcome of whistleblowing, holding all other monetary incentives fixed. Strengthening institutions raises whistleblowing rates, lowers theft, and reduces the rate of bribe offers, while leaving authorities’ acceptance of bribes unchanged when they face no punishment for accepting them. The second essay studies the end of stop and frisk in Chicago following the 2015 ACLU-CPD settlement agreement, which cut annual investigatory …

Doctor Decision Making And Patient Outcomes, Janet Currie, W. Bentley Macleod, Kate Musen

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Doctors often treat similar patients differently, which affects health outcomes and medical spending. We assess the recent literature on doctor decision making through the lens of a model that incorporates diagnostic and procedural skills, beliefs, incentives, and differences in patient pools. Decision making is affected by beliefs, training, experience, peer effects, financial incentives, and time constraints. Interventions to improve decision making include providing information, guidelines, and technologies like electronic medical records and algorithmic decision tools. Economists have made progress in understanding doctor decision making, but applications of that knowledge to improving health care are still limited.

Analisis Environmental Kuznets Curve Dan Foreign Direct Investment Di Sulawesi, Fadel Firmansyah, Meity Ferdiana Paskual, Laendatu Paembonan, Musdayati Musdayati, Muhammad Ichsan

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

This study examines the relationship between economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), and environmental quality across the six provinces of Sulawesi within the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) framework. Using panel data for 2015–2024, the study applies the Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (Panel-ARDL) model with the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator. The results confirm a long-run EKC relationship, indicating that environmental quality initially deteriorates and subsequently improves as income increases. Meanwhile, FDI has a negative but statistically insignificant effect, while short-run dynamics remain heterogeneous across provinces due to differences in economic structures, investment characteristics, and environmental management

Religiosity And Female Autonomy In Indonesia, Milda Irhamni

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

This study estimates the effect of religiosity on married women’s autonomy within households in Indonesia using panel data from the 2007 and 2014 rounds of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS4 and IFLS5). Women’s autonomy is measured by the wife’s decision-making power relative to her husband across eighteen household decisions, complemented by indirect proxies such as asset ownership and contraceptive use. Applying household fixed-effect and IV estimation to control for endogeneity, the analysis finds little robust evidence that religiosity systematically reduces female autonomy, suggesting that any negative association is weak and sensitive to specification.

Mengukur Capaian Dan Identifikasi Konvergensi Pembangunan Infrastruktur Antarprovinsi Di Indonesia, Ressa Isnaini Arumnisaa', Aisyah Fitri Yuniasih

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

Indonesia’s economic challenges are characterized by stagnant economic growth and regional development disparities. This study analyzes the achievement and convergence of infrastructure development across provinces in Indonesia during 2011–2021 through the construction of an Infrastructure Development Index (IPI). The study employs panel data from 33 provinces, using factor analysis to construct the IPI and the First Difference Generalized Method of Moments (FD-GMM) to examine convergence and its determinants. The results show that many provinces still have IDI scores below the national average. Furthermore, the FD-GMM model shows that σ-convergence and β-convergence occur in Indonesia. In addition, GRDP per capita, inflation, …

Hkc06 - Information Versus Attention In Flood Risk Disclosure, Dolores Albarracín, Timothy Hyde

Oberlin College Kasper Economics and Business Working Paper Series

Flood risk disclosure is expanding rapidly in real estate markets, but if disclosures move demand by commanding attention rather than by conveying information, theirwelfare effects are ambiguous. We examine this tension in a discrete choice experiment where 1,498 respondents make hypothetical choices among real Gulf Coast properties under a control condition and four disclosure formats varying in informational content and presentation. Absent disclosure, insurance costs barely influence choices; by contrast, when respondents are shown precise flood insurance estimates, they are willing to pay $3.34 in annualized housing costs to avoid each annual premium dollar. Using a separate beliefs elicitation, we …

Tipping In The Digital Age: Comparing Group And Individual Tipping Behavior Across Cashless Payments, Akosua Sayer Koduah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tipping has long been central to the U.S. hospitality industry, where it provides a substantial share of service workers’ income. What was once a cash-based practice is now increasingly mediated through digital platforms such as card readers, QR codes, and peer-to-peer apps. These systems introduce features such as visibility of the decision, preset defaults, and group payment options that reshape how customers decide whether and how much to tip. While traditional tipping has been widely studied, research on digital restaurant tipping remains limited. This study focuses on two underexplored mechanisms: visibility (whether staff can observe the decision) and group context …

How Much Should A Conversational Recommender System Converse?, Akshit Kumar, Vahideh Manshadi, Akhilesh Tumu

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Conversational recommender systems powered by generative AI can enhance personalization by facilitating information elicitation through follow-up questions. However, engaging in these conversations imposes a communication cost on users. As platforms with different objectives and monetization models deploy these systems, a central question is: how does the platform’s objective and sellers’ strategic response shape the design of these systems in terms of their elicitation strategy? We develop a parsimonious model of conversational elicitation in which interaction generates noisy preference information and imposes a communication cost borne by the user. A user-welfare-maximizing platform elicits more information when accurate niche matching yields large …

The Displacement Effects Of Domestic Outsourcing, Mayara Felix, Michael B. Wong

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Evidence that domestic outsourcing lowers pay comes largely from on-site transfers, in which workers move to a contractor but keep the same jobs. Displacement is rarely observed: whether workers lose their jobs, where they go, how earnings evolve. In Brazil’s 1993–1994 pro-outsourcing reforms, which differentially affected security guards, such transfers were rare; firms instead used occupational layoffs, shedding their guards while keeping other workers. Displaced guards’ employment recovered within five years, but many changed occupations and wages stayed about 12% lower. Lifetime losses average 1.2 to 1.5 years of pre-layoff earnings, concentrated among workers from high-wage firms, reflecting lost premia.

Retirement Investment Behaviors Of Itin Immigrants, Krzysztof Zoltek

Theses and Dissertations from DePaul University

This study examines retirement related financial behaviors among foreign-born immigrants living in the United States, with particular focus on the role of Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) status. Using a cross-sectional survey of 223 foreign-born respondents, including both ITIN and non-ITIN respondents, the study examined whether ITIN status, financial literacy, fintech usage, remittance behavior, demographic characteristics, and attitudes toward financial inclusion were associated with participation in formal retirement saving and likelihood of using retirement products if available. Binary logistic regression and multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to test the study hypotheses. The findings indicated that ITIN status was negatively …

Estimasi Underground Economy Triwulanan Di Indonesia Pada Tahun 2010–2023, Ghina Anandhia, Hardius Usman

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

Underground economics have a significant impact on economy. Underground economy leads to low potential state revenues from the tax sector. This study estimates the quarterly value of the underground economy in Indonesia from 2010 to 2023 using the Error Correction Model (ECM) method. The results show that the average value of the underground economy in Indonesia is IDR138,392.32 billion, equivalent to 5.36 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 35.72 percent of tax revenue from 2010 to 2023. GDP and tax burden variables have a positive influence on currency demand.

Conflict-Mediated Group Size Regulation: A Theory Of Supraoptimal And Suboptimal Group Size, Eric Schniter

ESI Working Papers

Observed group sizes rarely match the size that would maximize what each member gets from belonging. We propose a two-part theory in which group size is regulated by two related conflicts: insider-outsider conflict over admission, and within-group conflict as crowding, competition, and social tensions intensify with size. Three strategies are available: admission, exclusion, and fission. The first part shows that even when exclusion is unavailable, fission dynamics alone drive group size away from the optimum in both directions, with the pattern set by how prospective joiners encounter groups and by the geometry of fission. When joiners compare groups across a …

Modeling And Forecasting Intraday Spot Volatility, Adam Clements, Daniel P. A. Preve

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a multiple-equation regression-based method for modeling and forecasting intraday spot volatility. In this approach, intraday intervals are treated as individual time series, deviating from the common practice of treating the data as one continuous sample. Our empirical study, which spans more than two decades and encompasses six US blue-chip stocks, employs the recent OK volatility estimator developed by Li, Wang, and Zhang (2024) to expose the dynamics of latent intraday spot volatility over time. We demonstrate that the proposed method effectively captures the intricate dynamics of intraday spot volatility and find strong evidence that it outperforms a competing …

How Do Sectoral Shocks Shape Future Gdp?, Paul Ho, Danial Lashkari, Pierre-Daniel Sarte

Research Collection School Of Economics

A production sector’s size, as measured by its Domar weight, captures the contemporaneous aggregate effect of its productivity shocks. Any future aggregate effects, however, depend on that sector’s participation in the investment network. We derive a dynamic generalization of Hulten’s theorem in an environment with intermediate-input and investment networks. This generalization, implied by production efficiency alone, decomposes each sector’s Domar weight into an impact and a propagation component. The relative size of these components then determines how persistent the aggregate effects of sectoral shocks are, but cannot be known absent information on the economy’s production structure. We show in a …