Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cross-Quality Impacts Of Ncaa Division I Baseball And Softball, Laura Beaudin

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

Fifty years after Title IX, inequalities still exist between men's and women's sports. Most sport studies still fail to examine women's sports. This study explores the cross-quality impacts of Division I baseball and softball teams. The softball team win percentage is positively related to softball and baseball game attendance. However, models produce mixed results for the impact of the quality of the baseball team. Therefore, improving the strength of the softball team could increase softball and baseball game attendance, while improving the strength of the baseball team might only increase attendance at baseball games.

Movin’ On Up? A Survey Experiment On Mobility Enhancing Policies, Jared Barton, Xiaofei Pan

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

We use a nationwide survey experiment in the United States to measure whether information on intergenerational economic mobility or policy-specific arguments influence support for six pro-mobility policies advocated by political entrepreneurs. We find the information treatments do not affect support, but the argument treatments significantly increase support for three of the policies. We also include a behavioral measure by allowing respondents the opportunity to write their U.S. Senators. We find argument treatments significantly increase the likelihood that letters address economic mobility and significantly promote advocacy for that policy in the letter, but no increase in advocacy from the information treatments. …

The Effect Of Task Choice And Task Assignment On The Gender Earnings Gap: An Experimental Study, Kai Ou, Xiaofei Pan

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

Previous studies explain the gender earnings gap by gender differences in choosing competitive and higher-paying jobs. However, little is known about whether and how women’s earnings are affected when they choose more challenging jobs. In this study, we use a novel identification strategy to investigate 1) how the gender earnings gap arises from individuals’ self-selecting into different tasks and 2) whether mobilizing women to work on the tasks typically preferred by men increases women’s earnings and decreases the earnings gap. Our results show that men who prefer the hard and higher-paid task are more likely to obtain higher earnings regardless …

The Quonset Economic Impact, Edinaldo Tebaldi

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

This report provides a data-driven and comprehensive assessment of the economic impact and tax incidence implications of economic activities at the Quonset Business Park.

The Role Of Human Capital In The Structural Change Process, Michele Aparecida Nepomuceno Pinto, Edinaldo Tebaldi, Marina Silva Da Cunha

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

The main of this paper is to verify if human capital is an important determinant of structural change in the different sectors of the economy and if it can accelerate the speed of this structural transformation. This paper contributes to the literature once it develops an empirical test of the model proposed by Li et al. (2019) and it uses the generalized method of moments (GMM) which considers the problem of endogeneity found in human capital variables, it also uses two proxies for human capital and structural change in order to verify whether or not they affect the variable of …

Cross-Country Evidence Of Corruption Spillovers To Formal And Informal Entrepreneurship, Aziz N. Berdiev, James Saunoris

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

Using cross‐country data this paper examines the spillovers of corruption to formal and informal entrepreneurship in neighboring countries. Whereas research has shown that entrepreneurs move underground to escape corruption, we argue that entrepreneurs may also seek refuge in neighboring countries. Indeed, the empirical results show that in response to a ceteris paribus increase in corruption in neighboring countries formal entrepreneurship increases in the home country with no effect on informal entrepreneurship. This is consistent with entrepreneurs circumventing corrupt public officials by immigrating to countries with presumably less corruption. These results withstand a battery of robustness checks. (JEL D73, L26)

Why Trust Out-Groups? The Role Of Punishment Under Uncertainty, Xiaofei Pan, Daniel Houser

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

We conducted a hidden-effort trust game, in which we assigned subjects to one of two groups. The groups, which were formed through two different group formation processes, included a “social” group that required sharing and exchange among its members, and a “non-social” group that did not. Once assigned, subjects participated in the game with members from both groups, either with or without the opportunity to punish a trustee who may have defected on them. We found that for investors in the non-social group, the opportunity to punish a trustee worked to promote trust, but only when the trustee was a …

The Impacts Of El Niño And La Niña On Large Grain Producing Countries In Eca: Yield, Poverty And Policy Response, Edinaldo Tebaldi

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

There is a need to further examine and enhance knowledge concerning the relationship among El Niño and La Niña cycles, drought events, and grain production in the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Kazakhstan (RUK) region, which accounts for more than one third of total wheat exports. This report contributes to close this knowledge gap. A data-driven analysis is utilized to gain a better understanding of (a) the potential impact on grain production of droughts linked to the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon in RUK, (b) RUK governments’ policy response to those events and how domestic and regional grain markets are affected, and …

Romania -- Systematic Country Diagnostic: Background Note-Agriculture (English), Edinaldo Tebaldi, Anatol Gobjila

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

Agriculture plays a significant socio-economic role in Romania and its transformation to a modern, vibrant, and market-oriented sector is central to fighting poverty, promoting social inclusion, and reducing the urban/rural development divide. Most of Romania's poor live in rural areas and earn their living from agriculture or agriculture-related activities. In 2016, eight out of ten people who were at risk of poverty or social exclusion lived either in rural areas or in towns and suburbs that were predominately rural. Using microdata from the 2013 Household Budget Survey (HBS), this report finds that individuals living in rural areas are 16.5 percent …

It's Not Just The Thought That Counts: An Experimental Study On Hidden Cost Of Giving, Xiaofei Pan, Erte Xiao

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

Receiving a gift can create an impulse to reciprocate, even when doing so may be inefficient and potentially harmful to a third party. This paper provides a theoretical framework for a pure gift effect on reciprocity impulses and experimental evidence that such an effect exists: that is, a gift receiver will favor an actual gift giver over an intended gift giver, even if the intended gift giver incurred the same costs and signaled the same intention to give. This result contrasts with the predictions of existing theories on social preferences. We also show that the pure gift effect is present …

The Causal Effect Of Market Priming On Trust: An Experimental Investigation Using Randomized Control, Omar Al-Ubaydli, Daniel E. Houser, John Nye, Maria Pia Paganelli, Xiaofei Pan

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

We report data from laboratory experiments where participants were primed using phrases related to markets and trade. Participants then participated in trust games with anonymous strangers. The decisions of primed participants are compared to those of a control group. We find evidence that priming for market participation affects positively the beliefs regarding the trustworthiness of anonymous strangers and increases trusting decisions.

Competition For Trophies Triggers Male Generosity, Xiaofei Sophia Pan, Daniel E. Houser

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

Background

Cooperation is indispensable in human societies, and much progress has been made towards understanding human pro-social decisions. Formal incentives, such as punishment, are suggested as potential effective approaches despite the fact that punishment can crowd out intrinsic motives for cooperation and detrimentally impact efficiency. At the same time, evolutionary biologists have long recognized that cooperation, especially food sharing, is typically efficiently organized in groups living on wild foods, even absent formal economic incentives. Despite its evident importance, the source of this voluntary compliance remains largely uninformed. Drawing on costly signaling theory, and in light of the widely established competitive …