Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Wording Effects In Moral Judgments, Ross E. O'Hara, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Nicholas A. Sinnott-Armstrong

Dartmouth Scholarship

As the study of moral judgments grows, it becomes imperative to compare results across studies in order to create unified theories within the field. These efforts are potentially undermined, however, by variations in wording used by different researchers. The current study sought to determine whether, when, and how variations in wording influence moral judgments. Online participants responded to 15 different moral vignettes (e.g., the trolley problem) using 1 of 4 adjectives: “wrong”, “inappropriate”, “forbidden”, or “blameworthy”. For half of the sample, these adjectives were preceded by the adverb “morally”. Results indicated that people were more apt to judge an act …

Put Your Money Where Your Butt Is: A Commitment Contract For Smoking Cessation, Xavier Giné, Dean Karlan, Jonathan Zinman

Dartmouth Scholarship

We designed and tested a voluntary commitment product to help smokers quit smoking. The product (CARES) offered smokers a savings account in which they deposit funds for six months, after which they take a urine test for nicotine and cotinine. If they pass, their money is returned; otherwise, their money is forfeited to charity. Of smokers offered CARES, 11 percent took up, and smokers randomly offered CARES were 3 percentage points more likely to pass the 6-month test than the control group. More importantly, this effect persisted in surprise tests at 12 months, indicating that CARES produced lasting smoking cessation. …

The Margins Of Multinational Production And The Role Of Intrafirm Trade, Alfonso Irarrazabal, Andreas Moxnes, Luca David Opromolla

Dartmouth Scholarship

In this paper we provide a quantitative analytical framework for analyzing trade and multinational production (MP), consistent with a set of stylized facts for trade and MP, among them that both exports and MP adhere to a gravity model. We propose a heterogeneous firm trade model where firms choose endogenously whether to serve foreign markets through MP or exports, where headquarters and affiliates are vertically integrated, and where firms face stochastic entry and demand shocks in each market. Using a unique firm-level data set on production, trade and MP, we establish key regularities about the entry and sales patterns of …

Trade Restrictiveness And Deadweight Losses From Us Tariffs, Douglas A. Irwin

Dartmouth Scholarship

This paper calculates a trade restrictiveness index, i.e., the uniform tariff that yields the same welfare loss as an existing tariff structure, for nearly a century of US data. The results show that the average tariff understates the TRI by about 75 percent. The static deadweight loss from US tariffs is about 1 percent of GDP after the Civil War, but falls almost continuously thereafter to less than one-tenth of 1 percent of GDP. Import duties produced an average welfare loss of 40 cents for every dollar of revenue, slightly higher than contemporary estimates of the marginal cost of taxation. …

Density Estimation And Adaptive Bandwidths: A Primer For Public Health Practitioners, Heather A. Carlos, Xun Shi, James Sargent, Susanne Tanski, Ethan M. Berke

Dartmouth Scholarship

Background: Geographic information systems have advanced the ability to both visualize and analyze point data. While point-based maps can be aggregated to differing areal units and examined at varying resolutions, two problems arise 1) the modifiable areal unit problem and 2) any corresponding data must be available both at the scale of analysis and in the same geographic units. Kernel density estimation (KDE) produces a smooth, continuous surface where each location in the study area is assigned a density value irrespective of arbitrary administrative boundaries. We review KDE, and introduce the technique of utilizing an adaptive bandwidth to address the …

Balancing, Generic Polls And Midterm Congressional Elections, Joseph Bafumi, Robert S. Erikson, Christopher Wlezien

Dartmouth Scholarship

One mystery of U.S. politics is why the president’s party regularly loses congressional seats at midterm. Although presidential coattails and their withdrawal provide a partial explanation, coattails cannot account for the fact that the presidential party typically performs worse than normal at midterm. This paper addresses the midterm vote separate from the presidential year vote, with evidence from generic congressional polls conducted during midterm election years. Polls early in the midterm year project a normal vote result in November. But as the campaign progresses, vote preferences almost always move toward the out party. This shift is not a negative referendum …

The Climatic Niche Diversity Of Malagasy Primates: A Phylogenetic Perspective, Jason M. Kamilar, Kathleen M. Muldoon

Dartmouth Scholarship

Background:

Numerous researchers have posited that there should be a strong negative relationship between the evolutionary distance among species and their ecological similarity. Alternative evidence suggests that members of adaptive radiations should display no relationship between divergence time and ecological similarity because rapid evolution results in near-simultaneous speciation early in the clade's history. In this paper, we performed the first investigation of ecological diversity in a phylogenetic context using a mammalian adaptive radiation, the Malagasy primates.

Methodology/Principal Findings:

We collected data for 43 extant species including: 1) 1064 species by locality samples, 2) GIS climate data for each sampling locality, …

Changing To Win? Threat, Resistance, And The Role Of Unions In Strikes, 1984–2002, Andrew W. Martin, Marc Dixon

Dartmouth Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lidar Remote Sensing Variables Predict Breeding Habitat Of A Neotropical Migrant Bird, Scott J. Goetz, Daniel Steinberg, Matthew G. G. Betts, Richard T. Holmes

Dartmouth Scholarship

A topic of recurring interest in ecological research is the degree to which vegetation structure influences the distribution and abundance of species. Here we test the applicability of remote sensing, particularly novel use of waveform lidar measurements, for quantifying the habitat heterogeneity of a contiguous northern hardwoods forest in the northeastern United States. We apply these results to predict the breeding habitat quality, an indicator of reproductive output of a well-studied Neotropical migrant songbird, the Black-throated Blue Warbler (Dendroica caerulescens). We found that using canopy vertical structure metrics provided unique information for models of habitat quality and spatial patterns of …

Intrafirm Trade And Product Contractibility, Andrew B. Bernard, J. Bradford Jensen, Stephen J. Redding, Peter K. Schott

Dartmouth Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Wholesalers And Retailers In Us Trade, Andrew B. Bernard, J. Bradford Jensen, Stephen J. Redding, Peter K. Schott

Dartmouth Scholarship

International trade models typically assume that producers in one country trade directly with final consumers in another. In the real world, of course, trade can involve long chains of potentially independent actors who move goods through wholesale and retail distribution networks. These networks likely affect the mag-nitude and nature of trade frictions and hence both the pattern of trade and its welfare gains. To promote further understanding of how goods move across borders, this paper examines the extent to which US exports and imports flow through wholesalers and retailers versus “pro-ducing and consuming” firms. We highlight a number of stylized …

Disclosure By Politicians, Simeon Djankov, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-De-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer

Dartmouth Scholarship

We collect data on the rules and practices of financial and conflict disclosure by members of Parliament in 175 countries. Although two-thirds of the countries have some disclosure laws, less than one-third make disclosures available to the public, and less than one-sixth of potentially useful information is publicly available in practice, on average. Countries that are richer, more democratic, and have free press have more disclosure. Public disclosure, but not internal disclosure to parliament, is positively related to government quality, including lower corruption. (JEL J13, I21, I12)

Financial Stability, The Trilemma, And International Reserves, Maurice Obstfeld, Jay C. Shambaugh, Alan M. Taylor

Dartmouth Scholarship

The rapid growth of international reserves, a development concentrated in the emerging markets, remains a puzzle. In this paper, we suggest that a model based on financial stability and financial openness goes far toward explaining reserve holdings in the modern era of globalized capital markets. The size of domestic financial liabilities that could potentially be converted into foreign currency (M2), financial openness, the ability to access foreign currency through debt markets, and exchange rate policy are all significant predictors of reserve stocks. Our empirical financial-stability model seems to outperform both traditional models and recent explanations based on external short-term debt.

Differential Activation Of Frontoparietal Attention Networks By Social And Symbolic Spatial Cues, Andrew D. Engell, Lauri Nummenmaa, Nikolaas N. Oosterhof, Richard N. Henson, James V. Haxby, Andrew J. Calder

Dartmouth Scholarship

Perception of both gaze-direction and symbolic directional cues (e.g. arrows) orient an observer’s attention toward the indicated location. It is unclear, however, whether these similar behavioral effects are examples of the same attentional phenomenon and, therefore, subserved by the same neural substrate. It has been proposed that gaze, given its evolutionary significance, constitutes a ‘special’ category of spatial cue. As such, it is predicted that the neural systems supporting spatial reorienting will be different for gaze than for non-biological symbols. We tested this prediction using functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the brain’s response during target localization in which laterally …

Bold Signal In Both Ipsilateral And Contralateral Retinotopic Cortex Modulates With Perceptual Fading, Po-Jang Hsieh, Peter U. Tse

Dartmouth Scholarship

Under conditions of visual fixation, perceptual fading occurs when a stationary object, though present in the world and continually casting light upon the retina, vanishes from visual consciousness. The neural correlates of the consciousness of such an object will presumably modulate in activity with the onset and cessation of perceptual fading.

Method: In order to localize the neural correlates of perceptual fading, a green disk that had been individually set to be equiluminant with the orange background, was presented in one of the four visual quadrants; Subjects indicated with a button press whether or not the disk was subjectively visible …

Countervailing Power In Wholesale Pharmaceuticals, Sara F. Ellison, Christopher M. Snyder

Dartmouth Scholarship

Using data on wholesale prices for antibiotics sold to U.S. drugstores, we test the growing theoretical literature on ‘countervailing power’ (a term for the ability of large buyers to extract discounts from suppliers). Large drugstores receive a modest discount for antibiotics produced by competing suppliers but no discount for antibiotics produced by monopolists. These findings support theories suggesting that supplier competition is a prerequisite for countervailing power. As further evidence for the importance of supplier competition, we find that hospitals receive substantial discounts relative to drugstores, attributed to hospitals' greater ability to induce supplier competition through restrictive formularies.

Multiple-Product Firms And Product Switching, Andrew B. Bernard, Stephen J. Redding, Peter K. Schott

Dartmouth Scholarship

This paper examines the frequency, pervasiveness, and determinants of product switching by US manufacturing firms. We find that one-half of firms alter their mix of five-digit SIC products every five years, that product switching is correlated with both firm- and firm-product attributes, and that product adding and dropping induce large changes in firm scope. The behavior we observe is consistent with a natural generalization of existing theories of industry dynamics that incorporates endogenous product selection within firms. Our findings suggest that product switching contributes to a reallocation of resources within firms toward their most efficient use. (JEL L11, L21, L25, …

Financial Exchange Rates And International Currency Exposures, Philip R. Lane, Jay C. Shambaugh

Dartmouth Scholarship

In order to gain a better empirical understanding of the international financial implications of currency movements, we construct a database of international currency exposures for a large panel of countries over 1990-2004. We show that trade-weighted exchange rate indices are insufficient to understand the financial impact of currency movements and that our currency measures have high explanatory power for the valuation term in net foreign asset dynamics. Exchange rate valuation shocks are sizable, not quickly reversed, and may entail substantial wealth redistributions. Further, we show that many developing countries have substantially reduced their negative foreign currency positions over the last …

Smart Density: A More Accurate Method Of Measuring Rural Residential Density For Health-Related Research, Peter M. Owens, Linda Titus-Ernstoff, Lucinda Gibson, Michael L. Beach, Sandy Beauregard, Madeline A. Dalton

Dartmouth Scholarship

Studies involving the built environment have typically relied on US Census data to measure residential density. However, census geographic units are often unsuited to health-related research, especially in rural areas where development is clustered and discontinuous. We evaluated the accuracy of both standard census methods and alternative GIS-based methods to measure rural density.

Behind The Mask: The Influence Of Mask-Type On Amygdala Response To Fearful Faces, M Justin Kim, Rebecca A. Loucks, Maital Neta, F. Caroline Davis, Jonathan A. Oler, Emily C. Mazzulla, Paul J. Whalen

Dartmouth Scholarship

In this study, we compared the effects of using neutral face masks vs non-face pattern masks on amygdala activity to masked fearful faces. Twenty-seven subjects viewed 18 s blocks of either fearful or happy faces masked with either neutral faces or patterns, while their brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results replicated increased amygdala activation to face-masked fearful vs happy faces. In the pattern mask condition, the amygdala discriminated between masked fearful and happy faces, but this effect manifested as a decrease in activation to fearful faces compared to happy faces. This interactive effect between facial expression …

Searching For Effective Teachers With Imperfect Information, Douglas O. Staiger, Jonah E. Rockoff

Dartmouth Scholarship

Over the past four decades, empirical researchers -- many of them economists -- have accumulated an impressive amount of evidence on teachers. In this paper, we ask what the existing evidence implies for how school leaders might recruit, evaluate, and retain teachers. We begin by summarizing the evidence on five key points, referring to existing work and to evidence we have accumulated from our research with the nation's two largest school districts: Los Angeles and New York City. First, teachers display considerable heterogeneity in their effects on student achievement gains. Second, estimates of teacher effectiveness based on student achievement data …

What The Stock Market Decline Means For The Financial Security And Retirement Choices Of The Near-Retirement Population, Alan L. Gustman, Thomas L. Steinmeier, Nahid Tabatabai

Dartmouth Scholarship

This paper investigates the effect of the current recession on the retirement age population. Data from the Health and Retirement Study suggest that those approaching retirement age (early boomers ages 53 to 58 in 2006) have only 15.2 percent of their wealth in stocks, held directly or in defined contribution plans or IRAs. Their vulnerability to a stock market decline is limited by the high value of their Social Security wealth, which represents over a quarter of the total household wealth of the early boomers. In addition, their defined contribution plans remain immature, so their defined benefit plans represent sixty …

Is There Monopsony In The Labor Market? Evidence From A Natural Experiment, Douglas O. Staiger, Joanne Spetz, Ciaran S. Phibbs

Dartmouth Scholarship

Recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market. However, there is little direct empirical support for these models. We use an exogenous change in wages at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals as a natural experiment to investigate the extent of monopsony in the nurse labor market. We estimate that labor supply to individual hospitals is quite inelastic, with short-run elasticity around 0.1. We also find that non-VA hospitals responded to the VA wage change by changing their own wages.