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Research Collection School Of Economics

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Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Economics

Allocating Vehicle Registration Permits, Massimiliano Landi, Domenico Menicucci May 2024

Allocating Vehicle Registration Permits, Massimiliano Landi, Domenico Menicucci

Research Collection School Of Economics

We compare social welfare, consumer surplus and profits in two different institutional settings in which an item whose quantity is fixed and controlled (vehicle registration permit) is allocated to the buyers of a complementary good (car). In the first setting, which resembles the way in which vehicle registration permits are allocated in Singapore, the central planner runs a uniform price auction for permits in which the consumers who bid the highest receive the permits and pay the highest losing bid. Then each winning consumer purchases a car from a seller. In the alternative setting, the central planner first allocates the …


Housing Markets Since Shapley And Scarf, Mustafa Oguz Afacan, Gaoji Hu, Jiangtao Li Apr 2024

Housing Markets Since Shapley And Scarf, Mustafa Oguz Afacan, Gaoji Hu, Jiangtao Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

Shapley and Scarf (1974) appeared in the first issue of the Journal of Mathematical Economics, and is one of the journal’s most impactful publications. As we approach the remarkable milestone of the journal’s 50th anniversary (1974–2024), this article serves as a commemorative exploration of Shapley and Scarf (1974) and the extensive body of literature that follows it.


Tackling Misperceptions About Immigrants With Fact-Checking Interventions: A Randomized Survey Experiment, Syngjoo Choi, Chung-Yoon Choi, Kim Oct 2023

Tackling Misperceptions About Immigrants With Fact-Checking Interventions: A Randomized Survey Experiment, Syngjoo Choi, Chung-Yoon Choi, Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

We conduct a randomized online survey experiment to study the impact of fact-checking offers and financial incentives on misperceptions about immigrants. We find that natives overestimate the number of immigrants and the social and economic costs of immigration. Offering a free check of the factual information about immigrants reduces these misperceptions; it becomes more effective when combined with financial incentives. However, more than half of the participants never took up offers to check factual information. Using a model of information search with limited attention, we identify the presence of non-negligible costs of information search and processing, which limits the effectiveness …


Does Fertility Matter For Middle Aged And Older Adults’ Risk Attitudes?, Christine Ho, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Joanne Tan, Eugene Rui Le Tan Aug 2023

Does Fertility Matter For Middle Aged And Older Adults’ Risk Attitudes?, Christine Ho, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Joanne Tan, Eugene Rui Le Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Given that risk attitudes influence many decisions, it is important to understand the factors that shape such attitudes in late adulthood, when individuals face important risky decisions. While research finds that parenthood tends to correlate with lower risk tolerance in western countries, there is a lacuna on whether such associations persist in late adulthood, and are applicable to the Asian context, where children are conventionally considered a linchpin of old age support. Data for middle aged and older individuals come from the nationwide Singapore Life Panel (N = 6,740). Multivariate statistical analyses are employed to estimate the associations between willingness …


The Impact Of Upzoning On Housing Construction In Auckland*, Ryan Greenaway-Mcgrevy, Peter C. B. Phillips Jul 2023

The Impact Of Upzoning On Housing Construction In Auckland*, Ryan Greenaway-Mcgrevy, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

There is a growing debate about whether upzoning is an effective policy response to housing shortages and unaffordable housing. This paper provides empirical evidence to further inform debate by examining the various impacts of recently implemented zoning reforms on housing construction in Auckland, the largest metropolitan area in New Zealand. In 2016, the city upzoned approximately three quarters of its residential land to facilitate construction of more intensive housing. We use a quasi-experimental approach to analyze the short-run impacts of the reform on construction, allowing for potential shifts in construction from non-upzoned to upzoned areas (displacement effects) that would, if …


The Importance Of The First Generic Substitution: Evidence From Sweden, Aljoscha Janssen, David Granlund Jul 2023

The Importance Of The First Generic Substitution: Evidence From Sweden, Aljoscha Janssen, David Granlund

Research Collection School Of Economics

We analyze changes in the willingness to substitute from prescribed pharmaceuticals to more affordable generic equivalents in response to the first experience with a substitution. Using Swedish individual-level data of prescribed and dispensed pharmaceuticals, we em-ploy a dynamic event study and an instrumental variable approach to show that an initial substitution reduces the probability of opposing subsequent substitutions by 39 percent-age points. We recommend that policy-makers target patients with a history of opposed substitution and offer additional discounts to promote substitution as long-term savings outweigh one-time costs.


Teaching In The Right Context: Textbook Supply Program, Language, And Vocabulary Ability In Vietnam, Tomoki Fujii, Maki Nakajima, Sijia Xu May 2023

Teaching In The Right Context: Textbook Supply Program, Language, And Vocabulary Ability In Vietnam, Tomoki Fujii, Maki Nakajima, Sijia Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

An ethnic gap in education is prevalent around the world. This remains the case in Vietnam, a country that has achieved phenomenal economic growth and raised the educational attainment of the public. This paper examines the impact of language policy reorientation represented by the textbook supply program in Vietnam on the ethnic gap in children's learning measured by a vocabulary test. Applying difference-in-differences estimation to the Young Lives data between 2006 and 2015, we show that the program became more effective in narrowing the ethnic gap as the education policy became reoriented toward ethnic minority children. A causal mediation analysis …


Life Satisfaction Changes And Adaptation In The Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Singapore, Terence C. Cheng, Kim, Kanghyock Koh Dec 2022

Life Satisfaction Changes And Adaptation In The Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Singapore, Terence C. Cheng, Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide novel evidence on how COVID-19 affected overall life satisfaction using a monthly longitudinal survey of middle-aged and older Singaporeans. We study how the subjective well-being of individuals evolves over the course of 18 months including the outbreak of the pandemic, the implementation of the lockdown and the spike of cases due to the delta variant in a country where COVID-19 is controlled in a sustained manner. Using an event-study design framework, we find large declines in overall life satisfaction in the lead-up to and following the lockdown. Fifteen months after the outbreak of the pandemic, and 13 months …


Strategic Parent Meets Detached Child? Parental Intended Bequest Division And Support From Children, Christine Ho Aug 2022

Strategic Parent Meets Detached Child? Parental Intended Bequest Division And Support From Children, Christine Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

Whereas the literature has found that elderly parents may use bequests to reward children who provide them with time support, there is limited evidence on whether younger less needy parents may base their intended bequest division on alternative forms of support from children. Using a large-scale dataset of middle-aged and older Singaporeans, I find that parents intend to leave larger bequest shares to coresident children and to children who provide greater material support. Parents also intend to bequeath more to children in whom they confide frequently while they bequeath more to children in whom they rarely confide when the latter …


Intra-Firm Hierarchies And Gender Gaps, Nicolo Dalvit, Aseem Patel, Joanne Tan Aug 2022

Intra-Firm Hierarchies And Gender Gaps, Nicolo Dalvit, Aseem Patel, Joanne Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study how changes in female representation at the top of a firm’s organisation affect gender-specific outcomes across hierarchies within firms. We start by developing a theoretical model of a hierarchical firm, where gender representation in top organisational layers can affect gender-specific hiring and promotion probabilities at lower layers. We then exploit a recent French reform that imposed gender representation quotas in the boards of directors and test the model’s predictions in the data. Our empirical results show that the reform was successful in reducing gender wage and representation gaps at the upper layers of the firm, but not at …


Start-Up Firms And Corporate Culture: Evidence From Advertised Corporate Culture, Jungho Lee Jun 2022

Start-Up Firms And Corporate Culture: Evidence From Advertised Corporate Culture, Jungho Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

I document advertised corporate culture among start-up firms from an online job board. Two corporate-culture types emerge, one that concerns the well-being of em- ployees (worker-centered culture) and another that emphasizes other values, such as cus- tomers, firms, and markets (firm-centered culture). The worker-centered culture attracts 20% more applications than the other culture type. Firms advertising the worker-centered culture exploit worker preference by paying 5% lower salaries than measurably similar jobs. Using a standard model of business creation, I show financially constrained start- ups are incentivized to advocate popular culture, even though doing so is not optimal without financial constraints.


Assessing Gender Parity In Intrahousehold Allocation Of Educational Resources: Evidence From Bangladesh, Sijia Xu, Abu S. Shonchoy, Tomoki Fujii Mar 2022

Assessing Gender Parity In Intrahousehold Allocation Of Educational Resources: Evidence From Bangladesh, Sijia Xu, Abu S. Shonchoy, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Gender parity in education—an important global development goal—has been primarily measured through school enrollment, and the gender parity in education quality has received limited attention until recently. We address this issue by highlighting the intrahousehold allocation of education expenditure. We extend the hurdle model into a three-part model to enable decomposition of households’ education decisions into enrollment, total education expenditure, and share of the total education expenditure on the core component, or items relating to the quality of education such as private tutoring. We apply this model to four rounds of nationally representative household surveys from Bangladesh, a country that …


Forced Moves And Home Maintenance: The Amplifying Effects Of Mortgage Payment Burden On Underwater Homeowners, John Harding, Li Jing, Stuart Rosenthal, Xirui Zhang Mar 2022

Forced Moves And Home Maintenance: The Amplifying Effects Of Mortgage Payment Burden On Underwater Homeowners, John Harding, Li Jing, Stuart Rosenthal, Xirui Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Although the adverse effect of high loan to value ratios (LTV) on mortgage default is known, the potential amplifying effect of high payment-to-income (PTI) ratios that can force families out of their homes has received limited attention. High PTI and LTV can also add to default costs by discouraging home maintenance. Using the 1985-2013 AHS panel, we show that high PTI prompts families to move and especially so for households with LTV above 120%. This lends support for policies like HAMP and HARP that seek to reduce forced moves and mortgage default by lowering mortgage payment burden for financially stressed …


Heterogeneous Health Effects Of Medical Marijuana Legalization: Evidence From Young Adults In The United States, Junxing Chay, Seonghoon Kim Feb 2022

Heterogeneous Health Effects Of Medical Marijuana Legalization: Evidence From Young Adults In The United States, Junxing Chay, Seonghoon Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

Legalizing marijuana for medical purposes is a longstanding debate. However, evidence of marijuana's health effects is limited, especially for young adults. We estimate the health impacts of medical marijuana laws (MML) in the U.S. among young adults aged 18–29 years using the difference-in-differences method and data from the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System. We find that having MMLs with strict regulations generate health gains, but not in states with lax regulations. Our heterogeneity analysis results indicate that individuals with lower education attainments, with lower household income and without access to health insurance coverage gain more health benefits from MML with …


Short-Term Impact Of Covid-19 On Consumption Spending And Its Underlying Mechanisms: Evidence From Singapore, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Xuan Zhang Feb 2022

Short-Term Impact Of Covid-19 On Consumption Spending And Its Underlying Mechanisms: Evidence From Singapore, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Xuan Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine the short-term impact of COVID-19 on consumption spending and labor market outcomes. Using monthly panel data of individuals mainly aged 50–70 in Singapore, we find that COVID-19 reduced consumption spending and labor market outcomes immediately after its outbreak, and its negative impact quickly evolved. At its peak, the pandemic reduced total household consumption spending by 22.8% and labor income by 5.9% in April. Probability of full-time work also went down by 1.2 pp and 6.0 pp in April and May, respectively, but employment and self-employment were only mildly affected. Our heterogeneity analysis indicates that the reduction in consumption …


Domains For Well Behaved Monotonic Social Choice Functions, Salles Paulo Daniel Ramos Feb 2022

Domains For Well Behaved Monotonic Social Choice Functions, Salles Paulo Daniel Ramos

Research Collection School Of Economics

We present here a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for an MD-Connected Domain to support a Well Behaved Monotonic Social Choice Function. We require the domain to have a minimal number of preferences in which a pair of alternatives flips their relation, and these reversals must occurr in accordance to a tree graph. While this condition cannot be sum-marized by a set of restrictions on individual preferences, we provide two alternative characterizations that can, one that is necessary and another that is sufficient.


Does A District Mandate Matter For The Behavior Of Politicians? An Analysis Of Roll-Call Votes And Parliamentary Speeches, Andreas Born, Aljoscha Janssen Jan 2022

Does A District Mandate Matter For The Behavior Of Politicians? An Analysis Of Roll-Call Votes And Parliamentary Speeches, Andreas Born, Aljoscha Janssen

Research Collection School Of Economics

In most democracies, members of parliament (MPs) are elected either through a party list or by a district. We use a discontinuity in the German electoral system to investigate the causal effect of a district election on an MP’s conformity with the party line. A district election does not affect roll-call voting behavior causally, possibly due to overall high adherence to party-line voting. Analyzing the parliamentary speeches of each MP allows us to overcome the high party-line discipline with regard to parliamentary voting. Using textual analysis and machine learning techniques, we create two measures of closeness of an MP’s speeches …


Jue Insight: Migration, Transportation Infrastructure, And The Spatial Transmission Of Covid-19 In China, Bingjing Li, Lin Ma Jan 2022

Jue Insight: Migration, Transportation Infrastructure, And The Spatial Transmission Of Covid-19 In China, Bingjing Li, Lin Ma

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper evaluates the impacts of migration flows and transportation infrastructure on the spatial transmission of COVID-19 in China. Prefectures with larger bilateral migration flows and shorter travel distances with Hubei, the epicenter of the outbreak, experienced a wider spread of COVID-19. In addition, richer prefectures with higher incomes were better able to contain the virus at the early stages of community transmission. Using a spatial general equilibrium model, we show that around 28% of the infections outside Hubei province can be explained by the rapid development in transportation infrastructure and the liberalization of migration restrictions in the recent decade.


Does Precise Case Disclosure Limit Precautionary Behavior? Evidence From Covid-19 In Singapore, Aljoscha Janssen, Matthew H. Shapiro Dec 2021

Does Precise Case Disclosure Limit Precautionary Behavior? Evidence From Covid-19 In Singapore, Aljoscha Janssen, Matthew H. Shapiro

Research Collection School Of Economics

Limiting the spread of contagious diseases can involve both government-managed and voluntary efforts. Governments have a number of policy options beyond direct intervention that can shape individuals’ responses to a pandemic and its associated costs. During its first wave of COVID-19 cases, Singapore was among a few countries that attempted to adjust behavior through the announcement of detailed case information. Singapore's Ministry of Health maintained and shared precise, daily information detailing local travel behavior and residences of COVID-19 cases. We use this policy along with device-level cellphone data to quantify how local and national COVID-19 case announcements trigger differential behavioral …


Economic Impact Of Targeted Government Responses To Covid-19: Evidence From The Large-Scale Cluster In Seoul, Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Jinwook Shin Dec 2021

Economic Impact Of Targeted Government Responses To Covid-19: Evidence From The Large-Scale Cluster In Seoul, Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Jinwook Shin

Research Collection School Of Economics

We estimate the economic impact of South Korea's targeted responses to the first large-scale COVID-19 cluster in Seoul. We find that foot traffic and retail sales decreased only within a 300 meter radius of the cluster and recovered to its pre-outbreak level after four weeks. The reductions appear to be driven by temporary business closures rather than the risk avoidance behavior of the citizens. Our results imply that less intense, but more targeted COVID-19 interventions, such as pin-pointed, temporary closures of businesses, can be a low-cost alternative after lifting strict social distancing measures.


Social Norms And Fertility, Sunha Myong, Junghae Park, Junjian Yi Oct 2021

Social Norms And Fertility, Sunha Myong, Junghae Park, Junjian Yi

Research Collection School Of Economics

We document three stylized facts on marriage and fertility patterns in East Asian societies: (i) their marriage rates are among the highest in the world, but their total fertility is the lowest; (ii) although they have the lowest total fertility, almost all married women have at least one child; and (iii) almost no single women have any children. As these societies have been influenced by Confucianism over millennia, marriage and fertility decisions are potentially shaped by two social norms: the unequal gender division of childcare and the stigma attached to out-of-wedlock births. We present a model incorporating the two social …


The Price Elasticity Of African Elephant Poaching, Quy-Toan Do, Andrei A. Levchenko, Lin Ma, Julian Blanc, Holly Dublin, Tom Milliken Oct 2021

The Price Elasticity Of African Elephant Poaching, Quy-Toan Do, Andrei A. Levchenko, Lin Ma, Julian Blanc, Holly Dublin, Tom Milliken

Research Collection School Of Economics

The objective of this paper is to provide an estimate of the elasticity of elephant poaching with respect to prices. Ivory being a storable commodity subjects its price to Hotelling’s no-arbitrage condition, hence allowing identification of the supply curve. The price of gold, one of many commodities used as stores of value, is thus used as an instrument for ivory prices. The supply of illegal ivory is found to be price inelastic with an elasticity of 0.4, with changes in consumer prices passing-through to prices faced by producers at a rate close to unity. Estimations based on a number of …


Providing Childcare, Christine Ho, Sunha Myong Sep 2021

Providing Childcare, Christine Ho, Sunha Myong

Research Collection School Of Economics

Women’s economic empowerment has been hailed as one of the most remarkable revolutions in the past 50 years. Yet, women still face the lion’s share of the burden of childcare despite major progress in their education and earnings capacity. This is particularly salient in many Asian countries. This chapter proposes a synthesis of the state of knowledge on childcare and discusses policy-relevant issues applicable to the Singapore context. Selected policies are documented and lessons from the international landscape are discussed. Raising children incurs both direct costs in the form of childcare and opportunity costs in the form of career costs. …


Hedonic Price Of Housing Space, Sumit Agarwal, Yanying Chen, Li Jing, Yi Jin Tan Jul 2021

Hedonic Price Of Housing Space, Sumit Agarwal, Yanying Chen, Li Jing, Yi Jin Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This article estimates hedonic prices for different levels of housing space, by exploiting a unique space‐adding project in Singapore that added a uniform amount of space to each existing housing unit regardless of the original size. This space adding program was carried out if sufficient residents vote in favor of space adding. Using a difference‐in‐differences (DiD) strategy after restricting our sample to narrow margins around the voting cutoff, we find that the additional space increased the resale price of a housing unit by 7% on average, and the extent of price appreciation varied significantly across the original size of the …


High-Frequency Internet Survey Of A Probability Sample Of Older Singaporeans: The Singapore Life Panel, Rhema Vaithianathan, Bryce Hool, Michael D. Hurd, Susann Rohwedder Jun 2021

High-Frequency Internet Survey Of A Probability Sample Of Older Singaporeans: The Singapore Life Panel, Rhema Vaithianathan, Bryce Hool, Michael D. Hurd, Susann Rohwedder

Research Collection School Of Economics

Facing a rapidly ageing population, Singapore is presented with urgent policy challenges. Yet there is very little data on the economic, health and family circumstances of older Singaporeans. In response, the Centre for Research on the Economics of Ageing (CREA) at Singapore Management University has been collecting monthly data on a panel of Singaporeans aged between 50 and 70 years. We detail the methodology by which the Singapore Life Panel® (SLP) was constructed using a population-representative sampling frame from the Singapore Department of Statistics. Contact was made with 25,000 households through postal, phone and in-person canvassing. More than 15,200 respondents …


Happy Lottery Winners And Lottery-Ticket Bias, Seonghoon Kim, Andrew J. Oswald Jun 2021

Happy Lottery Winners And Lottery-Ticket Bias, Seonghoon Kim, Andrew J. Oswald

Research Collection School Of Economics

The world spends a remarkable $250 billion a year on lottery tickets. Yet, perplexingly, it has proved difficult for social scientists to show that lottery windfalls actually make people happier. This is the famous and still unresolved paradox due initially to Brickman and colleagues. Here we describe an underlying weakness that has affected the research area, and explain the concept of lottery‐ticket bias (LT bias), which stems from unobservable lottery spending. We then collect new data—in the world’s most intense lottery‐playing nation, Singapore—on the amount that people spend on lottery tickets (n = 5626). We demonstrate that, once we correct …


Asset Classes, Nicolas L. Jacquet Apr 2021

Asset Classes, Nicolas L. Jacquet

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a theory of endogenous differences in liquidity of assets based on the interaction between differences in the risk of assets and differences in liquidity needs of investors. An equilibrium of the model, which always exists and is unique, displays a class structure, where investors’ types sort themselves across different types of assets. I also provide a detailed analysis of the possible types of sorting and of the consequences for the cross-sectional properties of asset prices and their velocity. The framework can also be useful to think about what constitute a ""light-to-liquidity" and a "safe asset".


The Evolution Of Income Risk And Consumption Insurance In South Korea Over The Last Two Decades, Taehyun Ahn, Chung Gu Chee, Seonghoon Kim Apr 2021

The Evolution Of Income Risk And Consumption Insurance In South Korea Over The Last Two Decades, Taehyun Ahn, Chung Gu Chee, Seonghoon Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using data from the Korea Labor Income Panel Study, we study the evolution of income risk and consumption insurance against transitory and permanent income shocks in South Korea over the last two decades. We find a decreasing trend in both income and consumption risks. Furthermore, we estimate that 47.6% of permanent income shocks and 9.8% of transitory income shocks pass through to consumption. We also provide evidence of substantial improvements in consumption insurance among the less educated and the older cohort nearing retirement. Our results suggest that recent developments of social safety net and welfare system may have played an …


The Effects Of Income On Health: Evidence From Lottery Wins In Singapore, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh Mar 2021

The Effects Of Income On Health: Evidence From Lottery Wins In Singapore, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We estimate the causal effects of household income on self-reported health status by exploiting random variations in the amount of lottery prizes won. We find that a S$10,000 (US$7,245) increase in income via lottery wins improves individuals’ health by a standard deviation of 0.18. As possible mechanisms, we find that lottery wins increase household consumption spending and improve overall life satisfaction, but do not change healthcare spending, labor supply, and risky health behavior. Previous studies, which focused on the health effects of lottery prizes in Western European countries with strong social safety nets, do not find positive effects other than …


Pregnancy Persistently Reduces Alcohol Purchases: Causal Evidence From Scanner Data, Aljoscha Janssen, Elle Parslow Feb 2021

Pregnancy Persistently Reduces Alcohol Purchases: Causal Evidence From Scanner Data, Aljoscha Janssen, Elle Parslow

Research Collection School Of Economics

We analyze household-level changes in alcohol consumption in response to pregnancy. Using scanner data, we identify households with a pregnant household member. Within an event study and a dynamic difference-in-differences estimation, we find that during a first pregnancy, households reduce their alcohol purchases by 36%. After pregnancy, purchases of alcohol are 34% lower than before pregnancy. We do not find any effect during the second pregnancy. One possible explanation for our result is that lower consumption during pregnancy changes habits and reduces consumption in the long term. We discuss other explanations and comment on policy implications.