Econometrics Commons^™

A Granger Causality Test On The Misery Index Effects On Domestic Violence, Talia Vicente

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the possibility of an increase in domestic violence because of high inflation and unemployment rates in the United States. Inflation and unemployment are two factors that add together to contribute to the Misery Index. This index was created in 1970 by Arthur Okan, who used the index as a measure of economic distress felt by everyday people, due to the risk of, or actual, joblessness combined with an increasing cost of living. The data is collected from 1950’s to 2019 on factors such as unemployment, inflation, poverty, education, and GDP per capita. The results show that an …

How International Trade And Government Integrity Affect The Structural Transformation Of Lao Pdr And Cambodia, Yixin Wan

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper explores the how international trade and government integrity affect the structural transformation of Lao PDR and Cambodia. This empirical study is conducted by using the methodology based on Chenery-Syrquin model with several control groups that have impacted on structural transformation in Lao PDR and Cambodia. Moreover, the obtained data is from 1993 to 2021 to find out how these two countries transform from being agriculture dominant economy to being more industry-and services-oriented economy. This study has confirmed non-linear effects of both income and population on the sectoral shares and found that trade has facilitated structural transformation in Lao …

Exploring The Relationship Between Exchange Rate Pass-Through And Cpi Inflation In Mainland China And India, Edward Zhou

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

By examining the link between exchange rate transmission and cpi inflation across countries, we investigate whether there is a considerable link between the two. In this paper, we examine data for two representative Asian countries, mainland China and India, to determine whether there is a relationship between the two. The study finds no significant link between exchange rate and cpi inflation for China by comparing 40 years of data for these two countries, but for India, there is a particularly clear link. The difference between the two is mainly due to the different exchange rate control systems implemented by the …

The Effects Of Cultural Values On Economic Growth: An Empirical Investigation, Jake Barlow

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This study explores the relationship between cultural attitudes and national GDP growth, across several countries. Data from the World Values Survey from the 2010 through 2014 and 2005-2009 wave have been utilized to determine cultural attitudes, and data from the World Bank and USAID has been utilized for building the economic growth model. The purpose of this study is to inform policy makers regarding the effects of different cultural factors and their interactions on economic growth outcomes. The main contribution of this study is the positive impact that attitudes towards the environment have on economic growth outcomes.

An Empirical Analysis Of Foreign Trade And Institutional Quality On Economic Growth In Asian Countries, Ruixi Huang

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This investigation explores the connections between foreign commerce, institutional quality, and economic growth in 11 Asian nations, utilizing panel data spanning 2000 to 2021. The countries are classified into Central Asia and Southeast Asia groups. Economic growth serves as the dependent variable, while trade openness, FDI, institutional quality, human capital, and terms of trade act as independent variables. The outcomes reveal that only total life expectancy at birth significantly influences Central Asian countries' economic growth. Furthermore, trade openness, FDI net inflows, and governance indicators considerably affect Southeast Asian nations. The results also indicate that institutional quality's impact on economic growth …

An Empirical Exploration Of U.S Healthcare Discrimination And Obesity Prevalence, Arinzechukwu Maduka

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper offers an empirical exploration of the discriminatory nature of the US healthcare system using obesity prevalence as a primary lens. The study involves an analysis of time series data sets to examine the impact of an array of both economic and lifestyle factors on obesity rates across a statewide level. In addition to discussing the current realm of literature surrounding obesity, this paper expounds upon existing empirical models. Results show that inequality and race are significant influencers of anti-black discrimination that is ever present within society.

An Empirical Analysis Of Prime Performing Age Of Nba Players; When Do They Reach Their Prime?, Tony Salameh

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This empirical research paper investigates the prime performing age of NBA players from the perspective of General Managers. The study aims to identify the age range in which players are most effective on the court and to determine if there is a significant relationship between age and player performance. Player performance statistics data was collected from ESPN and analyzed to help determine at what age players reach their prime productivity levels for a team. The findings suggest that the prime performing age of NBA players is between 27 and 31 years old, with a slight decline in performance after the …

Empirical Analysis Of Nba 2011 Cba Changes And Their Effects On Competitive Balance, Derek Smith

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the effects of the 2011 collective bargaining agreement on the competitive balance in the National Basketball Association. It illustrates how the different rules and regulations affected various factors within the sport, and in turn how these alterations affected the competitive balance of the NBA. The goal is to exemplify the importance of NBA factors in the competitive balance of the sport and prevent incorrect manipulation of the industry. The results showed that the 2011 CBA did little to none in terms of improving the level of competitive balance within the NBA. All of the factors that were …

Deciding For Others: Local Public Good Contributions With Intermediaries, Andrej Angelovski, Praveen Kujal, Christos Mavridis

ESI Working Papers

Given the prevalence of local public goods, whose broader use is often limited by distance and borders, we propose a potential solution to the free-riding problem by having each participant/beneficiary delegate the public good contribution decision to a non-local intermediary who neither puts in own endowment into the public good nor benefits from it. Intermediaries make decisions under two compensation mechanisms where the incentives for the intermediary are either non-aligned (fixed) or aligned (variable) with those of the beneficiary. We find that the use of intermediaries, regardless of whether their compensation is aligned or not with that of the beneficiary, …

Choice Flexibility And Long-Run Cooperation, Gabriele Camera, Jaehong Kim, David Rojo Arjona

ESI Working Papers

Cooperation does not empirically scale when strangers confront indefinitely repeated social dilemmas—despite its incentive-compatibility. Here, we investigate if an intervention can mitigate this problem: expanding the action set with partial cooperation choices. Although standard theory predicts no effect, adding interior choices to a rigid binary-choice game often boosted cooperation and efficiency in the laboratory. Under some conditions, groups of strangers achieved outcomes close to those observed in pairs of partners—where adding interior choices, instead, was inconsequential. This suggests that choice rigidities can hinder long-run cooperation.

Failed Secular Revolutions: Religious Belief, Competition, And Extremism, Jean-Paul Carvalho, Jared Rubin, Michael Sacks

ESI Working Papers

All advanced economies have undergone secular revolutions in which religious belief and institutions have been subordinated to secular forms of authority. There are, however, numerous examples of failed secular transitions. To understand these failures, we present a religious club model with endogenous entry and cultural transmission of religious beliefs. A spike in the demand for religious belief, due for example to a negative economic shock, induces a new and more extreme organization to enter the religious market and exploit the dissatisfaction of highly religious types with the religious incumbent. The eect is larger where institutional secularization is more advanced, for …

Competing Social Influence In Contested Diffusion: Luther, Erasmus And The Spread Of The Protestant Reformation, Sascha O. Becker, Steven Pfaff, Yuan Hsiao, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

The spread of radical institutional change does not often result from one-sided pro-innovation influence; countervailing influence networks in support of the status quo can suppress adoption. We develop a model of multiple and competing network diffusion. To apply the contested-diffusion model to real data, we look at the contest between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, the two most influential intellectuals of early 16th-century Central Europe. Whereas Luther championed a radical reform of the Western Church that broke with Rome, Erasmus opposed him, stressing the unity of the Church. In the early phase of the Reformation, these two figures utilized influence …

An Experimental Test Of Algorithmic Dismissals, Brice Corgnet

ESI Working Papers

We design a laboratory experiment in which a human or an algorithm decides which of two workers to dismiss. The algorithm automatically dismisses the least productive worker whereas human bosses have full discretion over their decisions. Using performance metrics and questionnaires, we find that fired workers react more negatively to human than to algorithmic decisions in a broad range of tasks. We show that spitefulness exacerbated this negative reaction. Our findings suggest algorithms could help tame negative reactions to dismissals.

Impact Of Goods And Money Market Indicators On Stock Market Index In Nigeria, Adamu Hassan, Mika'‘Ilu Abubakar

Bullion

This study examines the influence of goods and money

market indicators on the performance of the Nigerian

stock market index from 1985 to 2021 using

Autoregressive Distributed Lag model. The findings

demonstrate that goods market indicators such as

domestic savings and government spending have a

strong positive effect on the performance of the stock

market index, but domestic investment has a negative

influence on the performance of the stock market index.

This is because majority of the investors in goods market

are financially excluded and have no access to formal

financial system. The results of the money market reveal

that …

Gambling On Growth: An Analysis Of The Early Impact Of Historical Horse Racing On Kentucky’S Thoroughbred Industry, Barrett W. Kerr

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

With a continuous decline in on-track wagering on Thoroughbred racing, racetrack operators are exploring alternative revenue sources to fund purses and create better quality racing. Historical Horse Racing (HHR), which represents one of the most recent advancements in parimutuel wagering, has become a popular system used by many states to offset the live wagering decline. Proponents of HHR suggest that this alternative wagering option will benefit the live racing industry. Using data from Kentucky racetracks from 2002 – 2021, this study examines the relationship between HHR wagering and key industry metrics, such as purses, on-track wagering, sales prices, and foal …

Guns And Fatal Police Shootings: Accuracy Of Firearm Prevalence Proxies In A Panel Data Analysis, Corin Elmore

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores the relationship between gun prevalence and fatal police shootings in the United States. Specifically, the study assesses the validity of using FSS (Firearm Suicides Per Total Suicides) as a proxy for gun prevalence. It examines whether FBI background check data can be a more reliable alternative. Through a panel data analysis, the study provides moderate evidence that FBI background check data performs better than FSS as a proxy for gun prevalence and that the relationship between firearm prevalence and fatal police shootings is positive. Additionally, the study finds that instrumenting FSS with background check data to account …

Impact Of Recessions And The Business Cycle On Altruism, Nicolas De Mello

CMC Senior Theses

I examine how recessions and the business cycle impact the time individuals allocate to altruism, using American Time Use Survey data from 2002-2019. The aim of the paper was to create a measure of altruism to explore changes in attitudes towards charity and altruism instead of the financial ability to do so. Additionally, I want to understand how economic shocks, such as recessions, impact behaviors and habits across the US population. Using ordinary least squares and the Tobit model, I created two models to capture both changes during and after recessionary periods. The first model is a regression of individuals’ …

A Classical Model Of Speculative Asset Price Dynamics, Sabiou M. Inoua, Vernon L. Smith

ESI Working Papers

In retrospect, the experimental findings on competitive market behavior called for a revival of the old, classical, view of competition as a collective higgling and bargaining process (as opposed to price-taking behaviors) founded on reservation prices (in place of the utility function). In this paper, we specialize the classical methodology to deal with speculation, an important impediment to price stability. The model involves typical features of a field or lab asset market setup and lends itself to an experimental test of its specific predictions; here we use the model to explain three general stylized facts, well established both empirically and …

Better-Than-Chance Prediction Of Cooperative Behaviour From First And Second Impressions, Eric Schniter, Timothy W. Shields

ESI Working Papers

Could cooperation among strangers be facilitated by adaptations that use sparse information to accurately predict cooperative behaviour? We hypothesize that predictions are influenced by beliefs, descriptions, appearance, and behavioural history available for first and second impressions. We also hypothesize that predictions improve when more information is available. We conducted a two-part study. First, we recorded thin-slice videos of university students just before their choices in a repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma with matched partners. Second, a worldwide sample of raters evaluated each player using either videos, photos, only gender labels, or neither images nor labels. Raters guessed players’ first-round Prisoner’s Dilemma choices …

Contingent Payments In Procurement Interactions - Experimental Evidence, Matthew J. Walker, Jason Shachat, Lijia Wei

ESI Working Papers

A primary objective of creating competition among suppliers is the procurement of higher quality goods and services at lower prices. When procuring non-standard goods, it is often difficult to write a complete specification of desired quality in the contract. Thus, payments to suppliers cannot be perfectly conditioned on the quality provided. We propose a correlated contingent payment contract to mitigate the supplier moral hazard problem while retaining competitive supplier selection based on price. We treat the probability of implementing contingent payments as probabilistic. The selected supplier’s payment is, according to a fixed probability, either the amount of their bid or …

Litigation With Negative Expected Value Suits: An Experimental Analysis, Cary Deck, Paul Pecorino, Michael Solomon

ESI Working Papers

The existence of lawsuits providing plaintiffs a negative expected value (NEV) at trial has important theoretical implications for signaling models of litigation. The signaling equilibrium possible absent NEV suits breaks down with NEV suits because plaintiffs do not have a credible threat to proceed to trial undermining the ability to signal type. Using a laboratory experiment, we analyze behavior with and without the possibility of NEV suits. Absent NEV suits, behavior largely follows predicted patterns. However, the possibility of NEV suits does not cause the signaling equilibrium to unravel and does not cause the dispute rate to increase. Plaintiffs only …

Inequality As A Barrier To Economic Integration? An Experiment, Gabriele Camera, Lukas Hohl, Rolf Weder

ESI Working Papers

International economic theory suggests that people should embrace economic integration because it promises large gains. But policy reversals such as Brexit indicate a desire for economic disintegration. Here we report results of an experiment of how size and cross-country distribution of gains from integration influence individuals’ inclination to cooperate to reap its intended benefits and to embrace or reject integration. The design considers an indefinitely repeated helping game with multiple equilibria and strategic uncertainty. The data reveal that inequality of potential gains neither affected behavior nor reduced support for economic integration. However, integration may lead to disappointing, unequally distributed welfare …

Information Aggregation With Heterogeneous Traders, Cary Deck, Tae In Jun, Laura Razzolini, Tavoy Reid

ESI Working Papers

The efficient market hypothesis predicts that asset prices reflect all available information. A seminal experiment reported that contingent claim markets could yield market outcomes consistent with information aggregation when traders hold heterogeneous state-contingent values. However, a recent experiment found the rational expectation model outperformed the prior information and maxi-min models in contingent claim markets when traders hold homogeneous values despite the no trade equilibrium in that setting. But that same study failed to replicate the original result calling into question when, if ever, prices reliably reflect the aggregate information of traders with heterogeneous values. In this paper, we show contingent …

United We Stand: On The Benefits Of Coordinated Punishment, Vicente Calabuig, Natalia Jiménez, Gonzalo Olcina, Ismael Rodriguez-Lara

ESI Working Papers

Coordinated punishment occurs when punishment decisions are complements; i.e., this punishment device requires a specific number of punishers to be effective; otherwise, no damage will be inflicted on the target. While societies often rely on this punishment device, its benefits are unclear compared with uncoordinated punishment, where punishment decisions are substitutes. We argue that coordinated punishment can prevent the free-riding of punishers and show, both theoretically and experimentally, that this may be beneficial for cooperation in a team investment game, compared with uncoordinated punishment.

Historical Political Economy: What Is It?, Jeffrey Jenkins, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

In this chapter, we define what historical political economy (HPE) is and is not, classify the major themes in the literature, assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of the literature, and point to future directions. We view HPE as social scientific inquiry which highlights political causes or consequences of historical issues. HPE is different from conventional political economy in the emphasis placed on historical processes and context. While we view HPE in the most inclusive manner reasonable, we define it to exclude works that are either solely of contemporary importance or use historical data without any historical context (e.g., long-run …

Nobel And Novice: Author Prominence Affects Peer Review, Jürgen Huber, Sabiou M. Inoua, Rudolf Kerschbamer, Christian König-Kersting, Stefan Palan, Vernon L. Smith

ESI Working Papers

Peer-review is a well-established cornerstone of the scientific process, yet it is not immune to status bias. Merton identified the problem as one in which prominent researchers get disproportionately great credit for their contribution while relatively unknown researchers get disproportionately little credit.¹ We measure the extent of this effect in the peer-review process through a pre-registered field experiment. We invite more than 3,300 researchers to review a paper jointly written by a prominent author – a Nobel laureate – and by a relatively unknown author – an early-career research associate –, varying whether reviewers see the prominent author’s name, …

Introducing New Forms Of Digital Money: Evidence From The Laboratory, Gabriele Camera

ESI Working Papers

Central banks may soon issue currencies that are entirely digital (CBDCs) and possibly interest-bearing. A strategic analytical framework is used to investigate this innovation in the laboratory, contrasting a traditional “plain” tokens baseline to treatments with “sophisticated” interest-bearing tokens. In the experiment, this theoretically beneficial innovation precluded the emergence of a stable monetary system, reducing trade and welfare. Similar problems emerged when sophisticated tokens complemented or replaced plain tokens. This evidence underscores the advantages of combining theoretical with experimental investigation to provide insights for payments systems innovation and policy design.

The Doors Of Perception: Theory And Evidence Of Frame-Dependent Rationalizability, Gary Charness, Alessandro Sontuoso

ESI Working Papers

We investigate how strategic behavior is affected by the set of notions (frames) used when thinking about the game. In our games, the action set consists of visual objects: each player must privately choose one, trying to match the counterpart’s choice. We propose a model where different player-types are aware of different attributes of the action set (hence, different frames). One of the novelties is an epistemic structure that allows players to think about new frames, after initial unawareness of some attributes. To test the model, our experimental design brings about multiple frames by varying subjects’ awareness of several attributes.

How Federal Pollution Discharge Permits Affect U.S. Water Quality: A Study On Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, Cloe C. Mueller

Theses and Dissertations

This paper uses difference-in-difference regression models to examine how state-level pollution discharge permits on concentrated animal feeding operations affect U.S. water quality. I ultimately deem the permitting to be ineffective at improving water quality, calling attention to the need to re-evaluate the ``socially optimal level of pollution."

Political Legitimacy In Historical Political Economy, Avner Greif, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

Political legitimacy has long been recognized in the social sciences as an integral component of governance. It encourages obedience without the threat of force, thus lowering governing costs and improving the efficacy of policies. This chapter begins by overviewing the extensive literature on political legitimacy, classifying studies by whether they are based on the beliefs (regarding the legitimacy of the authority) or effectiveness (good governance is legitimate governance). Among the studies focusing on beliefs, most take legitimacy as an exogenous element of political authority. We develop a conceptual framework to study how beliefs regarding political legitimacy form endogenously and impact …