Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Mechanism design (33)
- Asymptotic size (26)
- Bayes correlated equilibrium (25)
- Incomplete information (25)
- Unit root (25)
-
- Adverse selection (24)
- Information structure (24)
- Test (24)
- Climate change (23)
- Cointegration (22)
- Identification (22)
- Asymptotics (21)
- Default (21)
- Moment inequalities (21)
- Nonstationarity (21)
- Confidence set (20)
- Productivity (20)
- Asymptotic theory (19)
- Robustness (19)
- Autoregression (18)
- Common knowledge (18)
- Game theory (18)
- Moral hazard (18)
- Weak instruments (18)
- Brownian motion (17)
- Correlated equilibrium (17)
- General equilibrium (17)
- Long memory (17)
- Unit roots (17)
- Experimentation (16)
- Publication Year
Articles 271 - 300 of 2768
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Migration And Informal Insurance, Costas Meghir, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Corina Mommaerts, Melanie Morten
Migration And Informal Insurance, Costas Meghir, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Corina Mommaerts, Melanie Morten
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We document that an experimental intervention offering transport subsidies for poor rural households to migrate seasonally in Bangladesh improved risk sharing. A theoretical model of endogenous migration and risk sharing shows that the effect of subsidizing migration depends on the underlying economic environment. If migration is risky, a temporary subsidy can induce an improvement in risk sharing and enable profitable migration. We estimate the model and find that the migration experiment increased welfare by 12.9%. Counterfactual analysis suggests that a permanent, rather than temporary, decline in migration costs in the same environment would result in a reduction in risk sharing.
Misspecified Moment Inequality Models: Inference And Diagnostics, Donald W.K. Andrews, Soonwoo Kwon
Misspecified Moment Inequality Models: Inference And Diagnostics, Donald W.K. Andrews, Soonwoo Kwon
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
This paper is concerned with possible model misspecification in moment inequality models. Two issues are addressed. First, standard tests and confidence sets for the true parameter in the moment inequality literature are not robust to model misspecification in the sense that they exhibit spurious precision when the identified set is empty. This paper introduces tests and confidence sets that provide correct asymptotic inference for a pseudo-true parameter in such scenarios, and hence, do not suffer from spurious precision. Second, specification tests have relatively low power against a range of misspecified models. Thus, failure to reject the null of correct specification …
Inference In Moment Inequality Models That Is Robust To Spurious Precision Under Model Misspecification, Donald W.K. Andrews, Soonwoo Kwon
Inference In Moment Inequality Models That Is Robust To Spurious Precision Under Model Misspecification, Donald W.K. Andrews, Soonwoo Kwon
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Standard tests and confidence sets in the moment inequality literature are not robust to model misspecification in the sense that they exhibit spurious precision when the identified set is empty. This paper introduces tests and confidence sets that provide correct asymptotic inference for a pseudo-true parameter in such scenarios, and hence, do not suffer from spurious precision.
Does Eviction Cause Poverty? Quasi-Experimental Evidence From Cook County, Il, John Eric Humphries, Nicholas Mader, Daniel Tannenbaum, Winnie Van Dijk
Does Eviction Cause Poverty? Quasi-Experimental Evidence From Cook County, Il, John Eric Humphries, Nicholas Mader, Daniel Tannenbaum, Winnie Van Dijk
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Each year, more than two million U.S. households have an eviction case filed against them. Many cities have recently implemented policies aimed at reducing the number of evictions, motivated by research showing strong associations between being evicted and subsequent adverse economic outcomes. Yet it is difficult to determine to what extent those associations represent causal relationships, because eviction itself is likely to be a consequence of adverse life events. This paper addresses that challenge and offers new causal evidence on how eviction affects financial distress, residential mobility, and neighborhood quality. We collect the near-universe of Cook County court records over …
Migration And Informal Insurance, Costas Meghir, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Corina Mommaerts, Melanie Morten
Migration And Informal Insurance, Costas Meghir, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Corina Mommaerts, Melanie Morten
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. We explain this finding using a model of endogenous migration and risk sharing. When migration is risky, the network can facilitate migration by insuring that risk, which in turn crowds-in risk sharing when new migration opportunities arise. We estimate the model and find that welfare gains from migration subsidies are 42% larger, compared with the welfare gains without spillovers, once we …
Inference In Moment Inequality Models That Is Robust To Spurious Precision Under Model Misspecification, Donald W.K. Andrews, Soonwoo Kwon
Inference In Moment Inequality Models That Is Robust To Spurious Precision Under Model Misspecification, Donald W.K. Andrews, Soonwoo Kwon
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Standard tests and confidence sets in the moment inequality literature are not robust to model misspecification in the sense that they exhibit spurious precision when the identified set is empty. This paper introduces tests and confidence sets that provide correct asymptotic inference for a pseudo-true parameter in such scenarios, and hence, do not suffer from spurious precision.
Dual-Self Representations Of Ambiguity Preferences, Madhav Chandrasekher, Mira Frick, Ryota Iijima, Yves Le Yaouanq
Dual-Self Representations Of Ambiguity Preferences, Madhav Chandrasekher, Mira Frick, Ryota Iijima, Yves Le Yaouanq
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We propose a class of multiple-prior representations of preferences under ambiguity, where the belief the decision-maker (DM) uses to evaluate an uncertain prospect is the outcome of a game played by two conflicting forces, Pessimism and Optimism. The model does not restrict the sign of the DM’s ambiguity attitude, and we show that it provides a unified framework through which to characterize different degrees of ambiguity aversion, and to represent the co-existence of negative and positive ambiguity attitudes within individuals as documented in experiments. We prove that our baseline representation, dual-self expected utility (DSEU), yields a novel representation of the …
Greedy Or Grateful? Asking For More When Thanking Donors, K. Sudhir, Hortense Fong, Subroto Roy
Greedy Or Grateful? Asking For More When Thanking Donors, K. Sudhir, Hortense Fong, Subroto Roy
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Charities routinely send “thank you letters” and small gifts to express gratitude to donors but seek to defray these costs by making additional asks for donations and/or engagement. But the “ask for more” can backfire if potential donors perceive persuasive intent in the expression of gratitude, inducing reactance. We hypothesize that such reactance and its impact on giving will vary by donor loyalty. Loyal donors are more likely to experience reactance to additional asks, muting the feeling of reciprocity aroused by the expression of gratitude to suppress giving. In contrast, non-loyal donors are less likely to experience reactance, and therefore …
Education Quality And Teaching Practices, Marina Bassi, Costas Meghir, Ana Reynoso
Education Quality And Teaching Practices, Marina Bassi, Costas Meghir, Ana Reynoso
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Improving school quality with limited resources is a key issue of policy. It has been suggested that instructing teachers to follow specific practices together with tight monitoring of their activities may help improve outcomes in under-performing schools that usually serve poor populations. This paper uses an RCT to estimate the effectiveness of guided instruction methods as implemented in under-performing schools in Chile. The intervention improved performance substantially and by equal amounts for boys and girls. However, the effect is mainly accounted for by children from relatively higher income backgrounds and not for the most deprived. Based on the CLASS instrument …
Boolean Representations Of Preferences Under Ambiguity, Mira Frick, Ryota Iijima, Yves Le Yaouanq
Boolean Representations Of Preferences Under Ambiguity, Mira Frick, Ryota Iijima, Yves Le Yaouanq
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We propose a class of multiple-prior representations of preferences under ambiguity where the belief the decision-maker (DM) uses to evaluate an uncertain prospect is the outcome of a game played by two conflicting forces, Pessimism and Optimism. The model does not restrict the sign of the DM’s ambiguity attitude, and we show that it provides a unified framework through which to characterize different degrees of ambiguity aversion, as well as to represent context-dependent negative and positive ambiguity attitudes documented in experiments. We prove that our baseline representation, Boolean expected utility (BEU), yields a novel representation of the class of invariant …
Dual-Self Representations Of Ambiguity Preferences, Madhav Chandrasekher, Mira Frick, Ryota Iijima, Yves Le Yaouanq
Dual-Self Representations Of Ambiguity Preferences, Madhav Chandrasekher, Mira Frick, Ryota Iijima, Yves Le Yaouanq
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We propose a class of multiple-prior representations of preferences under ambiguity, where the belief the decision-maker (DM) uses to evaluate an uncertain prospect is the outcome of a game played by two conflicting forces, Pessimism and Optimism. The model does not restrict the sign of the DM’s ambiguity attitude, and we show that it provides a unified framework through which to characterize different degrees of ambiguity aversion, and to represent the co-existence of negative and positive ambiguity attitudes within individuals as documented in experiments. We prove that our baseline representation, dual-self expected utility (DSEU), yields a novel representation of the …
Greedy Or Grateful? Asking For More When Thanking Donors, K. Sudhir, Hortense Fong, Subroto Roy
Greedy Or Grateful? Asking For More When Thanking Donors, K. Sudhir, Hortense Fong, Subroto Roy
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Charities often send annual “thank you letters” to express gratitude to donors, but seek to defray these costs by inviting additional donations or engagement. However, the additional asks may backfire if potential donors see the thank you message as “insincere” or “manipulative.” We test this trade-off by conducting a field experiment in cooperation with a leading charity in India. We find that an explicit ask for additional donations or even a request to follow the organization on Facebook reduces giving. However, these effects are not only heterogeneous, but asymmetric by past giving behavior. Recent, frequent, and higher monetary value donors …
Boolean Expected Utility, Mira Frick, Ryota Iijima, Yves Le Yaouanq
Boolean Expected Utility, Mira Frick, Ryota Iijima, Yves Le Yaouanq
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We propose a multiple-prior model of preferences under ambiguity that provides a unified lens through which to understand different formalizations of ambiguity aversion, as well as context-dependent negative and positive ambiguity attitudes documented in experiments. This model, Boolean expected utility (BEU), represents the belief the decision-maker uses to evaluate any uncertain prospect as the outcome of a game between two conflicting forces, Pessimism and Optimism. We prove, first, that BEU provides a novel representation of the class of invariant biseparable preferences (Ghirardato, Maccheroni, and Marinacci, 2004). Second, BEU accommodates rich patterns of ambiguity attitudes, which we characterize in terms of …
Aggregation Of Diverse Information With Double Auction Trading Among Minimally-Intelligent Algorithmic Agents, Karim Jamal, Michael Maier, Shyam Sunder
Aggregation Of Diverse Information With Double Auction Trading Among Minimally-Intelligent Algorithmic Agents, Karim Jamal, Michael Maier, Shyam Sunder
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Information dissemination and aggregation are key economic functions of financial markets. How intelligent do traders have to be for the complex task of aggregating diverse information (i.e., approximate the predictions of the rational expectations equilibrium) in a competitive double auction market? An apparent ex-ante answer is: intelligent enough to perform the bootstrap operation necessary for the task—to somehow arrive at prices that are needed to generate those very prices. Constructing a path to such equilibrium through rational behavior has remained beyond what we know of human cognitive abilities. Yet, laboratory experiments report that profit motivated human traders are able to …
Attribute Sentiment Scoring With Online Text Reviews: Accounting For Language Structure And Missing Attributes, Ishita Chakraborty, Minkyung Kim, K. Sudhir
Attribute Sentiment Scoring With Online Text Reviews: Accounting For Language Structure And Missing Attributes, Ishita Chakraborty, Minkyung Kim, K. Sudhir
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
The authors address two significant challenges in using online text reviews to obtain fine-grained attribute level sentiment ratings. First, they develop a deep learning convolutional-LSTM hybrid model to account for language structure, in contrast to methods that rely on word frequency. The convolutional layer accounts for the spatial structure (adjacent word groups or phrases) and LSTM accounts for the sequential structure of language (sentiment distributed and modified across non-adjacent phrases). Second, they address the problem of missing attributes in text in construct-ing attribute sentiment scores—as reviewers write only about a subset of attributes and remain silent on others. They develop …
Can Random Friends Seed More Buzz And Adoption? Leveraging The Friendship Paradox, Vineet Kumar, K. Sudhir
Can Random Friends Seed More Buzz And Adoption? Leveraging The Friendship Paradox, Vineet Kumar, K. Sudhir
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A critical element of word of mouth (WOM) or buzz marketing is to identify seeds, often central actors with high degree in the social network. Seed identification typically requires data on the full network structure, which is often unavailable. We therefore examine the impact of WOM seeding strategies motivated by the friendship paradox to obtain more central nodes without knowing network structure on adoption. Higher-degree nodes may be less effective as seeds if these nodes communicate less with neighbors or are less persuasive when they communicate; therefore whether friendship paradox motivated seeding strategies increase or reduce WOM and adoption remains …
Functional Coefficient Panel Modeling With Communal Smoothing Covariates, Peter C.B. Phillips, Ying Wang
Functional Coefficient Panel Modeling With Communal Smoothing Covariates, Peter C.B. Phillips, Ying Wang
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Behavior at the individual level in panels or at the station level in spatial models is often influenced by aspects of the system in aggregate. In particular, the nature of the interaction between individual-specific explanatory variables and an individual dependent variable may be affected by `global’ variables that are relevant in decision making and shared communally by all individuals in the sample. To capture such behavioral features, we employ a functional coefficient panel model in which certain communal covariates may jointly influence panel interactions by means of their impact on the model coefficients. Two classes of estimation procedures are proposed, …
Attribute Sentiment Scoring With Online Text Reviews : Accounting For Language Structure And Attribute Self-Selection, Ishita Chakraborty, Minkyung Kim, K. Sudhir
Attribute Sentiment Scoring With Online Text Reviews : Accounting For Language Structure And Attribute Self-Selection, Ishita Chakraborty, Minkyung Kim, K. Sudhir
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
The authors address two novel and significant challenges in using online text reviews to obtain attribute level ratings. First, they introduce the problem of inferring attribute level sentiment from text data to the marketing literature and develop a deep learning model to address it. While extant bag of words based topic models are fairly good at attribute discovery based on frequency of word or phrase occurrences, associating sentiments to attributes requires exploiting the spatial and sequential structure of language. Second, they illustrate how to correct for attribute self-selection—reviewers choose the subset of attributes to write about—in metrics of attribute level …
Attribute Sentiment Scoring With Online Text Reviews: Accounting For Language Structure And Missing Attributes, Ishita Chakraborty, Minkyung Kim, K. Sudhir
Attribute Sentiment Scoring With Online Text Reviews: Accounting For Language Structure And Missing Attributes, Ishita Chakraborty, Minkyung Kim, K. Sudhir
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
The authors address two significant challenges in using online text reviews to obtain finegrained attribute level sentiment ratings. First, in contrast to methods that rely on word frequency, they develop a deep learning convolutional-LSTM hybrid model to account for language structure. The convolutional layer accounts for spatial structure (adjacent word groups or phrases) and LSTM accounts for sequential structure of language (sentiment distributed and modified across non-adjacent phrases). Second, they address the problem of missing attributes in text in constructing attribute sentiment scores—as reviewers write only about a subset of attributes and remain silent on others. They develop a model-based …
Can Friends Seed More Buzz And Adoption?, Vineet Kumar, K. Sudhir
Can Friends Seed More Buzz And Adoption?, Vineet Kumar, K. Sudhir
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A critical element of word of mouth (WOM) or buzz marketing is to identify seeds, often central actors with high degree in the social network. Seed identification typically requires data on the full network structure, which is often unavailable. We therefore examine the impact of WOM seeding strategies motivated by the friendship paradox to obtain more central nodes without knowing network structure. But higher-degree nodes may communicate less with neighbors; therefore whether friendship paradox motivated seeding strategies increase or reduce WOM and adoption remains an empirical question. We develop and estimate a model of WOM and adoption using data on …
The Causal Effect Of Service Satisfaction On Customer Loyalty, Guofang Huang, K. Sudhir
The Causal Effect Of Service Satisfaction On Customer Loyalty, Guofang Huang, K. Sudhir
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We propose an instrumental-variable (IV) approach to estimate the causal effect of service satisfaction on customer loyalty, by exploiting a common source of randomness in the assignment of service employees to customers in service queues. Our approach can be applied at no incremental cost by using routine repeated cross-sectional customer survey data collected by firms. The IV approach addresses multiple sources of biases that pose challenges in estimating the causal effect using cross-sectional data: (i) the upward bias from common-method variance due to the joint measurement of service satisfaction and loyalty intent in surveys; (ii) the attenuation bias caused by …
Boosting The Hodrick-Prescott Filter, Peter C.B. Phillips, Zhentao Shi
Boosting The Hodrick-Prescott Filter, Peter C.B. Phillips, Zhentao Shi
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
The Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter is one of the most widely used econometric methods in applied macroeconomic research. The technique is nonparametric and seeks to decompose a time series into a trend and a cyclical component unaided by economic theory or prior trend specification. Like all nonparametric methods, the HP filter depends critically on a tuning parameter that controls the degree of smoothing. Yet in contrast to modern nonparametric methods and applied work with these procedures, empirical practice with the HP filter almost universally relies on standard settings for the tuning parameter that have been suggested largely by experimentation with macroeconomic …
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions For Determinacy Of Asymptotically Stationary Equilibria In Olg Models, Alexander Gorokhovsky, Anna Rubinchik
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions For Determinacy Of Asymptotically Stationary Equilibria In Olg Models, Alexander Gorokhovsky, Anna Rubinchik
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We propose a criterion for determining whether a local policy analysis can be made in a given equilibrium in an overlapping generations model. The criterion can be applied to models with infinite past and future as well as those with a truncated past. The equilibrium is not necessarily a steady state; for example, demographic and type composition of the population or individuals’ endowments can change over time. However, asymptotically, the equilibrium should be stationary. The two limiting stationary paths at either end of the timeline do not have to be the same. If they are, conditions for local uniqueness are …
Wages, Experience And Training Of Women Over The Lifecycle, Richard Blundell, Monica Costa Dias, David Goll, Costas Meghir
Wages, Experience And Training Of Women Over The Lifecycle, Richard Blundell, Monica Costa Dias, David Goll, Costas Meghir
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We investigate the role of training in reducing the gender wage gap using the UK-BHPS. Based on a lifecycle model and using tax and welfare bene t reforms as a source of exogenous variation we evaluate the role of formal training and experience in defining the evolution of wages and employment careers, conditional on education. Training is potentially important in compensating for the effects of children, especially for women who left education after completing high school, but does not fundamentally change the wage gap resulting from labor market interruptions following child birth.
Robust Tests For White Noise And Cross-Correlation, Violetta Dalla, Liudas Giraitis, Peter C.B. Phillips
Robust Tests For White Noise And Cross-Correlation, Violetta Dalla, Liudas Giraitis, Peter C.B. Phillips
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Commonly used tests to assess evidence for the absence of autocorrelation in a univariate time series or serial cross-correlation between time series rely on procedures whose validity holds for i.i.d. data. When the series are not i.i.d., the size of correlogram and cumulative Ljung-Box tests can be significantly distorted. This paper adapts standard correlogram and portmanteau tests to accommodate hidden dependence and non-stationarities involving heteroskedasticity, thereby uncoupling these tests from limiting assumptions that reduce their applicability in empirical work. To enhance the Ljung-Box test for non-i.i.d. data a new cumulative test is introduced. Asymptotic size of these tests is unaffected …
Earnings Dynamics And Firm-Level Shocks, Benjamin Friedrich, Lisa Laun, Costas Meghir, Luigi Pistaferri
Earnings Dynamics And Firm-Level Shocks, Benjamin Friedrich, Lisa Laun, Costas Meghir, Luigi Pistaferri
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We use matched employer-employee data from Sweden to study the role of the firm in affecting the stochastic properties of wages. Our model accounts for endogenous participation and mobility decisions. We find that firm-specific permanent productivity shocks transmit to individual wages, but the effect is mostly concentrated among the high-skilled workers; firm-specific temporary shocks mostly affect the low-skilled. The updates to worker-firm specific match effects over the life of a firm-worker relationship are small. Substantial growth in earnings variance over the life cycle for high-skilled workers is driven by firms accounting for 44% of cross-sectional variance by age 55.
Robust Tests For White Noise And Cross-Correlation, Violetta Dalla, Liudas Giraitis, Peter C.B. Phillips
Robust Tests For White Noise And Cross-Correlation, Violetta Dalla, Liudas Giraitis, Peter C.B. Phillips
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Commonly used tests to assess evidence for the absence of autocorrelation in a univariate time series or serial cross-correlation between time series rely on procedures whose validity holds for i.i.d. data. When the series are not i.i.d., the size of correlogram and cumulative Ljung-Box tests can be significantly distorted. This paper adapts standard correlogram and portmanteau tests to accommodate hidden dependence and non-stationarities involving heteroskedasticity, thereby uncoupling these tests from limiting assumptions that reduce their applicability in empirical work. To enhance the Ljung-Box test for non-i.i.d. data a new cumulative test is introduced. Asymptotic size of these tests is unaffected …
Wages, Experience And Training Of Women, Richard Blundell, Monica Costa Dias, David Goll, Costas Meghir
Wages, Experience And Training Of Women, Richard Blundell, Monica Costa Dias, David Goll, Costas Meghir
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We investigate the role of training in reducing the gender wage gap using the UK- BHPS which contains detailed records of training. Using policy changes over an 18 year period we identify the impact of training and work experience on wages, earnings and employment. Based on a lifecycle model and using reforms as a source of exogenous variation we evaluate the role of formal training and experience in defining the evolution of wages and employment careers, conditional on education. Training is potentially important in compensating for the effects of children, especially for women who left education after completing high school.
Breaking Ties: Regression Discontinuity Design Meets Market Design, Atila Abdulkadiroğlu, Joshua D. Angrist, Yusuke Narita, Parag A. Pathak
Breaking Ties: Regression Discontinuity Design Meets Market Design, Atila Abdulkadiroğlu, Joshua D. Angrist, Yusuke Narita, Parag A. Pathak
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Many schools in large urban districts have more applicants than seats. Centralized school assignment algorithms ration seats at over-subscribed schools using randomly assigned lottery numbers, non-lottery tie-breakers like test scores, or both. The New York City public high school match illustrates the latter, using test scores and other criteria to rank applicants at \screened” schools, combined with lottery tie-breaking at unscreened \lottery” schools. We show how to identify causal effects of school attendance in such settings. Our approach generalizes regression discontinuity methods to allow for multiple treatments and multiple running variables, some of which are randomly assigned. The key to …
The Economics Of Social Data: An Introduction, Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti
The Economics Of Social Data: An Introduction, Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Large internet platforms collect data from individual users in almost every interaction on the internet. Whenever an individual browses a news website, searches for a medical term or for a travel recommendation, or simply checks the weather forecast on an app, that individual generates data. A central feature of the data collected from the individuals is its social aspect. Namely, the data captured from an individual user is not only informative about this specific individual, but also about users in some metric similar to the individual. Thus, the individual data is really social data. The social nature of the data …