We study the impact of an investigation into collusion and corruption to learn about the organization of cartels in public procurement auctions. Our focus is on Montreal’s asphalt industry, where ...there have been allegations of bid rigging, market segmentation, complementary bidding, and bribes to bureaucrats, and where, in 2009, a police investigation was launched. We collect procurement data and use a difference-in-difference approach to compare outcomes before and after the investigation in Montreal and in Quebec City, where there have been no allegations of collusion or corruption. We find that entry and participation increased, and that the price of procurement decreased. We then decompose the price decrease to quantify the importance of two aspects of cartel organization, coordination and entry deterrence, for collusive pricing. We find that the latter explains only a small part of the decrease.
Violence and Human Capital Investments Koppensteiner, Martin Foureaux; Menezes, Lívia
Journal of labor economics,
07/2021, Letnik:
39, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We combine extremely granular information on the location and timing of homicides with a number of large administrative educational data sets from Brazil to estimate the effect of exposure to ...homicides around schools, around students’ residences, and on their way to school. We show that violence has a detrimental effect on both school attendance and standardized test scores and that it increases the dropout rates of students substantially. We use exceptionally rich information from student- and parent-background questionnaires to investigate the effect of violence on aspirations and attitudes toward education. We find that boys systematically report lower educational aspiration.
Technological innovations in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have enabled tremendous amounts of natural gas to be extracted profitably from underground shale formations that were long ...thought to be uneconomical. In this paper, we provide the first estimates of broad-scale welfare and distributional implications of this supply boom. We provide new estimates of supply and demand elasticities, which we use to estimate the drop in natural gas prices that is attributable to the supply expansion. We find large, positive welfare impacts for four broad sectors of gas consumption (residential, commercial, industrial, and electric power) and a negative impact for producers, with variation across regions. We then examine the evidence for a gas-led "manufacturing renaissance" and for pass-through to prices of products such as retail natural gas, retail electricity, and commodity chemicals. We conclude with a discussion of environmental externalities from unconventional natural gas, including limitations of the current regulatory environment. Overall, we find that between 2007 and 2013 the shale gas revolution led to an increase in welfare for natural gas consumers and producers of $48 billion per year, but more data are needed on the extent and valuation of the environmental impacts of shale gas production.
Abstract
Oligopoly can give rise to complex patterns of price interaction and adjustment. While oligopolistic firms may divide into price leaders and price followers, it is conceivable that some may ...take on dual roles, being a leader to one group but a follower to a different group in a hierarchical structure. The contribution of this article is to show how such dual relationships are possible in theory along with providing an empirical method to help identify price-leadership structures in n-firm oligopoly. As an illustration, we apply the method to British supermarkets and find a three-tier leader–follower structure.
The financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession left the US economy in an injured state. In 2013, output was 13% below its trend path from 1990 through 2007. Part of this shortfall -- 2.2 percentage ...points out of the 13 -- was the result of lingering slackness in the labor market in the form of abnormal unemployment and substandard weekly hours of work. The single biggest contributor was a shortfall in business capital, which accounted for 3.9 percentage points. The second largest was a shortfall of 3.5 percentage points in total factor productivity. The fourth was a shortfall of 2.4 percentage points in labor-force participation. I discuss these four sources of the injury in detail, focusing on identifying state variables that may or may not return to earlier growth paths. The conclusion is optimistic about the capital stock and slackness in the labor market and pessimistic about reversing the declines in total-factor productivity and the part of the participation shortfall not associated with the weak labor market.
: The subject of this paper is Measure 121 of the 2007-2013 RDP, called Modernisation of agricultural holdings. The objective of the study was to present the diversification of regional absorption of ...aid funds used under this measure and to assess the correlation between the scale of the use of these funds and the level of labor productivity in agriculture.
: On the basis of the GUS data, the regional differentiation of the absorption of aid funds from the analyzed measure and labor productivity in agriculture were assessed. The relation between these categories was determined based on Pearson’s linear correlation index.
A strong regional diversification of labor productivity in agriculture and the level of utilization of European Union funds directed at modernization of agricultural holdings was observed. There is a relation between the scale of the utilization of funds under Measure 121 of the RDP and the efficiency of labor factor. It can therefore be assumed that the form of support investigated is a significant stimulus for the increase in the level of work efficiency.
The rate of inflation fell far less over the period 2007-2013 than in the period 1979-1985 despite similar large increases in the unemployment rate. This paper asks why. Possible explanations include ...a change in the persistence of inflation, changes in NAIRU, and other shocks. A change in the persistence of inflation, with inflation more anchored in the period 2007-2013 than in the period 1979-1985, is found to be important. The level and change in the NAIRU cannot be precisely estimated, but the data suggest an increase of nearly 1 percentage point since 2007.
This study leverages sibling identifiers merged to administrative school records to analyze the assignment of elementary students to teachers. We document significant sorting of students to their ...older sibling's teachers, and this effect is stronger for relatively advantaged students. By analyzing the circumstances in which students are disproportionately assigned to their older sibling's teacher, we provide indirect evidence regarding parental preferences for various teacher characteristics. We find stronger sorting to the older sibling's teacher when that teacher is relatively experienced or has higher value-added. The sorting towards higher value-added teachers is significantly stronger for relatively advantaged students.
Abstract
The government-sponsored Five-Star Quality Rating System (FSQRS) aggregates multiple measures of nursing home quality into a standardized overall rating. Previous research has found that the ...FSQRS affected consumer demand and correspondingly motivated a strategic shift toward competing for higher ratings, most notably among nursing homes in more competitive markets. The primary objective of this article is to provide evidence on whether it produced a complementary change in the weight placed on quality ratings in senior management retention decisions. Using the Florida nursing home administrator files from 2007 to 2013, our analysis reveals that the FSQRS motivated a substantial and significant increase in the sensitivity of administrator turnover to star ratings, particularly in more competitive nursing home markets (JEL I18, L15, J63, G24, G34).
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