Using a comprehensive database of coastal home sales merged with data on elevation relative to local tides, we compare prices for houses based on their inundation threshold under projections of sea ...level rise. The analysis separates the sensitivity of housing to rising seas from other confounding characteristics by exploiting cross-sectional differences in relative sea level rise due to vertical land motion. This provides variation in the expected time to inundation for properties of similar elevation and distance from the coast. In a variety of specifications and test settings, we find precisely estimated null results suggesting limited price effects.
Abstract
This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime. We show that antirefugee sentiment on Facebook predicts crimes against refugees in otherwise similar municipalities with ...higher social media usage. To establish causality, we exploit exogenous variation in the timing of major Facebook and internet outages. Consistent with a role for “echo chambers,” we find that right-wing social media posts contain narrower and more loaded content than news reports. Our results suggest that social media can act as a propagation mechanism for violent crimes by enabling the spread of extreme viewpoints.
The Promises and Pitfalls of Robo-Advising D’Acunto, Francesco; Prabhala, Nagpurnanand; Rossi, Alberto G.
The Review of financial studies,
05/2019, Letnik:
32, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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We study the introduction of a wealth-management robo-adviser that constructs portfolios tailored to investors’ holdings and preferences. Adopters are similar to non-adopters in terms of demographics ...and prior interactions with human advisers but tend to be more active and have greater assets under management. Investors adopting robo-advising experience diversification benefits. Ex ante undiversified investors increase stock holdings and hold portfolios with less volatility and better returns. Already well-diversified investors hold fewer stocks, yet see some reduction in volatility, and trade more after adoption. All investors increase attention based on online account logins. We find that adopters exhibit declines in prominent behavioral biases, including the disposition, trend chasing, and rank effect. Our results emphasize the promises and pitfalls of robo-advising tools, which are becoming ubiquitous all over the world.
Research Summary
Problem formulation is central to recombinant invention, and problem complexity particularly shapes the process and outcome of knowledge recombination. However, research on the ...antecedents of problem complexity remains limited. This study examines how breakthrough inventions may serve as an important antecedent of the complexity of problems formulated by individual inventors. We propose that a breakthrough invention may facilitate inventors' appreciation of novel knowledge couplings and improve their overall comprehension of knowledge interdependence for problem formulation, thus increasing problem complexity. We further argue that inventors' prior search breadth and experimentation strengthen the above effect. By exploiting the unexpected victory of AlphaGo and tracking the questions posted on StackOverflow.com by developers interested in deep learning, we find empirical evidence that supports our hypotheses.
Managerial Summary
Because formulating complex problems may result in novel and valuable inventions, it is helpful to understand what drives inventors to formulate problems of higher complexity. In this study, we propose that breakthrough inventions can serve as an important antecedent of problem complexity. In the context of deep learning, we find that developers formulate problems of higher complexity after the unexpected victory of AlphaGo, a widely acknowledged inventive breakthrough. Further, the above effect is more pronounced when developers have broad search experience in the past or engage frequently in experimentation. The insights of this study are not only relevant to managerial practices within the dynamic field of deep learning but also generalizable to broader technological contexts with breakthrough inventions.
We partnered a low-cost communication technology with school information systems to automate the gathering and provision of information on students' academic progress to parents of middle and high ...school students. We sent weekly automated alerts to parents about their child's missed assignments, grades, and class absences. The alerts reduced course failures by 27 percent, increased class attendance by 12 percent, and increased student retention, though there was no impact on state test scores. There were larger effects for below-median GPA students and high school students. More than 32,000 text messages were sent at a variable cost of $63.
Several K-12 and university systems have adopted race-neutral affirmative action in place of race-based alternatives. This paper explores whether these plans are effective substitutes for racial ...quotas in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), which now employs a race-neutral, place-based affirmative action system at its selective exam high schools. The CPS plan is ineffective compared to plans that explicitly consider race: about three-quarters of the reduction in average entrance scores at the top schools could have been avoided with the same level of racial diversity. Moreover, the CPS plan is less effective at adding low-income students than was the previous system of racial quotas. We develop a theoretical framework that motivates quantifying the inefficiency of race-neutral policies based on the distortion in student preparedness they create for a given level of diversity and use it to evaluate several alternatives. The CPS plan can be improved in several ways, but no race-neutral policy restores minority representation to prior levels without substantially greater distortions, implying significant efficiency costs from prohibitions on the explicit use of race.
Many firms claim that “social impact” influences their strategies. This paper develops a structural model that quantifies social impact as the sum of surpluses to a firm and its stakeholders. With ...data from a for-profit firm whose prosocial expenditures are measurable and salient to consumers, the analysis shows that the firm spends prosocially beyond profit maximization, thereby increasing welfare substantially. Incentivizing a standard profit-maximizing firm to behave similarly would require subsidies amounting to 58% of its prosocial expenditures, because consumers’ willingness to pay is relatively inelastic to prosocial expenses. Therefore, social impact resembles a self-imposed welfare-enhancing tax with limited pass-through.
Abstract
We investigated how the adoption of a new production technology differently affects the risk of job separation of young and old employees in South Korea by analyzing establishment-level ...panel data linked with administrative employment insurance records on individual workers. To address potential endogeneity associated with a firm’s technology adoption, we conducted instrumental variable estimations with a two-stage residual inclusion (2SRI) approach. The results suggest that technology (indicated by newly adopted automation and increased purchase of Information Technology equipment) positively affects the overall employment of incumbent workers. However, the employment of aged workers is less favorably affected by newly adopted technologies compared to that of younger workers. In some conditions, technology adoptions increase the retirement risk of older workers absolutely as well as relative to that of younger workers. Newly adopted automation negatively affects the employment of aged workers who are engaged in clerical and support occupations or employed in the wholesale and retail industry. Estimation results according to the reason for retirement suggest that the negative effect of technology adoption on employment may be related to both labor demand and supply.
Abstract
Can access to a few hundred dollars of liquidity affect the career choice of a recent college graduate? In a three-year field experiment with Teach For America (TFA), a prestigious teacher ...placement program, we randomly increase the financial packages offered to nearly 7,300 potential teachers who requested support for the transition into teaching. The first two years of the experiment reveal that although most applicants do not respond to a marginal $600 of grants or loans, those in the worst financial position respond by joining TFA at higher rates. We continue the experiment into the third year and self-replicate our results. For the highest-need applicants, an extra $600 in loans, $600 in grants, and $1,200 in grants increase the likelihood of joining TFA by 12.2, 11.4, and 17.1 percentage points (or 20.0%, 18.7%, and 28.1%), respectively. Additional grant and loan dollars are equally effective, suggesting a liquidity mechanism. A follow-up survey bolsters the liquidity story and also shows that those drawn into teaching would have otherwise worked in private-sector firms.
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