This paper uses a unique data set to measure peer effects among college roommates. Freshman year roommates and dormmates are randomly assigned at Dartmouth College. I find that peers have an impact ...on grade point average and on decisions to join social groups such as fraternities. Residential peer effects are markedly absent in other major life decisions such as choice of college major. Peer effects in GPA occur at the individual room level, whereas peer effects in fraternity membership occur both at the room level and the entire dorm level. Overall, the data provide strong evidence for the existence of peer effects in student outcomes.
Authorities in the economic field (European Commission and US Federal Trade Commission) focus on the level of market concentration and establish limits in order to promote competition. However, ...sports authorities do not seem to pay the same attention to competitive balance in the national leagues, given the results achieved in the major leagues and limited interventions and regulations in this area. How are the major European football leagues evaluated based on the limits set for market concentration in the United States or the European Union? Following this line, we undertook a comparative analysis using the distance to competitive balance index, whose range is the unit interval, and define it as a function in a metric space. The comparative analysis shows, as in other studies, the high and ever‐growing concentration of the results of these leagues over the past 25 years. With the European Commission and US Federal Trade Commission criteria, about one in three seasons would have been highly concentrated in the period analysed, and half in the last 10 seasons. Thus, it would seem reasonable that mechanisms that encourage competitiveness are considered.
Tax evasion, by its very nature, is difficult to observe. We quantify the effects of tax rates on tax evasion by examining the relationship in China between the tariff schedule and the “evasion gap,” ...which we define as the difference between Hong Kong’s reported exports to China at the product level and China’s reported imports from Hong Kong. Our results imply that a one‐percentage‐point increase in the tax rate is associated with a 3 percent increase in evasion. Furthermore, the evasion gap is negatively correlated with tax rates on closely related products, suggesting that evasion takes place partly through misclassification of imports from higher‐taxed categories to lower‐taxed ones, in addition to underreporting the value of imports.
In a sample of 398 firms from Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, firm-level differences in variables related to corporate governance had a strong impact on firm performance ...during the East Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998. Significantly better stock price performance is associated with firms that had indicators of higher disclosure quality (ADRs and auditors from Big Six accounting firms), with firms that had higher outside ownership concentration, and with firms that were focused rather than diversified. The results suggest that individual firms have some power to preclude expropriation of minority shareholders if legal protection is inadequate.
In an attempt to validate the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) over Brazil, TRMM PR estimates are compared with rain gauge station data from Agência Nacional de ...Energia Elétrica (ANEEL). The analysis is conducted on a seasonal basis and considers five geographic regions with different precipitation regimes. The results showed that TRMM PR seasonal rainfall is well correlated with ANEEL rainfall (correlation coefficients are significant at the 99% confidence level) over most of Brazil. The random and systematic errors of TRMM PR are sensitive to seasonal and regional differences. During December to February and March to May, TRMM PR rainfall is reliable over Brazil. In June to August (September to November) TRMM PR estimates are only reliable in the Amazonian and southern (Amazonian and southeastern) regions. In the other regions the relative RMS errors are larger than 50%, indicating that the random errors are high.
This article develops and estimates an equilibrium model of charter school entry, school input choices, and student school choices. The structural model renders a comprehensive and internally ...consistent picture of treatment effects when there may be general equilibrium effects of school competition. Simulations indicate that the mean effect of charter schools on attendant students is positive and varies widely across locations. The mean spillover effect on public school students is small but positive. Lifting caps on charter schools would more than double entry but reduce gains for attendant students.
The “Asian Crisis” of 1997–98 affected all the “emerging markets” open to capital flows. Measures of corporate governance, particularly the effectiveness of protection for minority shareholders, ...explain the extent of exchange rate depreciation and stock market decline better than do standard macroeconomic measures. A possible explanation is that in countries with weak corporate governance, worse economic prospects result in more expropriation by managers and thus a larger fall in asset prices.
Do remittances sent by overseas migrants serve as insurance for recipient households? In a study of how remittances from overseas respond to income shocks experienced by Philippine households, ...changes in income are found to lead to changes in remittances in the opposite direction, consistent with an insurance motivation. Roughly 60 percent of declines in household income are replaced by remittance inflows from overseas. Because household income and remittances are jointly determined, rainfall shocks are used as instrumental variables for income changes. The hypothesis cannot be rejected that consumption in households with migrant members is unchanged in response to income shocks, whereas consumption responds strongly to income shocks in households without migrants.
A Sunday New York Times article on a potential development of new cancer-curing drugs caused EntreMed's stock price to rise from 12.063 at the Friday close, to open at 85 and close near 52 on Monday. ...It closed above 30 in the three following weeks. The enthusiasm spilled over to other biotechnology stocks. The potential breakthrough in cancer research already had been reported, however, in the journal Nature, and in various popular newspapers (including the Times) more than five months earlier. Thus, enthusiastic public attention induced a permanent rise in share prices, even though no genuinely new information had been presented.
This descriptive study of micro-, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Indonesia has two goals: (a) to estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis on MSMEs and to compare it with ...the two previous crises; that is, the 1998-1999 Asian financial crisis and the 2008-2009 global financial crisis; and (b) to explore crisis mitigation measures (CMMs) adopted by affected MSMEs. This study is based on a literature study and a survey of 137 MSMEs in several cities and sectors in Indonesia during the period of May to September 2020. It reveals that different types of crises have different transmission channels through which the crises affect MSMEs. CMMs adopted by affected MSMEs also vary, with different types of crises and different business risks. To the author's knowledge, it is the first study on how such crises affect MSMEs and through what transmission channels, and how the affected MSMEs respond.
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