We document quasi-experimental evidence against the common assumption in the matching literature that agents have full information on their own preferences. In Germany's university admissions, the ...first stages of the Gale-Shapley algorithm are implemented in real time, allowing for multiple offers per student. We demonstrate that nonexploding early offers are accepted more often than later offers, despite not being more desirable. These results, together with survey evidence and a theoretical model, are consistent with students' costly discovery of preferences. A novel dynamic multioffer mechanism that batches early offers improves matching efficiency by informing students of offer availability before preference discovery.
We estimate turnover costs in small retail sales teams using daily sales data and an advance notice requirement to address endogeneity concerns. In addition to short-staffing and onboarding costs, we ...identify two less familiar sources of turnover costs: incumbent workers’ recruitment activities and reductions in team morale after a departure is announced. Our estimates of total turnover costs are relatively modest, however: 10% higher turnover is about as costly as a 0.6% wage increase. We attribute these low costs to a set of complementary personnel policies that ensure that only 25% of departures result in a short-staffing spell.
This article quantifies the effect of minimum wages on workers' occupational mobility. I show that minimum wages decrease younger, less‐educated workers' occupational mobility and are associated with ...more mismatch. A search‐and‐matching model highlights two channels by which the minimum wage decreases occupational mobility. First, it compresses wages and reduces the gain from switching, leading to lower occupational mobility and more mismatch. Second, it decreases vacancy posting. Calibrating the model to the U.S. economy, the results suggest that a 15 dollar minimum wage can damp aggregate output by 0.4%, of which the wage compression channel accounts for 80%.
In poison frogs (Dendrobatoidea), usually the males are territorial, care for terrestrial nests and later transport their offspring to waterbodies where they complete larval development. In some ...species, mothers care for their offspring or may exhibit flexible care to compensate for father absence. We conducted a multi-season field experiment with the Amazonian species Allobates paleovarzensis, in which it was possible to study the joint impact of paternal care and the El Niño climatic anomaly on offspring survival. The experiment consisted of two treatments: non-removal, and removal of the father from their territories. We observed that parental care was performed exclusively by the father, and none of the mothers of the 21 monitored nests transported the tadpoles. We also observed that the severe drought in a year under the influence of the El Niño event caused such a high mortality in all pre-metamorphic stages, that the role of parental care became irrelevant for offspring survival during that season. We found that pre-metamorphic Allobates paleovarzensis are highly vulnerable to the loss of paternal care. In addition, we showed that paternal care, when present, does not prevent offspring death under these increasingly frequent climatic anomalies.
Fighting corruption cannot lie exclusively on appropriate formal institutions. It also requires social support and public engagement. Particularly in countries under institutional and economic ...transition. We embrace the recent perspective arguing that higher quality of life conditions makes people better citizens, more civically committed and more conformed to institutional rules. Accordingly, we study whether life satisfaction is a predictor of individuals' corruption aversion across 28 former socialist countries from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We use data from the third wave of the Life in Transition Survey (2015–2016). 2SLS estimations suggest that individuals reporting higher scores of life satisfaction are more averse to corruption. Our results are robust to a series of sensitivity analyses. Additionally, we estimate predicted values of corruption aversion for different levels of institutional trust across low and high life satisfaction groups. We find that when institutional trust is very low, its impact on corruption aversion does not differ between life satisfaction groups. As institutional trust increases so does corruption aversion and this occurs even more amongst the group of respondents with high life satisfaction.
Influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 pandemic virus causing the 2009 global outbreak moved into the post‐pandemic period, but its variants continued to be the prevailing subtype in the 2015‐2016 influenza season ...in Europe and Asia. To determine the molecular characteristics of influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 isolates circulating during the 2015‐2016 season in Turkey, we identified mutations in the hemagglutinin (HA) genes and investigated the presence of H275Y alteration in the neuraminidase genes in the randomly selected isolates. The comparison of the HA nucleotide sequences revealed a very high homology (>99.5%) among the studied influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 isolates, while a relatively low homology (96.6%‐97.2%), was observed between Turkish isolates and the A/California/07/2009 vaccine virus. Overall 14 common mutations were detected in HA sequences of all 2015‐2016 influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 isolates with respect to the A/California/07/2009 virus, four of which located in three different antigenic sites. Eleven rare mutations in 12 HA sequences were also detected. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that all characterized influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 isolates formed a single genetic cluster, belonging to the genetic subclade 6B.1, defined by HA amino acid substitutions S84N, S162N, and I216T. Furthermore, all isolates showed an oseltamivir‐sensitive genotype, suggesting that Tamiflu (Oseltamivir) could still be the drug of choice in Turkey.
This paper identifies the business constraints that are most binding for firm performance. Using panel methods on novel quarterly Ugandan business climate data, we exploit perceived changes in ...business climate constraints to account for changes in firm performance. Not all identified constraints are binding for firm performance. Macroeconomic instability, demand stability, access to finance, corruption/bribery, and weather variability are found to be binding constraints. Firms' expectations about future performance outcomes are associated with current perceptions about these constraints, alleviating endogeneity concerns to some extent. While taxation constraints are usually highly ranked, we do not find evidence linking them to firm performance.
Abstract
We use distribution regression analysis to study the impact of a 6% increase in the Irish minimum wage on the distribution of hourly wages and household income. Wage inequality, measured by ...the ratio of wages in the 90th and 10th percentiles and the 75th and 25th percentiles, decreased by approximately 8 and 4%, respectively. The results point towards wage spillover effects up to the 30th percentile of the wage distribution. We show that minimum wage workers are spread throughout the household income distribution and are often located in high-income households. Therefore, while we observe strong effects on the wage distribution, the impact of a minimum wage increase on the household income distribution is quite limited.
This study investigated the relationship between phytoplankton biomass and taxonomic composition and hydrographic variables in the Northeastern Tropical Pacific for June 2015, March 2016, and ...September 2016. Hydrographic data were measured between surface and 100 m; samples were collected at the surface and the deep chlorophyll maximum (DCM) along one or two transects. Pigments were quantified by high-performance liquid chromatography; the CHEMTAX software was used to determine the relative contribution to chlorophyll
a
of the main taxonomic groups. Our results show that the studied region is characterized by a stable vertical distribution of phytoplankton biomass regardless of the season (winter, spring or summer). A subsurface maximum (DCM) is always observed close to the bottom of the mixed layer where there is a higher abundance of larger groups (diatoms and Prymnesiophytes) while at the surface community, composition was generally dominated by picoplankton (Cyanobacteria and
Prochlorococcus
), and occasionally Prymnesiophytes. However, during the spring cruise (June 2015), affected by the 2015–2016 El Niño, phytoplankton biomass at the DCM markedly decreased along with an increase in the abundance of Chlorophytes. On the other hand, in September 2016, there was an unexpected increase in phytoplankton biomass at the DCM, although stratification was strong, and Prymnesiophytes comprised 60% of the community at the surface. The evaluation of nutrient and light will be necessary in future studies to determine their role in this temporal variability. Finally, chemotaxonomy (HPLC/CHEMTAX) proved to be a valuable tool for describing phytoplankton distribution at group level in this region and its relationship with physical processes.
PDF
