Volume 24, Issue 1

Despite a growing literature investigating the effect of gender diversity of CEOs and firm performance, the answer is still unclear. This study estimates the effect of gender differences in ownership and Leadership (CEOs) on firm performance simultaneously. The paper exploits a unique data from more than 9000 Indian firms by using fixed effects and propensity score matching techniques. Findings reveal a positive significant effect of female CEOs on firm performance but no definite effect of female owners on firm performance. The effect is more prominent in progressive and high-sex ratio states in India. Third, the evidence suggests potential payoffs to firms that adopt gender-inclusive policies intended to increase the share of female CEOs in India. Results confirm no bias from unobservable covariates.

This paper uses administrative data and a soft skill index integrating seven personality traits to examine the relationship between soft skills and academic outcomes. I exploit the timing of soft skill assessment and study the interaction between soft and cognitive skills in education production. The results show that soft skills are positively associated with academic outcomes. Soft and cognitive skills are both substitutes and complements in education production. The complementarity between both skills is asymmetric. Soft skills and returns to cognitive skills exhibit a U-shaped relationship, while returns to soft skills fail to show such a relationship with cognitive skills. Time-use data suggest that soft skills may have a causal effect on academic achievements, and increased study time is a mechanism through which soft skills affect these outcomes. Soft skills can reduce inequality in academic outcomes due to differences in cognitive ability. Investment in non-cognitive skills can be quite rewarding.

We develop a search and matching model to analyze the dynamics of the political corruption market. This model serves as a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of a set of anti-corruption policies. Contrary to expectations, conventional policies such as enhancing penalties or allocating greater resources to criminal investigations do not universally emerge as the most effective tools. For mitigating small-scale political corruption, the optimal strategy is to curtail corruption signaling, achieved, for instance, through enhancing transparency and competitiveness in the exchanges between entrepreneurs and politicians. For large-scale corruption, raising the costs of corruption signaling proves less effective as a deterrent compared to ex-post policy measures, such as improved detection effectiveness and harsher sanctions.

This study explores cooperation in the circular agency problem. In circular agency, an agent has weak power in the face of its principal. This research explores a cooperation mechanism in which three participants simultaneously have the identity of principal and agent, in order to illuminate the power struggle between the board of directors, the external shareholder, and the manager of a company. We use the equilibrium results to explain the phenomenon of cooperation between members of the enterprise in practice. Our results have implications for firm governance.

It is well known that the protectionist view for tariff protection can be justified if the tariff induced international technology licensing benefits the consumers. We show that this view may not hold true if the domestic firm lobbies for tariff protection. If lobbying determines tariff following the “tariff-function formation” approach, lobbying reduces consumer surplus by reducing the incentive for licensing. However, if lobbying determines tariff following the “political contribution” approach, lobbying increases the incentive for licensing but creates an ambiguous effect on consumer surplus. Hence, whether the protectionist view for tariff protection can be justified under international technology licensing depends on the way the tariff rates are determined.

There is still a lack of knowledge on how to effectively help the long-term unemployed into employment. We evaluate a wide range of active labour market policies for this target group, using a dynamic matching approach. Measures vary considerably in the extent to which they improve labour market prospects. Human capital-intensive training programs that substantially enhance vocational skills and employment programs are most effective, short activating job search training the least. Our results suggest that not only wage subsidies in the private sector, but also direct job creation in the public and non-profit sectors can work, if properly designed.

Insurance coverage increases health care consumption, but less is known whether moderate copayments affect adults’ primary care utilization in a system characterized by gatekeeping. We analyze whether abolishing a 14-euro copayment for visits to general practitioners (GP) in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, increased the number of GP visits among adults and especially among low-income individuals. Using a difference-in-differences (DD) design and combining several administrative registers from 2011 to 2014, we find that the abolition is associated with only a small increase in GP visits (+0.04 visits annually, or +4.4 %, for all adults). The increase is driven by low-income adults (+0.06 visits, or +4.5 %, at the bottom 40 %). Although the point estimates are rather robustly positive, the conclusions regarding the statistical significance are sensitive to how we account for clustering in a setting characterized by only one treated cluster and a finite number of comparison clusters.

Physicians behave differently depending on the payment systems, giving rise to several problems such as patient dumping in which patients are refused because of economic or liability reasons. This paper tests whether and to which extent the adoption of either fee-for-service or Salary system induces physicians to practice patient dumping. Through the combination of an artefactual field experiment and a laboratory experiment, we test whether the risk of being sued for having practiced dumping can affect physicians’ behavior. Dumping is more often observed under Salary than under FFS. The introduction of dumping liability only mildly reduced dumping practice, though the provision of services increased. Our findings call for healthcare policy makers looking at the interplay between remuneration schemes and liability risks, and accounting for the trade-off between the reduction of the risk of being sued for patient dumping and the increase of the costs of the provision of medical services.

Considering the Italian wine market, we investigate the relationship between product quality, on the one hand, and profits and profitability, on the other hand. Using data from 1052 wineries over the period 2006–2015, we find robust evidence of a positive relationship between product quality, measured by the wineries’ reputation for quality, and profits, measured by the Earnings Before Interest, Depreciation and Amortization. By contrast, we observe no relationship between reputation and profitability, measured by the Return on Invested Capital.

The income of those who attacked the U.S. Congress on January 6, 2021 and were subsequently arrested is estimated for the first time using the annual per-capita income in the neighborhood of their residence as a proxy measure. Contrary to common wisdom, we find that two groups were conspicuously underrepresented from this subset of the insurrectionists ( N = 933): the utterly poor (whose estimated per- capita income was below $15 K), as well as those whose estimated annual per-capita income was above $50 K per annum. Fully 83.3 % of the arrestees resided in areas with a (five-year average) annual per capita income between $20 K and $50 K (in 2020 prices). This finding dovetails with the argument that the right-wing populist movement in the U.S. is driven largely by the struggling lower-middle class who have been left behind by the transition from an industrial to a knowledge economy. The public policy implications point to the amelioration of this distributional deficit.

A recent National Academy of Sciences report recommends elevating the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) to the “nation’s headline poverty statistic.” I project how making the SPM the official poverty measure would affect eligibility for government assistance programs whose eligibility thresholds are tied to the official poverty line. Making the SPM the official poverty measure would increase the poverty line for a family of four by 20 percent in 2024. The eligibility threshold for a family of four would consequentially increase by $8320 for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), $8512 for Medicaid adults, and by larger amounts for Medicare Part D Low Income Subsidies, the National School Lunch Program, and Affordable Care Act premium subsidies (once temporarily relaxed eligibility rules are restored in 2026). Effects on eligibility thresholds would grow over time because the SPM thresholds grow faster over time than the current official thresholds. As a result of the higher eligibility thresholds, I estimate that in 2024 SNAP would cover 2.0 million additional households with spending rising by $2.6 billion, and that Medicaid would cover 1.3 million additional recipients with spending rising by $5.6 billion.

Data-driven health innovation may lead to develop targeted treatments using health data. We consider privacy-sensitive patients who may decide to share personal health data if compensated. Each patient does not internalize the impact of sharing data on drug innovation. We show that investment incentives in targeted treatments are too weak as long as such innovation has a public good nature so that patients can free ride on sharing health data. Then, privacy protection measures reducing data sharing risks can promote pharmaceutical R&D and social welfare.