Volume 24, Issue 4

This article examines the evolution of the gender wealth gap in Germany during the first decade of the XXI century. This period is characterized by an increase in labour supply of women and change in occupational structure due to numerous reforms undertaken by the government. We use the Firpo, Fortin, Lemieux detailed decomposition technique throughout the wealth distribution to identify the main factors explaining the gap over time. Findings indicate that an increase in the labour market participation of women and the resulting changes in the occupational structure are accompanied by positive changes in women’s wealth accumulation, which reduce the gender wealth gap. The role of permanent income decreases due to a reduction both in the gender difference in average permanent income and in gender differences in its returns. There remain substantial differences in the way women and men accumulate wealth. Policy interventions to further reduce the gap are discussed.

In this paper, we examine the relationship between terrorism and exports at the firm-level. We use a panel data of 301 firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange and records of terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities from 1999 to 2014. By calculating city-level terrorism indices, the study reveals significant variations in the frequency of terrorist incidents both between cities and within cities over different time periods. Our panel regressions show that firm exports are correlated with terrorist attacks in the cities where the firms are located, and these correlations are statistically significant even when terrorism is lagged up to six years. Interregional spillover effects of terrorism are less pronounced. While a negative correlation can be found between firm exports and our terrorism indices, the correlation with domestic sales tends to be statistically insignificant. The findings shed light on the persistent link between local terrorism and firms’ international and domestic operations.

The rising demand for dual-language immersion (DLI) programs, which offer core instruction in two languages from early grades onward, has raised questions about program design and access. We leverage the rapid expansion of DLI schools across the U.S. state of Utah to estimate effects of DLI program availability on the academic achievement of primary English speakers and English learners (ELs) in programs that serve mainly the former (one-way) or at least a third of the latter (two-way). Using within-school variation in first graders’ access to DLI programs, we find no overall effects on English, math, or science scores from grades 3 to 6. However, ELs whose primary languages match the schools’ partner languages in two-way schools show notable outperformance in math and higher English-language proficiency at grade 5. Benefits of DLI access are driven by schools with a larger share of primary speakers of the partner language.

A wide range of abilities beyond cognitive skills, including motivation, effort, and perseverance, plays an important role in shaping one’s prospects in the labor market and overall life outcomes. However, little is known about the role of education in improving these abilities, especially among teenagers for whom they are observed to be particularly malleable. We address two questions: can remedial educational interventions improve perseverance during adolescence? And, can we expect heterogeneous effects by gender? We take advantage of an education program for under-performing secondary school students implemented in Spain, and we consider testing behaviors and, in particular test endurance, as a measure of perseverance. We find that the program had a substantial positive effect on test endurance, with effects ranging from 0.04 to 0.05 of one standard deviation. This effect is particularly pronounced for girls, where the corresponding figure is 0.09 of one standard deviation.

One of the acknowledged advantages of patent clearinghouses is that they favor the diffusion of technology. In traditional clearinghouses, patents are usually bundled in pools and sold at a pre-set price. Recently, in the biotechnology industry a new form of clearinghouse has been observed, where patent tariffs are instead bargained over by the clearinghouse members. Exchange is then guaranteed by arbitration agreements to which the negotiating parties are bound, should their bargaining reach a dead end. This paper assesses the effect on technology diffusion of this new type of clearinghouse. We show that such arbitration agreements, through their effect on the outside options, may reduce the incentives of a member of the clearinghouse to license to non-members. This result highlights the role of such arbitration agreements in the diffusion of technology outside the clearinghouse.

Critical loss analysis is used to define product markets for merger analysis and determine if market forces are sufficient to discipline prices in transitionally competitive regulated markets. Unlike the approval of a merger, however, regulatory forbearance is a reversible act. The threat of future (re)-regulation, or regulatory contestability, in combination with high price-cost margins and complementary demands can lower the critical loss (elasticity) necessary to justify the competitive classification of regulated services. This suggests that the intensity of competition sufficient to forbear from regulation can be considerably less than what regulators may believe is required a priori .

This research studies factors affecting the rapid spread of a donor-driven, Feeding America BackPack (weekend food assistance) program at schools in northwestern North Carolina. Foodbank data are matched with census tract, administrative-school, and GIS data for places of worship (PWs), facilitating analyses of the role of need, religion, and race/ethnicity. Our conceptual model yields a new hybrid fragmentation index that captures racial/ethnic differences between the school and community. Consistent with the model, discrete-time survival estimates suggest that schools with a racial/ethnic composition different from the surrounding community were less likely to get a program, especially if no other program-eligible schools were nearby. The GIS-created PWs bring new information, but yield results only weakly suggestive of a positive relationship. Results withstand falsification and robustness checks. A descriptive update reveals that most high-need schools eventually offered weekend food assistance but that race/ethnicity may still play a role for those that do not.

This study examines the effect of inheritance receipt on labor supply, exploring the empirical issues associated with inheritance expectations, informal caregiving, and liquidity constraints. The literature has not examined the possibility that ignoring the labor supply increase associated with the termination of caregiving can lead to an underestimation of the decrease in labor supply after inheritance. Based on a dataset of Japanese women, we found that inheritance decreased labor supply, primarily through changes in the extensive margin, particularly for recipients in their 50s and under 40 years of age with children. Unlike labor supply, household expenditures hardly change after an inheritance. Furthermore, unanticipated inheritances reduce labor supply compared to anticipated inheritances. Additionally, controlling for the termination of caregiving responsibilities resulted in a 25 % larger estimate of the wealth effect of inheritance receipt on labor supply. Finally, pre-inheritance liquidity constraints have no effect on changes in labor supply.

We conduct an experiment to examine how the attitude toward time preference changed when there was a time-related occasion, specifically the Lunar New Year. We anticipated that individuals would be more patient as measured by a battery of questions after the New Year. However, we find that individuals only appear more patient when those questions pose the amount of time they have to wait in year increments rather than other units of time. More experimentation is necessary to identify the peculiarities of framing questions around this “New Years Effect.”

The classic economic prediction is that long-term savings become more important as individuals become more future oriented. However, we expect future-oriented individuals to be more concerned with the long-term effects of work-life imbalance, leading us to hypothesize a positive correlation between future orientation and a choice of present work-life balance over work related long-term savings. In an online survey with open-university students, we confirmed our hypothesis. Important policy implications are discussed. The findings highlight a potential shift in priorities post-COVID-19, with significant implications for policies aimed at enhancing retirement savings. They suggest that promoting WLB can lead to a decrease in long-term savings, indicating a need for balanced policy measures that consider both well-being and future financial security.

This paper analyzes the deterrence implications of different inmate assistance programs (IAPs), carefully distinguishing between deterrence of first offenses and recidivism. All IAPs considered in our model reduce recidivism, and we identify IAPs that also reduce the first offense rate. However, IAPs which increase work opportunities, improve the reintegration of exiting inmates, and moderate individual’s self-control issues may lower the deterrence of first offenses, if this possibility is not adequately anticipated when designing these IAPs.

We analyze how a plaintiff acquires damage-level information and discloses it to the defendant during the discovery process when the plaintiff knows that the defendant is privately informed about the plaintiff’s probability of winning at trial. The plaintiff can design the process for generating the damage-level information but cannot omit or misrepresent it. She does this with an understanding of how the defendant’s updated beliefs after the discovery stage will impact pretrial negotiations. We find that the plaintiff prefers full disclosure when deciding between a pooling or a screening settlement demand depends on the damages level. In other scenarios, she is indifferent to how much information the discovery stage conveys about the damage level to the defendant.