Search results for "Econometric"

The Effects of a Structured Curriculum on Preschool Effectiveness: A Field Experiment

2021

Abstract: This study tests an intervention that introduces a structured curriculum for five-year-olds into the universal preschool context of Norway, where the business as usual is an unstructured curriculum. We conduct a field experiment with 691 five-year-olds in 71 preschools and measure treatment impacts on children’s development in mathematics, language, and executive functioning. The nine-month intervention has effects on child development at post-intervention and the effects persist one year following the end of the treatment. The effects are mainly driven by the preschools identified as low-quality at baseline, indicating that a structured curriculum can reduce inequality in early c…

Testing for non-linearity in an artificial financial market: a recurrence quantification approach

2004

Abstract In this paper, earlier work on testing for non-linear dynamics on realizations from an artificial financial market is extended in two ways. On the one hand, Hinich’s bispectral test and White’s neural network test are computed. On the other hand, a recently developed methodology to test for hidden structures in data, inherited from Physics, is successfully applied on the realizations of the artificial market. Results among alternative tests are compared.

Demand for life annuities from married couples with a bequest motive

2006

The aim of this paper is to explain the ‘annuities puzzle’ in greater depth by introducing the bequest motive. It will try to determine whether this motive really is a relevant feature influencing the demand for life annuities from married couples. With this aim in mind, we develop an optimization model of the utility provided by purchasing a life annuity with contingent survivor benefit or a joint survivor life annuity. Our model is based on that first put forward by Brown and Poterba (2000), to which we have added elements from other models, such as Friedman and Warshawsky's (1990) and Vidal and Lejárraga's (2004), which include the bequest motive. This will enable us to calculate the ann…

Has pharmaceutical research become more scientific?

1996

Pharmaceutical research continues to be highly empirical, despite some recent writings arguing that it has become more scientific. Contrary to a study asserting that Mevacor, Tagamet, and Capoten demonstrate the success of targeted research, these drugs were discovered only after many years of following leads. Two hypotheses implied by the proposition that pharmaceutical research has become more scientific are tested. The first hypothesis is that the uncertainty of research has fallen. The second is that the number of publications by scientists in the industry has increased. Both are rejected.

Bazaar economics

2015

Competitive Equilibrium theory has been a widely accepted and extensively used cornerstone in economics for over a century. Here, we suggest a complementary model—motivated by the haggling in a bazaar—that offers a useful, first-principle account of market behavior that better accounts for the observed outcomes in forty market experiments. The Bazaar model uses simple stochastic processes to drive the matching of traders and the determination of price. We show that as agents become more impatient, the system tends toward more Competitive-Equilibrium-like outcomes.

Risk committee complexity and liquidity risk in the European banking industry

2021

Abstract The present study aims to investigate how bank governance characteristics are related to liquidity risk by analysing board composition, gender, and the risk committee. A dynamic panel data model is employed on a sample of European banks during the period after the financial crisis (from 2011 to 2017). Furthermore, we collect information about the profiles of the directors on the boards of banks, thereby creating five categories of risk committee members. To address the endogeneity issue, a generalised method of moments two-step estimator is implemented. The findings highlight that the fundamental role of the risk committee adequately shields banks against general liquidity risks. M…

On equity in education again : an international comparison

1985

This article proposes an approach to answering two questions: first, does investment in education help growth; second, does the allocation of investment in education matter? I develop a model where individual ability is heterogeneous and education both ...

Information Integration, Coordination Failures, and Quality of Prescribing

2022

Poor information flows hamper coordination, potentially leading to suboptimal decisions in health care. We examine the effects of a large-scale policy of health information integration. We use the staggered adoption of a nationwide electronic prescribing system over four years in Finland and prescription-level administrative data. Our results show no discernible effect on the probability of co-prescribing harmful drugs on average, but the heterogeneity analysis reveals that this probability reduces in rural regions, by 35 percent. This substantial reduction is driven by interacting prescriptions from different physicians and generalists. Information integration can therefore improve the coo…

Survival of the Weakest: Why the West Rules

2022

We study a model of institutions that evolve through conflict. We find that one of three configurations can emerge: an extractive hegemony, a balance of power between extrac-tive societies or a balance of power between inclusive societies -the latter being most conducive to innovation. As extractive societies are assumed to have an advantage in head to head confrontations we refer to this latter possibility as the survival of the weakest. Our contention is that the reason that the West "rules" can be traced back to two events both taking place in China: the invention of the cannon, which made possible the survival of the weakest in Europe; and the arrival of Genghis Khan, which led to the s…

2019

Abstract This paper examines the labor-market returns to a new form of postsecondary vocational education: vocational master's degrees. We use individual fixed effects models on a matched sample of students and non-students from Finland to capture any time-invariant differences across individuals. We find that attendance in vocational master's programs leads to an earnings increase of more than seven percent five years after entry. The estimated effect remains positive even if selection on unobservables is twice as strong as selection on observables. Earnings gains are similar by gender and age, but they are marginally higher for those in the health sector than for those in the business or …