Kyklos最新文献

We present the first model of preference evolution in an environment where the fame of an agent affects selection. Specifically, agents who are famous are more likely to be selected for comparison by other agents. Agents compare happiness, and then switch preferences if the other agent is happier. Without the attention economy, only ‘happy’ preferences survive – happy preferences being those which, when followed, give agents maximal subjective well-being. In an attention economy, however, unhappy preferences can persist if there is incomplete information. With incomplete information, agents may make errors when assessing the happiness of others. Furthermore, famous agents may be systematically less happy than others; empirical happiness research suggests that happiness comes from factors like family and religion, not fame. With these two possibilities in play, ordinary agents may be matched frequently with famous people who seem happy but are not. In these matches, ordinary agents will adopt preferences that actually make them less happy, and this allows unhappy preferences to persist in equilibrium. Our model contributes a theoretical explanation for the empirical finding that people who pay more attention to media generally score lower on scales of subjective well-being.

Homophily—the preference for people similar in their characteristics—is a strong determinant of many types of human relationships. It affects, for example, whom we marry and potentially also whom we vote for. We use data on preferential voting from eight (1996–2021) Czech parliamentary elections matched with census and administrative data to identify the effect of homophily on voting behavior. The Czech system of preferential voting is well suited to an analysis of homophilic preferences, as it enables us to filter out preferences for political parties and focus solely on candidates' individual background characteristics. We identify the effect of homophily on a sample of 6,844,538 observations from small municipalities that are not likely to be affected by potential electoral list optimization. We find that a 1 % increase in the share of a municipality's population whose education level or age are the same as the candidate's increases the number of preferential votes the given candidate receives by 0.5% or 0.2% respectively. We also find evidence for strong geographical homophily as living in the municipality substantially increases the number of preferential votes a candidate receives.

This paper examines the impact of externally funded trade policy reforms on firm productivity by combining data from the International Aid Transparency Initiative and World Bank Enterprise Surveys. By specifying baseline and end-line surveys based on the 2006 to 2020 World Bank Enterprise Surveys, we find that 70 of 83 countries received external funds for trade policy reforms, and primarily use records based on 45,886 firms with data on productivity across these countries. Applying difference-in-differences and triple-difference techniques, this paper finds that the impact of externally funded trade policy reforms is significant, accounting for 12% of firms' average productivity growth in the recipient countries relative to firms in non-recipient countries. We also show that externally funded trade policy reforms improve firms' international-trade-climate in the recipient countries by 0.17 standard deviations, which translates into a 27% increase in the average productivity of firms with a good international-trade-climate in recipient countries over that of firms in non-recipient countries and firms with poor international trade climate in recipient countries. These results suggest that interventions should focus on financing trade policy reforms that are more likely to improve the international-trade-climate of firms in the recipient countries.

Climate protection is a global public good. The related mitigation policies implemented by a single country could have little effect on climate change issue such that there could be no net gains for society. However, those measures might create winners and losers among individuals. We investigate the citizens' support for different pro-climate policies in EU countries, by considering the degree of heterogeneity in their attitudes towards climate issues using a cluster analysis. We also exploit the extent to which carbon intensity and green skills requirement of jobs contribute to supporting climate policies. Our results suggest that individuals' occupational exposure does matter: people in emission-intensive activities tend to be against stringent climate measures, whereas people in jobs that require high levels of green skills are in favour of them.

This paper examines the existence of a hot hand and whether performing in front of a supportive audience creates a psychological pressure, which may impair performance. Using the task of free throwing in basketball competitions involving National Basketball Association (NBA) regular season and playoff games, I find strong evidence of a hot hand and a negative causal effect of the spectators on the probability of a successful shoot. The results support the hot hand fallacy and are in line with the hypothesis of choking under pressure when performing skill-based tasks. Furthermore, contrary to what would be expected given the evidence in favor of a choking phenomenon, the effect of star players is insignificant. The hot hand effects for stars and non-stars are the same in direction. Finally, efforts increase the performance, and the influence of hot hands and choking are not different between home and away shootings.

Do voters place their trust in tried and tested leaders when uncertainty is high or do they prefer a new slate of leaders who are arguably more competent? To study this question, we make use of hand-collected data on 402,385 candidates who competed in open-list local council elections (1996–2020) in Bavaria. The 2020 elections took place at the dawn of the Covid-19 pandemic, a time of high uncertainty about the future course of events. Using local heterogeneity in Covid-19 outbreaks and related school/daycare closures to proxy the degree of perceived uncertainty across Bavarian municipalities, we show with a difference-in-differences design that councilors' incumbency advantage declined more in exposed municipalities. This decrease in the incumbency advantage is limited to male and non-university educated incumbents, resulting in shifted patterns of political selection. Overall, we conclude that voters select more competent politicians when they face uncertainty about the future.

We investigate the relationship between eudaimonic wellbeing (sense of life) and subjective survival probability (SSP), a proxy for self-assessed life expectancy. Our econometric analysis uses 220,601 observations of SHARE panel data from 2006 to 2015. We find evidence of a robust and strong positive relationship between eudaimonic wellbeing and subjective survival probability after controlling for self-assessed health, coupled with a negative effect of sense of life on mortality. The magnitude of the first effect is relevant, since the minimum difference (adjusted for fixed effects) between individuals declaring the highest versus the lowest sense of life is a 7-point higher self-assessed probability of being alive at the target age. Together, our two main findings imply that when respondents declare a high sense of life, they self-report a lower mortality risk and their predictions are correct.

Can television have a mitigating effect on xenophobia? To explore this question, we investigate a natural experiment in which individuals in some regions of East Germany could not—due to their geographic location—consume West German television until 1989. By analyzing survey data from the periods before and after German reunification, we provide evidence that individuals who received West German television during the GDR period and were thus more frequently exposed to foreign media have developed less xenophobia. We document that West German television programs positively affected individuals' attitudes towards foreigners and led to a higher likelihood of supporting refugees, for example by donating money to refugee aid. In addition to the survey evidence, we show that regions that could receive West German television before reunification were less likely to vote for extreme right-wing parties during the national elections from 1990 to 2017, and experienced fewer criminal offenses against refugees.

Meta-analysis studies the literature reporting estimates of one parameter, which at present is assumed positive. The purpose of the analysis is to find the best meta-average, which corrects the mean of the estimates for bias. The two main biases are: (i) Publication bias, where the correction nearly always makes the average smaller. (ii) Omitted variable bias, where the correction typically makes the average larger. Consequently, the bias is likely to increase if the correction is for the wrong bias. This allows a game of meta-mining to be played. A case study demonstrates the scope for meta-mining, and that it has been done. The game of meta-mining is surely against the purpose of meta-analysis.

We empirically test the hypothesis that adolescents' occupational aspirations are more gender-stereotypical if they live in a region where the societal norm towards gender equality is weaker. For our analysis, we combine rich survey data describing a sample of 1,434 Swiss adolescents who attended 8th grade in 2013 with municipal voting results dealing with gender equality and policy. We find that occupational aspirations predominantly follow gender stereotypes and that adolescents living in municipalities with a stronger norm towards gender equality are significantly less likely to aspire for a gender-stereotypical occupation, even after controlling for individual-level controls. At the same time, we also find that the association is surprisingly weak – in the sense that adolescents tend to aspire for gender-stereotypical occupations even in the most gender-progressive municipalities. Moreover, a more detailed analysis shows that the association mainly reflects the intergenerational transmission of occupations from parents to their children and/or regional differences in the prevailing occupational structure. We discuss the implications of these findings and several mechanisms that are consistent with the evidence from our analysis.