We investigate the role of time pressure in originating gender gaps in math tests. In a randomized experiment, college students took a 20-question math test under high, low or no time pressure. Reducing or eliminating time pressure decreases the math gender gap by up to 40%. Larger gaps under time pressure are mostly due to increased anxiety rather than to students’ modifying their test-taking strategies. The correlation between math tests’ scores and university performance is equally high under the different scenarios. Hence, less time pressure may increase gender equality in math subjects with no effect on the selection process.
{"title":"Gender Differences in Math Tests: The Role of Time Pressure","authors":"Vincenzo Galasso, Paola Profeta","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueae052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae052","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 We investigate the role of time pressure in originating gender gaps in math tests. In a randomized experiment, college students took a 20-question math test under high, low or no time pressure. Reducing or eliminating time pressure decreases the math gender gap by up to 40%. Larger gaps under time pressure are mostly due to increased anxiety rather than to students’ modifying their test-taking strategies. The correlation between math tests’ scores and university performance is equally high under the different scenarios. Hence, less time pressure may increase gender equality in math subjects with no effect on the selection process.","PeriodicalId":501319,"journal":{"name":"The Economic Journal","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141348753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Uzma Afzal, Giovanna d’Adda, Marcel Fafchamps, Simon Quinn, Farah Said
We conduct a field experiment in which we offer credit and saving contracts to the same pool of Pakistani microfinance clients. Additional treatments test ex ante demand for soft commitment (in the form of reminders, either to respondents or to their families), hard commitment (in the form of a penalty for missing an instalment), and flexibility (an option to postpone an instalment) to save or pay loan instalments on time. We find substantial demand for fixed-repayment contracts in both the credit and savings domains, in ways that imply that respondents value the commitment required. While we find little or no average demand for additional contractual features, we nonetheless observe that different combinations of contractual add-ons are preferred depending on the respondent’s level of financial discipline. Respondents with high financial discipline prefer flexibility in credit contracts when combined with reminders to self while those with low discipline value penalties in savings contracts only when paired with reminders. Our results imply that, for the average microfinance client, demand for commitment is met through the regular payment schedule built into standard microcredit or commitment savings contracts. However, combining penalties or flexibility with reminders may appeal to certain subsets of clients.
{"title":"Demand for Commitment in Credit and Saving Contracts: A Field Experiment","authors":"Uzma Afzal, Giovanna d’Adda, Marcel Fafchamps, Simon Quinn, Farah Said","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueae053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae053","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 We conduct a field experiment in which we offer credit and saving contracts to the same pool of Pakistani microfinance clients. Additional treatments test ex ante demand for soft commitment (in the form of reminders, either to respondents or to their families), hard commitment (in the form of a penalty for missing an instalment), and flexibility (an option to postpone an instalment) to save or pay loan instalments on time. We find substantial demand for fixed-repayment contracts in both the credit and savings domains, in ways that imply that respondents value the commitment required. While we find little or no average demand for additional contractual features, we nonetheless observe that different combinations of contractual add-ons are preferred depending on the respondent’s level of financial discipline. Respondents with high financial discipline prefer flexibility in credit contracts when combined with reminders to self while those with low discipline value penalties in savings contracts only when paired with reminders. Our results imply that, for the average microfinance client, demand for commitment is met through the regular payment schedule built into standard microcredit or commitment savings contracts. However, combining penalties or flexibility with reminders may appeal to certain subsets of clients.","PeriodicalId":501319,"journal":{"name":"The Economic Journal","volume":"74 23","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141353337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We investigate whether US House representatives favour special interest groups over constituents in periods of low media attention to politics. Analysing 666 roll calls from 2005 to 2018, we show that representatives are more likely to vote against their constituency’s preferred position the more special interest money they receive from groups favouring the opposite position. The latter effect is significantly larger when less attention is paid to politics due to distraction by exogenous newsworthy events like natural disasters. The effect is mostly driven by short-term opportunistic behaviour than the short-term scheduling of controversial votes in periods with high news pressure.
{"title":"Special Interest Groups Versus Voters and the Political Economics of Attention","authors":"Patrick Balles, Ulrich Matter, Alois Stutzer","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueae020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae020","url":null,"abstract":"We investigate whether US House representatives favour special interest groups over constituents in periods of low media attention to politics. Analysing 666 roll calls from 2005 to 2018, we show that representatives are more likely to vote against their constituency’s preferred position the more special interest money they receive from groups favouring the opposite position. The latter effect is significantly larger when less attention is paid to politics due to distraction by exogenous newsworthy events like natural disasters. The effect is mostly driven by short-term opportunistic behaviour than the short-term scheduling of controversial votes in periods with high news pressure.","PeriodicalId":501319,"journal":{"name":"The Economic Journal","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141192223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Agustin Casas, Federico Curci, Antoni-Italo De Moragas
We exploit a unique quasi-experiment to study the effects of judicial decisions on sensitive issues on political attitudes. In 2010, the Spanish Constitutional Court partially overruled the new Catalan Constitution–the Estatut–that granted further decentralization. Our identification strategy relies on the fact that this ruling occurred amid a public opinion survey. We find that the ruling increased support for independence by 5 percentage points. We interpret this result as evidence of judicial backlash on political attitudes: a judicial decision that limited further autonomy triggered a shift in attitudes towards even more autonomy. Moreover, the ruling decreased trust in the courts and satisfaction with democracy. This backlash of political attitudes extends to other spheres: Catalans increased their national identification with their region and the support for pro-decentralization parties. Finally, we show that the ruling increased polarization around the partisan and identity cleavages.
{"title":"Judicial Decisions, Backlash and Secessionism: The Spanish Constitutional Court and Catalonia","authors":"Agustin Casas, Federico Curci, Antoni-Italo De Moragas","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueae041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae041","url":null,"abstract":"We exploit a unique quasi-experiment to study the effects of judicial decisions on sensitive issues on political attitudes. In 2010, the Spanish Constitutional Court partially overruled the new Catalan Constitution–the Estatut–that granted further decentralization. Our identification strategy relies on the fact that this ruling occurred amid a public opinion survey. We find that the ruling increased support for independence by 5 percentage points. We interpret this result as evidence of judicial backlash on political attitudes: a judicial decision that limited further autonomy triggered a shift in attitudes towards even more autonomy. Moreover, the ruling decreased trust in the courts and satisfaction with democracy. This backlash of political attitudes extends to other spheres: Catalans increased their national identification with their region and the support for pro-decentralization parties. Finally, we show that the ruling increased polarization around the partisan and identity cleavages.","PeriodicalId":501319,"journal":{"name":"The Economic Journal","volume":"98 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141169504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many media outlets depend on advertising revenue to finance their operations, but the effect of advertising on media outlets’ content choice is largely unexplored. This paper exploits two institutional features from YouTube to show that an exogenous increase in the feasible amount of advertising induces YouTubers to differentiate their video content from their competitors. A plausible mechanism is that YouTubers avoid competition: Viewers typically perceive advertising as a nuisance and therefore as an implicit price they have to pay; thus, they could switch to a competitor if a YouTuber increased her advertising quantity. This is less likely, however, if the YouTuber differentiates her content from the mainstream and moves to a niche.
{"title":"Advertising and Content Differentiation: Evidence from Youtube","authors":"Anna Kerkhof","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueae043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae043","url":null,"abstract":"Many media outlets depend on advertising revenue to finance their operations, but the effect of advertising on media outlets’ content choice is largely unexplored. This paper exploits two institutional features from YouTube to show that an exogenous increase in the feasible amount of advertising induces YouTubers to differentiate their video content from their competitors. A plausible mechanism is that YouTubers avoid competition: Viewers typically perceive advertising as a nuisance and therefore as an implicit price they have to pay; thus, they could switch to a competitor if a YouTuber increased her advertising quantity. This is less likely, however, if the YouTuber differentiates her content from the mainstream and moves to a niche.","PeriodicalId":501319,"journal":{"name":"The Economic Journal","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141149022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Consumers, businesses, and organizations rely on others’ ratings of items when making choices. However, individual reviewers vary in their accuracy and some are biased – either systematically over- or under-rating items relative to others’ tastes, or even deliberately distorting a rating. We describe how to process ratings by a group of reviewers over a set of items and evaluate the individual reviewers’ accuracies and biases, in a way that yields unbiased and consistent estimates of the items’ true qualities. We provide Monte Carlo simulations that showcase the added value of our technique even with small data sets, and we show that this improvement increases as the number of items increases. Revisiting the famous 1976 wine tasting that compared Californian and Bordeaux wines, accounting for the substantial variation in reviewers’ biases and accuracies results in a ranking that differs from the original average rating. We also illustrate the power of this methodology with an application to more than forty-five thousand ratings of “en primeur” Bordeaux fine wines by expert critics. Those data show that our estimated wine qualities significantly predict prices when controlling for prominent experts’ ratings and numerous fixed effects. We also find that the elasticity of a wine price in an expert’s ratings increases with that expert’s accuracy.
{"title":"Finding the Wise and the Wisdom in a Crowd: Estimating Underlying Qualities of Reviewers and Items","authors":"Nicolas Carayol, Matthew O Jackson","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueae045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae045","url":null,"abstract":"Consumers, businesses, and organizations rely on others’ ratings of items when making choices. However, individual reviewers vary in their accuracy and some are biased – either systematically over- or under-rating items relative to others’ tastes, or even deliberately distorting a rating. We describe how to process ratings by a group of reviewers over a set of items and evaluate the individual reviewers’ accuracies and biases, in a way that yields unbiased and consistent estimates of the items’ true qualities. We provide Monte Carlo simulations that showcase the added value of our technique even with small data sets, and we show that this improvement increases as the number of items increases. Revisiting the famous 1976 wine tasting that compared Californian and Bordeaux wines, accounting for the substantial variation in reviewers’ biases and accuracies results in a ranking that differs from the original average rating. We also illustrate the power of this methodology with an application to more than forty-five thousand ratings of “en primeur” Bordeaux fine wines by expert critics. Those data show that our estimated wine qualities significantly predict prices when controlling for prominent experts’ ratings and numerous fixed effects. We also find that the elasticity of a wine price in an expert’s ratings increases with that expert’s accuracy.","PeriodicalId":501319,"journal":{"name":"The Economic Journal","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141148990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Reporting private information is a key part of economic decision making. A recent literature has found that many people have a preference for honest reporting, contrary to usual economic assumptions. In this paper, we investigate whether preferences for honesty are malleable and what determines them. We experimentally measure preferences for honesty in a sample of children. As our main result, we provide causal evidence on the effect of the social environment by randomly enrolling children in a year-long mentoring programme. We find that, about four years after the end of the programme, mentored children are significantly more honest.
{"title":"Malleability of preferences for honesty","authors":"Johannes Abeler, Armin Falk, Fabian Kosse","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueae044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae044","url":null,"abstract":"Reporting private information is a key part of economic decision making. A recent literature has found that many people have a preference for honest reporting, contrary to usual economic assumptions. In this paper, we investigate whether preferences for honesty are malleable and what determines them. We experimentally measure preferences for honesty in a sample of children. As our main result, we provide causal evidence on the effect of the social environment by randomly enrolling children in a year-long mentoring programme. We find that, about four years after the end of the programme, mentored children are significantly more honest.","PeriodicalId":501319,"journal":{"name":"The Economic Journal","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141148989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jean-Benoit Falisse, Marieke Huysentruyt, Anders Olofsgård
We designed and randomly evaluated the impact of a textbooks for self-study scheme in eastern DRC targeting student achievement in primary schools. Students in treatment schools were seven percentage points more likely to pass the national exam, and those who passed obtained higher scores. We also evidence higher scores on a French language test. The effects are primarily driven by student interest in textbooks, frequency of doing homework and motivation to go to school and continue education. Student achievement can thus be improved by intensified and diversified use of existing learning materials in poor and fragile settings.
{"title":"Incentivizing Textbooks for Self-Study: Experimental Evidence from the Democratic Republic of the Congo","authors":"Jean-Benoit Falisse, Marieke Huysentruyt, Anders Olofsgård","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueae039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae039","url":null,"abstract":"We designed and randomly evaluated the impact of a textbooks for self-study scheme in eastern DRC targeting student achievement in primary schools. Students in treatment schools were seven percentage points more likely to pass the national exam, and those who passed obtained higher scores. We also evidence higher scores on a French language test. The effects are primarily driven by student interest in textbooks, frequency of doing homework and motivation to go to school and continue education. Student achievement can thus be improved by intensified and diversified use of existing learning materials in poor and fragile settings.","PeriodicalId":501319,"journal":{"name":"The Economic Journal","volume":"138 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141060916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Charlotte Bartels, Simon Jäger, Natalie Obergruber
What are the long-term economic effects of a more equal distribution of wealth? We investigate consequences of land inequality, exploiting variation in land inheritance rules that traverse political, linguistic, geological, and religious borders in Germany. In some German areas, inherited land was to be shared or divided equally among children, while in others land was ruled to be indivisible. Using a geographic regression discontinuity design, we first show a more equal land distribution in areas with equal division; other potential drivers of growth are smooth at the boundary and equal division areas were not historically more developed. Today, equal division areas feature higher average incomes and more entrepreneurship which goes in hand with a right-shifted skill, income, and wealth distribution. We show evidence consistent with the more even distribution of land leading to more innovative industrial by-employment during Germany’s transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy that, in the long-run, led to more entrepreneurship.
{"title":"Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing: Evidence from Inheritance Rules for Land","authors":"Charlotte Bartels, Simon Jäger, Natalie Obergruber","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueae040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae040","url":null,"abstract":"What are the long-term economic effects of a more equal distribution of wealth? We investigate consequences of land inequality, exploiting variation in land inheritance rules that traverse political, linguistic, geological, and religious borders in Germany. In some German areas, inherited land was to be shared or divided equally among children, while in others land was ruled to be indivisible. Using a geographic regression discontinuity design, we first show a more equal land distribution in areas with equal division; other potential drivers of growth are smooth at the boundary and equal division areas were not historically more developed. Today, equal division areas feature higher average incomes and more entrepreneurship which goes in hand with a right-shifted skill, income, and wealth distribution. We show evidence consistent with the more even distribution of land leading to more innovative industrial by-employment during Germany’s transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy that, in the long-run, led to more entrepreneurship.","PeriodicalId":501319,"journal":{"name":"The Economic Journal","volume":"68 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141148993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How does anti-American terrorism in recipient countries respond to U.S. military aid? Does aid protect U.S. interests abroad or does it have unintended consequences for U.S. security? To answer these questions, we estimate the effect of U.S. military aid on anti-American terrorism in recipient countries for a sample of 174 countries between 1968 and 2018. We find that higher levels of aid especially for military financing and education are associated with a higher likelihood of anti-American terrorism in aid-receiving countries. Examining potential transmission channels, we show that more U.S. military aid correlates with lower military capacity and increases in corruption and exclusionary policies in recipient countries. Our findings are consistent with the argument that military aid aggravates local grievances, creating anti-American resentment and leading to anti-American terrorism. Indeed, we also provide tentative evidence that U.S. military aid is associated with lower public opinion about the United States in recipient countries.
{"title":"Paying Them to Hate US: The Effect Of U.S. Military aid on Anti-American Terrorism, 1968-2018","authors":"Eugen Dimant, Tim Krieger, Daniel Meierrieks","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueae034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae034","url":null,"abstract":"How does anti-American terrorism in recipient countries respond to U.S. military aid? Does aid protect U.S. interests abroad or does it have unintended consequences for U.S. security? To answer these questions, we estimate the effect of U.S. military aid on anti-American terrorism in recipient countries for a sample of 174 countries between 1968 and 2018. We find that higher levels of aid especially for military financing and education are associated with a higher likelihood of anti-American terrorism in aid-receiving countries. Examining potential transmission channels, we show that more U.S. military aid correlates with lower military capacity and increases in corruption and exclusionary policies in recipient countries. Our findings are consistent with the argument that military aid aggravates local grievances, creating anti-American resentment and leading to anti-American terrorism. Indeed, we also provide tentative evidence that U.S. military aid is associated with lower public opinion about the United States in recipient countries.","PeriodicalId":501319,"journal":{"name":"The Economic Journal","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140935881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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