RePEc: Research Papers in Economics

Research Papers in Economics is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in many countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics.

repec.org

QuBE Working Papers

2013

All  2021  2020  2019  2018  2017  2016  2015  2014  2013  2012  
  • #024
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    L83, D12, R22, Z19
    Keywords:
    outcome uncertainty, soccer, football, consumer demand, attendance, season ticket holders.

    Any Given Sunday: How Season Ticket Holders' Time of Stadium Entrance Is Influenced by Outcome Uncertainty

    Dominik Scheyer, Sascha L. Schmidt and Benno Torgler

    This paper constitutes a unique micro-level exploration of the relation between game outcome uncertainty and the behavior of highly committed season ticket holders of a major Bundesliga soccer team. Specifically, we look at 3,113 season ticket holders attending all 17 home games in the 2012-13 season and explore whether outcome uncertainty had an impact on their stadium arrival time. We find strong evidence that increased uncertainty about the expected outcome prompts these spectators to enter the stadium earlier. Moreover, season ticket holders travelling from outside the hosting city or paying higher season ticket prices exhibit a stronger reaction to uncertainty compared with season ticket holders in the standing section. We also find that younger spectators are less likely to arrive late when uncertainty increases.

  • #023
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    D03, D72, D83, H70
    Keywords:
    Power, religion, voting, referenda, trust, rules of thumb

    The Power of Religious Organizations in Human Decision Processes: Analyzing Voting Behavior

    Benno Torgler, Davis Stadelmann and Marco Portmann

    In Switzerland, two key church institutions - the Conference of Swiss Bishops (CSB) and the Federation of Protestant Churches (FPC) - make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this unique situation to directly measure religious organizations' power to shape human decision making. We employ an objective measure of voters' commitment to their religious organization to determine whether they are more likely to vote in line with this organization's recommendations. We find that voting recommendations do indeed matter, implying that even in a secularized world, religion plays a crucial role in voting decisions.

  • #022
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    D40, L10
    Keywords:
    behavioural economics, expected utility theory, experiments, expectations, probabilities

    Expectation Formation in an Evolving Game of Uncertainty: Theory and New Experimental Evidence

    Gigi Foster, Paul Frijters, Markus Schaffner and Benno Torgler

    We examine the nature of stated subjective probabilities in a complex, evolving context in which true event probabilities are not within subjects' explicit information set. Speci cally, we collect information on subjective expectations in a car race wherein participants must bet on a particular car but cannot influence the odds of winning once the race begins. In our setup, the actual probability of the good outcome (a win) can be determined based on computer simulations from any point in the process. We compare this actual probability to the subjective probability participants provide at three di erent points in each of 6 races. We fi nd that the S-shaped curve relating subjective to actual probabilities found in prior research when participants have direct access to actual probabilities also emerges in our much more complex situation, and that there is only a limited degree of learning through repeated play. We show that the model in the S-shaped function family that provides the best fi t to our data is Prelec's (1998) conditional invariant model.

  • #021
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    A11, A13, Z18, Z19
    Keywords:
    Academic Performance, Scholarly Importance, Market for Economists, Social Importance of Economists, External and Internal Influence, Book Prizes, TED Talks

    Do the Best Scholars and Economists Attract the Highest Speaking Fees?

    Ho Fai Chan, Bruno S. Frey, Jana Gallus, Markus Schaffner, Benno Torgler and Stephen Whyte

    External prominence (measured by the number of pages indexed on search engines or TED talk invitations) can be capitalized on the speakers' market while research performance (measured by publication and citation indicators) cannot. There is thus a clear distinction between the capitalization of external and internal prominence. Success through authorship of books is also positively correlated with speaking fees, however once we control for external prominence the statistical significance disappears. We find that academics profit from having been awarded a major book prize.

  • #020
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    A11, A13, Z18, Z19
    Keywords:
    Academia, Scholarly Importance, Role of Economics, Social Importance of Economists, External and Internal Influence, Academic Performance, Awards.

    External Influence as an Indicator of Scholarly Importance

    Ho Fai Chan, Bruno S. Frey, Jana Gallus, Markus Schaffner, Benno Torgler and Stephen Whyte

    The external influence of scholarly activity has to date been measured primarily in terms of publications and citations, metrics that also dominate the promotion and grant processes. Yet the array of scholarly activities visible to the outside world are far more extensive and recently developed technologies allow broader and more accurate measurement of their influence on the wider societal discourse. Accordingly we analyze the relation between the internal and external influences of 723 top economics scholars using the number of pages indexed by Google and Bing as a measure of their external influence. Although the correlation between internal and external influence is low overall, it is highest among recipients of major key awards such as the Nobel Prize or John Bates Clark medal, and particularly strong for those ranked among the top 100 researchers.

  • #019
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    H26, C93, K42
    Keywords:
    : tax compliance, tax evasion, field experiment, deterrence, tax enforcement, supervision

    Effects of supervision on tax compliance: Evidence from a field experiment in Austria

    Katharina Gangl, Benno Torgler, Erich Kirchler and Eva Hofmann

    The tax compliance literature has mainly focused on individual tax evasion rather than firm tax evasion. In general, there is a lack of field experiments on the topic, and measuring tax compliance is challenging. To address this shortcoming in the literature, we conduct a field experiment on firm tax compliance looking at newly founded firms. As a novelty we explore how firms react to closer supervision by the tax administration, looking at timely paying which has no measurement biases. Interestingly, we observe a crowding-out effect of supervision on timely paying of taxes. On the other hand, for those who were non-compliant, supervision reduced the tax amount that was due.

  • #018
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    P16;P17;P21;P35;P51;P52;Z12
    Keywords:
    Religious identity, public goods, collectivism, individualism, local government, centralization, Russia, Israel

    Religious Identity, Public Goods and Centralization: Evidence from Russian and Israeli Cities

    Benno Torgler and Theocharis Grigoriadis

    In this paper, we analyze the effects of religious identity - defined both as personal identification with a religious tradition and institutional ideas on the provision of public goods - on attitudes toward central government. We explore whether citizens belonging to collectivist rather than individualist religious denominations are more likely to evaluate their central government positively. Moreover, we explore whether adherence to collectivist norms of economic and political organization leads to a positive evaluation of central government. Surveys were conducted in Russia and Israel as these countries provide a mosaic of three major world religions - Judaism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Sunni Islam. The information gathered also allows us to study whether attitudes towards religious institutions such as the Russian Orthodox Church, the Chief Rabbinate in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, and the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem in Israel are able to predict positive attitudes toward centralized forms of governance. We find strong support for the proposition that collectivist norms and an institutional religious identity enhance positive attitudes towards central government.

  • #017
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    M52, J33, Z13
    Keywords:
    Nobel Prize, Nobel Laureates, Awards, Recognition, Educational Background, Theory, Empirics, Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine

    THE IMPLICATIONS OF EDUCATIONAL AND METHODOLOGICAL BACKGROUND FOR THE CAREER SUCCESS OF NOBEL LAUREATES: LOOKING AT MAJOR AWARDS

    Ho Fai Chan and Benno Torgler

    Nobel laureates have achieved the highest recognition in academia,reaching the boundaries of human knowledge and understanding. Owing to past research, we have a good understanding of the career patterns behind their performance. Yet, we have only limited understanding of the factors driving their recognition with respect to major institutionalized scientific honours. We therefore look at the award life cycle achievements of the 1901 to 2000 Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and physiology or medicine. The results show that Nobelists with a theoretical orientation are achieving more awards than laureates with an empirical orientation. Moreover, it seems their educational background shapes their future recognition. Researchers educated in Great Britain and the US tend to generate more awards than other Nobelists although there are career pattern differences. Among those, laureates educated at Cambridge or Harvard are more successful in Chemistry, those from Columbia and Cambridge excel in Physics, while Columbia educated laureates dominate in Physiology or Medicine.

  • #016
    Download full text
    Keywords:
    Experimental Economics, Programming, CORAL

    Programming for Experimental Economics: Introducing CORAL - a lightweight framework for experimental economic experiments

    Markus Schaffner

    The field of experimental economics is past its 50th anniversary and is celebrating its 2nd Nobel prize winner. By far the largest number of economic experiments are now conducted in computer labs, although there is a wide array of settings, ranging from pen-and-paper to elaborate field settings. The controlled environment of the computer lab remains a strong foothold for experimental research. On top of the high level of control, including the standardisation of recruitment protocol and software used, the ease of data collection singles out the lab environment as a key instrument for the testing of economic theory and market mechanics. A number of tools and procedures have developed over the recent decades shaping how experiments are conducted. Z-tree (Fischbacher, 2007) has been established as the quasi-standard tool to conduct experiments. This paper introduces a novel view on how to approach programming for experiments, specifically it introduces a number of innovations from professional software development into the programming of economic experiments. Finally the lightweight experimental software framework CORAL will be introduced.

  • #015
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    F50, F23, G30
    Keywords:
    Global Attitudes, Intangible Assets, Internalization, Multinational Corporation, Geographic Diversification

    Business in troubled waters: Does adverse attitude affect firm value? forthcoming, Journal of Corporate Finance

    Jung Chul Park, Dipanwita Sarkar, Jayanta Sarkar and Keven Yost

    This paper investigates the relationship between US MNCs' valuations and anti-Americanism in countries where MNCs' foreign subsidiaries are located. We find that MNCs suffer value-destruction when they enter markets where people express severe anti-Americanism. However, we uncover that geographic diversification into these high anti-Americanism countries significantly increases firm value if the MNC has high levels of intangibles such as technological know-how and marketing expertise. Our findings are consistent with the notion that the advantages from internalizing the cross-border transfer of intangibles are greater when barriers to competition are higher.

  • #012

    Gender and other determinants of trust and reciprocity in an experimental labour market amongst Chinese students

    Uwe Dulleck, Jonas Fooken and Yumei He

    Due to economic and demographic changes highly educated women play an important role on the Chinese labour market. Gender has been shown to be an important characteristic that influences behaviour in economic experiments, as have, to a lesser degree, academic major, age and income. We provide a study looking at trust and reciprocity and their determinants in a labour market laboratory experiment. Our experimental data is based on two games, the Gift Exchange Game (GEG) and a variant of this game (the Wage Promising Game, WPG) where the employer's wage off er is non-binding and the employer can choose the wage freely after observing the workers e ffort. We find that women are less trusting and reciprocal than men in the GEG while this cannot be found in the WPG. Letting participants play the GEG and the WPG, allows us to disentangle reciprocal and risk attitudes. While in the employer role, it seems to be that risk attitude is the main factor, this is not con firmed analysing decisions in the worker role.

  • #011

    Tactical Voting and Voter's Sophistication in British Elections

    St'ephane Dupraz, Daniel Muller and Lionel Page

    Although tactical voting attracts a great deal of attention, it is very hard to measure as it requires knowledge of both individuals' voting choices as well as their unobserved preferences. In this paper, we present a simple empirical strategy to nonparametrically identify tactical voting patterns directly from balloting results. This approach allows us to study the magnitude and direction of strategic voting as well as to verify which information voters and parties take into account to determine marginal constituencies. We show that tactical voting played a significant role in the 2010 election, mainly for Liberal-Democratic voters supporting Labour. Moreover, our results suggest that voters seem to form their expectations based on a national swing in vote shares rather than newspaper guides published in the main media outlets or previous election outcomes. We also present some evidence that suggests that campaign spending is not driving tactical voting.

  • #010
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    D08;D81;D87
    Keywords:
    s risk preferences

    The role of psychological and physiological factors in decision making under risk and in a dilemma

    Jonas Fooken and Markus Schaffner

    We study the di fference in the result of two diff erent risk elicitation methods by linking estimates of risk attitudes to gender, age, personality traits, a decision in a dilemma situation, and physiological states measured by heart rate variability (HRV). Our results indicate that di fferences between the methods are reflected in a diff erent effect of gender and personality traits. Furthermore, HRV is linked to risk-taking in the experiment for one of the methods, suggesting that emotionally more stressed individuals display more risk aversion. However, we cannot determine if these are signifi cantly related to the diff erence on the results of the two methods. Finally, we find that risk attitudes are not predictive of the ability to decide in a dilemma, but personality traits are. There is also no apparent relationship between the physiological state during the dilemma situation and the ability to make a decision.

  • #009
    Download full text
    Keywords:
    relative age effect, political selection, regression discontinuity design, school entry cut-off dates, leadership

    Political Selection and the Relative Age Effect

    Daniel Muller and Lionel Page

    We present substantial evidence for the existence of a bias in the distribution of births of leading US politicians in favor of those who were the eldest in their cohort at school. The result is robust to both parametric and nonparametric tests and is not driven by measurement error, redshirting or a sorting effect of highly educated parents. The magnitude of the effect we estimate is larger than what other studies on 'relative age effects' find for broader (adult) populations, but is in general consistent with research that looks at high-competition environments. The findings are in line with a multiplier effect of early human capital acquisition (Cunha and Heckman, 2007) whereby early skill accumulation lowers the cost of further investments.

  • #008

    Exit Polls, Turnout, and Bandwagon Voting: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

    Rebecca B. Morton, Daniel Mueller, Lionel Page and Benno Torgler

    We exploit a voting reform in France to estimate the causal eff ect of exit poll information on turnout and bandwagon voting. Before the change in legislation, individuals in some French overseas territories voted after the election result had already been made public via exit poll information from mainland France. We estimate that knowing the exit poll information decreases voter turnout by about 12 percentage points. Our study is the fi rst clean empirical design outside of the laboratory to demonstrate the e ffect of such knowledge on voter turnout. Furthermore, we fi nd that exit poll information signi ficantly increases bandwagon voting; that is, voters who choose to turn out are more likely to vote for the expected winner.

  • #007
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    D03 D81 C93
    Keywords:
    Decision under risk, large losses, natural experiment

    Variation in risk seeking behavior following large losses: A natural experiment

    Lionel Page, David A. Savage and Benno Torgler

    This study explores people's risk attitudes after having suff ered large real-world losses following a natural disaster. Using the margins of the 2011 Australian floods (Brisbane) as a natural experimental setting, we find that homeowners who were victims of the floods and face large losses in property values are 50% more likely to opt for a risky gamble { a scratch card giving a small chance of a large gain ($500,000) { than for a sure amount of comparable value ($10). This finding is consistent with prospect theory predictions of the adoption of a risk-seeking attitude after a loss.

  • #006
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    J16, J24
    Keywords:
    Research Productivity, Human Capital, Graduate Education, Gender Differences

    Are all High-Skilled Cohorts Created Equal? Unemployment, Gender, and Research Productivity

    John P. Conley, Ali Sina Onder and Benno Torgler

    Using life cycle publication data of 9,368 economics PhD graduates from 127 U.S. institutions, we investigate how unemployment in the U.S. economy prior to starting graduate studies and at the time of entry into the academic job market affect economics PhD graduates' research productivity. We analyze the period between 1987 and 1996 and find that favorable conditions at the time of academic job search have a positive effect on research productivity (measured in numbers of publications) for both male and female graduates. On the other hand, unfavorable employment conditions at the time of entry into graduate school affects female research productivity negatively, but male productivity positively. These findings are consistent with the notion that men and women differ in their perception of risk in high skill occupations. In the specific context of research-active occupations that require high skill and costly investment in human capital, an ex post poor return on undergraduate educational investment may cause women to opt for less risky and secure occupations while men seem more likely to "double down" on their investment in human capital. Further investigation, however, shows that additional factors may also be at work.

  • #005
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    D03, D72, D83, H70
    Keywords:
    Bounded rationality, voting, referenda attention, rules of thumb

    Bounded Rationality and Voting Decisions Exploring a 160-Year Period

    David Stadelmann and Benno Torgler

    Using a natural voting experiment in Switzerland that encompasses a 160-year period (1848-2009), we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on expert knowledge. We find that when more referenda are held on the same day, constituents are more likely to refer to parliamentary recommendations in making their decisions. This finding holds true even when we narrow our focus to referenda with a relatively lower voter turnout on days on which more than one referendum was held. We also show that when constituents face a higher level of complexity, they listen to parliament rather than interest groups.

  • #004
    Download full text
    JEL-Codes:
    A13, C23, M52
    Keywords:
    Awards, Incentives, Research, John Bates Clark Medal, Synthetic control method

    Does The John Bates Clark Medal Boost Subsequent Productivity And Citation Success?

    Ho Fai Chan, Bruno S. Frey, Jana Gallus and Benno Torgler

    Despite the social importance of awards, they have been largely disregarded by academic research in economics. This paper investigates whether a specific, yet important, award in economics, the John Bates Clark Medal, raises recipients' subsequent research activity and status compared to a synthetic control group of nonrecipient scholars with similar previous research performance. We find evidence of positive incentive and status effects that raise both productivity and citation levels.