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.
QuBE Working Papers
2018
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#056Download full text
- JEL-Codes:
- D91, H75, I24
- Keywords:
- Relative age, education, behavioural traits, online experiment
Long-lasting effects of relative age at school
We investigate the long lasting effects on behaviour of relative age at school. We conduct an online incentivised survey with a sample of 1007 adults, who were born at most two months before or after the school entry cut-off date in four Australian states. We find those who were among the oldest in the classroom throughout their school years display higher self-con fidence, are more willing to enter in some form of competition, declare taking more risk in a range of domains in their life and are more trusting of other people, compared to those who were among the youngest.
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#055Download full text
- Keywords:
- asset transfer, sustainable livelihoods, occupational choices, dietary diversity
Moving from Extreme Poverty to Sustainable Livelihoods: Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trials in Bangladesh
Do asset transfer programs to the extremely poor enable sustainable livelihoods? The study aims to explore whether transfer of capital and skills helps the ultra-poor to achieve sustainable livelihoods. CFPR-TUP program provides grant-based support services in rural Bangladesh with a view to reducing extreme poverty. Longitudinal data from randomized controlled trials shows significant positive impact of the intervention on educational outcomes of children, occupational transition, income, financial market participation, asset holdings, food security, food consumption, dietary diversity, and consumption expenditure. The trajectory of improvement from extreme poverty to sustainable livelihoods continues in the long-term, seven years after the end of the intervention.
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#054Download full text
- JEL-Codes:
- C92, D82, D84, G14
How much information is incorporated in financial asset prices? Experimental Evidence
We propose a new estimation method and use experimental data from multiple double auction experiments in the literature to directly estimate how much information is incorporated in financial market prices. We find that public information is almost completely reflected in prices, but that surprisingly little private information—less than 50%—is incorporated in prices. Our estimates therefore suggest that while semi-strong informational efficiency is consistent with the data, financial market prices may be very far from strong-form efficiency. We compare our estimates with beliefs of economists surveyed at the Econometric Society Meetings, and find that economists and finance researchers alike expect market prices to reflect considerably more private information than what we estimated.
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#053
How success breeds success
We study whether and how success increases the chance of subsequent success using a real-effort laboratory experiment. We identify the causal effect of winning in a simple dynamic contest (best-of-three) using the random component of a stochastic contest success function that determines the winner of each round. We find a positive effect of an initial success on subsequent performance. Replacing either the first round or the last round of the contest with a die selecting the winner at random, we disentangle two competing explanations of the positive effect: strategic thinking and psychological effect of winning. Our results clearly support the existence of a psychological effect of winning. On the contrary, we do not find evidence that strategic thinking can explain the effect of winning. Varying the amount of feedback provided in contest, we find that the psychological effect is likely driven by improved self-confidence after experiencing a success. We suggest that contest models need to venture beyond the framework of games with complete information to explain behaviour in dynamic contests.