ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SB1070 IN ARIZONA

We investigate the effectiveness of Arizona's omnibus immigration law SB1070, which made it a misdemeanor crime for an alien to not carry proper documentation and asked police to determine the immigration status of any person suspected of being an illegal alien during a lawful stop. We find that SB1070's enactment coincided with the stalling to slight recovery of the share of non‐citizen Hispanics in Arizona 3 years after the enactment of an employment verification mandate to all employers. Yet, its effectiveness in reducing the share of likely unauthorized immigrants has been minimal and questions the merit of the law. (JEL J61, J1)     

REPUTATION AND EARNINGS: THE ROLES OF QUALITY AND QUANTITY IN ACADEME

We examine the determinants of professional reputation. Does quantity of exposures raise reputation independent of quality? Does quality of the most important exposure have extra effects on reputation? In a very large sample of academic economists, there is little evidence that a scholar's most influential work provides any extra enhancement of reputation. Quality rankings matter more than absolute quality. Quantity has a zero or even negative effect on proxies for reputation. Data on salaries, however, show positive effects of quantity independent of quality. We test explanations for the differences between the determinants of reputation and salary. (JEL L14, J31)     

NONLINEARITIES AND THE SUSTAINABILITY OF THE GOVERNMENT'S INTERTEMPORAL BUDGET CONSTRAINT

We analyze the sustainability of the government's intertemporal budget constraint and the corresponding fiscal reaction function within a nonlinear error‐correction framework. Our empirical analysis, based on Italy, provides some evidence that the Italian government is meeting its intertemporal budget constraint. Nevertheless, we show that the burden of correcting budgetary disequilibria is entirely carried out by changes in the average tax rate, with a weakly exogenous government spending, possibly determined by the political process. We also document some rigidities of the tax instrument, in terms of downward inflexibility of the average tax rate with respect to its long‐run level. Finally, we provide some evidence in favor of a nonlinear adjustment toward a sustainable long‐run equilibrium, as the average tax rate adjusts faster the further away it gets from the equilibrium. By considering the behavior of taxes across the economic cycle, we also provide some evidence of inflexibility of the tax instrument during bad times. (JEL C32, C51, C52, H20, H50)     

THE POWER OF THE LITTLE BLUE PILL: INNOVATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF LIFESTYLE DRUGS IN AN AGING POPULATION

The launch of Viagra in April 1998 led to a historically unprecedented high usage of erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs. We test whether Viagra's introduction significantly influenced outcomes for its target population such as sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates of older men, as well as its nontarget populations, such as divorces, natality, the distribution of the age spread within couples, female STDs, and sexual assault rates. We find causal evidence that Viagra's introduction increased gonorrhea rates in older men by 15%–28%. We find no significant evidence of any effects on other variables. We take this as evidence that this lifestyle drug causes significant changes in choices only which affect short‐term outcomes, while long‐term planned decisions are unaffected. Overall, we find that the welfare impacts of Viagra with respect to our outcomes of interest are positive and large. (JEL I1, J1, O33)     

BANKS,DEBT AND RISK: ASSESSING THE SPILLOVERS OF CORPORATE TAXES

We find evidence of tax-driven strategic allocation of debt and asset risk across group entities of European banks. We evaluate the effects that establishing tax neutrality between debt and equity finance has on systemic risk, and show that the degree of coordination in implementing the hypothetical tax reform matters. In particular, a coordinated elimination of the tax advantage of debt would significantly reduce systemic losses in the event of a severe banking crisis. By contrast, uncoordinated tax reforms are not equally beneficial precisely because national tax policies generate spillovers through cross-border bank activities. (JEL G21, G28, H25)     

RANKING LAW JOURNALS AND THE LIMITS OF JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS

Journal rankings published by Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are widely used to assess research quality, which influences important decisions by academic departments, universities, and countries in the allocation of research funds. We study refereed law journal rankings by JCR and Washington and Lee Law Library (W&L). JCR's rankings are uncorrelated with W&L's. The differences appear to be attributable to underrepresentation of law journals in JCR's database. We illustrate the effects of database bias on rankings through case studies of three elite journals, the Journal of Law and Economics, Supreme Court Review, and the American Law and Economics Review. (JEL C18, C81, Y10)     

GONE FISHING! REPORTED SICKNESS ABSENTEEISM AND THE WEATHER

A fundamental challenge in informing employer–employee agency problems is measuring employee shirking activity. We identify the propensity of employees to misreport health in order to exploit favorable weather by linking Canadian weather data and survey data on short‐term spells of sickness absenteeism among indoor workers during the non‐winter months. The results point to a clear tendency for reported sickness absenteeism to rise with the recreational quality of the weather. Comparing across workers suggests larger marginal weather effects where shirking costs are higher, which we show is consistent with employees' marginal utility of outdoor leisure increasing in the interaction of their health and weather quality. We discuss the implications of our findings for flexible vacation policies and survey respondents' trust in the confidentiality guarantees of statistical agencies. (JEL D82, I10, J22)     

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: EVIDENCE FROM THE FRENCH DEMOCRACY

We provide a test of the impact of voters' political ideology on economic growth and of the role of preferences for government size as a transmission channel. We focus on France from the beginning of its stable democratic experience in 1871. A move of voters' ideology to the right increases economic growth over the total observation period. However, the growth effect of ideology is mediated by voters' preferences for government size only during the post‐World War II period. For reverse causality concerns, we use the political ideology of other historical democracies as an instrument variable for France's ideology. (JEL E6, O43, H11)     

THE MORAL COSTS OF NASTINESS

We introduce two variants of the one‐shot joy‐of‐destruction minigame (mini‐JOD). Two players are endowed with the same amount of money. They simultaneously decide whether or not to reduce the other player's payoff at an own cost. In one treatment there was a probability that nature would destroy the opponent's money anyway. We test whether this feature reduces the moral costs of nastiness, and find that destruction rates rise significantly, despite the absence of strategic reasons. (JEL C72, C91, D03)     

THE HABIT OF GIVING

Many charitable organizations believe it is worthwhile to solicit very small donations, particularly from young people, because these gifts form a habit of giving which leads to larger donations in the future. Indeed, there is some evidence of a positive correlation between giving when young and giving when old. However, such a correlation, by itself, does not constitute evidence of habit formation. Using data on alumni contributions to a university, we assess whether the correlation is due to habit formation—true state dependence—or to unobservable factors such as affinity to the school. We further examine whether habits form by the mere act of giving or based on the amount given. We implement an instrumental variables approach using the fact that performance of the school's athletic teams and solicitation by one's former roommates generate shocks to giving while young that are plausibly uncorrelated with giving when older. There is strong evidence of habit formation on the extensive margin, but not in the amount given. This finding has important implications for fundraising strategies, charities' accounting practices, and tax policy. (JEL D64, D91, D12)     

DIFFERENCES IN CITATION PATTERNS ACROSS JOURNAL TIERS: THE CASE OF ECONOMICS

We study how citation patterns differ between journal tiers in economics by analyzing citations patterns of more than 6,000 research articles published in top five, second tier, and top field economics journals. We find that top five journals' articles receive more citations and that the life cycles of those citations are longer. However, their influence (in term of citations) is overestimated: in its first twenty years since publication, the median top five article accumulates 4.25 as many citations when compared to non-top five median articles. This ratio is strongly associated with the field of economics research and with articles' impact. (JEL A14)     

STRATEGIC INFORMATION DISCLOSURE: THE CASE OF MULTIATTRIBUTE PRODUCTS WITH HETEROGENEOUS CONSUMERS

We examine the incentives for firms to voluntarily disclose otherwise private information about the quality attributes of their products. In particular, we focus on the case of differentiated products with multiple attributes and heterogeneous consumers. We show that there exist certain configurations of consumers' multidimensional preferences under which a firm, no matter whether producing a high‐ or low‐quality product, may choose not to reveal the quality even with zero disclosure costs. The failure of information unraveling arises when providing consumers with more information results in more elastic demand, which triggers more intensive price competition and leads to lower prices and profits for competing firms. As a result, the equilibrium in which disclosure is voluntary may diverge from that in which disclosure is mandatory. (JEL L15, L5)     

PARENTAL EARNINGS AND CHILDREN'S WELL‐BEING: AN ANALYSIS OF THE SURVEY OF INCOME AND PROGRAM PARTICIPATION MATCHED TO SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION EARNINGS DATA

We estimate the association between parental earnings and child well‐being using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation matched to Social Security Administration earnings records. We use very large samples on a wide variety of measures of child well‐being that are also linked to long histories of parent earnings from administrative records. Consistent with previous studies, we find that the use of longer time averages of parent earnings leads to substantially higher estimated associations compared to using only a single year of parent earnings. Using 7‐year time averages of parent earnings, we show, for example, that a doubling of parent earnings is associated with a reduced probability of a teenager reporting being in poor health by close to 50% and a decrease in the likelihood of a child repeating a grade by 39%. We also examine how the associations vary by the timing of when parental earnings are received during childhood. We find suggestive evidence that parental earnings received during the child's school‐going years (ages 6 to 17) are more strongly associated with college enrollment and children's future earnings as adults than parent earnings received earlier or later in the child's life. (JEL J13, I1, I2)     

PRICING ANOMALIES IN THE MARKET FOR DIAMONDS: EVIDENCE OF CONFORMIST BEHAVIOR

Some goods are consumed not just for their intrinsic utility but also for the impression their consumption has on others. We analyze the market for such a commodity—diamonds. We collect data on price and other attributes from the inventories of three large online retailers of diamonds. We find that people are willing to pay premiums upward of 18% for a diamond that is one‐half carat rather than slightly less than a half carat and between 5% and 10% for a one‐carat rather than a slightly less than one‐carat stone. Since a major portion of larger gem‐quality diamonds are used for engagement rings, such an outcome is consistent with Bernheim's model of conformism, where individuals try to conform to a single standard of behavior that is often established at a focal point. In this case, prospective grooms signal their desirability as a mate by the size of the diamond engagement ring they give their fiancées. (JEL A1, D4)     

FIELD EXPERIMENTS ON THE ANCHORING OF ECONOMIC VALUATIONS

A pillar of behavioral research is that preferences are constructed during the process of choice. A prominent finding is that uninformative numerical “anchors” influence judgment and valuation. It remains unclear whether such processes influence market equilibria. We conduct two experiments that extend the study of anchoring to field settings. The first experiment produces evidence that some consumers' valuations can be anchored in novel situations; there is no evidence that experienced agents are influenced by anchors. The second experiment finds that anchors have only transient effects on market outcomes that converge to equilibrium predictions after a few market periods. (JEL C93, D11)     

ON THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE'S SERVICE AND ENFORCEMENT

Built on the seminal work of Graetz et al. (1986), this study considers a model of tax compliance in which the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) services as well as audits taxpayers as in the real world. Taxpayers are uncertain about whether their incomes are eligible for deduction/exemption, and may seek advice from the taxpayer service provided by the IRS to mitigate the uncertainty. We show: (1) while the society's preferred quality of taxpayer service is likely to be sufficiently high, the IRS's preferred quality of taxpayer service is only at an intermediate level; and (2) the conflict between the society and the IRS tends to be intensified as the cost of tax audits becomes lower. Evidence in support of our results is addressed. We also extend our model to addressing the issue of corruption in tax administration and to considering a dynamic model. (JEL D82, H26, K42)     

ON THE OPTIMAL REALIGNMENT OF A CONTEST: THE CASE OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL

This article examines the relationship between demand and scheduling in college football. We first derive two different metrics for team quality, and then use those metrics to see how they impact attendance. We find that there is a positive interaction between the quality of the teams. Then various simulations are run to see how attendance would change under different scheduling scenarios. If teams are put into conferences based on the team quality measures, the average per game attendance only rises 1–2%. This is true if 1‐year or 10‐year quality measures are used. However, our simulation suggests that this effect would be more than offset, mainly because schools with larger capacity would play fewer home games and so aggregate attendance would fall. We discuss whether this effect would be mitigated by capacity adjustments in the longer term. (JEL L83, Z20, C78)     

THE PRIMACY OF THE POLITICAL AND THE TROPE OF THE ‘PEOPLE’ IN ERNESTO LACLAU'S ON POPULIST REASON

If the proliferation of new social movements thematized in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy was the key conjectural feature on the horizon of radical democratic politics in Euro-America in 1980s, the eruptions of the people in the streets and slums all over the world, and especially in the global south, is hauntingly present in the background of On Populist Reason. With the democratic imaginary now gone global, Laclau's positing of the people as the political subject par excellence and populism as the paradigmatic logic of the political acquires new pertinence. This double privileging is accompanied by a series of shifts in emphasis in the conceptual architecture of Laclau's theory of hegemony. Aside from the further radicalization two pivotal terms in Laclau's social ontology – heterogeneity and contingency – one can observe three other noticeable shifts in emphasis: First, on the plane of discursivity (or in the differential field of the meaningful) the articulatory practices are increasingly characterized in terms of their rhetoricity (i.e. the mode of braiding the rhetorical form with its function); and, furthermore, the tropological characterization of the articulatory practices progressively yields to an analysis of their performative emergence by way of ‘naming’. Second, there is a corresponding shift in the analytic interest from the discursive production of the nodal points (such as ‘free market’ or ‘law and order’) to the discursive production of empty signifiers (especially, of the ‘people’). Third, the conflictual social field is configured not only in terms of antagonisms but also in terms of dislocations.     

HISTORY DEPENDENCE AND THE FORMATION OF SOCIAL PREFERENCES: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

We study the minimal contributing set (MCS) game, a three‐person sequential step‐level public goods game. The behavior of critical third players changes with experience in this game even though they face no strategic or payoff uncertainty. We explore why these changes occur by manipulating subjects' experience in the first half of the experiment. The treatments give subjects very different initial experiences, but all treatments move subjects' choices toward experienced subjects' play in the control sessions. Long‐run play is indistinguishable across treatments. Our results are more consistent with the “discovered preferences” hypothesis ( Plott 1996 ) than either the “constructed preference” or “reference point” hypotheses. (JEL H41, C72, C92)     

FIGURES OF HOPE AND THE FILMIC IMAGINARY OF JIANGHU IN CONTEMPORARY HONG KONG CINEMA

Through an extensive allegorical reading of films, this paper attempts to capture a certain cultural form of imagination in Hong Kong during the transitional period leading up to the historical handover of power in 1997. Dwelling on the world of signification conjured up through what I call the jianghu filmic imaginary,the analysis focuses on the ideological and utopian impulses registered in relation to a whole emotional complex of anxiety, bewilderment and despair in the works of some highly creative local filmmakers of the genre: Ching Siu-Tong, Ann Hui, Tsui Hark and Wong KarWai. The study draws theoretically from Castoriadis's notion of the social imaginary and Bloch's aesthetics of hope, to focus on the textual and contextual re-constructions of a number of very unconventional martial arts swordplay (wuxia) films made in Hong Kong in the last two decades: namely, Tsui's Butterfly Murders (1979), Hui's Romance of Book and Sword (1987), Ching/Tsui's Swordsman II (1992), and Wong's Ashes of Time (1994). By identifying the ideological and affective moments in the filmic imaginary,I want to trace what has been left in a ruined culture for utopian longings, and point to the presence/absence of ‘hope’ as the cultural imagination for an unknown and unknowable future (beyond 1997). It is my contention that an understanding of that peculiar form of popular imaginary at the unusual juncture of Hong Kong's history can begin with a critical attempt to cope with this subtle practice of hope, so as to recognize (or reject) it as mediation in the process of our collective cultural crisis, anticipation and identification.