After-school as intermediary space: theory and typology of partnerships

This chapter explores the nature of after-school partnerships and sets forth a theory and typology describing the way in which the intersection of partners creates a unique intermediary space.     

DOES RAIDING EXPLAIN THE NEGATIVE RETURNS TO FACULTY SENIORITY?

We track faculty for 30 yr at five PhD‐granting departments of economics. Two‐thirds of faculty who take alternative employment move downward; less than one‐quarter moves upward. We find a substantial penalty for seniority, even after richly controlling for faculty productivity, and the penalty is little changed when we allow wages and returns to seniority to differ by mobility status. Faculty who end up moving to better or comparable positions were penalized as severely for seniority while they were in our sample as faculty who stay. These results are incompatible with the raiding hypothesis. Faculty from top 10 programs are also punished for seniority but to a lesser degree than other faculty, which could reflect reduced monopsony power against such faculty if they are more marketable. All results persist when we control for prospective publications and allow lower returns for older publications. Match‐quality bias has dissipated in the post‐internet period, which may be the consequence of greater availability of information. (JEL J62, J44, J42)     

A theory of quality-related differences in retail margins: why there is a 'premium' on premium gasoline

This paper develops a theory of vertical and horizontal product differentiation to explain observed price-cost margin differentials for goods that differ in quality. The difference in price-cost margins between the high- and low-quality goods is shown to depend positively on consumers' average valuation for incremental increases in quality and positively on the distance to each competitor's closest rival. These predictions are largely supported using an extensive station-level data set of premium and regular unleaded gasoline prices from the Los Angeles Basin area from 1992–1995.     

NFL Draftnikology: Euclidean Metrics and Other Approaches to Scoring Ranking Predictions

With viewership of NFL (National Football League) football in the US rising above 20 million, interest in the NFL Draft has also been at all-time highs in recent years. Much of this interest is directed toward the “NFL draftniks” who provide draft predictions—so-called “mock drafts”—leading up to the NFL Draft. Despite increasing interest in “NFL draftnikology,” the scoring methodology used to evaluate mock NFL drafts lags far behind. This study offers a few alternative approaches, including a Euclidean metrics approach to evaluating mock NFL drafts. The usefulness of our methodologies extends to evaluation of economic and financial analysts.     

THE IMPACT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND HUMAN CAPITAL ON WAGES

Historically, economists have taken the position that psychological capital is either unobservable or immeasurable; thus, heretofore, little evidence has been available on the contribution of psychological capital to wages. Using data drawn from two different waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we offer evidence that psychological capital has both a direct effect—via self-esteem—and an indirect effect—through locus of control—on an individual's real wage. We find a person s wage is more sensitive to changes in self-esteem than to comparable alterations in human capital. Both relative wages and human capital contribute to self-esteem.     

HOW IMPORTANT ARE CAPITAL AND TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH?

We examine the relative importance of the growth of physical and human capital and the growth of total factor productivity (TFP) using newly organized data on 145 countries that spans more than 100 years for 23 of these countries. For all countries, only 14% of average output growth per worker is associated with TFP growth. We use priors from theories to construct estimates of the relative importance of the variances of aggregate input growth and TFP growth across countries. Much of the importance of the variance of TFP growth across countries is associated with negative TFP growth. (JEL O47 , O50 , O57 , O30 , N10 )     

"Trust me, I''m a scientist (not a developer)": perceived expertise and motives as predictors of trust in assessment of risk from contaminated land

Previous authors have argued that trust may be based on the extent to which risk communicators are seen as good at discriminating safety from danger, are unbiased in their assessments, and share their audience's values. Residents of two English urban regions rated their trust in six potential sources of information about the risk of contaminated land in their neighborhood (independent scientists; local council property developers; residents' groups; friends and family; local media), and how expert, open, accurate, or biased these sources were and how much they had residents' interests at heart. Overall, scientists were trusted most and developers least, but this was only partly due to their greater perceived expertise. Resident groups and friends/family were also trusted, despite being seen as relatively inexpert, since they scored highly on openness and shared interests, these latter two attributes being more important predictors of trust in individual sources than perceived expertise. We conclude that, where a source is seen as motivated to withhold, distort, or misinterpret information, this will undermine public trust even in apparently knowledgeable sources, hence supporting the view that trust depends on a combination of perceived expertise and perceived motives as complementary processes.     

PURCHASING POWER PARITY AND BLACK-MARKET EXCHANGE RATES

This paper develops a theory of black-market exchange rate determination as a function of the market-clearing rate, the official rate and changes in official reserve levels. The model is tested for three countries over the period 1952–1971 by using purchasing-power-parity calculations as approximations of the equilibrium rate. The results indicate that relative rates of inflation are the dominant forces influencing equilibrium exchange rates.