Accounting for Information: Case Studies in Editorial Decisions and Mortgage Markets

Title of Document: ACCOUNTING FOR INFORMATION: CASE STUDIES IN EDITORIAL DECISIONS AND MORTGAGE MARKETS Ayeh Bandeh-Ahmadi Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Directed By: John Rust, Professor, Department of Economics I demonstrate that referee comments at a scholarly journal contain information on submissions’ future citation impact above and beyond information available in referee scores. I measure this signal on future citation impact and show that it does not enter into editorial decision-making directly but rather through an interaction that amplifies the information content of referee scores: the more citations predicted for a lowor mediocre-scoring paper, the less likely it is to be published. Secondly, I describe referee comments that are highly predictive of greater citations. Papers that referees say have access to unique datasets, or are written on topics of relevance to ongoing debates or government applications receive greater citations on average. Third, I show the appearance of favoritism amongst editors who accept a higher share of papers that cite themselves is partly a reflection of an ability to draw and select for papers that receive more citations. Finally, I characterize budget constraints on publication space and referee capital and provide some guidance on what types of information editorial systems could capture to promote transparency in future analyses while protecting privacy of authors or referees. A second chapter introduces a theoretical framework for assessing the empirical discussion of asymmetric information amongst mortgage lenders and adds the idea of lender competition into this framework. ACCOUNTING FOR INFORMATION: CASE STUDIES IN EDITORIAL DECISIONS AND MORTGAGE MARKETS