The quality of manufactured products made in China has improved tremendously in the past several decades. In this paper, we argue that crises beget opportunities for quality upgrade. We first develop a theoretical framework to show that a crisis, if used wisely, could present good opportunities for entrepreneurs and local governments to form collective action to improve product quality. Next, w...

We estimate the effect of employer offers of retiree health benefits (RHBs) on the timing of retirement using a sample of Health and Retirement Study (HRS) men observed over a period of up to 12 years. We hypothesize that the effect of RHBs differs for workers of different ages—a hypothesis we can test now that the main HRS cohort has aged sufficiently. We apply three wellknown panel data estim...

India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been hailed as one of the country’s most creative social initiatives. Since the program was begun only recently (in 2004-05) there is a need to assess its impact on households not just in one year but over time. To the best of our knowledge there are no studies of the latter kind. Using a unique panel data set for 2007-08 and 2009-1...

Using unique and unpublished panel data from selected US cities, the paper investigates the consequences of ignoring unobserved heterogeneity in the unit of observationwhenestimating the economicmodel of crime. Results con® rmthat neglecting to control for unobserved heterogeneity overstates the ability of sanctions to deter criminal activity. Further, thisupwardbias is found tovary signi® cant...

This paper examines the relationship between income equality and crime using U.S. statewide panel data for the years 1981 to 1999. After controlling for demographics and the rates of poverty and unemployment, I find a robust negative relationship between income inequality and the violent and property crime rates. I conclude that rising income inequality during those two decades did not lead to ...

This paper investigates the effects of human capital on productivity using micro panel data of rural households in the North­West Frontier Province, Pakistan, where a substantial job stratification is observed in terms of income and education. To clarify the mechanism underlying this stratification, the human capital effects are estimated for wages (individual level) and for self­employed activ...

This paper examines whether minimum competency school accountability systems, such as those created under No Child Left Behind, influence the distribution of student achievement. Because school ratings in these systems only incorporate students’ test scores via pass rates, this type of system increases incentives for schools to improve the performance of students who are on the margin of passin...

In recent years there has been a growing stream of literature in marketing and economics that models consumers as Bayesian learners. Such learning behavior is often embedded within a discrete choice framework which is then calibrated on scanner panel data. At the same time it is now accepted wisdom that disentangling preference heterogeneity and state dependence is critical in any attempt to un...

In this study we examine the impact of lottery sales and the introduction of new lottery games on the retail activity using panel data on all West Virginia counties over the 1987-2001 period. We find that the introduction of video lottery spurred retail activity in those counties that have been granted the authority to offer video lottery. Empirical analysis also suggests that there is a positi...

The East German Wage Structure after Transition We extend the literature on transition economies’ wage structures by investigating the returns to tenure and experience. This study applies recent panel data and estimation approaches that control for hitherto neglected biases. We compare the life cycle structure in East and West German wages for fulltime employed men in the private sector. The pa...