We increased the amount of time spent in our introductory microeconomics courses on active-learning pedagogies like groupproblem solving and simulations. In order to make time for these activities, we employed a blended learning approach that shifted much of the basic content delivery of material outside of the class. In this paper we explore some of the effects of this shift, by asking whether...

Recent reforms across Eastern European countries gave more flexibility and information for parties to engage in secured debt transactions, reducing court involvement. The menu of assets legally accepted as collateral was enlarged to include movable assets (e.g., machinery and equipment). Generalized difference-in-differences tests show that firms operating more movable assets borrowed more, inv...

In this paper, I analyze how the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood, marked by increased parliamentary power in late 2006 due to unprecedented success in the 2005 elections, impacts female labor force participation in districts in which Muslim Brotherhood candidates won compared to those in which they did not win. I use a difference in differences estimation strategy, using both district a...

In 2015, over 7 million Japanese citizens donated a total of ¥165,291,021,000 (approximately 1.5 billion USD) to municipalities in which they did not live in using the “Furusato Nouzei” system, which was developed as a means to revitalize rural areas in the country (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications). In this paper, I examine this system in two ways. First, I predict the amount of...

In this paper, we study how firm investments in technology-based employee monitoring impact both misconduct and productivity. We use unique and detailed theft and sales data from 392 restaurant locations from five different chains that adopt a theft monitoring information technology (IT) product. Since the specific timing of individual locations’ technology adoption is plausibly exogenous, we c...

This paper seeks to identify the causal effect of foreign acquisitions on wages of skilled and unskilled workers, using difference-in-differences propensity score matching estimators. Our results suggest that there is substantial heterogeneity in the post-acquisition wage effect depending on the nationality of the foreign acquirer and the skill group of workers. We find sizable post acquisition...

The introduction of the 1999 Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) in the UK encouraged low income families with children to enter the labor market. The tax credit, however, may have had the unintended side effect of increasing the childbearing of these households. While many studies have looked at the importance of WFTC on the female labor supply, only few have estimated the impact it had on fert...

Using a difference-in-differences framework, we estimate the impact of Ramadan on educational outcomes of Muslim students living in a non-Muslim country. For identification we exploit the fact that the number of Ramadan weeks during the course that we study, varies from year to year, ranging from zero to four. Our main finding is that Ramadan observance has a negative impact on performance; one...

This paper uses a difference-in-difference estimator to test whether the introduction of patient choice and hospital competition in the English NHS in January 2006 has prompted hospitals to become more efficient. Efficiency was measured using hospitals’ average length of stay (LOS) for patients undergoing elective hip replacement. LOS was broken down into its two key components: the time from a...

China’s Higher Education Expansion and its Labor Market Consequences Using a 1/5 random draw of the 1% census of 2005, we investigate how China’s higher education expansion commenced in 1999 affects the education opportunities of various population groups and how this policy affects the labor market. Treating the expansion as an experiment and using a LATE framework, we find that higher educati...