Overreporting Oil Reserves

An increasing number of oil market experts argue that OPEC members substantially overstate their oil reserves. While the economic implications could be dire, the incentives for overreporting remain unclear. This paper analyzes these incentives, showing that oil exporters may overreport to raise expected future supply, thereby discouraging oil-substituting R&D and improving their own future market conditions. In general, however, overreporting is not costless: it must be backed by observable actions and therefore induces losses through supply distortions. Surprisingly, these distortions offset others that arise when suppliers internalize the buyers' motives for R&D. In this case, overreporting is rational, credible, and cheap.Exhaustible Resource, Substitution Technology, Signaling

Political Involvement and Memory Failure as Interdependent Determinants of Vote Overreporting

Survey respondents have been found to systematically overreport their participation in political elections. Although the sociodemographic correlates of this response bias are well known, only a few studies have analyzed the determinants predicted by two prominent theoretical explanations for vote overreporting: memory failure and social desirability bias. Both explanations have received empirical support in studies in which the probability of vote overreporting was found to increase (a) with the time between the election and the survey interview and (b) when respondents were more politically involved. In the present paper, we argue that the effect of each of these determinants is not simply additive, but depends on the value of the respective other factor. This interaction effect has been found with data from the American National Election Studies: The probability of vote overreporting increases significantly stronger with the respondents’ political involvement when more time has elapsed since the election day.

Response privacy and elapsed time since election day as determinants for vote overreporting

Survey respondents have consistently been found to overreport their participation in political elections. Lots of research has been done about the sociodemographic correlates of vote overreporting, but only a few studies analyzed determinants which survey researchers have under their control in order to reduce the problem. Theoretical explanations have assumed memory failure and social desirability bias to explain overreporting. Taking these explanations as a starting point, we tested firstly whether asking retrospective questions about the participation in elections which date back longer in time leads to more overreporting. The second hypothesis is that ensured response privacy eliminates the need for positive self-presentation and thus reduces overreporting. Using data from a field experiment, we found that even when already a substantial time has elapsed between the election under consideration and the survey interview, increasing this time lag still increases the probability of vote reports. This was as well the case when the data was collected interviewer- rather than self-administered. Thus, conducting the survey interview as soon as possible after the political election and using an administration mode which ensures response privacy successfully reduces vote overreporting

Optimal monitoring of credit-based emissions trading under asymmetric information

Project-based emissions trading schemes, like the Clean Development Mechanism, are particularly prone to problems of asymmetric information between project parties and the regulator. In this paper, we extend the general framework on incomplete enforcement of policy instruments to reflect the particularities of credit-based mechanisms. The main focus of the analysis is to determine the regulator’s optimal spot-check frequency given plausible assumptions of incomplete enforcement under asymmetric information on reduction costs and heterogeneous verifiability of projects. We find that, depending on the actual abatement cost and penalty schemes, optimal monitoring for credit-based systems is often discontinuous and significantly differs from the one to be applied for cap-and-trade schemes or environmental taxes. We conclude that, in a real-world context, project admission should ultimately be based on the criterion of verifiability.Environmental regulation, Project-based emissions trading systems, Audits and compliance.

Response Privacy and Elapsed Time Since Election Day as Determinants for Vote Overreporting

Survey respondents have consistently been found to overreport their participation in political elections. Lots of research has been done about the sociodemographic correlates of vote overreporting, but only a few studies analyzed determinants which survey researchers have under their control in order to reduce the problem. Theoretical explanations have assumed memory failure and social desirability bias to explain overreporting. Taking these explanations as a starting point, we tested firstly whether asking retrospective questions about the participation in elections which date back longer in time leads to more overreporting. The second hypothesis is that ensured response privacy eliminates the need for positive self-presentation and thus reduces overreporting. Using data from a field experiment, we found that even when already a substantial time has elapsed between the election under consideration and the survey interview, increasing this time lag still increases the probability of vote reports. This was as well the case when the data was collected interviewer- rather than self-administered. Thus, conducting the survey interview as soon as possible after the political election and using an administration mode which ensures response privacy successfully reduces vote overreporting.

A Preliminary Study of Income-in-kind Underreporting in the Quarterly Integrated Survey of Households (ISH)

This paper is presented at the Third National Convention on Statistics at the Philippine International Convention Center on December 13-14, 1982. It presents preliminary findings from a small-scale test to determine the reporting errors in the ISH regarding cash and income-in-kind utilizing an analytical framework. Evidence indicates income-underreporting biases.income

Deception and Misreporting in a Social Program

We investigate empirically the extent of misreporting in a poverty-alleviation program in which self-reported information, followed by a household visit, is used to determine eligibility. Underreporting may be due to a deception motive, and overreporting to an embarrassment motive. We find that underreporting of goods and desirable home characteristics is widespread, and that overreporting is common with respect to goods linked to social status. Larger program benefits encourage underreporting and discourage overreporting. The effect of benefits on underreporting is significant under a variety of specifications. We also investigate the effects of education and gender on misreporting.

Imputation rules to improve the education variable in the IAB employment subsample

"The education variable in the IAB employment subsample has two shortcomings: missing values and inconsistencies with the reporting rule. We propose several deductive imputation procedures to improve the variable. They mainly use the multiple education information available in the data because the employees' education is reported at least once a year. We compare the improved data from the different procedures and the original data in typical applications in labor economics: educational composition of employment, wage inequality, and wage regression. We find, that correcting the education variable: (i) shows the educational attainment of the male labor force to be higher than measured with the, original data, (ii) gives different values for some measures of wage inequality, and (iii) does not change the estimates in wage regressions much." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))IAB-Beschäftigtenstichprobe, Bildungsabschluss, Bildungsverlauf, Datengewinnung, Validität, Stichprobenfehler, Datenaufbereitung, Arbeitsmarktforschung, Reliabilität, Datenqualität, Imputationsverfahren

Why Do BLS Hours Series Tell Different Stories About Trends in Hours Worked?

Hours worked is an important economic indicator. In addition to being a measure of labor utilization, average weekly hours are inputs into measures of productivity and hourly wages, which are two key economic indicators. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ two hours series tell very different stories. Between 1973 and 2007 average weekly hours estimated from the BLS’s household survey (the Current Population Survey or CPS) indicate that average weekly hours of nonagricultural wage and salary workers decreased slightly from 39.5 to 39.3. In contrast, average hours estimated from the establishment survey (the Current Employment Statistics survey or CES) indicate that hours fell from 36.9 to 33.8 hours per week. Thus the discrepancy between the two surveys increased from about two-and-a-half hours per week to about five-and-a-half hours. Our goal in the current study is to reconcile the differences between the CPS and CES estimates of hours worked and to better understand what these surveys are measuring. We examine a number of possible explanations for the divergence of the two series: differences in workers covered, multiple jobholding, differences in the hours concept (hours worked vs. hours paid), possible overreporting of hours in CPS, and changes in the length of CES pay periods. We can explain most of the difference in levels, but cannot explain the divergent trends.of work, Comparison of household and establishment surveys