51 research outputs found
Owning versus leasing: do courts matter?
The authors develop a legal contract enforcement theory of the own versus lease decision. The allocation of ownership rights will minimize enforcement costs when the legal system is inefficient. In particular, when legal enforcement of contracts is costly, there will be a shift from arrangements that rely on such enforcement (such as a rental agreement) toward other forms that do not (such as direct ownership). The authors then test this prediction and show that costly enforcement of rental contracts hampers the development of the rental housing market in a cross-section of countries. They argue that this association is not the result of reverse causation from a developed rental market to more investor-protective enforcement and is not driven by alternative institutional channels. The results provide supportive evidence on the importance of legal contract enforcement for market development and the optimal allocation of property rights.
Women and Power: Unwilling, Ineffective, or Held Back?
We develop a model that nests previous explanations for women under-representation in positions of power. Focusing on democratic electoral dynamics, our framework delineates the three types of mechanisms that may be at play: consumer demand, candidate supply, and internal party dynamics beyond electoral markets. We use Spain's Equality Law, requiring a 40 percent female quota in electoral lists, to test the alternative theories. The law was enacted by the social-democratic party after the surprise parliamentary electoral results following the Madrid terrorist bombings, and was therefore completely unexpected by regional political machines. The law only applied to towns with populations above 5000, so we can use a treatment-control, before-and-after discontinuity design to learn about the impact of female politicians in local elections. Our evidence is most consistent with the existence of entrenched male-dominated political machines capturing influential power positions within the parties.female political representation
Owning Versus Leasing: Do Courts Matter?
We develop a legal contract enforcement theory of the own versus lease decision. The allocation of ownership rights will minimize enforcement costs when the legal system is inefficient. In particular, when legal enforcement of contracts is costly, there will be a shift from arrangements that rely on such enforcement (such as a rental agreement) toward other forms that do not (such as direct ownership). We then test this prediction and show that costly enforcement of rental contracts hampers the development of the rental housing market in a cross-section of countries. We argue that this association is not the result of reverse causation from a developed rental market to more investor-protective enforcement and is not driven by alternative institutional channels. The results provide supportive evidence on the importance of legal contract enforcement for market development and the optimal allocation of property rights
Motivating through Managing by Walking Around
In this paper, we analyze the motivational effects of managing by walking around (MBWA), a management style that emphasizes managersâ unstructured visits to the rank and file of the company. We do so by conducting a field experiment in the retail division of a medium-sized bank located in Latin America. We find that branches increase their sales productivity by a significant ten percent in the window following the management visit, an effect that persists for at least a month after the event. Contrary to our expectations, we do not find that the incentive effect of the visit is stronger for those branches located further away from the bankâs headquarters
Early-Career Coordinated Distributed Experiments: Empowerment Through Collaboration
Este artĂculo contiene 7 pĂĄginas, 1 tabla, 3 figuras.Coordinated distributed experiments (CDEs) enable the study of large-scale ecological
patterns in geographically dispersed areas, while simultaneously providing broad
academic and personal benefits for the participants. However, the effective involvement
of early-career researchers (ECRs) presents major challenges. Here, we analyze the
benefits and challenges of the first CDE exclusively led and conducted by ECRs (i.e.
ECR-CDE), which sets a baseline for similar CDEs, and we provide recommendations
for successful CDE execution. ECR-CDEs achieve most of the outcomes identified in
conventional CDEs as well as extensive benefits for the young cohort of researchers,
including: (i) receiving scientific credit, (ii) peer-training in new concepts and methods, (iii)
developing leadership and communication skills, (iv) promoting a peer network among
ECRs, and (v) building on individual engagement and independence. We also discuss
the challenges of ECR-CDEs, which are mainly derived from the lack of independence
and instability of the participants, and we suggest mechanisms to address them, such
as resource re-allocation and communication strategies. We conclude that ECR-CDEs
can be a relevant tool to empower ECRs across disciplines by fostering their training,
networking and personal well-being.The authors were supported by the following founding: NC
the support of the Beatriu de PinĂłs postdoctoral program of
the Government of Cataloniaâs Secretariat for Universities and
Research of the Ministry of Economy and Knowledge (BP2016-
00215), EE by a predoctoral grant from the Basque Government
(2014-2017), AB by a Generalitat de CatalunyaâBeatriu de
PinĂłs (BP-00385-2016), AMG-F by a predoctoral research grant
(BES-2013-065770) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and
Competitiveness, MAr by a postdoctoral grant from the Basque
Government, MIA by a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral grant
(FJCI-2015-26192), PR-L by a Margalida Comas postdoctoral
contract (PD/031/2018) funded by the Government of the
Balearic Islands and the European Social Fund, AP by a RamĂłn
Areces Foundation Postdoctoral Scholarship, and AL by a Kempe
Foundation stipend. DOMIPEX project was founded by the First
Call of Collaborative Projects among Young Researchers of the
Iberian Association of Limnology (AIL; 2013-2015).Peer reviewe
Do people who care about others cooperate more? Experimental evidence from relative incentive pay
Layoffs and Quits in Repeated Games.
This paper studies games in which the players are not locked into their relationship for a fixed number of periods. We consider two-player games where player 1 can decide to let the opponent continue in the game or replace it with a new player. We also allow the possibility of player 2 quitting the game. When only layoffs can occur, cooperation takes place in finite horizons due to the threat that termination of the relationship imposes on player 2. However, quits limit that cooperation to those cases where the outside option for player 2 is small (lower than some Nash equilibrium of the stage game)
Firm Provision of General Training and Specific Human Capital Acquisition
The existing literature on training is concerned with understanding the reasons why firms pay for the general skills of their workers, but without explaining which firms train which workers. This paper develops a theory that both explains the willingness of firms to pay for general training, and accounts for the pattern of training provision empirically observed. It is assumed that labor markets are perfectly competitive, but there is imperfect contractibility of human capital. Under these assumptions, when training and specific human capital are complements, the firm would pay for the former in order to induce the acquisition of complementary specific skills by the worker
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