PRIVATIZING MARKETS FOR HETEROGENEOUS, EXPERIENCE GOODS: COFFEE IN NORTHWEST CAMEROON

Reform and privatization of administratively controlled marketing parastatals is always a thorny issue. Reform of public coffee parastatals is one of the most fascinating-and trickiest-exercises in free-market development. Coffee, a heterogenous, experience good, undergoes several processing stages with imperfect quality control, leading to agency problems. Successful privatization must address these problems. This paper analyzes the reform and partial privatization of the North West Cooperative Association (NWCA) parastatal in Cameroon. A conceptual, principal-agent framework informs the analysis. In an interesting twist, the reforms structured the marketing chain so that farmers are the residual claimants to profits from international sales, in effect making them the principals. As is suggested by the conceptual framework, empirical work confirms that farmers as principals have reinvested in coffee quality. However, the evidence also shows that agency problems still exist at later stages of the marketing chain. This is consistent with the principal-agent framework, since incentive-compatible contracts are not used in this marketing chain. The paper concludes by drawing more general lessons about how incomplete information and incentive structure issues arising from imperfect markets might be handled within the context of market liberalization.Marketing,

PRIVATIZING MARKETS FOR HETEROGENOUS, EXPERIENCE GOODS: COFFEE IN NORTHWEST CAMEROON

Reform and privatization of administratively controlled marketing parastatals is always a thorny issue. Reform of public coffee parastatals is one of the most fascinating and trickiest exercises in free-market development. Coffee, a heterogenous, experience good, undergoes several processing stages with imperfect quality control, leading to agency problems. Successful privatization must address these problems. This paper analyzes the reform and partial privatization of the North West Cooperative Association (NWCA) parastatal in Cameroon. A conceptual, principal-agent framework informs the analysis. In an interesting twist, the reforms structured the marketing chain so that farmers are the residual claimants to profits from international sales, in effect making them the principals. As is suggested by the conceptual framework, empirical work confirms that farmers as principals have reinvested in coffee quality. However, the evidence also shows that agency problems still exist at later stages of the marketing chain. This is consistent with the principal-agent framework, since incentive-compatible contracts are not used in this marketing chain. The paper concludes by drawing more general lessons about how incomplete information and incentive structure issues arising from imperfect markets might be handled within the context of market liberalization.Marketing,

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Three Essays in the Educational Context

Many universities and K-12 public school systems express a significant, formal commitment to the ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Relative to the emphasis on DEI in America’s educational institutions, however, there has been little research describing DEI trends and evaluating the efficacy of DEI bureaucracies. This three-chapter dissertation examines DEI trends that have been the subject of much discussion—but rarely studied empirically. For example, chapter one analyzes how universities promote DEI when hiring new faculty. I audit a subset of academic job postings and present the first evidence on how many require DEI statements, as well as the extent to which these requirements vary by university characteristics. I find that more than two-thirds of job advertisements mention the term diversity and 19 percent require DEI statements. More selective institutions are roughly 20 percentage points more likely than less-selective institutions to require DEI statements. There are no meaningful differences across academic subfields, suggesting that DEI requirements are not confined to the social sciences. Chapter two provides the first systematic study of DEI bureaucracy across school districts. I identify factors that predict whether K-12 school districts employ a chief diversity officer (CDO) and explore whether CDO employment is correlated with shrinking achievement gaps. I find that roughly 40 percent of the largest school districts in the United States employ CDOs. Districts in “blue” or Democratic-controlled states—which we define as those states where at least two of the House, Senate, and governorship are held by Democrats—are upwards of 15 percentage points more likely to have CDOs than districts in “red” states. An exploratory analysis suggests that CDO employment is not associated with achievement gap reductions, over the past ten years, between whites and Blacks, whites and Hispanics, and nonpoor versus FRPL eligible students. Chapter three explores how DEI issues manifest on the college graduate job market. I present the results of a resume audit—the first to estimate the causal effect of listing collegiate athletics on employer callbacks—and test for subgroup effects by ethnicity and gender. I show that listing sports participation does not significantly change whether an applicant receives a callback or interview request from an employer. Applicants who list sports are slightly less likely to receive interest from employers, but these differences are not statistically significant. There are somewhat larger decreases in the likelihood that females and non-white applicants receive callbacks when their resumes include sports, but these disparities also fell short of statistical significance. I discuss how gender and racial differences observed in this study may inform the need for DEI interventions

DISTRIBUTION CHOICE UNDER NULL PRIORS AND SMALL SAMPLE SIZE

Defining appropriate probability distributions for the variables in an economic model is an important and often arduous task. This paper evaluates the performance of several common probability distributions under different distributional assumptions when sample sizes are small and there is limited information about the data.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Controlling Marangoni induced instabilities in spin-cast polymer films: how to prepare uniform films

In both research and industrial settings spin coating is extensively used to prepare highly uniform thin polymer films. However, under certain conditions, spin coating results in films with non-uniform surface morphologies. Although the spin coating process has been extensively studied, the origin of these morphologies is not fully understood and the formation of non-uniform spincast films remains a practical problem. Here we report on experiments demonstrating that the formation of surface instabilities during spin coating is dependent on temperature. Our results suggest that non-uniform spincast films form as a result of the Marangoni effect, which describes flow due to surface tension gradients. We find that both the wavelength and amplitude of the pattern increase with temperature. Finally, and most important from a practical viewpoint, the non-uniformities in the film thickness can be entirely avoided simply by lowering the spin coating temperature.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. electronic supplementary material: 3 pages, 4 figure