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Essays in Labor Economics and Development Economics
Get PDFThis dissertation contains three essays on labor economics and development economics.In the first and second chapters, I examine determinants and consequences of alcohol consumption in Russia and quantify the effects of various public policies on mortality rates and on consumer welfare. For the past twenty years, Russia has confronted the Mortality Crisis - the life expectancy of Russian males has fallen by more than five years, and the mortality rate has increased by 50%. Alcohol abuse is widely agreed to be the main cause of this change.In the first chapter, I employ a rich dataset on individual alcohol consumption to analyze the determinants for heavy drinking in Russia, including the price of alcohol, peer effects, and habits. I exploit unique location identifiers in my data and patterns of geographical settlement in Russia to measure peers within narrowly-defined neighborhoods.This definition of peers is validated by documenting a strong increase in alcohol consumption around the birthday of peers. With natural experiments, I estimate the own price elasticity of the probability of heavy drinking using variation in alcohol regulations across Russian regions and over time. From these data, I develop a dynamic structural model of heavy drinking to quantify how changes in the price of alcohol would affect the proportion of heavy drinkers among Russian males (and subsequently also affect mortality rates). I find that that higher alcohol prices reduce the probability of being a heavy drinker by a non-trivial amount. An increase in the price of vodka by 50% would save the lives of 40,000 males annually, and would result in an increase in welfare. Peers account for a quarter of this effect.The second chapter analyzes the consequences of government policy towards light alcohol drinks. Light drinks are commonly viewed as stepping stone to harder drinks, but also as safer substitutes for them. Here, I analyze this trade-off by utilizing micro-level data on the alcohol consumption of Russian males. I find, first, that beer is a safer drink compared to hard alcohol beverages, in the sense that consumption of hard beverages increases the hazard of death while consumption of beer does not. Second, I find that beer is a substitute for vodka: there is significant positive cross-price elasticity of vodka consumption with respect to beer price. I find also little evidence that beer consumption actually serves as stepping stone for vodka consumption. Initiation of beer consumption instead forms habits for the further consumption of beer. Drinking beer at earlier ages results in higher beer consumption and higher overall alcohol intake in older years, but also results in reduced consumption of hard drinks compared to vodka drinkers and to non-abstainers. Finally, I estimate a multivariate model of consumer choice, and quantify the effect of different government policies on mortality rates, drinking patterns, and consumer welfare. I find that the taxation of beer may decrease consumer welfare and increase mortality rates. In contrast, subsidizing beer consumption will increase consumer welfare and even slightly decrease mortality rates.The third chapter of my dissertation documents the unequal enforcement of liberalization reform of business regulation across Russian regions with different governance institutions, which leads to unequal effects of liberalization. National liberalization laws were enforced more effectively in sub-national regions with a more transparent government, more-informed population, higher concentration of industry, and stronger fiscal autonomy. As a result, in regions with stronger governance institutions liberalization had a substantial positive effect on the performance of small firms and on the growth of the official small-business sector in general. In contrast, in regions with weaker governance institutions there is no effect from the reform, and in some cases even a negative effect is observed
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Essays on Empirical Analysis of Continuous-Time Models of Industrial Organization
No full textThe dissertation consists of three essays. The first
essay describes and estimates the model of bidding on eBay.
Internet auctions (such as eBay) differ from the traditional
auction format in that participants 1) typically face a choice
over several simultaneous auctions and 2) often have limited
information about rival bidders. Since existing economic models do
not account for these features of the bidding environment, it
should not be surprising that even casual empiricism reveals a
sharp discrepancy between the predictions of existing theory and
the actual behavior of bidders. In this paper, I show that the
presence of multiple, contemporaneous auctions for similar items
coupled with uncertainty regarding rival entry can explain both
features. I analyze these features in a continuous-time stochastic
auction model with endogenous entry, in which bidder types are
differentiated by their initial information regarding the entry
process. Empirical estimates using eBay auctions of pop-music CDs
confirm my theoretical prediction that the rate of entry depends
on price. I then test my model against alternative explanations of
observed bidding behavior using a detailed field experiment.
The second essay is on empirical analysis of executive
compensation in the continuous-time environment. In this essay, I
develop a methodology for the identification and non-parametric
estimation of a continuous-time principal-agent model. My
framework extends the existing literature on optimal dynamic
contracts by allowing for the presence of unobserved state
variables. To accommodate such heterogeneity, I develop an
estimation method based on numerically solving for the optimal
non-linear manager's response to the restrictions of the contract.
To demonstrate this feature, I apply my methodology to executive
contracts from the retail apparel industry.The third essay provides a tractable methodology for the
construction and structural estimation of continuous time dynamic
models. The specific class of models covered by my framework
includes competitive dynamic games where there are no direct
spillovers between objective functions of players. I develop an
estimation methodology based on the properties of the equilibrium
of the model. The methodology that I design can be applied to
welfare and revenue analysis of large dynamic models. As an
example, I compute the revenue and welfare gains for a
counter-factual exercise in which the eBay auction website changes
the format of its auctions from second-price to a flexible ending.</p
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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