Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties The interplay between religion and the economy has occupied social scientists for long. We construct a unique panel of income and Protestant church attendance for six waves of up to 175 Prussian counties spanning 1886-1911. The data reveal a marked decline in church attendance coinciding with increasing incom...

SYNOPSIS Demand for chief financial officer (CFO) service on corporate boards has grown substantially in recent years, leading to questions about how outside board appointments affect a CFO’s ability fulfill their home firm responsibilities. In this paper, we focus the core responsibility of overseeing reporting quality, and explore types situations where may lead either learning opportunities ...

Smoking Persistence Across Countries: An Analysis Using Semi-Parametric Dynamic Panel Data Models with Selectivity We study smoking persistence in ten countries using data from the European Community Household Panel. Such persistence may be due to true state dependence but may also reflect individual unobserved heterogeneity. We distinguish between the two by using semiparametric dynamic panel ...

ABSTRACT Policies and procedures that centralize decision making within an audit firm create auditor style effects. Prior research suggests this increases financial-statement comparability, implicitly financial statements more useful. However, a potential hazard of is the propagation errors. We examine association between common disclosure issues among clients. measure as presence use comments ...

We modify a previously suggested GMM estimator in a spatial panel regression model by taking into account the difference between disturbances and regression residuals and derive its asymptotic properties. Simulation results and an empirical application to Indonesian rice data illustrate the improvement in finite samples. JEL Classification: C13, C21

Unemployment Persistence: How Important Are Non-Cognitive Skills? Using a random effects dynamic panel data model and the 2000-2008 waves of the German SOEP this paper shows that non-cognitive skills have a predictive power on unemployment transitions. JEL Classification: C33, J64

The aim of this paper is to empirically investigate the determinants of tourism demand by utilizing panel data for the period of 1995-2011 from top 20 countries sending tourists to Turkey. Econometric results obtained from panel cointegration analysis show that macroeconomic factors as such income, prices, supply capacity, exchange rate and political stability play a significant role in determi...

This paper reviews the empirical evidence on firm heterogeneity in international trade. A first wave of empirical findings from micro data on plants and firms proposed challenges for existing models of international trade and inspired the development of new theories emphasizing firm heterogeneity. Subsequent empirical research has examined additional predictions of these theories and explored o...

This paper evaluates the impact of the positive terms of trade (TOT) Shock on macroeconomic variables, using panel data for the six OPEC major oil exporting countries during 1989-2005. The findings indicate that the positive TOT shocks have the small and negative impact on savings and on the trade balance. Nevertheless, it has a positive impact on investment (specifically private investment) an...