BACKGROUND An understanding of whether homocysteine is a cause or a marker of increased blood pressure is relevant because blood homocysteine can be effectively lowered by safe and inexpensive interventions (e.g., vitamin B-6, B-9, and B-12 supplementation). OBJECTIVE The aim was to assess the causal influence of homocysteine on systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP, respectively...

This paper presents a new user-written STATA command called ivtreatreg for the estimation of five different (binary) treatment models with and without idiosyncratic (or heterogeneous) average treatment effect. Depending on the model specified by the user, ivtreatreg provides consistent estimation of average treatment effects both under the hypothesis of “selection on observables” and “selection...

Leaders must scan the internal and external environment, chart strategic and task objectives, and provide performance feedback. These instrumental leadership (IL) functions go beyond the motivational and quid-pro quo leader behaviors that comprise the full-range—transformational, transactional, and laissez faire—leadership model. In four studies we examined the construct validity of IL. We foun...

Unlike in the United States where fertility is found to be negatively correlated with female labor force participation, China has witnessed a decrease in both fertility and female labor force participation since the 1980s. Does fertility play a different role in female labor force participation in China than in the U.S.? To answer this question, this paper exploits plausibly exogenous variation...

In 2008 the income of female GPs was 70%, and their wages (income per hour) were 89%, of those of male GPs. We estimate Oaxaca decompositions using OLS models of wages and 2SLS models of income and propose a set of new direct tests for within workplace gender discrimination. The direct tests are based on a comparison of the differences in income of female and male GPs in practices with varying ...

Why is corruption—defined here as the misuse of public office for private gain—perceived to be more widespread in some countries than others? Different theories associate cross-national variation in the extent of corruption with particular historical and cultural traditions, levels of economic development, political institutions, and government policies. This paper analyzes which of various pla...

Using a sample of resident fathers (either married or cohabiting) from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,213), this study assessed the relationship between child temperament and father involvement. The direct effects of child temperament on father involvement, as well as its moderating effect on the association between other predictor variables and father involvement were me...

This paper analyzes empirically whether political freedom and civil liberties help or hinder economic liberalization, using panel data from 25 post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Former Soviet Union (FSU), between 1992 and 1997. Building on analytical arguments and counter-arguments put forward by the recent literature, the paper identifies the channels through whic...

China experienced a near 5-fold increase in annual Higher Education (HE) enrolment the decade starting 1999. Using Household Finance Survey, we show that Great HE Expansion has exacerbated large pre-existing urban-rural gap educational attainment underpinned by hukou (household registration) system. We instrument years of schooling with interaction between urban status during childhood and timi...