Variations in the Wage Returns to a First Degree: Evidence from the British Cohort Study 1970 As in many other countries, government policy in the UK has the objective of raising the participation rate of young people in higher education, while increasing the share of the costs of higher education paid by students themselves. A rationale for the latter element comes from evidence of a high priv...

We provide evidence on the impact of globalization on labor market outcomes analyzing pay differences between foreign-acquired and domestically-owned firms. For this purpose, we use firm level data from 16 European countries over the time period 1999–2006. Applying propensity score matching techniques we estimate positive wage premia of cross-boarder merger and acquisitions (M&As), suggesting t...

The rapid growth of the prison system over the last three decades represents a critical institutional intervention in the lives of American families, which may have far-reaching and unintended consequences for demographic processes. In this paper, we investigate how exposure to the criminal justice system affects the fertility of men. Using propensity score matching methods and data from multip...

Program Quality and Treatment Completion for Youth Training Programs This paper analyzes the effects of training quality on the likelihood of treatment completion by estimating dose-response functions via a generalized propensity score. Results show a statistically positive relationship between training quality and treatment completion for youth participants in Peru. JEL Classification: I3, J2, C8

While the literature generally concludes that Big N auditors provide higher audit quality than nonBig N auditors, an unresolved question is whether this Big N effect is driven by self-selection. In particular, a recent high profile study suggests that Propensity Score Matching (PSM) on a set of commonly examined client characteristics causes Big N quality differentiation to disappear (Lawrence,...

In this paper, the authors evaluate the impact of access to ICT-based market information on prices received by farmers and the intensity of adoption of improved hybrid and composite maize varieties. Propensity score matching is applied to cross-sectional survey data from farmers whose major cash crop is maize. Results indicate that adoption of improved maize has a positive and significant effec...

Using data from a 40-year longitudinal study, the authors examined 3 related hypotheses about the effects of grade skipping on future educational and occupational outcomes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). From a combined sample of 3,467 mathematically precocious students (top 1%), a combination of exact and propensity score matching was used to create balanced compar...

Feed-in tariff (FiT) is one of the most popular policy measures for supporting the generation from renewable energy sources. In this paper we individuate the determinants driving a country’s choice of adopting FiT and investigate the reasons at the bottom of their distinctions in the choice of energy policies. The novelty of the paper relates to the methodology used to obtain the second aim tha...

Customer reward systems have rapidly shifted from plastic cards schemes to mobile application-based initiatives, yet our understanding of the economic value of mobile reward systems has not kept pace with this development. Using an individual-level transaction and reward redemption dataset from a large multi-brand, offline food-andbeverage merchandiser, we examine the effects of reward app adop...

This paper uses a rich panel dataset of Spanish manufacturing rms (1990-2006) and a propensity score reweighting estimator to show that multinational rms acquire the most productive domestic rms, which, on acquisition, conduct more product and process innovation (simultaneously adopting new machines and organizational practices) and adopt foreign technologies, leading to higher productivity....