nep-inv New Economics Papers
on Investment
Issue of 2023‒10‒09
ten papers chosen by
Daniela Cialfi, Università degli Studi di Teramo


  1. Minimum Wages and Voting: Assessing the Political Returns to Redistribution outside the Tax System By Huet-Vaughn, Emiliano
  2. Overeducation, Performance Pay and Wages: Evidence from Germany By Mehrzad B. Baktash
  3. Wage Inequality in Bulgaria: Decomposition by Economic Sectors, Occupational Groups and Districts By Svilena Mihaylova
  4. Donut Regression Discontinuity Designs By Cladia Noack; Chistoph Rothe
  5. 외국인 직접투자가 베트남의 성별 임금 격차에 미치는 영향과 시사점(Foreign Direct Investment and Gender Wage Gap: Vietnamese Evidence) By Kim, Jegook
  6. Entwicklung eines Modells zur Quantifizierung landwirtschaftlicher Stickstoffbilanzen in Rheinland-Pfalz - AGRUM-RP By Zinnbauer, Maximilian; Eysholdt, Max; Kreins, Peter
  7. Failing Just Fine: Assessing Careers of Venture Capital-backed Entrepreneurs via a Non-Wage Measure By Graham J. Abbott; Natee Amornsiripanitch; Paul Gompers; George Hu; Will Levinson; Vladimir Mukharlyamov
  8. Encouraging Preventative Care to Manage Chronic Disease at Scale By Claire E. Boone; Pablo A. Celhay; Paul Gertler; Tadeja Gracner
  9. Review essay: The young Hayek By Ivo Maes
  10. Mehr Qualität bei der Qualitätssicherung: Kriterien für eine wissenschaftlich fundierte Lehrveranstaltungsevaluation durch Studierende By Verbeek, Veronika

  1. By: Huet-Vaughn, Emiliano (Pomona College)
    Abstract: The positive political returns to providing cash transfers have been well documented. However, redistribution through the tax and transfer system, while direct, is not the only means by which governments seek to change the income distribution: regulation of private market transactions may have a similar, if indirect, effect, implicitly redistributing via so-called "pre-distribution" policies. Wage floors, in particular, are implemented with the explicit goal of redistributing pre-tax firm income to low-wage workers. In the United States, polls consistently indicate minimum wage increases are broadly popular, and, also clearly associated with the Democratic party. This paper provides the first test of whether large minimum wage increases actually yield electoral gains for Democrats. For both federal and state races, I find no evidence that this is generally true using an event-study design and sub-national variation in minimum wages from the early 1990s to recent years. A null result is further confirmed when using a beneficiary-level political sentiment measure and difference-in-difference design. Various explanations for the finding are explored and dispelled while newly collected survey evidence supports a salience, or inattention, mechanism. Specifically, voters are found to attend much less to a minimum wage increase than to an equivalently-valued direct cash transfer from the government. This suggests putting money in people's hands may not be enough to receive political credit and that the directness of a transfer may itself matter.
    Keywords: salience, minimum wage, voting
    JEL: J8 D72
    Date: 2023–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16416&r=inv
  2. By: Mehrzad B. Baktash
    Abstract: Overeducated workers are more productive and have higher wages in comparison to their adequately educated coworkers in the same jobs. However, they face a series of challenges in the labor market, including lower wages in comparison to their similarly educated peers who are in correctly matched jobs. Yet, less consensus exists over the adjustment mechanisms to overcome the negative consequences of overeducation. This study examines the hypotheses that overeducated workers sort into performance pay jobs as an adjustment mechanism and that performance pay moderates their wages. Using German Socio-Economic Panel, I show that overeducation associates with a higher likelihood of sorting into performance pay jobs and that performance pay moderates the wages of overeducated workers positively. It also holds in endogenous switching regressions accounting for the potential endogeneity of performance pay. Importantly, the positive role of performance pay is particularly larger for the wages of overeducated women.
    Keywords: Performance Pay; Overeducation; Wages; Educational Mismatch; Sorting
    JEL: I21 J24 J31 J33 M52
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trr:wpaper:202308&r=inv
  3. By: Svilena Mihaylova (University of Economics Ð Varna)
    Abstract: Given the pronounced income disparities in the Bulgarian economy, the paper explores wage inequality across economic sectors, occupational groups and districts in the country between 2008 and 2021. Using the between-group component of the Theil's T Statistic, the analysis reveals an overall upward trend in the evolution of wage inequality across sectors, occupational groups and districts. The largest positive contributor to inter-sectoral wage inequality is the highest paid information and communication sector. In terms of the wage disparities between occupational categories, the group of the managers has the largest weight. Finally, at a district level, the capital is the greatest positive contributor to between-district wage inequality, due to offering the highest average wage, accounting for around one third of the employment in the country and boasting a concentration of the highest-paid economic activities.
    Keywords: income distribution, wage inequality, regional disparities
    JEL: E24 J31 R12
    Date: 2023–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sko:wpaper:bep-2023-05&r=inv
  4. By: Cladia Noack; Chistoph Rothe
    Abstract: We study the econometric properties of so-called donut regression discontinuity (RD) designs, a robustness exercise which involves repeating estimation and inference without the data points in some area around the treatment threshold. This approach is often motivated by concerns that possible systematic sorting of units, or similar data issues, in some neighborhood of the treatment threshold might distort estimation and inference of RD treatment effects. We show that donut RD estimators can have substantially larger bias and variance than contentional RD estimators, and that the corresponding confidence intervals can be substantially longer. We also provide a formal testing framework for comparing donut and conventional RD estimation results.
    Date: 2023–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2308.14464&r=inv
  5. By: Kim, Jegook (KOREA INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY (KIEP))
    Abstract: 한국을 포함한 세계 다국적 기업의 주요 투자처인 베트남은 사회주의 체제를 유지하고 있으며, 남녀평등을 포함한 평등의 가치를 중요하게 여기는 국가 중 하나이다. 그러나 2010년대 이후 베트남으로의 FDI 유입 확대 추이와 달리, 2015년 이후 성별 임금 격차는 악화되는 모습을 보였다. 이러한 배경에서 본 연구는 베트남 63개 지역의 패널 자료를 사용해 FDI 유입이 유발할 수 있는 성별 임금 격차를 실증분석하고, 노동시장에 대한 정량적 분석과 양성평등 제도에 대한 정성적 분석을 종합해 시사점을 도출했다. 실증분석 결과 FDI 유입과 성별 임금 격차 간에는 대체로 음의 관계가 추정되었는데, 이는 여성 고용이 많은 산업 혹은 이러한 산업이 집중된 지역에서 두드러졌다. 통제변수 중 숙련노동 비중도 대체로 음의 관계가 추정되었다. 이상의 내용을 바탕으로 여성 고용의 양과 질 제고를 위한 FDI 유인구조 설계, 직업훈련 및 교육의 중요성, 양성평등 제도 이행을 위한 노력, 여성의 사회·경제 활동 참여 자기결정권 제고를 시사점으로 제시한다. On July 4, 2023, Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer best known for producing Apple’s products such as iPhone and MacBook, announced plans to invest more than $200 million in northern Vietnam to reduce its dependence on Apple and participate in the electric vehicles market. Including this investment, Foxconn has invested more than 2 billion dollars in Vietnam. Other multinationals such as Intel, LG, Nike, and Samsung are also rushing to invest in Vietnam. As a result Vietnam is sometimes called the FDI darling. These Foreign direct investment (FDI) contributes to Vietnam’s economic growth, not only through the role of capital as a factor of production, but also through the introduction of management skills from advanced economies. The impact of FDI on the host country is not limited to the target enterprises, but includes the transfer of capital or technology to industries and regions. The impact also affects factor markets in the region, in particular labor conditions, including employment, labor productivity, and wages. These effects may vary by industry, occupation, skill, educational level, and Executive Summary 102 • 외국인 직접투자가 베트남의 성별 임금 격차에 미치는 영향과 시사점 gender. This can be a matter of discrimination, especially when other conditions are equal, but the difference is simply due to innate gender differences. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to examine the statistical and institutional status of FDI inflows and the gender wage gap in Vietnam, and to derive implications for governments and firms in Korea and Vietnam. Chapter 2 compares the status of gender equality in Vietnam with key ASEAN countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, focusing on the labor market, and assesses Vietnam’s gender equality institutions. Given Vietnam’s stage of economic development, gender equality in economic activities is good, but there is a need to expand political empowerment, provide paid parental leave, and reduce the gender gap in retirement ages. (the rest omitted)
    Keywords: 외국인직접투자; 노동시장; 외국인직접투자; 성별임금격차; 베트남; Foreign direct investment; labor market; foreign direct investment; gender wage gap; Vietnam
    Date: 2023–09–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kiepre:2023_001&r=inv
  6. By: Zinnbauer, Maximilian; Eysholdt, Max; Kreins, Peter
    Abstract: Background The targets for groundwater quality set out in the Nitrates Directive have not yet been achieved across the board, neither in Germany as a whole nor in Rhineland-Palatinate (RP) (BMU and BMEL, 2020). In RP, 35 of the total 117 groundwater bodies were in poor chemical condition in 2019/2020, corresponding to about 40 % of the state's area (MKUEM Rheinland-Pfalz, 2022). 31 groundwater bodies are in poor chemical condition due to nitrate. Both the Water Framework Directive and the first version of the General Administrative Regulation for the Designation of Nitrate Polluted Areas (AVV GeA), which was passed in 2021, require spatially differentiated information for the planning of mitigation measures and the delineation of polluted areas. Against this background, a tool was developed that quantifies agricultural nitrogen emissions with high spatial resolution, at the municipality level and also within the municipality. The results provide detailed nitrogen budgets for the period 2016 to 2019. This information can be used as a decision support tool for policy processes, as basis for environmental monitoring, and to inform agricultural nitrogen management. The results enable the identification of pollution hot spots as well as uncontaminated areas and allow conclusions to be drawn about the causes of agricultural nitrogen emissions. In combination with additional geohydrological information, regional discharge potentials can be estimated (nitrate leaching).
    Keywords: Land Economics/Use, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:jhimwo:338575&r=inv
  7. By: Graham J. Abbott; Natee Amornsiripanitch; Paul Gompers; George Hu; Will Levinson; Vladimir Mukharlyamov
    Abstract: This paper proposes a non-pecuniary measure of career achievement: seniority. Based on a database of over 130 million resumes, this metric exploits the variation in how long it takes to attain job titles. When non-monetary factors influence career choice, assessing career attainment via non-wage measures, such as seniority, has significant advantages. Accordingly, we use our seniority measure to study labor market outcomes of VC-backed entrepreneurs. Would-be founders experience accelerated career trajectories prior to founding, significantly outperforming graduates from same-tier colleges with similar first jobs. After exiting their start-ups, they obtain jobs about three years more senior than their peers who hold (i) same-tier college degrees, (ii) similar first jobs, and (iii) similar jobs immediately prior to founding their company. Even failed founders find jobs with higher seniority than those attained by their non-founder peers.
    Keywords: career progression; entrepreneurship; venture capital
    JEL: G00 J00 J3 J30 J31 J44 J6 J63
    Date: 2023–08–28
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:96629&r=inv
  8. By: Claire E. Boone; Pablo A. Celhay; Paul Gertler; Tadeja Gracner
    Abstract: We study how reminding high-risk patients with chronic disease of their upcoming primary care appointments impacts their health care and behaviors. We leverage a natural experiment in Chile’s public healthcare system that sent reminders before preventative care appointments to over 300, 000 patients with type 2 diabetes and hypertension across 315 public primary care clinics between 2013 and 2018. Employing both a difference-in-differences and instrumental variables approach on national administrative patient-level data, we show that reminders increased preventative care visits, which led to more health screenings and improved medication adherence. In this at-scale program, we find substantial variation in implementation fidelity across clinics, which, once accounted for increases our estimates by over a third. Reminders also increased hospitalizations and reduced in-hospital mortality, suggesting an improvement in timely care-seeking behavior among high-risk patients. Our findings inform healthcare settings where patients must first visit their primary care provider for approval before undergoing tests, receiving medication prescriptions, or getting referrals to other specialists. Through intervening at the first step in the cascade of care, we find that a simple intervention like reminders can have large and meaningful downstream effects.
    JEL: I11 I12 I15
    Date: 2023–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31643&r=inv
  9. By: Ivo Maes (Robert Triffin Chair, University of Louvain and Visiting Fellow, Bruegel)
    Abstract: Friedrich Hayek has been one of the dominating intellectual figures of the 20th century. Hayek, together with Gunnar Myrdal, received the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, for “their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena”. Bruce Caldwell (Duke University) and Hansjoerg Klausinger (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business), two distinguished historians of economic thought, have produced a massive (840 pages) work, covering the first five decades of Hayek’s existence. Hayek: A Life, 1899-1950 is a monumental and sympathetic biography. The book is based on painstaking archival research and shows great scholarship. The novelty is very much in bringing the person of Hayek to life, with its strengths and weaknesses.
    Keywords: Friedrich Hayek, Austrian school, biography, business cycle theory
    JEL: B20 B31 B53 E14 G28 N10 P00
    Date: 2023–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbb:reswpp:202309-440&r=inv
  10. By: Verbeek, Veronika
    Abstract: Lehrveranstaltungsevaluationen durch Studierende sind ein verbreitetes Mittel zur Sicherung von Hochschulqualität. Die Beobachtung an Hochschulen legt nahe, dass hier nicht immer theoretische und methodische Ansprüche an eine wissenschaftliche Befragung oder an Rahmenbedingungen, Modellierungen von Hochschullehre oder ganz konkret den Erfordernissen eines adäquaten Umgangs mit Lehrenden entsprochen wird. Auf der Grundlage der Erfahrungen an verschiedenen Hochschulen als Lehrende und Gutachterin in Akkreditierungsverfahren fasst der Beitrag aus einer bildungswissenschaftlichen Perspektive 10 Empfehlungen für die Konzeption von Lehrveranstaltungsevaluationen durch Studierende zusammen.
    Keywords: Evaluation, Qualität der Lehre, Lehrveranstaltungsevaluation, quality of teaching, course evaluation
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iubhso:6september2023&r=inv

This nep-inv issue is ©2023 by Daniela Cialfi. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at https://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.