Wafa H Orman | University of Alabama in Huntsville (original) (raw)
Publications by Wafa H Orman
Much work has been done in recent times to answer the question of why people contribute, and cont... more Much work has been done in recent times to answer the question of why people contribute, and continue to contribute, to open-source and free software, despite the lack of immediate financial gain in most cases. Most have answered this in terms of intrinsic motivation. However , it has also been hypothesized (Lerner and Tirole, 2002) that open-source contributions act as a form of job-market signaling – they permit prospective employers to judge a person's ability directly. This paper tests that hypothesis using a complementarity framework – if open-source contributions and education are both forms of job-market signaling, then they are likely to be linked in some way. I find evidence that they are complements, and therefore fail to reject the job-market signaling hypothesis, while conclusively rejecting the idea that they are substitutes.
This paper compares behavior of heterogeneous groups with homogeneous groups in public goods prod... more This paper compares behavior of heterogeneous groups with homogeneous groups in public goods production. In heterogeneous groups members differ in their opportunity costs of contribution, while in homogeneous groups, members have the same opportunity costs. Members of three-player groups sequentially make all-or-nothing contributions towards the production of a public good where contribution decisions, payoffs, and opportunity costs of preceding players in the group are known to each group member. We find that heterogeneous groups perform better than homogeneous groups controlling for average opportunity costs at the group level. Our results also indicate that subjects develop an endogenous contribution norm to sustain public goods production where subjects in the first positions, and subjects with relatively low opportunity costs contribute most often.
Decisions about public goods in the real world are frequently made by trustees—individuals respon... more Decisions about public goods in the real world are frequently made by trustees—individuals responsible for managing pools of contributed funds—rather than by the contributors themselves. We conduct a laboratory experiment to compare contributions made by trustees who play with other trustees using their group's resources, with contributions made from their own endowment. We examine the decisions made by subjects in the two voluntary contribution public goods games, distinguishing between altruistic and reciprocal actions, and unpacking the heterogeneity of other-regarding preferences. Subjects contribute more when acting as trustees than when playing with their own money. Consistent with theories of other-regarding preferences, subjects free-ride less when they serve as trustees. They also more frequently conditionally contribute amounts greater than the unconditional contributions of other trustees in the group, while also unconditionally contributing more than they expect from others.
Building upon labor market theory, we investigate whether under-or over-investing in CEOs (i.e., ... more Building upon labor market theory, we investigate whether under-or over-investing in CEOs (i.e., strategically paying above or below a CEO's predicted labor market compensation rate) affects long-term firm value and whether there are diminishing returns to these investments. Our results indicate that investments in CEOs are positively related to long-term firm value and that the relationship diminishes, eventually becoming negative, as investments increase.
This paper investigates the effect of heterogeneous group compositions in a sequential contributi... more This paper investigates the effect of heterogeneous group compositions in a sequential contribution public good environment. We compare group behavior, when opportunity costs of contribution differ across group members to a situation where the opportunity costs of contribution remain the same across group members. In our experiment, members of three-player groups make all-or-nothing contributions sequentially towards the provision of a public good where contribution decisions of preceding players, payoffs and opportunity costs of group members are known to all group members. We find that heterogeneous groups manage to sustain contribution over multiple periods. In contrast, homogeneous groups fail to contribute consistently over the periods. Our experiments provide support for lead-by-example behavior. While first movers often exhibit trust towards subsequent movers by contributing, and subsequent movers often prove to be trustworthy by reciprocating contribution of preceding players, a closer scrutiny suggests that trusting behavior by first movers can possibly be strategic.
Papers by Wafa H Orman
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
Different community organizations require varying levels of contribution and effort from, and com... more Different community organizations require varying levels of contribution and effort from, and compete for the time, effort, and resources of a heterogeneous population of potential volunteers. Many are not able to sanction free-riders in any meaningful way, and must accoount for people's ability to opt out of joining groups altogether. I conduct threshold local public goods experiments with two groups, one with a low threshold and one high, and subjects with randomly distributed opportunity costs ("wages"). I allow subjects to opt out of joining a group in some treatments. Overall, I find that subjects self-select-high-wage subjects choose the low-threshold group, and vice versa. An "entry fee"-a small required contribution-for the high-threshold group increases both provision rates and low-wage subjects' earnings. When subjects are allowed to opt out of joining a group, provision rates fall, but the low-cost group continues to thrive as long as the high-cost group does not have an entry fee. When it does, it once again has a higher provision rate than the low-cost group. Allowing opting out worsens earnings overall for the low-wage individuals, but increases them for high-wage individuals. JEL Codes: C9, H4 * This experiment was funded by a University of Alabama in Huntsville Junior Faculty Distinguished Research Grant.
Group Decision and Negotiation, 2013
This paper compares behavior of heterogeneous groups with homogeneous groups in public goods prod... more This paper compares behavior of heterogeneous groups with homogeneous groups in public goods production. In heterogeneous groups members differ in their opportunity costs of contribution, while in homogeneous groups, members have the same opportunity costs. Members of three-player groups sequentially make all-ornothing contributions towards the production of a public good where contribution decisions, payoffs, and opportunity costs of preceding players in the group are known to each group member. We find that heterogeneous groups perform better than homogeneous groups controlling for average opportunity costs at the group level. Our results also indicate that subjects develop an endogenous contribution norm to sustain public goods production where subjects in the first positions, and subjects with relatively low opportunity costs contribute most often.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2008
Markets for operating systems are classic two-sided platforms, where the users of the operating s... more Markets for operating systems are classic two-sided platforms, where the users of the operating system must purchase applications from application developers, but neither side internalizes the welfare impact of their adoption of the platform on the other side. Studies of competition and compatibility between two-sided platforms have tended to focus on cases where both platforms are owned by profit-maximizing firms. This paper specifically focuses on the effects of competition and compatibility between a profit-maximizing, or "proprietary" platform and an open, freely accessible platform. Under certain conditions, compatibility (meaning applications developed for one platform can be used on the other) can in fact be a profitable strategy even for a proprietary platform, and can benefit developers on both platforms. It also unambiguously improves social welfare in some cases, and there are cases where compatibility is welfare-improving but the proprietary platform has no incentive to invest in it.
Do cattle slaughter bans during early life affect anemia decades later? We exploit an ongoing nat... more Do cattle slaughter bans during early life affect anemia decades later? We exploit an ongoing natural experiment from the rollout of legislation banning cow slaughter across states in India to study the long-term effect of disruptions in red meat intake during pregnancy on the next generation. Reduced consumption of iron rich animal proteins is likely to be particularly harmful for pregnant women, who have a significantly greater need for iron. Indian women in particular may be most vulnerable, as over 50% of Indian women suffer from at least mild to moderate anemia. Using a triple difference-in-difference strategy which exploits variation across religious and caste groups which do and do not consume beef and time (cohort) variation in implementation of laws over more than 40 years from time of 1950s to 1990s in different states of India, we find that overall, women exposed to cow slaughter bans in their year of birth have lower levels of hemoglobin (Hb) and are up to 10% more likel...
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
CHAPTER 2 An experimental analysis of teamwork and open-source software development (with Utteeyo... more CHAPTER 2 An experimental analysis of teamwork and open-source software development (with Utteeyo Dasgupta) .
After the Farm Crisis: Religiosity in the Rural United States The farm crisis in the United State... more After the Farm Crisis: Religiosity in the Rural United States The farm crisis in the United States in the 1980s had profound effects on rural, agricultural regions of the country, but almost no impact on urban and suburban areas. I use a difference-indifference methodology and find that religiosity as measured by religious attendance increased significantly in areas impacted by the crisis for those who worked in agriculture. Chen (2010) describes increased religiosity in Indonesia following the 1998 financial crisis, and this paper demonstrates a similar response to severe financial distress in the United States. I also find evidence that this increase is not due to a lower opportunity cost of time, as those who are currently employed have higher levels of attendance than those who are not. I hypothesize that the increased religiosity results from religious institutions' ability to provide public goods, both financial and emotional, in the form of community support.
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2015
Trust and trustworthiness are crucial to amelioration of social dilemmas. Distrust and malevolenc... more Trust and trustworthiness are crucial to amelioration of social dilemmas. Distrust and malevolence aggravate social dilemmas. We use an experimental moonlighting game with a sample of the U.S. population, oversampling immigrants, to observe interactions between immigrants and native-born Americans in a social dilemma situation that can elicit both benevolent and malevolent actions. We survey participants in order to relate outcomes in the moonlighting game to demographic characteristics and traditional, survey-based measures of trust and trustworthiness and show that they are strongly correlated. Overall, we find that immigrants are as trusting as native-born U.S. citizens when they interact with native-born citizens but do not trust other immigrants. Immigrants appear to be less trustworthy overall but this finding disappears when we control for demographic variables. Women and older people are less likely to trust but no more or less trustworthy. Highly religious immigrants are less trusting and less trustworthy than both other immigrants and native-born Americans.
The decline in IS enrollments since 2002 have been a cause of serious concern for IS departments.... more The decline in IS enrollments since 2002 have been a cause of serious concern for IS departments. Many programs have closed IS departments, reduced in size or merged with other departments. IS faculty and associations have taken numerous steps to stem the tide of declining enrollments such as redesigning the IS curricula, forming partnerships with alumni and IS professionals, improved marketing and information dissemination to alleviate myths and stereotypes as well as apprise students of the global opportunities available in IS. An understanding of the IS student will help us better target programs and approaches to reduce the enrollment decline. This study seeks to answer this question about the academic standing, demographic profile and satisfaction levels of the IS student by analyzing the 277,238 exit surveys of which 13,910 are from IS majors from 344 US business schools for the period 1999 – 2007
This paper uses the state-level rollout of cattle slaughter bans in India as a natural experiment... more This paper uses the state-level rollout of cattle slaughter bans in India as a natural experiment in beef availability around birth. We compile historical data on cattle slaughter ban legislation by state and harmonize it with household and individual level data on beef consumption (National Sample Surveys) and biomarkers (Demographic and Health Surveys). Using a difference-in-differences and event study design, we show that “beef bans” a) reduce beef consumption and women’s hemoglobin in communities that traditionally eat beef in the short-term; b) early life exposure to cattle slaughter bans makes women 10% more likely to be anemic decades after birth. (JEL I12, J16, O15, O17, Z12) 1 We would like to thank Philip Keefer, Gustavo Torrens, Harold Alderman, Karthik Muralidharan, Atheendar Venkataramani, Lee and Alexandra Benham, Rossella Calvi, Yinghua He, Rakesh Banerjee, Saravana Ravindran, and participants at the North East Universities Development Consortium Conference 2018, Rona...
We examine the connection between childhood religious attendance and educational attainment using... more We examine the connection between childhood religious attendance and educational attainment using data from two sources: the NLSY79 Child/Young Adult Survey and two waves of the Baylor Religion Survey. We consider both attendance as a child and parents' religious attendance. Preliminary results from a multiple equation model applied to the NLSY79 children suggest that childhood religious attendance influences educational attainment indirectly by increasing cognitive skills and reducing behavioral problems. Quantile regressions on the NLSY79 children indicate the greatest impact at the lower levels of educational attainment, raising the possibility (to be explored in future versions of this paper) that less-educated parents may use religious attendance as a substitute for parental investment in cognitive and noncognitive skills. Results from the Baylor Surveys show that better-educated people were more likely to have parents who attended church services twice a month or more, though this result is stronger for daughters than for sons. Additional results suggest that highly-educated parents are more likely to attend religious services than highly-educated nonparents, but that religious attendance rates among lower-educated parents and nonparents are similar. Overall, our results, though preliminary, point to highly-educated parents use of religious attendance as part of an overall human capital investment strategy for their children, while lower-educated parents are less inclined to do so even though religious attendance has stronger measurable impact on their children's educational attainment.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Much work has been done in recent times to answer the question of why people contribute, and cont... more Much work has been done in recent times to answer the question of why people contribute, and continue to contribute to open-source and free software, despite the lack of immediate financial gain in most cases. Lerner and Tirole (2002) hypothesize that open-source contributions act as a form of job-market signaling – they permit prospective employers to judge a person's ability
Much work has been done in recent times to answer the question of why people contribute, and cont... more Much work has been done in recent times to answer the question of why people contribute, and continue to contribute, to open-source and free software, despite the lack of immediate financial gain in most cases. Most have answered this in terms of intrinsic motivation. However , it has also been hypothesized (Lerner and Tirole, 2002) that open-source contributions act as a form of job-market signaling – they permit prospective employers to judge a person's ability directly. This paper tests that hypothesis using a complementarity framework – if open-source contributions and education are both forms of job-market signaling, then they are likely to be linked in some way. I find evidence that they are complements, and therefore fail to reject the job-market signaling hypothesis, while conclusively rejecting the idea that they are substitutes.
This paper compares behavior of heterogeneous groups with homogeneous groups in public goods prod... more This paper compares behavior of heterogeneous groups with homogeneous groups in public goods production. In heterogeneous groups members differ in their opportunity costs of contribution, while in homogeneous groups, members have the same opportunity costs. Members of three-player groups sequentially make all-or-nothing contributions towards the production of a public good where contribution decisions, payoffs, and opportunity costs of preceding players in the group are known to each group member. We find that heterogeneous groups perform better than homogeneous groups controlling for average opportunity costs at the group level. Our results also indicate that subjects develop an endogenous contribution norm to sustain public goods production where subjects in the first positions, and subjects with relatively low opportunity costs contribute most often.
Decisions about public goods in the real world are frequently made by trustees—individuals respon... more Decisions about public goods in the real world are frequently made by trustees—individuals responsible for managing pools of contributed funds—rather than by the contributors themselves. We conduct a laboratory experiment to compare contributions made by trustees who play with other trustees using their group's resources, with contributions made from their own endowment. We examine the decisions made by subjects in the two voluntary contribution public goods games, distinguishing between altruistic and reciprocal actions, and unpacking the heterogeneity of other-regarding preferences. Subjects contribute more when acting as trustees than when playing with their own money. Consistent with theories of other-regarding preferences, subjects free-ride less when they serve as trustees. They also more frequently conditionally contribute amounts greater than the unconditional contributions of other trustees in the group, while also unconditionally contributing more than they expect from others.
Building upon labor market theory, we investigate whether under-or over-investing in CEOs (i.e., ... more Building upon labor market theory, we investigate whether under-or over-investing in CEOs (i.e., strategically paying above or below a CEO's predicted labor market compensation rate) affects long-term firm value and whether there are diminishing returns to these investments. Our results indicate that investments in CEOs are positively related to long-term firm value and that the relationship diminishes, eventually becoming negative, as investments increase.
This paper investigates the effect of heterogeneous group compositions in a sequential contributi... more This paper investigates the effect of heterogeneous group compositions in a sequential contribution public good environment. We compare group behavior, when opportunity costs of contribution differ across group members to a situation where the opportunity costs of contribution remain the same across group members. In our experiment, members of three-player groups make all-or-nothing contributions sequentially towards the provision of a public good where contribution decisions of preceding players, payoffs and opportunity costs of group members are known to all group members. We find that heterogeneous groups manage to sustain contribution over multiple periods. In contrast, homogeneous groups fail to contribute consistently over the periods. Our experiments provide support for lead-by-example behavior. While first movers often exhibit trust towards subsequent movers by contributing, and subsequent movers often prove to be trustworthy by reciprocating contribution of preceding players, a closer scrutiny suggests that trusting behavior by first movers can possibly be strategic.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
Different community organizations require varying levels of contribution and effort from, and com... more Different community organizations require varying levels of contribution and effort from, and compete for the time, effort, and resources of a heterogeneous population of potential volunteers. Many are not able to sanction free-riders in any meaningful way, and must accoount for people's ability to opt out of joining groups altogether. I conduct threshold local public goods experiments with two groups, one with a low threshold and one high, and subjects with randomly distributed opportunity costs ("wages"). I allow subjects to opt out of joining a group in some treatments. Overall, I find that subjects self-select-high-wage subjects choose the low-threshold group, and vice versa. An "entry fee"-a small required contribution-for the high-threshold group increases both provision rates and low-wage subjects' earnings. When subjects are allowed to opt out of joining a group, provision rates fall, but the low-cost group continues to thrive as long as the high-cost group does not have an entry fee. When it does, it once again has a higher provision rate than the low-cost group. Allowing opting out worsens earnings overall for the low-wage individuals, but increases them for high-wage individuals. JEL Codes: C9, H4 * This experiment was funded by a University of Alabama in Huntsville Junior Faculty Distinguished Research Grant.
Group Decision and Negotiation, 2013
This paper compares behavior of heterogeneous groups with homogeneous groups in public goods prod... more This paper compares behavior of heterogeneous groups with homogeneous groups in public goods production. In heterogeneous groups members differ in their opportunity costs of contribution, while in homogeneous groups, members have the same opportunity costs. Members of three-player groups sequentially make all-ornothing contributions towards the production of a public good where contribution decisions, payoffs, and opportunity costs of preceding players in the group are known to each group member. We find that heterogeneous groups perform better than homogeneous groups controlling for average opportunity costs at the group level. Our results also indicate that subjects develop an endogenous contribution norm to sustain public goods production where subjects in the first positions, and subjects with relatively low opportunity costs contribute most often.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2008
Markets for operating systems are classic two-sided platforms, where the users of the operating s... more Markets for operating systems are classic two-sided platforms, where the users of the operating system must purchase applications from application developers, but neither side internalizes the welfare impact of their adoption of the platform on the other side. Studies of competition and compatibility between two-sided platforms have tended to focus on cases where both platforms are owned by profit-maximizing firms. This paper specifically focuses on the effects of competition and compatibility between a profit-maximizing, or "proprietary" platform and an open, freely accessible platform. Under certain conditions, compatibility (meaning applications developed for one platform can be used on the other) can in fact be a profitable strategy even for a proprietary platform, and can benefit developers on both platforms. It also unambiguously improves social welfare in some cases, and there are cases where compatibility is welfare-improving but the proprietary platform has no incentive to invest in it.
Do cattle slaughter bans during early life affect anemia decades later? We exploit an ongoing nat... more Do cattle slaughter bans during early life affect anemia decades later? We exploit an ongoing natural experiment from the rollout of legislation banning cow slaughter across states in India to study the long-term effect of disruptions in red meat intake during pregnancy on the next generation. Reduced consumption of iron rich animal proteins is likely to be particularly harmful for pregnant women, who have a significantly greater need for iron. Indian women in particular may be most vulnerable, as over 50% of Indian women suffer from at least mild to moderate anemia. Using a triple difference-in-difference strategy which exploits variation across religious and caste groups which do and do not consume beef and time (cohort) variation in implementation of laws over more than 40 years from time of 1950s to 1990s in different states of India, we find that overall, women exposed to cow slaughter bans in their year of birth have lower levels of hemoglobin (Hb) and are up to 10% more likel...
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
CHAPTER 2 An experimental analysis of teamwork and open-source software development (with Utteeyo... more CHAPTER 2 An experimental analysis of teamwork and open-source software development (with Utteeyo Dasgupta) .
After the Farm Crisis: Religiosity in the Rural United States The farm crisis in the United State... more After the Farm Crisis: Religiosity in the Rural United States The farm crisis in the United States in the 1980s had profound effects on rural, agricultural regions of the country, but almost no impact on urban and suburban areas. I use a difference-indifference methodology and find that religiosity as measured by religious attendance increased significantly in areas impacted by the crisis for those who worked in agriculture. Chen (2010) describes increased religiosity in Indonesia following the 1998 financial crisis, and this paper demonstrates a similar response to severe financial distress in the United States. I also find evidence that this increase is not due to a lower opportunity cost of time, as those who are currently employed have higher levels of attendance than those who are not. I hypothesize that the increased religiosity results from religious institutions' ability to provide public goods, both financial and emotional, in the form of community support.
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2015
Trust and trustworthiness are crucial to amelioration of social dilemmas. Distrust and malevolenc... more Trust and trustworthiness are crucial to amelioration of social dilemmas. Distrust and malevolence aggravate social dilemmas. We use an experimental moonlighting game with a sample of the U.S. population, oversampling immigrants, to observe interactions between immigrants and native-born Americans in a social dilemma situation that can elicit both benevolent and malevolent actions. We survey participants in order to relate outcomes in the moonlighting game to demographic characteristics and traditional, survey-based measures of trust and trustworthiness and show that they are strongly correlated. Overall, we find that immigrants are as trusting as native-born U.S. citizens when they interact with native-born citizens but do not trust other immigrants. Immigrants appear to be less trustworthy overall but this finding disappears when we control for demographic variables. Women and older people are less likely to trust but no more or less trustworthy. Highly religious immigrants are less trusting and less trustworthy than both other immigrants and native-born Americans.
The decline in IS enrollments since 2002 have been a cause of serious concern for IS departments.... more The decline in IS enrollments since 2002 have been a cause of serious concern for IS departments. Many programs have closed IS departments, reduced in size or merged with other departments. IS faculty and associations have taken numerous steps to stem the tide of declining enrollments such as redesigning the IS curricula, forming partnerships with alumni and IS professionals, improved marketing and information dissemination to alleviate myths and stereotypes as well as apprise students of the global opportunities available in IS. An understanding of the IS student will help us better target programs and approaches to reduce the enrollment decline. This study seeks to answer this question about the academic standing, demographic profile and satisfaction levels of the IS student by analyzing the 277,238 exit surveys of which 13,910 are from IS majors from 344 US business schools for the period 1999 – 2007
This paper uses the state-level rollout of cattle slaughter bans in India as a natural experiment... more This paper uses the state-level rollout of cattle slaughter bans in India as a natural experiment in beef availability around birth. We compile historical data on cattle slaughter ban legislation by state and harmonize it with household and individual level data on beef consumption (National Sample Surveys) and biomarkers (Demographic and Health Surveys). Using a difference-in-differences and event study design, we show that “beef bans” a) reduce beef consumption and women’s hemoglobin in communities that traditionally eat beef in the short-term; b) early life exposure to cattle slaughter bans makes women 10% more likely to be anemic decades after birth. (JEL I12, J16, O15, O17, Z12) 1 We would like to thank Philip Keefer, Gustavo Torrens, Harold Alderman, Karthik Muralidharan, Atheendar Venkataramani, Lee and Alexandra Benham, Rossella Calvi, Yinghua He, Rakesh Banerjee, Saravana Ravindran, and participants at the North East Universities Development Consortium Conference 2018, Rona...
We examine the connection between childhood religious attendance and educational attainment using... more We examine the connection between childhood religious attendance and educational attainment using data from two sources: the NLSY79 Child/Young Adult Survey and two waves of the Baylor Religion Survey. We consider both attendance as a child and parents' religious attendance. Preliminary results from a multiple equation model applied to the NLSY79 children suggest that childhood religious attendance influences educational attainment indirectly by increasing cognitive skills and reducing behavioral problems. Quantile regressions on the NLSY79 children indicate the greatest impact at the lower levels of educational attainment, raising the possibility (to be explored in future versions of this paper) that less-educated parents may use religious attendance as a substitute for parental investment in cognitive and noncognitive skills. Results from the Baylor Surveys show that better-educated people were more likely to have parents who attended church services twice a month or more, though this result is stronger for daughters than for sons. Additional results suggest that highly-educated parents are more likely to attend religious services than highly-educated nonparents, but that religious attendance rates among lower-educated parents and nonparents are similar. Overall, our results, though preliminary, point to highly-educated parents use of religious attendance as part of an overall human capital investment strategy for their children, while lower-educated parents are less inclined to do so even though religious attendance has stronger measurable impact on their children's educational attainment.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Much work has been done in recent times to answer the question of why people contribute, and cont... more Much work has been done in recent times to answer the question of why people contribute, and continue to contribute to open-source and free software, despite the lack of immediate financial gain in most cases. Lerner and Tirole (2002) hypothesize that open-source contributions act as a form of job-market signaling – they permit prospective employers to judge a person's ability
Abstract: Decisions about the level and allocation of public goods in the real world are frequent... more Abstract: Decisions about the level and allocation of public goods in the real world are frequently made by representatives or trustees, rather than by the contributors themselves. We design and conduct an experiment to test the difference between contributions made by trustees vis-à-vis contributions made with one's own endowment.
We look at data from the two waves of the Baylor Survey taken in the spring of 2005 and the fall ... more We look at data from the two waves of the Baylor Survey taken in the spring of 2005 and the fall of 2006, and from the NLSY79 Child/Young Adult Survey to see the effects of parental and personal religious attendance on educational outcomes. Preliminary results from the Baylor Surveys show that parents are a lot more likely to go to church than people with no children; and better-educated people generally had parents who attended church services twice a month or more. We then look at the Child/Young Adult Survey of the NLSY79, and find that, controlling for mother and family effects, educational outcomes are increasing in religious attendance, but this effect weakens for higher levels of mother's education.
Trust is a crucial component of social capital. We use an experimental moonlighting game with a r... more Trust is a crucial component of social capital. We use an experimental moonlighting game with a representative sample of the U.S. population, oversampling immigrants, to study trust, positive, and negative reciprocity between first-generation immigrants and native-born Americans as a measure of immigrant assimilation. We also survey subjects in order to relate trusting and trustworthy behavior with demographic characteristics and traditional, survey-based measures of social capital. We find that immigrants are as trusting as native-born U.S. citizens when faced with another native-born citizen, but do not trust other immigrants. Immigrants appear to be less trustworthy overall but this finding disappears when we control for demographic variables and the amount sent by the first mover. The length of time an immigrant has been a naturalized U.S. citizen appears to increase trustworthiness but does not affect trusting behavior. Women and older people are less likely to trust, but no mo...
Journal of Business Research, 2015
ABSTRACT Building upon labor market theory, we investigate whether under- or over-investing in CE... more ABSTRACT Building upon labor market theory, we investigate whether under- or over-investing in CEOs (i.e., strategically paying above or below a CEO's predicted labor market compensation rate) affects long-term firm value and whether there are diminishing returns to these investments. Our results indicate that investments in CEOs are positively related to long-term firm value and that the relationship diminishes, eventually becoming negative, as investments increase.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Abstract: Decisions about the level and allocation of public goods in the real world are frequent... more Abstract: Decisions about the level and allocation of public goods in the real world are frequently made by representatives or trustees, rather than by the contributors themselves. We design and conduct an experiment to test the difference between contributions made by trustees vis-à-vis contributions made with one's own endowment. We explore the patterns of decisions made by subjects in the two games, distinguishing between altruistic and reciprocal actions, and unpacking the potential heterogeneity of other-regarding ...
Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 2013
ABSTRACT In a 207-country sample, we find that rule of law and corruption are both associated wit... more ABSTRACT In a 207-country sample, we find that rule of law and corruption are both associated with a country’s religious heritage, thereby partially explaining the correlation between religion and economic growth found in previous research. We also show that our results change when we control for some variables lacking data for all countries in the sample but that these differences are attributable to changes in sample composition rather than the effects of the control variables. Our research suggests that researchers doing cross-country analysis should distinguish between the effects of adding a control variable and the resulting sample composition effects.