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Surveys that collect data regarding behavior estimates are found in many fields including, but not limited to, those that conduct consumer research, health studies, sexual behavior, drug use, political polls, and many types of education studies. These studies typically use either vague behavioral quantifiers as the response set, or enumerated response sets where the respondent needs to select or tally the target behavior, or a combination of both types. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between these two methods of estimating educationally related behaviors.

Data for this study was taken from the 2010 administration of Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE), which is administered to incoming first‐year students. Respondents included 30,964 first‐year entering students from 81 higher education institutions in the USA. Data analysis was then carried out.

This study found that the more frequent the behavior, the shorter the time frame the respondent uses when estimating the behavior using enumerated strategies. In addition, this study showed that for many educationally relevant behaviors vague quantifiers are associated with increasing enumerated responses for the same behavior showing that two behavioral estimates are providing consistent estimations of the same behavior. Another equally important finding is that there were few meaningful group differences regarding these estimates.

Overall, the results from this study shed new light on interpreting behavior estimations using vague and enumerated responses.

Motivated by the concept of procedural utility, which emphasises the salience of process-related job aspects, the purpose of this paper is to addresses three questions: first, “is job satisfaction different for the self-employed with no employees and the self-employed with employees?”; second, “is job satisfaction different for managers employed in smaller establishments and managers employed in larger establishments?”; and third, for both the self-employed and those in waged work, is job satisfaction overall correlated with satisfaction with ten identified job aspects’?

A data set which has its origins in the (UK) 2006 Skills survey is examined, making use of ordinal logit estimations.

There are differences in job satisfaction between the self-employed with no employees and those with employees, with the latter tending to be more likely to be satisfied. There are differences in job satisfaction between managers in smaller establishment and managers in larger establishments, but not for the three process-related job aspects associated with procedural utility. For the self-employed, there is a predominantly positive and sometimes statistically significant correlation between an individual's job satisfaction overall and satisfaction with the ten job aspects. For the waged worker, there is a uniformly positive and predominantly statistically significant correlation between an individual's job satisfaction overall and satisfaction with the ten job aspects.

The self-employed and those in waged work cannot be assumed to constitute homogeneous groups. Consequently, when future research seeks to examine the manner in which job satisfaction may differ across employment status groups, these groups cannot be treated as mere dichotomous dummy variables.

This is an empirically based reappraisal of hypotheses associated with procedural utility which focuses upon within group differences for two sub-populations in the data set, the self-employed and waged workers.

Most intergenerational mobility studies use data on two generations to estimate the elasticity between son's and father's earnings. The purpose of this paper is to use a data set spanning three generations to estimate additional relationships between a person's earnings and family background yielded by intergenerational mobility models such as Becker-Tomes (1979) model and modified versions of it.

The paper uses data from the 1996 PNAD – a nationally representative household survey in Brazil. The author builds a data set consisting of 5,125 grandfather-father-son triplets by taking advantage of two characteristics of Brazil. First, commonly in Brazil, individuals live with their parents until they marry. Second, individuals tended to quit school and begin working at an early age. As a result, there are many households with adult sons who are not at the very beginning of their working careers. Since the sample is limited to households with adult sons, the author applies Heckman (1979) estimation procedure to address selection bias.

Estimation results contradict some predictions of simple versions of the Becker and Tomes model. The paper proposes a modified version of the Becker and Tomes model that allows for a skipping generation effect, and finds that family background explains 34.9 percent of the variation in earnings among males aged 16-27 in Brazil. If there were no differences in endowments (talent, IQ, health, physical appearance, attitudes toward work, family connections, etc.), the variation in earnings would fall by no less than 26 percent. If it were possible to eliminate differences in investment in human capital, the variation in earnings would fall by at most 21.1 percent.

The paper has two main data limitations. First, the 1996 earnings of the fathers and sons are used as proxies for lifetime earnings although the transitory component of one-year earnings may be quite large, particularly at young ages. Second, in spite of the efforts to deal with the sample selection bias, the paper shows that the intergenerational elasticity in earnings for the sons aged 22-27 is about 14.6 percent lower for the subsample of households with adult sons than for the full sample.

The paper finds evidence supporting the existence of a direct effect of the grandparents on the grandchildren beyond their influence on the parents, and reinforces consideration of this factor in intergenerational mobility studies.

The findings in this paper may suggest a room for improvements in economic outcomes of children in less privileged families through investment in formal education as well as policies that considers other aspects of a person's life. For instance, Bolsa Família – a Brazilian government program that provide cash allowances to poor families conditional on children school attendance – may improve the economic outcomes of poor children by enforcing formal education and by lessening the children hardships at home.

The paper proposes a modified version of the Becker and Tomes model which allows for a skipping generation effect. Under the assumptions of the modified model and in hand with a three-generations data set from Brazil, the paper estimates a lowerbound for the variation in earnings explained by differences in endowments across families, and an upperbound for the variation in earnings explained by differences in human capital.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what factors influence the gap between caller's perception of how long they think they waited and how long they actually waited on hold and to determine what call managers can do to reduce this gap called estimation error.

A field experiment was conducted with a corporation's call center.

The findings were: the higher the estimation error of callers, the less satisfied they are; music increases estimation error, unless callers can choose the music; waiting information reduces estimation error; callers with urgent issues have more estimation error and they overestimate more; and females have higher estimation error and they overestimate more than males.

Limitations are one call center in one context. Implications are identification of antecedents of overestimation.

The paper provides guidelines for call center managers for reducing estimation error and increasing caller satisfaction. It discusses the need for understanding callers and measuring items that are important to them.

The study investigates an under researched variable called estimation error. Study also provides information about some of the causes for why consumers overestimate or underestimate their waiting time. Study provides guidelines from an actual call center and discusses variables that managers can easily use to decrease estimation error and overestimation.

Government repression against civilians while enforcing COVID-19 related lockdowns was widely reported in Africa. At the same time, many have claimed that high-speed (4G) mobile network proliferation provide an accountability mechanism that may constrain police abuses. This study focused on Nigeria to examine (1) the effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on police repression and (2) whether widespread high-speed mobile data networks constrain police repression.

Using data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Database (ACLED) and the Mobile Coverage Database, this study used difference-in-differences (DID) and triple difference (DDD) estimation on a sample of 423,925 observations (local government area-days) between January 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020 to estimate the causal effects of COVID-19 lockdowns and high-speed (4G) mobile data on police repression.

Lockdowns increased certain forms of police repression in areas with substantial high-speed (4G) mobile networks. Separate from the lockdowns, widespread 4G network increased police repression even without lockdowns.

Proliferation of high-speed mobile networks in Nigeria appears to facilitate, rather than constrain, police repression. It is possible that high-speed mobile data networks allow police to detect and repress citizen behaviors, rather than permitting citizens to correct repressive police behaviors.

Although many studies have explored the COVID-19 pandemic and police behavior in Western countries, only a few have examined its effects in states with even more troubled policing institutions, including those in sub-Saharan Africa, using DID and DDD estimation.

This paper is concerned with estimation and inference for difference-in-difference regressions with errors that exhibit high serial dependence, including near unit roots, unit roots, and linear trends. We propose a couple of solutions based on a parametric formulation of the error covariance. First stage estimates of autoregressive structures are obtained by using the Han, Phillips, and Sul (2011, 2013) X-differencing transformation. The X-differencing method is simple to implement and is unbiased in large N settings. Compared to similar parametric methods, the approach is computationally simple and requires fewer restrictions on the permissible parameter space of the error process. Simulations suggest that our methods perform well in the finite sample across a wide range of panel dimensions and dependence structures.

Economic globalization is leading large companies to focus on international strategic management. Nowadays, the assets referred to as “corporate intangibles,” such as corporate reputation, are becoming increasingly important because they are considered a key factor for the viability of an organization, and companies therefore need to incorporate them into their scorecards for management. The problem is that their measurement is subjective and latent. These two characteristics impede direct international comparison and require demonstrating the accuracy of comparison via a minimum of two tests – construct equivalence and metric equivalence. As regards corporate reputation, construct equivalence was verified by Naomi Gardberg (2006). However, the subsequent studies did not address metric equivalence. Based on the results of a survey provided by the Reputation Institute (n = 5,950, 50 firms evaluated in 17 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia), the degree of RepTrak metric equivalence has been tested, using two different methodologies, multigroup analysis (structural equation model), and a new technique from 2016, the Measurement Invariance of Composite Model procedure from the Partial Least Square Path Modeling family. As one would expect from other cross-cultural studies, reputation metrics do not meet the full metric equivalence, which is why they require standardization processes to ensure international comparability. Both methodologies have identified the same correction parameters, which have allowed validation of the mean and variance of response style by country.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the impending relationship between the impact of the US–China trade war on Taiwanese firms' spending on R&D and their offshore investment in technologically advanced countries (TAC), the authors examined if changes in these firms' R&D ratios and the growing presence of skilled workers in Taiwan's labour market during the trade war have affected their offshore investments in TAC.

Using a model built on pooled cross-sectional time-series data from 2012–2019, the authors examined whether a change in R&D ratios of domestic firms in Taiwan and the growing presence of skilled workers in Taiwan's labour market have affected the offshore investment by these firms during the trade war. Using data from the Manpower Utilisation Survey, the authors applied differences–in–differences–in–differences and differences–in–differences–in–differences–in–differences estimation methods and found that the trade war indeed gave a boost to Taiwan's job market, particularly for skilled workers.

From the estimation results, the authors noticed a rise in employment opportunities alongside a decline in the earnings of skilled workers in industries where more firms have spent on R&D as well as invested in offshore operations. However, firms in Taiwan that had not heavily spent on R&D from industries where investment in foreign operations was otherwise high have also attracted skilled workers during the trade war.

An in-depth analysis of the impact of the trade war on domestic firms' spending on R&D and their investment in offshore operations in TAC should be helpful to policymakers interested in understanding the effects of the trade war and subsequent changes in firms' spending on R&D on labour market outcomes. If changes in the R&D ratios and a steady supply of skilled workers influenced the outflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to TAC, this insight could be helpful for those devising policies and measures to curb the impact of the trade war on domestic spending on R&D.

The study findings not only provide broad lessons to policymakers in Taiwan, but the country case study can guide growing economies that are equally careful while perceiving trade war as a significant deterrent to domestic R&D spending and the outflow of FDI.

Credit is an essential element in the production process in agriculture. There are two sources from which farm households can access credit: institutional sources and non-institutional or informal sources of credit. The informal sources of credit, such as moneylenders, charge exorbitant rates of interest, which further puts a financial burden on the farmers. Hence, to increase the flow of credit from institutional sources, a policy known as the interest subvention scheme (ISS) was introduced in the year 2006. This paper aims to find the effect of the ISS on the behaviour of farm households.

The author has used difference-in-difference analysis for estimation. In the analysis, the author has taken Madhya Pradesh as the treatment state and Andhra Pradesh as the controlled state. The author has used the Village Dynamics in South Asia (VDSA) dataset of ICRISAT for analysis. The author has used data from 2009 to 2014 for the two states.

The author has found that the difference between the average interest rate of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh is significant for both pre-treatment and post-treatment periods and this gap has increased after the intervention period. The results suggest that the share of informal sector borrowings has reduced in the treatment group (Madhya Pradesh) as compared to the control group (Andhra Pradesh) in the post-treatment period.

This paper is particularly important because of the dearth of literature on the impact of this scheme in India and may shed light on the much-needed policy implications of this particular policy.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of Literacy Boost Project Model implemented by World Vision on reading skills of early grade students in Ethiopia. It intended to examine whether the intervention contributed to improving students’ achievement in reading comprehension.

Difference in difference with propensity score matching impact estimation model was used in the study. Baseline and end line data collected by World Vision Ethiopia in four districts in Oromia region, where the project had been operational, were used for the research. A total of 1,418 students (685 control and 733 intervention) were selected using random sampling technique and assessed based on the core reading skill components.

The result of the analysis indicated significant improvement in the core reading skills of treated students. The ultimate outcome of reading comprehension skill from the previous evaluation was found inflated. Variables related to the home literacy environment and community activities were found significantly impacting the students reading achievement.

Policies and strategies intended to improve the quality of education, particularly the reading skills of early grade students, in the study area and scaling up the literacy boost project to areas with similar context, thus should give due attention to the variables related to the home literacy environment and community activities.

This study is important in providing valuable information on early grade education quality improvement interventions, especially to development practitioners and policymakers to make informed decisions regarding education sector reform and development in the study area.