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In this paper, we study partial identification of the distribution of treatment effects of a binary treatment for ideal randomized experiments, ideal randomized experiments with a known value of a dependence measure, and for data satisfying the selection-on-observables assumption, respectively. For ideal randomized experiments, (i) we propose nonparametric estimators of the sharp bounds on the distribution of treatment effects and construct asymptotically valid confidence sets for the distribution of treatment effects; (ii) we propose bias-corrected estimators of the sharp bounds on the distribution of treatment effects; and (iii) we investigate finite sample performances of the proposed confidence sets and the bias-corrected estimators via simulation.

Educational policies are widely recognized as the means par excellence to equalize opportunities among children with different social and family backgrounds and to promote intergenerational mobility. In this chapter, we focus on the French case and we apply the opportunity equalization criterion proposed by Andreoli, Havnes, and Lefranc (2019) for evaluating the effect of rising compulsory schooling requirements in secondary education. Our results show that such education expansion has a limited redistributive effect on students’ earnings distribution. Nonetheless, we provide evidence of opportunity equalization among groups of students defined by family background circumstances.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the wage differentials along the entire distribution between immigrants and the Australian-born.

Using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, the authors apply a semi-parametric method (DiNardo et al., 1996) to decompose the distributional wage gap between immigrants and native-born Australians into composition effect and wage structure effect. The authors further apply the unconditional quantile regression (UQR) method (Firpo et al., 2007) to decompose the overall wage structure effect into contributions from individual wage covariates.

Relative to the native-born, both effects favour immigrants from English-speaking countries. For male immigrants from non-English-speaking countries (NESC) the favourable composition effect is offset by disadvantage in the wage structure effect, leaving little overall wage difference. Female immigrants from NESC are disadvantaged at the lower part of the wage distribution.

The increasingly skill-based immigration policy in Australia has increased skill levels of immigrants relative to the Australian-born. However, the playing field may yet to be equal for the recent NESC immigrants due to unfavourable rewards to their productivity factors. Also, immigrants are not homogeneous. Countries of origin and gender matter in affecting wage outcomes.

The unique wage-setting system and the increasingly skill-based immigration policy have made Australia an interesting case. The authors examine the entire wage distribution between migrants and native-born rather than focus on the mean. The authors differentiate immigrants by their country of origin and gender; and apply the UQR decomposition to identify the contributions from individual wage covariates.

“Economics is a Serious Subject.” Edwin Cannan.

In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this research question in an empirical analysis at the aggregate level, we examine a global sample of 73 countries between 1981 and 2010, studying a broad set of drivers to investigate their interaction and influence on income inequality. Within this broad approach, we are interested in the heterogeneity of income inequality determinants across world regions and along the income distribution. Our findings indicate the existence of a small set of systematic drivers across the global sample of countries. Declining labour income shares and increasing imports from high-income countries significantly contribute to increasing income inequality, while taxation and imports from low-income countries exert countervailing effects. Our study reveals the region-specific impacts of technological change, financial globalisation, domestic financial deepening and public social spending. Most importantly, we do not find systematic evidence of education’s equalising effect across high- and low-income countries. Our results are largely robust to changing the underlying sources of income Ginis, but looking at different segments of income distribution reveals heterogeneous effects.

This chapter reviews recent developments in the density discontinuity approach. It is well known that agents having perfect control of the forcing variable will invalidate the popular regression discontinuity designs (RDDs). To detect the manipulation of the forcing variable, McCrary (2008) developed a test based on the discontinuity in the density around the threshold. Recent papers have noted that the sorting patterns around the threshold are often either the researcher’s object of interest or may relate to structural parameters such as tax elasticities through known functions. This, in turn, implies that the behavior of the distribution around the threshold is not only informative of the validity of a standard RDD; it can also be used to recover policy-relevant parameters and perform counterfactual exercises.

Hotel managers are being challenged by the increasing multitude of distribution and sales channels. Online travel agencies (OTAs) in particular generate a great deal of uncertainty: Which are the best ones? Which ones offer the best conditions? How many channels are optimal for my hotel? How can I evaluate costs versus benefits? These and other questions concerning the optimal online distribution channel strategy have produced different reactions in practice. The aim of this paper is to challenge the need for an over-optimization of channel strategy by proposing that the consumer, at the end, deals with a network of information presented on one networked environment, including the Web. Hence, the network effect of the numerous online platforms is what drives consumer choice and, finally, bookings.

A series of multiple regressions with representative samples of hotels in Switzerland from the years 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 was performed to estimate the importance of the number of platforms against other independent variables. Additionally, further multiple regressions with samples from the years 2011 and 2012 using the most important platforms (first-tier channels) shows again that the number of platforms is more important.

The analyses show that the estimated number of online bookings by the respondents in the hotels is a result of the number of channels, not the type of channel. This is particularly true for non-categorized establishments and one- and two-star hotels. The analyses do not confirm the billboard effect, according to which particular platforms (first-tier channels) increase the probability of bookings. Thus, the survival strategy is to maximize share of shelf and to build on interdependencies and network effects.

The study looks only at online bookings. Additional research into the connection between online and offline channels, particularly from the viewpoint of the consumer, will provide further insights. The study looks at the booking volume per channel, not the monetary sales volume or the profit. A study that quantifies not only the volume of bookings but also the total profit or the contribution to profit per channel could quantify the benefits of the multi-channel strategy.

The multiple online channel strategy seems to be the more effective approach to maximizing bookings online, regardless of the platforms chosen. Results of the study challenge the current opinion among practitioners that the multitude of distribution channels forces them to choose among single online channels and, therefore, drives the search for criteria to assess these channels or even to disregard them. The consistent results across 2009-2012 show that even in the turbulent phase of the advent of OTAs in the travel industry, hotels can adopt a winning strategy. Finally, the results suggest that the intermediation of online distribution of hotel beds has approached the condition of perfect competition, causing the OTA business model to be cannibalized.

The minimum wage has been regarded as an important element of public policy for reducing poverty and inequality. Increasing the minimum wage is supposed to raise earnings for millions of low-wage workers and therefore lower earnings inequality. However, there is no consensus in the existing literature from industrialized countries regarding whether increasing the minimum wage has helped lower earnings inequality. China has recently exhibited rapid economic growth and widening earnings inequality. Since China promulgated new minimum wage regulations in 2004, the magnitude and frequency of changes in the minimum wage have been substantial, both over time and across jurisdictions. The growing importance of research on the relationship between the minimum wage and earnings inequality and its controversial nature have sparked heated debate in China, highlighting the importance of rigorous research to inform evidence-based policy making. We investigate the contribution of the minimum wage to the well-documented rise in earnings inequality in China from 2004 to 2009 by using city-level minimum wage panel data and a representative Chinese household survey, and we find that increasing the minimum wage reduces inequality – by decreasing the earnings gap between the median and the bottom decile – over the analysis period.