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Purpose – This chapter gives an overview of meta-analytic methods and illustrates the use of these methods for synthesising research findings. The advantages of performing a meta-analysis are described. Pitfalls in meta-analyses are also discussed. The chapter is intended to present the main elements of a meta-analysis and guide readers to literature presenting meta-analytic methods in greater detail.

Methodology – Key references in the meta-analysis literature are quoted and examples of meta-analyses are presented.

Findings – A meta-analysis is a useful tool for summarising knowledge in fields where a large number of studies have been reported. In addition to providing summary estimates of results, a meta-analysis can be applied to identify factors that produce systematic variation in study findings.

Research implications – Methods of meta-analyses keep developing to deal with complex data structures, thus extending the type of research findings that are amenable to meta-analyses.

Practical implications – Performing a meta-analysis saves labour by eliminating the need to read and digest a large number of studies in order to get an overview of the current state-of-knowledge in a field. Moreover, a meta-analysis establishes a system for easily and quickly updating knowledge as new studies become available.

John Kwoka’s Mergers, Merger Control, and Remedies is a meta-analysis of “retrospective” academic studies of consummated mergers and other horizontal arrangements. Based on this meta-analysis, Kwoka strongly criticizes federal enforcement policies, claiming that the agencies permit far too many anticompetitive mergers to go unchallenged, and are far too willing to accept remedies that fail to prevent a significant loss of competition. Kwoka claims further that this excessive leniency is the culmination of a trend reflecting deliberate policy choices made over the last several decades.

In a forthcoming critique, Vita and Osinski challenge Kwoka’s analysis and his conclusions, identifying serious flaws in the size, construction, and composition of his sample, and in the statistical analysis of the data drawn from that sample. In a published response to Vita and Osinski, Professor Kwoka offers a number of objections and counter-arguments. In this rejoinder, I respond to Professor Kwoka.

In this chapter we demonstrate the construction of inverse test confidence intervals for the turning-points in estimated nonlinear relationships by the use of the marginal or first derivative function. First, we outline the inverse test confidence interval approach. Then we examine the relationship between the traditional confidence intervals based on the Wald test for the turning-points for a cubic, a quartic, and fractional polynomials estimated via regression analysis and the inverse test intervals. We show that the confidence interval plots of the marginal function can be used to estimate confidence intervals for the turning-points that are equivalent to the inverse test. We also provide a method for the interpretation of the confidence intervals for the second derivative function to draw inferences for the characteristics of the turning-point.

This method is applied to the examination of the turning-points found when estimating a quartic and a fractional polynomial from data used for the estimation of an Environmental Kuznets Curve. The Stata do files used to generate these examples are listed in Appendix A along with the data.

We examine the empirical relationship between direct equity agency costs measures and corporate governance control mechanisms to control equity agency costs. We measure the three direct agency cost proxies commonly used in the literature: the operating expense; asset turnover; and selling, general, and administrative (SGA) ratios. Internal corporate governance control mechanisms examined are inside ownership (IO), outside ownership concentration (OC), the size of the board of directors (BODs), and the composition of the BODs (proportion of nonexecutive (NE) directors and separation of chief executive officer (CEO) and board chair). The external corporate governance control mechanism examined is the size of bank debt (short-term debt). Univariate and multivariate tests reveal that the only statistically significant relationship between corporate governance control mechanisms and direct equity agency cost measures is the negative relationship between the proportion of IO and direct agency costs. The asset utilization ratio (asset turnover) ratio is the best proxy for direct equity agency costs and can be useful for event studies of announcement period excess returns.

The aim of this chapter is to show the limits of the European policy model and to support the existence, through straightforward empirical analysis, of an inverse relationship both in the short run and in the long run between trust in institutions and unemployment. The empirical methodology relies on dynamic panel data techniques allowing measuring in a single equation both the long-run relationship and the short-run speed of adjustment among variables. This connection appears to be valid both in the Eurozone considered as a whole and in particular in peripheral countries, where the macroeconomic dynamics have been, under this respect, much more divergent from the average. This outcome allows proofing that to consolidate the European process of integration in the long run, institutions should have as main objective not only inflation but especially unemployment.

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.

This study seeks to investigate whether firms’ capital structure decisions are congruent with the assumptions underpinning the traditional trade-off theory and the pecking order theory in Ghana. Using a sample of listed firms, the dynamic system generalized method of moments (GMM) technique is applied on a balanced panel data spanning 2008–2016. The findings reveal that the financing decisions of Ghanaian firms adhere to the pecking order theory, given the established relationship between leverage and profitability, firm age, as well as firm size. The study also shows that tax does not matter for corporate leverage, departing from the tax proposition of the traditional trade-off theory. However, the negative effect of growth opportunities and risk on debt corroborates the trade-off theory. Consequently, it is postulated that the trade-off theory and the pecking order theory are not discordant in predicting firms’ capital structure decisions in Ghana.

Direct economic use and changing patterns of human habitation have long been a cause of concern for the ecological health of many rivers and tributaries. Current development trends in many watersheds are driving the conversion of rural, agricultural and forestland to urban or industrial uses. While any single project may not have an adverse effect on the watershed as a whole, the summation of development can rapidly change the character of the landscape and alter the ecosystem functions of a river, its tributaries and an entire watershed. This chapter is a discussion on using available tools to help piece together economic transactions and their relationship to the land.