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This paper estimates the financial returns to higher education quality in the UK. To account for the selectivity of students to institution, we rely on a selection on observable assumption. We use several estimates including the Generalised Propensity Score (GPS) of Hirano and Imbens, which relies on a continuous measure of institutional quality. This highlights that the returns to quality are heterogeneous and mostly driven by high-quality institutions. Moving from an institution in the third quality quartile to a top quality institution is associated with a 7% increase in earnings.

Without controlling for selection bias and the potential endogeneity of the treatment by using proper methods, the estimation of treatment effect could lead to biased or incorrect conclusions. However, these issues are not addressed adequately and properly in higher education research. This study reviews the essence of self-selection bias, treatment assignment endogeneity, and treatment effect estimation. We introduce three treatment effect estimators – propensity score matching analysis, doubly robust estimation (augmented inverse probability weighted approach), and endogenous treatment estimator (control-function approach) – and examine literature that applies these methods to research in higher education. We then use the three methods in a case study that estimates the effects of transfer student pre-enrollment debt on persistence and first year grades. The final discussion provides guidelines and recommendations for causal inference research studies that use such quasi-experimental methods.

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of off-farm work on food security in rural Bangladesh. We use rural household-level data and a nonparametric propensity score matching (PSM) estimator. Matching estimators are used in observational data to address the potential selection biases caused by nonrandom allocation of the treatment. Monthly food-consumption data and household income and expenditure surveys from rural Bangladesh for 2013–2014 are used in this chapter. We found that rural Bangladeshi households participating in nonfarm income-generating activities, especially in higher return nonfarm employment, enjoy higher levels of per-capita food expenditures and diet diversity – two of the measures of food security. In particular, we find that rural households increased diet diversity in cereals, fruits and vegetables, and meats. Finally, our estimates reveal that rural households participating in off-farm work increased per-capita food consumption by about Taka 1,576, on average, and increased per-capita expenditures on milk and milk products (Taka 212), and fruits and vegetables (Taka 235) significantly. Policy makers should design and implement policies that create off-farm livelihood activities. These nonfarm activities would help smallholder farm families to diversify, to supplement their income, and to continue their agricultural operations as well as increase food security.

Researchers in economics and other disciplines are often interested in the causal effect of a binary treatment on outcomes. Econometric methods used to estimate such effects are divided into one of two strands depending on whether they require unconfoundedness (i.e., independence of potential outcomes and treatment assignment conditional on a set of observable covariates). When this assumption holds, researchers now have a wide array of estimation techniques from which to choose. However, very little is known about their performance – both in absolute and relative terms – when measurement error is present. In this study, the performance of several estimators that require unconfoundedness, as well as some that do not, are evaluated in a Monte Carlo study. In all cases, the data-generating process is such that unconfoundedness holds with the ‘real’ data. However, measurement error is then introduced. Specifically, three types of measurement error are considered: (i) errors in treatment assignment, (ii) errors in the outcome, and (iii) errors in the vector of covariates. Recommendations for researchers are provided.

With the rising of “religious fever” in China rural area, the authors inquire the reason why it happened. First, the authors explore the group characteristics which could affect both happiness and the religion belief of Chinese rural elderly. The authors analyze the micro-data of “thousand village surveys” data of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics by using Order Logit and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method. These results show that when the elderly people have the following features related to health such as: feeling psychological loneliness, not obtaining the good management of chronic disease in the village, and not being participated in new rural cooperative medical system are more likely to believe in religious in the rural areas. And the authors also find these Chinese rural elderlies who believe in religion are less happy than atheism elderly actually (by PSM). Believing in religion is not the solution and maybe the way these elderly resorts to when they encounter health problem.

This study examines the effect of domestic alliances on firms’ foreign divestment decisions. We argue that foreign subsidiaries face a higher risk of being divested when firms form new alliances with other firms in their home country. Alliances at home involve resources and may divert attention away from international operations. Also, opportunities emerging from entering into new relationships with other firms domestically may lead firms to reconfigure their value chain activities and resources across locations, thereby increasing the probability of foreign divestment. Using data from the electronic and electrical equipment industries in the USA over the period 2001–2008, we empirically investigate the link between domestic alliances and foreign divestment. We find that increases in domestic interfirm collaboration indeed significantly affect firms’ propensity to divest foreign operations.

The focus of this study is to analyze the impact of financing sources on productivity and technical efficiency of the tuna fishing business in Sendang Biru Coastal, Indonesia, in order to improve the entrepreneurship goals. This research used the quantitative explanatory method. The results showed that fishermen's difficulty accessing traditional financing sources (banks and cooperatives) became a constrain in optimizing production activities. The financing source used by Sendang Biru fishermen for their business activities mostly comes from “Pengambek.” The logit regression analysis shows that the number of fishing gear and the size of the boat owned by fishermen have a positive and statistically significant effect on the opportunities for fishers to obtain traditional financing. The ability of fishers to obtain business financing sources positively impacts the productivity and technical efficiency of the tuna fishing business. Our research implies developing a financing system in coastal environment business, especially in the tuna fishing industry.

We examine the relationship between tax-related accounting misstatements and changes in the uncertain tax benefits accrual account in the year of the disclosure of a misstatement. We find that the disclosure of a tax-related misstatement is associated with an increase in unrecognized tax benefits during that year. We show that the increase in unrecognized tax benefits in the year of disclosure is from uncertain tax positions taken in prior periods. Overall, this finding is consistent with increase in financial reporting conservatism upon disclosure of tax-related accounting misstatement.

Prior studies document increased share repurchase activity after the temporary tax holiday under the American Jobs Creation Act (AJCA) of 2004. Our study examines the moderating effect of financial statement readability on share repurchases in response to a temporary reduction in repatriation tax. Building on prior literature, we argue that firms with excess cash overseas, despite the lack of investment opportunities, produce less readable financial statements to hide bad news. We find that firms with less readable financial statements initiated higher levels of share repurchases after the AJCA. Our results contribute to the existing literature showing (1) firms hold excess cash overseas mainly for tax reasons rather than for nontax reasons such as precautionary motives or empire-building concerns and (2) firms return excess funds to investors rather than squander the funds once the tax cost of repatriation is reduced. Firms that suffer from the overinvestment problem using hard-to-read financial statements to hide the bad news of a lack of investment opportunities are more likely to benefit from the tax cut. Our study provides timely evidence of potential firm response to the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which permanently removes the repatriation tax.