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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of China’s urban segregation caused by hukou restrictions on food consumption.

Based on the 2007–2009 Urban Household Survey data from six China provinces conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the authors adopt a propensity score matching (PSM) method to correct for potential selection bias. A Rosenbaum bounds test is applied to evaluate the sensitivity of the PSM results to unobserved variables.

The results show that holding rural hukou (RHs) reduces the consumption of livestock products and vegetables and fruit by 8.8 and 4.8 percent, respectively. The status of hukou does not affect the consumption of grain and edible oil. Hukou impacts on food consumption are heterogeneous across income levels, with low-income and middle-income households more vulnerable to urban segregation and hukou discriminations. A stronger motivation for precautionary saving and higher welfare expenditures that not compensated by social security lead to the lower food consumption by migrant households with RHs.

This paper advances the research frontier by investigating the impacts of hukou system on the structure of food consumption, which accurately reflects the household welfare.

This paper evaluates the effects of tax incentives on business innovation in Brazil that were established by Law 11,196/05 (the “Fiscal Incentives Law”) to test whether they have had a positive impact on beneficiary firms' innovation input and output and on their performance.

The policy impacts are estimated using microdata on 13,706 firms available in the 2008 and 2011 editions of the Brazilian Innovation Survey (PINTEC) and by applying propensity score matching with difference-in-differences.

The results suggest a positive and statistically significant impact of the policy on research and development (R&D) expenditures (average of approximately US$ 264,000 in 2011), the number of research staff (average of five researchers) and total employment (approximately 5% of the beneficiary firms' mean size). However, no impact was found on the overall spending on innovative activities, the percentage of sales and exports from new products, net revenue or net revenue per employee.

The findings provide empirical support in favor of tax incentives as a policy tool to boost business innovation in the country. However, the absence of significant effects on innovative activities expenditures and on most indicators of innovation output and firms' performance reveals shortcomings of the policy that need to be addressed.

The study complements and advances the findings of previous studies by assessing policy impact on total innovative activities expenditures and on innovation output and firm performance.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether a difference or mismatch between individual political ideology and predominant political views in society is a significant determinant of the intention to migrate in Latin American countries.

The authors use data from the 2018 Latinobarómetro Survey and conduct logit regressions using intention to migrate as the dependent variable and political ideology mismatch as the independent variable. The authors control for a large set of demographic, economic, and social variables. The authors also conduct Propensity Score Matching to control for potential endogenous effects produced by observable characteristics as well as a commonly used sensitivity analysis known as Rosenbaum's bounding approach.

The authors find that political ideology mismatch is a significant determinant of the intention to migrate in Latin American countries but not symmetrically. The authors find that positioning to the right of predominant views in society is associated with voicing an intention to migrate, but positioning to the left of those views is not.

Not much has been said about the role of individual political ideology as a push migrating factor. The paper contributes to fill that gap. The paper also contributes to the discussion about the political ideology of Latin American immigrants and how that ideology may have an effect on internal politics in the host countries.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0028.

The goal of this paper is to study the factors that determine individuals' beliefs about robots in Latin America. The authors highlight the role of interpersonal trust in shaping these beliefs.

The authors use data from 2018 Latinobarómetro survey in 18 Latin American countries. The analysis includes an empirical strategy that reduces overt bias and weighs hidden bias.

Robots are not generally supported or positively perceived in Latin America. However, people are less negative about robots when they (1) trust others, (2) are male, (3) are single, (4) are more educated, (5) support democracy and (6) favor free imports. Interpersonal trust is the most consistent covariate. The results provide support to the idea that trusting robots can be the result of trusting humans working in the technological sector (Coeckelbergh, 2012).

This study faces some limitations. The first one relates to the standard caveats associated with the use of survey data – interviewees may not express their true beliefs. Another limitation is that this study examines data for only one year (the 2018 Latinobarómetro survey). Finally, although propensity score matching allow to control for endogeneity due to observable characteristics and the authors perform a sensitivity test regarding hidden characteristics, the nature of the data does not allow to guarantee that there is a causal effect from interpersonal trust to beliefs about robots.

The authors find that the positive relationship between trust and beliefs about robots is particularly strong in the area of health. Medical companies could consider these findings when designing and promoting robots.

Negative views about robots may delay the adoption of new technology in the region. To facilitate the adoption of new technologies, stakeholders should pay attention to the prevalent levels of interpersonal trust in society. This is especially important in developing countries.

To the authors’ knowledge this is the first study that empirically links beliefs about robots and interpersonal trust.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze differential consumption patterns of Pakistani migrant households resulting from foreign and domestic remittances.

Using the Working-Leser model and a number of matching techniques, the authors analyze a representative household survey carried out in 2010–2011 to compare various expenditure categories of recipient and non-recipient households across different income brackets.

Results show that foreign remittances lead to significant consumption changes. Contrary to the widely held view, remittances do not raise the budget share on consumer goods and recreation, while allocation on education increases substantially. Households receiving domestic remittances also reflect strong focus on human capital with significantly higher shares of health and education. Recipients of international transfers living below one dollar a day spend proportionally more on food compared with their non-recipient counterparts whereas their education and health budget shares are not dissimilar.

The positive effect of remittances on expenditures on human capital coupled with a lack of evidence suggesting an increase in the share of conspicuous spending resulting from remittances highlights the beneficial role that remittances play in a developing country.

Extant literature lacks consensus on whether migrant remittances should be treated as a temporary or permanent source of household income. In this study, the authors argue and empirically show that the two need not be mutually exclusive, and may co-exist depending on the nature of remittances and household characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively explore the association between low self-control and college student retention.

Cross-sectional survey data were obtained from 369 undergraduate students in the USA and combined with follow-up data on retention. Factor analysis was used to develop and validate the abbreviated eight-item low self-control instrument. Propensity score matching, an analytic technique that permits the assertion of causality without the need for experimental design, was used to examine the relationship between low self-control and second-semester college retention. Use of propensity score matching permitted the pairing of survey respondents under the defined circumstance of low self-control with those respondents not having low self-control under multiple relevant covariates.

The results showed a relationship between low self-control and college retention. Specifically, in the matched sample, those students with low self-control were 8 percent less likely to be retained at the institution at the onset of the second year than their counterparts with higher self-control.

The results of the study prompt the important question of how colleges and universities can alter their structures and processes to better support students with low self-control. Key managerial and administrative implications from the findings of this study revolve around the recognition, motivation, and subsequent performance appraisals of those students with low self-control.

This study extends the quite limited research on how low self-control correlates with retention and subsequently offers insights on how to further support students with low self-control as a way to improve retention outcomes. Additionally, the validated eight-item survey provides a quick, low-cost assessment tool for interested researchers and managers.

The welfare impacts of the food security on the beneficiaries can be understood from multiple dimensions. This paper, thus, examines the impact of the India's National Food Security Act (NFSA) on the welfare of the beneficiary households from a multidimensional perspective.

The study is based on a sample household survey covering three different states of India. The stratified random sampling technique was used to select the states, districts and blocks. Sample villages and households were selected purposively. A total of 1,523 households comprising 1,069 beneficiary and 454 non-beneficiary households constituted the sample. In order to find out the impact of the programme on different dimensions of welfare, the endogenous switching regression model is employed as it helps control for any absence of randomization and the unobserved heterogeneity bias. Propensity score matching is also employed to supplement the results.

The substitution effect and income effect of the food subsidy policy combined improve the overall welfare of the households presented through the subjective measures of food consumption behaviour, income transfer and educational achievements. The bargaining effect of the food subsidy programme is reflected in the enhanced social status and women's empowerment. The food security programme seems to augment the food consumption of the beneficiaries as observed from the food consumption score.

The food security policy has improved the overall welfare of the households and can play a major role in enhancing household welfare even further. The non-beneficiaries' welfare could have increased if they would have been included in the food security programme. The subjective assessment may, however, be subjected to personal biases, and there is also absence of a common reference point. Hence, the implications of the findings may be generalized with caution.

This study provides evidences of the impacts of food subsidy from a multidimensional standpoint considering both subjective and objective dimensions of household welfare.

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 paper is to evaluate the impact of access to production credit on the productivity of smallholder farmers.

Data for the study were drawn from the Agricultural Value Chain Facility (AVCF), which was implemented in the Northern Region of Ghana. This paper uses the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to estimate the average treatment effect of access to production credit on the productivity of smallholder farmers. The rationale for the choice of this estimation technique is to control for selection bias since the treatment variable (access to production credit) was not randomised. The authors also test for the effect of hidden bias using “Rosenbaum bounds” sensitivity analysis. The study uses two control groups to examine the net effect of credit on productivity.

The results reveal that smallholder farmers with access to production credit increased productivity through investment in farm inputs. For the impact of credit on productivity using control Group 1, the result shows that farmers with access to credit increased their productivity by 0.170 metric tonnes per hectare and for control Group 2, the result shows an increase of 0.252 metric tonnes per hectare more than farmers who are without access to production credit.

The evidence as provided by this paper is that access to production credit is significant to meet the credit needs of smallholder farmers and therefore contributes to the policy debate on whether access to credit has impact on the productivity of smallholder farmers.

The paper shows the importance of production credit in augmenting the production function of smallholder farmers.