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This paper aims to analyze how nearby property prices are affected by new construction projects in Stockholm. If there is an impact on property prices, the authors endeavor to investigate whether the effects vary among different areas within the municipality, for different groups of inhabitants and for different types of housing (i.e. public versus private housing).

The authors use a difference-in-difference specification in a hedonic model, and the sample consists of more than 90,000 observations over the period 2005-2013.

The results are robust and indicate that house prices in nearby areas increase following the completion of infill development. The results also indicate that infill development has a positive spillover effect on nearby dwelling prices only in areas with lower incomes, more public housing units and more inhabitants born abroad.

It provides an analysis on how nearby property prices are affected by new construction projects by creating a restricted control area, so as to make the treatment group and the control group more homogeneous. Thus, it mitigates any potential problems with spatial dependency, which can cause biased standard errors.

In 1997 minimum wages were introduced in the West and East German construction sector. The purpose of this paper is to analyze their impact on wage growth and employment retention probability of affected workers.

Following a difference‐in‐differences approach the paper proposes a method to identify the effects of this quasi‐experiment despite the lack of information on working hours in the large panel microdata. The method determines the size of the treatment and control group by the maximum likelihood criterion.

All results show positive wage growth effects of the minimum wage regulation in both parts of the country. When it comes to employment effects, the results clearly differ between the two parts of the country. The employment effects are negative for East Germany and positive for West Germany, although the latter are not always statistically significant.

Although there is a limit to the simple transferability of the results for the construction sector to other industries, the study provides some useful insights for this country concerning reactions to the minimum wage. This is the first paper analyzing the effect of minimum wages in Germany using microeconometric methods.

As the minimum wage in the East German construction sector was much higher in relation to the median wage than in West Germany, a tentative conclusion of the different employment results might be that the trade‐off between increasing wages for low‐paid workers and the danger of job losses does not exist in this case if minimum wages are moderate.

This paper provides valuable information on the impact of wage growth and employment retention probability in Germany.

An economic impact study conducted in 2010 predicted that hosting the 34th America's Cup in 2013 would result in $1.37 billion in total economic benefits to the San Francisco Bay Area. The goal of this paper is to examine the ex post effects of this competition on real taxable sales in the Bay Area.

A panel data set of quarterly observations on taxable sales transactions for all counties in the state of California is employed. These data are explored using two estimation methodologies: difference-in-differences and synthetic control.

Results from a difference-in-differences analysis and a synthetic control analysis produce similar findings. Namely, the 34th America's Cup competition appears to have had a minimal, short-lived impact on San Francisco and no measurable impact on two nearby counties.

The empirical results in this paper underscore the findings of previous research showing that ex ante economic impact studies tend to overstate the net economic benefits of hosting mega-events.

The results of this paper may serve as a warning to policy makers considering using tax dollars to host a mega-event that such events often do not generate the economic gains reported in typical economic impact studies.

This is the first paper to econometrically explore the impact of hosting the America's Cup on taxable sales transactions in a region. This paper also employs the relatively new empirical methodology called synthetic control.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of independent directors on firm performance in Vietnam and identify how different types of ownership structure and the presence of controlling shareholders influence the relationship.

For a sample of 217 non-financial Vietnam-listed companies during the period from 2010 to 2014, this study uses the ordinary least squares regressions to estimate the relationship between independent directors and firm performance. Two econometric techniques – the fixed effects estimation and the difference in difference estimation – are used to control for endogeneity. The results are also robust to the lag variable of independent directors.

The results reveal that independent directors have an overall negative effect on firm operating performance. This finding may be because of information asymmetry, expertise disadvantage and the dominance of ownership concentration that prevent independent directors from fulfilling their monitoring function in governance. The negative relationship between independent directors and firm performance is stronger in firms where the State is a controlling shareholder.

Findings suggest that changes relating to independent directors, as a response to the new corporate governance code in 2012, do not have a positive effect on the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance. Further reform is required to improve internal control mechanisms and corporate governance systems in Vietnam.

This is the first study to provide a robust evidence on the relationship between independent directors and firm performance in Vietnam as well as to explore the impact of the type of controlling shareholders on the relationship.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between board independence and firm performance for publicly listed New Zealand (NZ) firms over the period 2004-2016.

To address endogeneity concerns, the relationship between firm performance and board independence is modelled using three different approaches: firm fixed-effect estimation, difference-in-difference estimation and two-stage least squares estimation, while controlling for firm and governance characteristics.

The main finding is that the mandated board independence introduced by the Best Practice Code does not improve operating or market performance for listed NZ firms.

The fact that NZ firms choose greater board independence than required is puzzling. Research examining director characteristics and connectedness, not captured by the NZX Code, may be a fruitful area for future research when disclosure allows.

Regulators may need to review reasons for mandating changes in factors affecting firm governance before implementing further regulations concerning board structure.

The findings cast doubt on the benefit of mandated board independence for NZ firms. The results imply that “good” governance practices proposed by regulators are not universal.

This paper tests the impact of mandated board independence following the adoption of the Best Practice Code in 2004 using methodologies that account for endogeneity using 13 years of data.

This paper examines whether and how labour market duality can be alleviated through legislation that prohibits discrimination based on employment type.

In 2007, the Korean government undertook a labour reform banning discriminatory treatment against fixed-term, part-time and dispatched workers. By exploiting a gradual implementation of the anti-discrimination law by firm size targeting a subset of non-regular workers, the paper identifies the treatment effects of the anti-discrimination law, taking a difference-in-difference-in-differences approach.

The results suggest that the anti-discrimination law significantly increases hourly wages and the probabilities of being covered by national pension, health insurance, and employment insurance for targeted non-regular workers in small firms relative to other workers. Anticipatory behaviours of employers and selective transitions of employees in response to the implementation of the anti-discrimination law do not underlie the estimated effects. The presence of labour unions contributes to reducing gaps in labour conditions between regular workers and targeted non-regular workers.

The main contribution of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on causal impacts of equal pay legislation on the gaps in labour conditions between different categories of workers, using a difference-in-difference-in-differences estimation.

This paper aims to analyse the change in performance of parent Indian firms (home effects) who have invested in overseas locations in recent times.

Difference-in-difference (DiD) estimate of home effects using farm level data.

Home effects of Indian outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), in general, are insignificant. However, in the case of OFDI directed only to non-offshore financial centre (OFC), some firms did enjoy beneficial home effects with respect to turnover, current ratio and leverage ratio. In the case of OFDI directed purely to OFC locations, some of the parameters exhibited negative home effects. In the subsample of Indian OFDI directed to combination of OFC and non-OFC locations, the results show positive home effects with respect to export, operating profit margin and forex earnings; however, impact on turnover seems to be negative for all the quartiles.

Estimation of home effects using data over longer horizon may yield robust outcome.

These results make a strong case to draw a distinction among OFDIs to OFC, non-OFC and combination of OFC and non-OFC locations in studying the beneficial home effects of OFDI.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper which estimates home effects of different groups of Indian firms (based on their investment locations and size class) using difference-in-difference estimate.

This paper aims to evaluate the performance of a chat reference service implemented at an academic library in a private liberal arts college by gauging its impact on other forms of reference service in terms of usage volume, with a focus on research-related face-to-face reference questions.

Two statistical methods are used, namely, the difference-in-differences method and a simple moving average time series analysis, to analyze both the short-term and long-term impact brought by chat reference.

This study finds that the usage volume of the traditional face-to-face reference is significantly affected by chat reference in its first service year. The long-term analysis suggests that chat reference volume displays a significant declining trend (−2.06 per cent academic month) since its implementation. Yet, its usage volume relative to other reference services remains stable over time.

The findings in this case study will be of value to libraries with similar scale and institutional features that are also interested in assessing their chat reference service. In addition, this paper is the first to apply the difference-in-differences approach in the field of library science, and the two statistical methods adopted in this case study can be readily adapted and applied to other similar volume-based library assessment projects.

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.

In this paper, the authors examined the changes in labour unrest and labour quality brought by high labour standards over a considerable period in Taiwan. Then, the authors studied the role of these changes in predicting the inflow of foreign direct investment (IFDI) in the country. To test the role, the authors measured the differences in effects of the two changes on wages, working hours and employment opportunities of skilled female and skilled male workers in FDI-intensive and non-intensive industries.

Using a model built on pooled cross-sectional time-series data from 1999 to 2012, the authors measured the effect of changes in labour unrest and the presence of skilled workers on the net inflow of FDI. Using data from the Manpower Utilisation Survey (MUS), the authors applied differences–in–Differences-in--ddifferences- (DDD) and differences–in–Differences-in-ddifferences-in--differences- (DDDD) estimation methods to test the effect of changes in labour unrest and labour quality on three labour market outcomes, namely wages, working hours and job opportunities of skilled workforce.

Increasing labour unrest affected the employment opportunities of almost every unemployed person seeking skilled jobs in Taiwan. When the authors compared the adverse effect of high labour standards on employment opportunities and working hours, the authors found women looking for skilled jobs in foreign-owned firms to be the worst affected. Besides, foreign firms paid different wages to skilled educated men than what foreign firms' domestic counterparts paid to skilled educated men employed in Taiwanese firms.

An in-depth analysis of changes in labour unrest and presence of skilled workers because of high labour standards and the extent to which such changes helped the nation to attract FDI should be useful to policymakers interested in understanding the impact of legislative measures and policy reforms on labour market outcomes across industry types, which matter to foreign investors. If changes in labour unrest and labour quality influenced the inflow of FDI more to firms in one set of industries than the others, the same should have a bearing on revamping of future enactment and enforcement in Taiwan.

Current study findings would not only provide broad lessons to policymakers in Taiwan but findings of the authors' country case study should be able to guide growing economies that are equally careful whilst raising the labour standards as most fear that high labour standards can deter inflow of FDI because of increasing labour cost.