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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.

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.

This chapter examines the effects that airports have had on economic development in cities from 1950 to 2010. It uses a novel dataset consisting of previously unexploited data on the origins and history of the aviation system in the United States. Applying the method of synthetic controls to a set of medium and small airports, I examine both the overall impacts and the heterogeneity within the outcomes of various airports. Then, I use regression analysis to determine key factors differentiating successful airports from less successful ones, as it pertains particularly to population and employment growth. I find that, first, on average, cities have benefited from airports over this period. Airports, overall, provided a causal contribution of 0.2– 0.6% per year on population and employment growth over the time period. Second, I show that city-level factors contributing to airport success include: (1) closer proximity to a major research university, (2) a capital city location, and (3) climate factors, particularly higher January mean temperatures and/or hours of sunshine. City size is a consideration as well; cities in larger metropolitan areas, with larger shares of employment in nontradables in the 1950s, were also better positioned to reap the benefits that airports provided on city growth. Significant differences were not found across regions, airport governance structures, or other factors.

Adolescent pregnancy stands as a societal challenge, compelling young individuals to prematurely discontinue their education. Conversely, an expansion of high school education can potentially diminish rates of adolescent pregnancy, given that educational attainment stands as the foremost risk factor influencing sexual initiation, the use of contraceptive methods during initial sexual encounters and fertility. The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the implementation of the public educational policy introducing full-time schools (FTS) for high schools in the state of Ceará, Brazil, on early pregnancy rates.

Using the difference-in-differences method with multiple time periods, we measured the average effect of this staggered treatment on the treated municipalities.

The main result indicates a reduction of 0.849 percentage points in the teenage pregnancy rate. Concerning dynamic effects, the establishment of FTS in treated municipalities results in a 1.183–1.953 percentage point decrease in teenage pregnancy rates, depending on the timing of exposure. We explored heterogeneous effects within socioeconomically vulnerable municipalities, yet discerned no impact on this group. Rigorous tests confirm the robustness of the results.

This paper aims to contribute to: (1) the consolidation of research on the subject, given the absence of such research in Brazil to the best of our knowledge; (2) the advancement and analysis of evidence-based public policy and (3) the utilization of novel longitudinal data and methodology to evaluate adolescent pregnancy rates.

The purpose of this paper is to take occupation opportunity as an indicator to examine the impact of hukou on labor market segmentation in China. It estimates the scale of the impact and identifies the way of the impact. Especially, the paper takes hukou uniform reform as an example and tests whether hukou reforms helped in eliminating labor market segmentation.

The data sets this paper adopted are the 2000 Census and 2005 Mini Census data in China. Linear model and Probit model are used in estimating hukou's impact. Oaxaca/Blinder decomposition is used in decomposing the difference in occupation distribution among hukou statuses. DID evaluation method is used in comparing the region with hukou uniform reform and the region without to capture the influence of the reform.

The result shows that occupation segmentation based on hukou significantly exists in urban labor market. Hukou uniform reform improved the occupation opportunity of local rural workers but migrating rural workers were somehow crowded out. Migrating urban workers did not benefit from the reform. To conclude these, the reform released employment segmentation between rural and urban workers within the reformed region but strengthened the segmentation between the local residents and outcomers which could influence future labor source and scale in reformed area.

The paper evaluates the hukou uniform reform's impact on the labor market using an empirical way for the first time and makes concrete policy recommendations based on these findings.

This study examines the impact of influential shareholders, namely, state and influential businessmen, on the dividend policies of firms. A special focus is made on the causal effect of exogenous changes: general and personal economic sanctions leading to toughened state policies concerning dividends.

Russian firms included into the Moscow Stock Exchange Broad Market Index were examined for a period from 2009 to 2019 using a generalized method of moments and a tobit model. The effect of personal sanctions was elucidated with the use of difference-in-differences method with multiple time periods.

The analysis showed that government or businessmen's ownership does not affect dividend payments. However, after 2014, state-owned companies began to increase their payments. At the same time, owing to a series of changes triggered by general economic sanctions, businessmen-owned companies decrease their dividends payout ratio. Personal sanctions imposed do not have long-term effect on Russian companies' dividends.

This study estimates the effect of ownership structure on dividend payouts after an exogenous change. The results show that there is heterogeneity in influential owners' decisions regarding dividends and changes strengthening it.

Many European countries suspended mandatory conscription after the Cold War, and especially between 2000 and 2010. However, with the changing security situation in Europe, more and more countries are considering the re-introduction of the draft. That is why, it is important to evaluate the impact of conscription on draftees, including its effect on fertility outcomes. Additionally, fertility is of particular interest because birth rates have been below replacement levels in most European countries at least in the last two decades. This, combined with the increase in life expectancy, has contributed to aging population and raises concerns about the future economic prospects and sustainability of the continent. Military service could be related to fertility in several ways. Compulsory service for men would affect the marriage market and subsequently child-bearing outcomes. For example, men who serve in the military would have to delay higher education at least by a year, given that they plan to continue their education after high school. One possibility is that this leads to older men meeting younger women if partners meet at college. Alternatively, in case the partners know each other prior to the draft, service could delay marriage by up to a year due to the conscription, postponing planning and having children, and potentially having fewer children as women might be less able or less willing to have a child after a certain age. Finally, some men who plan and would otherwise continue their education might choose to not do so or to further postpone it once they disattach from studying during their service. For some men, this might influence their marital and subsequent fertility outcomes. In either of these scenarios, a draft or its suspension is likely to be connected to fertility.

This study examines the effect of the suspension of the draft in Spain in December 2001 on three fertility outcomes of men that would have been drafted in the absence of the suspension. The author performs the analysis in a difference-in-differences framework. Potential concerns and policy implications are also discussed.

The findings suggest that after the suspension of the draft, individuals started to have their first child earlier given that they decide to have children. Consistent with the overall time trend, they became less likely to have a child and started to have fewer children. However, the age at birth of the first child decreased while the number of children and the likelihood of having a child increased for men relative to women, after compared to before the suspension of the mandatory draft.

The author extends prior literature by investigating the effect of the abolition of compulsory military service in Spain in December 2001 on fertility. This is novel is several ways. First, to the best of the author’s knowledge, previous literature has examined the effect of this Spanish reform only on labor market outcomes prior to men's conscription. Second, even for other countries that terminated the compulsory draft, fertility has been under-studied, providing an opportunity for further exploration. Third, this analysis is based on rich Census data, representative of the population in Spain. Finally, given the inconclusive findings of previous studies for other countries and the proposed re-introduction of the draft in some parts of Europe, additional evidence of the effect of the conscription has important policy implications necessary for the evaluation of future military service policy decisions.

This study intends to explore the relationship between digital finance and the vertical specialization of firms. The following questions are discussed: (1) As a representative new financial development model, what is the role of digital finance in the vertical specialization of firms? (2) If digital finance improves the level of vertical specialization of firms, what is the mechanism behind such improvement? (3) How does digital finance impact the vertical specialization of firms in different regions, industries, and firms?

A two-way fixed-effect model of panel data is proposed to verify the relationship between digital finance and the vertical specialization of firms. This model is constructed by matching the city-level data of digital finance with the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2018. Meanwhile, the instrumental variable (IV) method and difference-in-difference (DID) method are adopted to deal with the endogeneity problem of the model.

The authors' study finds that digital finance has significantly improved the level of vertical specialization of firms. The result is robust under the endogeneity consideration and a series of robustness tests. After the dimensionality of the index is reduced, the depth of digital finance usage is more conducive to the improvement of the vertical specialization of firms compared with the width of digital finance coverage and the level of financial digitization. Digital finance mainly improves the level of vertical specialization of firms by reducing transaction costs and increasing the market thickness of the intermediate products. Moreover, digital finance has certain heterogeneity in promoting the vertical specialization of firms, an effect that is more significant in the eastern region, manufacturing industry and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The first limitation is the mechanism test. This research only analyzes the mechanism from transaction cost and the market thickness of the intermediate products. With the rapid development of information technology, digital finance will be further integrated into people's production and life. There will then be more mechanisms that should be explored between digital finance and the vertical specialization of firms. Another limitation is the data sample of this paper. The conclusions of this research are based only on the data of listed companies. However, in the authors' opinion, the specialization level of small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) should be higher. Therefore, the conclusions of this work are underestimated, which can be considered as the lower limit of digital finance for enterprise specialization.

As a favorable financing channel to supplement traditional financial service functions, digital finance plays a critical role in the operating efficiency of enterprises and the effective allocation of macro resources. The authors' research shows that digital finance has significantly improved the vertical specialization of firms. This conclusion provides guides to improve the production efficiency of enterprises and the quality of economic development.

This paper has three main contributions. (1) The relationship between financial development and the vertical specialization of firms is innovatively discussed from the perspective of digital finance, which implies that digital finance can effectively promote the level of vertical specialization of firms. (2) This paper provides new perspectives and ideas to reveal the impact mechanism of digital finance on the real economy by systematically analyzing the mechanism of digital finance on the vertical specialization of firms from the perspectives of transaction costs and financing constraints. (3) The regional differences in the development of digital finance, industry differences in the vertical specialization of firms and differences in the nature of enterprise property rights are all under consideration, which improves the effectiveness and pertinence of digital finance in promoting the vertical specialization of firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether high-cost-sharing ambulatory care policies affect non-urgent emergency department (ED) care utilization differently among individuals with and without chronic conditions.

This retrospective cohort study used 2010–2011 US Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data. Difference-in-difference methods, multivariate logit model and survey procedures were employed. Time lag effect was used to address endogeneity concerns.

The sample included 4,347 individuals. Difference in non-urgent ED visits log odds between high- and low-cost-sharing policies was not significantly different between chronically ill and non-chronically ill individuals (β=−0.48, p=0.42). Sensitivity analysis with 15 and 25 percent cost-sharing levels also generated consistent insignificant results (p=0.33 and p=0.31, respectively). Ambulatory care incidence rates were not significantly different between high- and low-cost-sharing groups among chronically ill people (incidence rate ratio=0.849, p=0.069).

High-cost-sharing ambulatory care policies were not associated with increased non-urgent ED care utilization among chronically ill and healthy people. The chronically ill patients may have retained sizable ambulatory care that was necessary to maintain their health. Health plans or employers may consider low-level cost-sharing policies for ambulatory care among chronically ill enrollees or employees.

Findings contribute to insurance benefit design; i.e., whether high-cost-sharing ambulatory care policies should be implemented among chronically ill enrollees to maintain their health and save costs for health plans.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the purchase of insurance and economic growth among agricultural households.

Using survey data of the agricultural sector obtained from China over two years, the authors highlight the effect of job switching between farm and non-farm activities on the demand for insurance by applying the difference-in-differences and triple differences methodologies.

The results show that compared with farm income, non-farm income is associated with an increased (decreased) demand for insurance among households in Eastern (Western) China. The inequality in degree of economic development between the regions plays an important role in this finding. Both education and income exhibit a positive relationship with insurance demand for most regions. In addition, in 2007, regardless of farm or non-farm sector, switches are (except in the northeast region) associated with a significant increase in insurance expenditures. Households who switched from the farm to non-farm sector in 2007 are significantly negatively associated with insurance expenditures in the western region.

Inequalities in the degree of economic development play an important role in insurance consumption.

The authors assess the determinants of insurance market development in the agricultural sector in China, characterized by inter-regional disparities in economic development.