We study the effect of standardized external tests on students’ academic outcomes. We exploit the fact that only one of the 17 Spanish regions started doing and publishing the results of standardized tests in 2005 to apply a difference-in-difference methodology, using outcomes of the PISA...

We study optimal time-consistent fiscal policy in a neoclassical economy with endogenous government spending, physical capital and public debt. We show that a dynamic complementarity between the households’ consumption-savings decision and the government’s policy decision gives rise to a...

We study the problem of normalizing citation impact indicators for differences in citation practices across scientific fields. Normalization of citation impact indicators is usually done based on a field classification system. In practice, the Web of Science journal subject categories are often...

Conventional difference-in-differences (DID) methods that are used to estimate the effect of a treatment rely on important identifying assumptions. Identification of the treatment effect in a DID framework requires some assumption relating trends for controls and treated in absence of treatment,...

In many markets, sellers advertise their good with an asking price. This is a price at which the seller will take his good off the market and trade immediately, though it is understood that a buyer can submit an offer below the asking price and that this offer may be accepted if the seller...

The top-two primary recently approved in states like Washington, California, and Alaska eliminates the closed party primaries and creates instead a single ballot in which the first and second place winners pass to the general election. We compare the electoral consequences of the top-two primary...

In this paper, we develop a new methodology for comparing normalization procedures based on different classification systems. Firstly, a pair of normalization procedures should be compared using their own classification systems for evaluation purposes. Secondly, when the two procedures are...

We study how estimators used to impute consumption in survey data are inconsistent due to measurement error in consumption. Previous research suggests instrumenting consumption to overcome this problem. We show that, if additional regressors are present in the estimation, then instrumenting...

We analyze a competitive research-oriented public program established in Spain, the Ramon yCajal Program, intended to offer contracts in public research centers to high-quality researchers.We study the effects of the Program on the ex-post scientific productivity of its recipients, relativeto...

This paper studies the role of extremely highly cited articles in two instances: the measurement of citation inequality, and mean citation rates. Using a dataset, acquired from Thomson Scientific, consisting of 4.4 million articles published in 1998-2003 in 22 broad fields with a five-year...