The literature estimating returns to education has often utilized spousal education and parental education as instrument variables (IV). However, due to usual survey designs, both IVs are available only for the individuals whose spouse or parents are present in the same household. The IV...

Purpose: In a contribution to the emerging research examining Chinese cross-border acquisitions (CBAs), the authors observe experiential learning applications for enhancing M&A completions. By emphasizing knowledge transfer, the authors reveal how target-to-target industry similarity and...

The use of informal job search method is prevalent in many countries. There is, however, no consensus in the literature on whether it actually matters for wages, and if it does, what are the underlying mechanisms. We empirically examine these issues specifically for rural migrants in urban...

It is widely accepted in word-of-mouth (WOM) research that weak ties have a greater macro-level impact than strong ties on the spread of WOM and that marketers should thus intentionally stimulate WOM between weak ties to optimize a given WOM campaign. Here, we challenge this idea based on the...

In the traditional human capital framework, education is often considered as an investment, rather than consumption, while consumption is not necessarily precluded. Whether education is an investment is empirically unclear and relatively under-explored. We shed light on this issue by estimating...

Supporting working mothers to balance their work and childcare responsibilities is a central objective of maternal and parental leave policies. Nearly all countries offer some forms of maternity and family leave programs for childbearing on a national basis. This chapter reviews various types of...

Although the theoretical trade-off between the quantity and quality of children is well-established, empirical evidence supporting such a causal relationship − particularly on child health − is limited. We use two measures of child health to asses the quantity-quality trade-off across the...

This paper studies the impact of mortgages on consumer debt and on debt on durable goods. We first present a stylized model in which an outstanding debt, representing mortgages, affects positively consumer debt, and debt on durable goods. The model is empirically tested for the U.S. using PSID...