This paper takes advantage of a recent policy experiment in Ukraine's secondary education system to study the effect of stricter requirements for proficiency in the state language on linguistic minority students' demand for, as well as opportunities to pursue, further studies at the university...

We show that if two goods whose Indirect Utility Function V (p; q) exhibits the Giffen property for good 1 in some subdomain G(p; q) of the positive quadrant, and if U(x; y) is a Direct Utility Function given by U(x; y) = -V (x; y) and therefore having the same convex contours as V, then U also...

The problem of recognising Giffen behaviour is approached from the standpoint of the Indirect Utility Function (IUF) from which the marshallian demands are easily obtained via Roy's identity. It is shown that, for the two-good situation, downward convergence of the contours of the IUF is...

We incorporate inferential expectations into the Barro-Gordon model (1983a) of time inconsistency and consider reputational equilibria. The range of sustainable equilibria shrinks as the private sector becomes more belief-conservative.

This paper studies the effects of social capital on access to bank financing. Based on a Chinese nationwide survey our analysis suggests that entrepreneurs who spend more time on social activities are more likely to obtain a loan from commercial banks. In addition, we find that membership of...

We analyze a group contest in which n groups compete to win a group-specific public good prize. Group sizes can be different and any individual player may value the prize differently within and across groups. Players expend costly efforts simultaneously and independently. Only the highest effort...

We examine firms' motivation to change their main bank and how this switch affects loans, interest payments and firm performance after switching. Applying treatment effect analysis on unique firm-bank matched Ukrainian data, we find that larger and highly leveraged companies are more likely to...

We investigate situations in which players make costly contributions as group mem- bers in a group conflict, and at the same time engage in contest with fellow group members to appropriate the possible reward. We introduce within group power asymmetry and complementarity in members' efforts and...

Asset prices tend to cluster at round numbers. We examine betting exchange data on U.K. horse races to establish whether limited cognition is partially responsible for this clustering. The key tool in this study is the stark increase in cognitive load faced by traders during races compared to...

A stationary bilinear (SB) model can be used to describe processes with a time-varying degree of persistence that depends on past shocks. An example of such a process is inflation. This study develops methods for Bayesian inference, model comparison, and forecasting in the SB model. Using...