Műhelytanulmányok
Péter Csóka, P. Jean-Jacques Herings
MKE-WP-38934
- pcsoka
- 2024.03.26.
- Elmélet és kísérleti közgazdaságtan, Pénzügyek
- 1
We consider financial networks where agents are linked to each other via mutual liabilities. In case of bankruptcy, there are potentially many bankruptcy rules, ways to distribute the assets of a bankrupt agent over the other agents. One common approach is to first apply pairwise netting of agents that have mutual liabilities and next use the proportional rule to determine the payments on the basis of the net liabilities. We refer to this as the pairwise netting proportional rule. The pairwise netting proportional rule satisfies the basic requirements of claims boundedness, limited liability, priority of creditors, and continuity. It also satisfies the desirable properties of net impartiality, an agent that has two creditors with the same net claims pays the same amount to both creditors on top of pairwise netting, and invariance to mitosis, an agent that splits into a number of identical agents is not affecting the payments of the other agents. We demonstrate that if net impartiality and invariance to mitosis, together with the basic requirements, are regarded as imperative properties, then payments should be determined by the pairwise netting proportional rule.
Antal Ertl, Dániel Horn, Hubert János Kiss
MKE-WP-38931
- Kiss Hubert János
- 2024.03.25.
- Elmélet és kísérleti közgazdaságtan
- 1
Chowdhury, Sutter and Zimmermann (2022) assessed the risk, time, and social preferences of family members in rural Bangladesh, presenting two main findings. First, there is a strong and positive association between family members’ preferences, even when controlling for personality traits and family background. Second, families can be grouped into two clusters: approximately 20% of the families are characterized by relatively impatient, risk-averse, and spiteful members, while the rest of the families have relatively patient, risk-tolerant, and prosocial members. Recognizing the pivotal role of cluster analysis in deriving the second result, we first successfully computationally reproduced the results, and then we conducted two types of robustness checks. The first examines the transformation of variables (continuous or categorical), affecting the proximity measure that is crucial to cluster analysis. The second assesses the effect of varying the number of clusters on the findings. Some results are robust, as we consistently find the small cluster of families identified by Chowdhury et al. (2022). However, divergent outcomes emerge with categorical variables (a logical choice given their nature) and a larger number of clusters (3 or 4). We conclude that, although the cluster analysis by Chowdhury et al. (2022) is valid, its outcomes significantly depend on the researcher’s assumptions and choices. Careful consideration of several alternatives is essential in exploratory cluster analysis to identify stable groups.
- Kiss Hubert János
- 2024.03.21.
- Elmélet és kísérleti közgazdaságtan
- 2
Abstract
The linguistic-savings hypothesis posits that the grammatical marking of future events in languages is linked to future-oriented behavior. Recent experimental studies have suggested patience as a possible mechanism connecting language use and future-oriented behavior by exogenously manipulating what language is used. Our paper explores the association between patience and the language that people naturally use, thereby building on endogenous (as opposed to exogenously manipulated) language use. To capture natural language usage, we utilized a novel sentence-completion task designed for native speakers of the Hungarian language. This language allows for referencing future events through both present and future tenses. We hypothesized a positive correlation between being patient and using the present tense to refer to future events. We conducted incentivized and non-incentivized experiments with four independent samples of high school and university students, involving nearly 3,500 students in total. We find no consistent evidence that patience is correlated with endogenous future-time reference. Our null finding is further supported by a robustness check that leverages specific randomness in our data.
- adamszeidl
- 2024.02.07.
- Alkalmazott közgazdaságtan
- 1
We created experimental variation across markets in China in the share of firms having access to a new loan product. Access to finance had a large positive direct effect on the performance of treated firms, but a similar-sized negative indirect effect on that of firms with treated competitors, leading to non-detectable gains in producer surplus. Access to finance had a positive direct effect on business quality and consumer satisfaction, and a negative effect on price, which were not offset by indirect effects, implying net gains in consumer surplus. We document other indirect effects and combine effects in a welfare evaluation.
Anikó Bíró (Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungary); Márta Bisztray (Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungary); João Galindo da Fonseca (Université de Montréal, Canada); Tímea Laura Molnár (Central European University, Austria)
MKE-WP-38877
- molnartl
- 2024.02.07.
- Emberi erőforrás tanulmányok
- 1
How do short absences from work affect workers' labor trajectory? We use linked employer-employee administrative data from Hungary, with rich administrative health records, and use unexpected and mild accidents with no permanent labor productivity losses as exogenous drivers of short absences. Our Difference-in-Differences results show that, relative to the counterfactual of no accident, even short (3-6-months long) periods of absence due to accidents decrease wages for up to two years by 1.5 percent, and workers end up with lower-paying firms. Missed opportunities to move to higher-paying firms account for 7-37 percent of the wage loss over a two-year period.
Tünde Lénárd, Dániel Horn, Hubert János Kiss
MKE-WP-38856
- Kiss Hubert János
- 2023.12.16.
- Emberi erőforrás tanulmányok
- 1
The gender gap in competitiveness is argued to explain gender differences in later life outcomes, including career choices and the gender wage gap. In experimental settings, a prevalent explanation attributes this gap to males being more (over)confident than females (we call this the compositional channel). While our lab-in-the-field study using data from students in 53 classrooms (N>1000) reproduces this finding, it also uncovers a second, potentially more impactful channel of confidence contributing to the gender gap in competitiveness (the preference channel). To disentangle the two channels, we propose a more precise measure of confidence based on whether the subjects’ believed performance rank exceeds, coincides with or falls short of their actual performance in a real-effort task. We label categories of this Guessed - Actual Performance (GAP) difference as overconfident,
realistic or underconfident, respectively. Surprisingly, there is no gender difference in competitiveness within the over- and underconfident subgroups, while a significant gender gap exists among the realistic. So, even if both genders had the same level of confidence, a persistent gender gap in preference (or taste) for competition would remain in the realistic group. This finding is robust across all specifications, challenging previous theories about the overconfidence of men being the sole driver
of the relationship between confidence and the gender gap in competition.
Anna Adamecz, John Jerrim, Jean-Baptiste Pingault, Nikki Shure
MKE-WP-38841
- Anna Adamecz
- 2023.12.16.
- Emberi erőforrás tanulmányok
- 4
It is well established that boys perceive themselves to be better in mathematics than girls, even when their ability is the same. We examine the drivers of the gender gap in self-assessed mathematics ability using a longitudinal study of twins. Using measures of individual self-assessment in mathematics from childhood and adolescence, along with mathematics levels and test scores, cognitive skills, parent and teacher mathematics assessments, and characteristics of their families and siblings, we examine potential channels of the gender gap. Our results confirm that objective mathematics abilities only explain a small share of the gender gap in self-assessed mathematics abilities, and the gap is even larger within opposite-sex twin pairs. We find that the self-assessment of boys is positively correlated with the self-assessment of their male co-twins, not just in mathematics, but also in other abilities. However, this positive correlation is not observed between girls and their male co-twins; if anything, it is negative. This phenomenon might explain why men self-select into top jobs or STEM courses, that are filled with confident men, possibly making entry relatively easier for men. We also find that parents are more likely to overestimate boys’ and underestimate girls’ mathematics abilities. Gender-biased parental assessments explain a large part of the gender gap in mathematics self-assessment, highlighting the potential of the intergenerational transmission of gender stereotypes.