PUBLISHED PAPERS
If you would like a PDF or hard copy of any of the following papers, please contact me.
"Interview Effects in the Reporting of Domestic Violence" forthcoming, Journal of Socio-Economics
Abstract: Victims of domestic abuse sometimes have the opportunity to discuss their experiences in interviews with researchers and subsequently to report their victimization. Beyond the reporting decision—a nontrivial information-revelation decision—they frequently must decide whether to have someone they know present at the interview and whether to conduct the interview in person or by telephone. Having an associate present at the interview may provide a respondent victim greater comfort, or social support, than she might have conducting the interview by herself, but perhaps only to the extent that the abusive partner does not pose a continuing household threat. Undertaking a personal interview may facilitate a greater degree of empathy or deeper understanding from the information gatherer likely unavailable over the telephone, but personal interviews generally take more time and so may incur significant marginal opportunity costs. This paper examines conceptually and empirically how the parameters of these interviews, endogenously determined by victims themselves, affect the decision to report domestic violence.
"Innovation, Managerial Effort, and Start-Up Performance" (with Thomas W. Hall) forthcoming, Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance and Business Ventures August 2008
Abstract: Managers of start-up firms make a number of important yet understudied decisions, such as the amount of time and effort they will devote to their new company, whether or not to use external consulting services, whether or not to innovate, and whether or not to produce a high-technology product or service. Start-up teams have access to various resources—factors exogenous to the firm’s decisions that make effort more efficient at contributing to the firm’s profitability. We consider how these resources influence optimal provision of entrepreneurial and managerial effort, and examine the firm’s decision to engage in innovative behavior (i.e., to market a novel or high-technology product) and to exert managerial effort (i.e., time commitment team members devote to the enterprise and their use of external assistance). To investigate these relationships empirically, we make use of a unique data set that identifies various aspects of a large number of start-up firms: type of product, degree of external consulting use, allocation of time devoted to the firm by the management team (hours per week), etc. We also control for relevant aspects of the entrepreneur’s social environment. Our results illustrate how pre-existing resources influence entrepreneurial and managerial activity in start-ups, and we also illustrate that pre-existing resources complement effort in their effect on performance (sales).
"Crime, Protection, and Incarceration" (with Allen Wilhite) forthcoming, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization August 2008
Abstract: Criminals impose costs on society that go beyond the direct losses suffered by their victims; crime casts a shadow of uncertainty over our daily economic and social activities. Consequently, individuals and society as a whole choose to direct resources to crime prevention. In this study we analyze a virtual society facing such choices. Individuals, neighborhoods, and cities make crime prevention decisions and adjust their decisions over time as they attempt to balance the cost of crime with the cost of crime prevention. The society that ultimately emerges exhibits aggregate criminal characteristics that mimic patterns of crime observable in the natural world. We then use this virtual society to conduct a series of anti-crime policy experiments, the results of which illustrate how different approaches to crime protection and incarceration can vary in their efficiency at reducing crime.crime.
"The Reporting and Underreporting of Rape" Southern Economic Journal January 2007
Abstract: A rape victim possesses a scarce resource: information about the crime. Thus, a victim’s decision to report the crime to police, to allocate that resource, becomes an economic choice. A victim cannot receive social support or legal justice without revealing such information, but doing so creates real costs--social recrimination and lost privacy--with no guarantee of offender apprehension. This article explores the economics of the reporting and chronic non-reporting of rape in the context of this information-allocation problem. The empirical analysis addresses the extent to which social-support availability and evidentiary factors influence the reporting decision. Dichotomous and multinomial logit results, obtained using National Crime Survey data on a sample of rape victims, reveal how various demographic and crime-specific factors explain the decision to report and the selection of specific reasons for not reporting. Some of these factors reflect circumstances addressable as matters of procedure or policy.
"Bidding and Overconfidence in Experimental Financial Markets" (with Dorla A. Evans) Journal of Behavioral Finance Summer 2005
Abstract: Overconfidence is a well-documented phenomenon in psychology. Psychologists define an overconfident individual as one who believes he has more accurate information than he really does. Recently, behavioral economists have become interested in the implications of trader overconfidence for financial decision making and the functioning of financial markets. To date, most financial market studies have been analytical in nature. These studies assume that traders are overconfident and model decision making behavior accordingly. Rather than assuming the presence of overconfidence, our objective is to use experimental bidding data to determine the extent to which trader overconfidence exists and what variables suggested by previous research in finance and psychology relate to it. We find approximately 40% of subjects exhibited overconfidence. Variables which distinguish overconfident bidding from risk-averse and risk-neutral bidding include the traditional financial variables which explain bidding (expected value and standard deviation), non-traditional financial variables, and variables related to the self-attribution bias and feedback. Contrary to what some analysts have suggested, experience did not reduce overconfidence.
"Cultures of Illegality in the National Hockey League" Southern Economic Journal January 2005
Abstract: When people commit illegal acts, are they influenced by the wider culture of illegality around them, or do personal incentives matter most? If someone experiences a more pronounced culture of illegality, whether he increases his illegality depends greatly on his historical involvement with illegality and how his wealth also changes. The National Hockey League provides a useful setting for empirical analysis of these issues. Using a constructed panel data set which tracks player behavior on a game-by-game basis over the course of a season, we examine how various aspects of the wider culture of illegality affect individual illegality. We also take advantage of what amounts to a natural experiment in exogenous cultural change, by examining the behavior of players traded from one team to another during the season under analysis. The empirical results are consistent with the economic model of crime, but cultural factors generally appear less influential and robust than individual-level incentives.
"Crime, Punishment, and Recidivism: Lessons from the National Hockey League" Journal of Sports Economics February 2002
Abstract: Among the fundamental elements of the sport of ice hockey are the on-ice rules violations occasionally committed by players and the penalties assessed for those violations. During the 1998-99 season, the National Hockey League for the first time experimented with the deployment of two on-ice referees for a selection of games instead of the customary single referee, significant in that only referees have the authority to call penalties. In this paper, that experimental 1998-99 season provides the empirical setting for a test of the economic model of crime, which suggests that economic agents allocate time to legal and illegal activity by considering the benefits and costs of these activities. Here, those economic agents are NHL players. Empirically, relatively non-violent illegal activity appears significantly influenced by benefits and costs, but particularly violent acts appear to occur more randomly. Particularly violent penalties increase when a second referee is deployed, suggesting a dominant "apprehension effect," rather than a dominant "deterrence effect," of what amounts to an increase in the presence of police.
"Social Networks and Self-Employment" Journal of Socio-Economics October 2000
Abstract: This paper applies social network concepts, developed in sociology, to the analysis of the self-employment decision. Theory suggests that if one’s social network provides social support so as to reduce the costs of self-employment, those with more effective social networks may possess a greater incentive to attempt self-employment, ceteris paribus. Empirical investigation of this hypothesis is conducted using a unique new data set, the Wisconsin Entrepreneurial Climate Study, which allows analysis of self-employment in a social context. Results illustrate that the individual self-employment choice is highly influenced by the size and composition of the social network and that women receive less influential social support for entrepreneurial activity than men receive, a finding that may provide an explanation for gender differences in self-employment likelihood.
"The Moonlighting Decision of Unmarried Men and Women: Family and Labor Market Influences" Atlantic Economic Journal June 1998
Abstract: This paper investigates the moonlighting behavior of unmarried adults. Moonlighting theory hypothesizes that individuals who face labor supply constraints may possess an enhanced incentive to work for more than one employer at a time, but previous research in the moonlighting literature has not investigated the influence of labor market constraints empirically. Unmarried men and women, an increasingly prevalent demographic group, face somewhat unique familial and economic circumstances. Unlike married individuals, they do not have access to intra-household income sources and, yet, they may have children present in their household. Empirical results suggest a relationship between labor market constraints and moonlighting likelihood that is consistent with theory and suggest that a larger immediate and extended family may be associated with a lesser probability of moonlighting.
"Retroactive Benefits in Income Replacement Programs: Results from a Modified Natural Experiment" (with William P. Curington and Amy Farmer) Southern Economic Journal July 1997
Abstract: Displaced workers face a waiting period before they may receive income replacement benefits. Commonly, if work absence duration exceeds a statutory "retroactive period," workers receive compensatory benefits for the waiting period. Theoretically, retroactive benefits create a "notch" in workers’ lifetime budget constraint. When the retroactive period is reduced, workers who fall within the notch gain an incentive to increase their work absence durations, while others gain an incentive to decrease their durations because they receive retroactive benefits sooner. Results obtained utilizing log-linear regression models and individual-level workers’ compensation data from New York state lend empirical support to these hypotheses.
"Family Illness and Temporary Work Absence" Applied Economics September 1996
Abstract: The literature contains much research examining the economics of absenteeism and the relationship between an individual’s labour supply and his or her own health status. But very little has examined the effect of a family illness on an individual’s labour supply. This paper presents an analysis of the length of temporary work absences subsequent to a family illness. Conceptually, workers have varying degrees of family-specific psychic work costs: the greater those costs, the greater the familial pull in the event of a family problem, and therefore the greater the degree of work loss subsequent to a family illness. Empirical results obtained using microdata from the University of Michigan PSID indicate that family factors do have a significant impact on the duration of work absence. The results would seem to carry policy relevance in light of the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.
"How Strikes Influence Work-injury Duration: Evidence from the State of New York" (Proceedings of the Forty-Sixth Annual Meeting, Industrial Relations Research Association 1994)
Abstract: The work-injury literature contains many studies of the determinants of the lengths of post-injury work loss spells, but the importance of work stoppages as a factor affecting work-injury duration is largely unexplored. Because industries that suffer work stoppages (strikes) generally have no choice but to continue production with less-experienced replacement workers, it seems likely that injury durations would lengthen and perhaps become more severe during a strike. This paper provides empirical evidence of this phenomenon using individual level Workers’ Compensation data from the state of New York. The results suggest that industrial strike activity may act as an important latent factor affecting injury durations and that future research models would be wise to keep the influence of strike activity in mind.