Controls For Other Factors Research Articles

Confessional culture, religiosity, and traditionalism: tracing the influence of religion on public attitudes towards European integration

ABSTRACT Religion has long played an important role in the European integration process. Here we review competing confessional visions of ‘Europe’ and summarise empirical findings on their influence on public support for the European Union (EU). In the EU’s early years Catholics – especially if observant – consistently favoured integration more than Protestants, a deep-seated difference that survived statistical controls for other factors. In recent years, however, religion’s impact has changed: (1) religiosity has replaced confessional identity as the most influential religious factor, as the devout in all traditions favour the EU; (2) religious traditionalism, previously tied to religiosity, now plays an independent role, with those defending the authority of the Bible and other traditional forms of religious guidance more sceptical of the EU; and (3) continuing secularisation has eroded support for the EU, both by reducing the ranks of the religious and by ‘decoupling’ religious influences from integration attitudes, especially among the young. We examine these changes in an analysis of the 2019 European Election Study.

COVID-19 lockdowns, stimulus packages, travel bans, and stock returns

This paper examines the effect of government responses of G7 countries to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) on stock market returns. Using time-series data, we show that lockdowns, travel bans, and economic stimulus packages all had a positive effect on the G7 stock markets. However, lockdowns were most effective in cushioning the effects of COVID-19. Our results are robust to different measures of returns and controls for other factors of returns.

Big data suggest strong constraints of linguistic similarity on adult language learning

When adults learn new languages, their speech often remains noticeably non-native even after years of exposure. These non-native variants (‘accents’) can have far-reaching socio-economic consequences for learners. Many factors have been found to contribute to a learners’ proficiency in the new language. Here we examine a factor that is outside of the control of the learner, linguistic similarities between the learner’s native language (L1) and the new language (Ln). We analyze the (open access) speaking proficiencies of about 50,000 Ln learners of Dutch with 62 diverse L1s. We find that a learner’s L1 accounts for 9–22% of the variance in Ln speaking proficiency. This corresponds to 28–69% of the variance explained by a model with controls for other factors known to affect language learning, such as education, age of acquisition and length of exposure. We also find that almost 80% of the effect of L1 can be explained by combining measures of phonological, morphological, and lexical similarity between the L1 and the Ln. These results highlight the constraints that a learner’s native language imposes on language learning, and inform theories of L1-to-Ln transfer during Ln learning and use. As predicted by some proposals, we also find that L1-Ln phonological similarity is better captured when subcategorical properties (phonological features) are considered in the calculation of phonological similarities.

Double standards: the verdicts of western election observers in sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACTThis article tests whether Western election observers apply a “double standard” to elections in sub-Saharan Africa. It demonstrates that they do: Western election observers were statistically less likely to allege that significant fraud had occurred in an election in sub-Saharan Africa, than an election of the same quality held elsewhere, throughout the period from 1991 to 2012. This discrepancy exists despite controls for other factors commonly thought to influence the verdicts of observers, such as the strategic interests of Western countries. Yet, there is variation over time. Between 1991 and 2001, the double standard is partly explained by “progress bias,” a tendency to tolerate flawed elections that improved on those held previously. From 2002 to 2012, observers’ application of a double standard is much harder to explain. In that period, the analysis points to several factors that discourage Western observers from alleging fraud, including the risk of triggering electoral violence and a desire to protect relationships with strategic partners. It also identifies factors that make allegations of electoral fraud more likely, including the precedent set by past allegations of fraud and – unexpectedly – higher levels of foreign aid. None of these factors, however, account for the regional discrepancy.

Does Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Extraction Affect How Much Youth in Rural Pennsylvania Like Their Community?

Prior research on the impacts of boomtowns on youth provides mixed results. Recent qualitative work suggests youth are ambivalent about change associated with extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale. The Rural Youth Education longitudinal study of youth in rural Pennsylvania provides a unique opportunity to examine youth views about their communities before and during development of the Marcellus Shale. We use two waves of data from 10 rural school districts to assess differences in youth reports of how much they liked their community pre‐Marcellus (2005) and during Marcellus activity (2009), creating a natural experiment. Youth characteristics, aspirations, perceptions of job and educational opportunities, and views about their community are included in multinomial multivariate logistic regression models to predict how much youth like their community. We find no difference in youth liking their community pre‐Marcellus, but a larger share of youth in communities experiencing Marcellus activity by 2009 like their community “a lot” than those in areas not affected. The Marcellus effect strengthens when controls for other factors typically associated with extraction activity and views of community are included in the model, suggesting other, unmeasured aspects of Marcellus‐related activity influence how much youth like their community.

Gravity Models in Air Transport Research: A Survey and an Application

For more than 50 years, the gravity model has performed well in empirical studies on international trade flows. Its strong economic theoretical foundations have been acknowledged in the last 20 years. Its applications in air transport research remain relatively sparse. A review of the air transport literature employing gravity models in the last ten years shows that most of the studies have not accounted for the advances in empirical estimation techniques developed in international economics. We apply the gravity model in China’s aviation market using the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) approach with fixed effects. The results indicate an enormous positive effect of the continuous liberalisation in the air transport sector in promoting the demand for air travel. The emergence of high-speed rail (HSR) has been a serious threat to China’s airline industry and could result in a significant reduction in the number of air passengers when given controls for other factors.

Does previous collegiate academic experience affect students' performance?

The aim of this study was to expose and assess the impact of previous collegiate academic experience on the academic performance of students studying Principles of Financial Accounting (II). This study attempts to provide comparative evidence for the harmonisation of international accounting education. Correlation and linear regression (OLS) analyses using a sample of 1,571 students, who were enrolled in 35 sections of a Principle of Financial Accounting (II) course during the period from 2001 to 2013 at the College of Business Studies in Kuwait, were used to test the study's hypotheses. The results indicated that there was a statistically significant and negative relationship between previous collegiate academic experience and students' performance, which explained the influence of previous collegiate academic experience on students' performance, with and without controls for other factors. The study concludes by considering the implications of these findings for the administration team of the College of Business Studies, for similar educational institutions, and for instructors, as well as suggests avenues for future research.

Evaluating the Office of Fair Trading’s ‘fee-paying schools’ intervention

This paper assesses the impact of the 2006 OFT intervention addressing the anti-competitive exchange of information in the setting of school fees by a group of 50 schools in the United Kingdom. Availing of a large panel dataset of school fees and other schools’ characteristics, the paper employs a differences-in-differences methodology to allow robust and statistically significant findings to be drawn. Evolution of school fees of the group of 50 infringing schools—subject to OFT treatment—is compared with a ‘no-intervention’ counterfactual scenario, informed by reference to a control group of 178 non-participating schools. The analysis controls for other factors that may influence the determination of fees, most notably the quality of the schools. The analysis finds the OFT intervention leads to a reduction of 1.6 % in the boarding fees of the infringing schools. This equates to savings of approximately £500 per boarder per term, and suggests consumer savings of around £85m may have been realised since intervention. Additional potential effects in spurring wider competitive responses by non-infringing schools are not considered in this analysis, and underline the conservative nature of the findings.

Taxpayers as a Disciplinary Mechanism in Governmental Budgeting: The Case of Balloting in School District Budgets

This study examines the influence of taxpayer balloting on budget levels and its relationship with standardized test results in New Jersey school districts. The relation between efficiency, effectiveness, and budget voting outcomes is analyzed over a ten-year sample period. Cost and production functions are jointly estimated, where the two endogenous variables are comparative cost per pupil and weighted test scores. From these regressions, efficiency and effectiveness scores are derived for each school district. Granger causality tests with controls for other factors are then used to determine the presumed direction of causality between efficiency, effectiveness, and voting outcomes.We find a negative relation between the one-year lag of efficiency scores and the current year's effectiveness scores, and vice-versa. This negative feedback loop suggests that cutting costs in one year may have an adverse effect on test scores in the following year, and that higher test scores are followed by more spending in the subsequent year. However, overall, we find that more cost-efficient school districts also tend to be more test outcome-effective. As for voting outcomes, we find that a defeated budget (i.e., "no vote") is negatively related to efficiency, but positively related to effectiveness for the coming school year to which that budget relates. The negative relation suggests that the proposed budget observed by taxpayer's signals inefficiencies that are not cured by remedial actions taken in response to the negative vote, and that the negative vote is instead used as an incentive to improve performance (in lieu of making substantial reductions in the budget).

Small and large firm regulatory costs: the case of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act

PurposeAs a result of scandals concerning major financial crime in the early twenty‐first century, including accounting and auditing fraud and inappropriate behavior by directors on the boards of US corporations, Congress hurriedly enacted the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002. SOX's major purpose was to restore investor confidence in America's securities markets. Small firms argued that their cost of compliance was very heavy and that their burden was greater than for larger firms, especially the costs related to section 404 of the Act, which dealt with new requirements to obtain independent audit opinions. The authors found no empirical research that supports or denies these claims. Subsequently, in 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission reduced the Act's new audit requirements for small companies. This paper aims to examine audit fees for large and small firms.Design/methodology/approachThe study examines actual audit fee data to investigate the increased costs paid by publicly traded companies to independent audit firms for their services due to Sarbanes‐Oxley. The authors use univariate and multivariate statistical methods to compare increases in audit fees paid by samples of 150 large firms and 150 small firms.FindingsThe study finds that both small and large firms incurred increased audit fees due to compliance with Sarbanes‐Oxley, and that small companies did incur larger increases in their cost burden.Originality/valueThe study uses actual audit fee data reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission and controls for other factors that determine audit fees in reaching its conclusions.

Corporate Funding Liquidity, Exposure to the Financial Industry, and Stock Returns

Distress in the financial sector affects businesses in the corporate sector by spilling over into financing channels. This creates problems for businesses which rely heavily on a continuous supply of funding. These businesses are forced to bypass positive NPV projects when the quantity of available financing in the economy dries up. This reliance on external funding creates risks for businesses. Using two proxies, we explore whether this risk is priced in the cross section of stock returns. While the first proxy measures a firm's reliance on external financing, the second proxy measures a firm's exposure to downside risk in the financial sector. Ex-ante, we expect these proxies to capture similar effects, and to generate a positive premium in the cross-section of returns. As expected, we find that reliance on external finance carries a significantly positive premium. In contrast, however, we find that exposure to downside risk in the financial sector is associated with a significantly negative. High exposure to downside risk in the financial sector generates a discount when compared to assets with low exposure. This effect is robust to controls for other factors known to generate negative premia in the cross section. We find preliminary evidence indicates that this puzzling negative premium may be created by a “bailout discount”.

Getting Out and About: The Relationship Between Urban Form and Senior Travel Patterns

As the overall U.S. population expands outward from the central city and core suburbs and as people age in place, more seniors will reside in suburban and exurban locations. This research seeks to determine whether older adults who live in areas with differing urban forms experience travel pattern variations under controls for other factors related to travel. We analyzed data from a telephone survey of a random sample of seniors aged 75 years and older and we employed a unique approach for establishing the urban form of their residential settings. The results show that urban form does influence travel patterns, including the number of trips and transportation mode, and suggest that the construction of compact, mixed-use communities where today's older adults can age in place may be part of the solution to addressing the mobility needs of our aging population.

What is different about urban activities of those with access to ICTs? Some early evidence from Québec, Canada

The first wave, conducted in 2002–2003, of an in-depth panel survey in Quebec City, was used to compare the out-of-home activities of adults who had the use of mobile phones, or of internet at home, to those who did not. A unique feature of the survey was the inclusion of respondents’ perceptions of the both the temporal and the spatial flexibility of all executed activities. We find, after statistical controls for other factors, that mobile phone use was positively associated with activity and trip levels, while internet access was negatively associated. These two ICTs also had mostly opposite relationships with the routinisation and pre-arrangement of activities and with some conventionally defined sub-classes of activity.

Class Attendance and Performance in Principles of Economics

A sample of 347 students, enrolled in principles of economics classes during the period 1997–2001, is used to examine the relation between class attendance and student performance on examinations. Among the questions examined are: Is attendance related to performance, with and without controls for other factors? Do only substantial levels of absence matter? Do low test scores cause more frequent subsequent absences? Do the results change when individual heterogeneity (in addition to controls for differences in SAT and GPA) is considered in the context of random‐effects and fixed‐effects models, using panel data? Can overall attendance be proxied by attendance at six meetings at the end of the semester, and does such a proxy yield the same relation to performance as overall attendance? We also study the factors that appear to contribute to improved classroom attendance.

Policy Instruments in Injury Crashes

Alcohol prohibition and law enforcement deployment are important policies designed to increase traffic safety and reduce injury crashes. This study uses data on county-level law enforcement and injury crashes to analyze the effect of traffic law enforcement and alcohol prohibition. The analysis controls for other factors that affect injury crashes such as age groups, road factors, and behavioral factors including driving under the influence convictions and suspended licenses. Analysis is presented through a negative binomial regression methodology. Results indicate that both increasing law enforcement personnel and alcohol prohibition reduce the number of injury crashes within a county. Moreover, if policymakers’ goals are to reduce the count of injury crashes to zero, law enforcement and alcohol prohibition are important combined factors in this goal.

Democratic Progress and Regress: The Effect of Parties on the Transitions of States to and Away from Democracy

This article examines how political parties and party competition affect the likelihood of nations becoming and remaining democracies. While many scholars have long assumed that this is the case, the roles of parties and party competition are indeed affected, such a likelihood has rarely been examined rigorously in cross-national evaluations. In addition to examining the links between parties and political transitions, our analysis controls for other factors purported to have a significant effect on democratization. To test the effects of parties and party competition on the transition to and survival of democracies and autocracies, this article utilizes event history analysis on all countries in political transition between the years of 1950-1992, using three different measures of democracy. Through this multifaceted and unique approach, we are able to demonstrate that across all three measures of democracy, parties do indeed play an important role in causing authoritarian states to transition to democracy and helping democratic nations remain democracies.

Assessing the effects of race and ethnicity on use of complementary and alternative therapies in the USA

Objective To investigate the use of alternative therapies among different racial/ethnic groups in the USA. Specifically, we examined whether alternative medicine use differs for working aged whites, Asian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanics. Design Using the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, racial differences in utilization were investigated at two levels: (1) the bivariate level with no controls for other factors and (2) at the multivariate level with controls for age, sex, region, marital status, education, income, health status, satisfaction with conventional healthcare, and access measures. Results Americans in this sample population used alternative and complementary therapies at a fairly low rate (6.5%). This 6.5%, however, was not consistent across all groups. African Americans and Hispanics were less likely than whites to utilize alternative therapies, whereas Asian Americans did not differ significantly from whites. Conclusions The use of alternative and complementary therapies varied across racial/ethnic groups. Evidence showed that individuals who were dissatisfied with the availability of conventional healthcare, who were in poor health, but very satisfied with their conventional provider were more likely to use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies. The addition of these variables to a logistic regression model did not change the findings for differential use by ethnicity, the relative ranking of groups, or the overall strength of the relationship.

Can Equity Investors Profit from Elections?

Indications that suggest equity investors can profit from elections are problematic for three reasons. First, the research assumes that political variables alone determine stock market performance. Therefore, this article controls for other factors, namely, total and systematic risk. Second, given the limited usefulness of temporal variance for practitioners, this study examines international data and thus broadens the potentially applicable findings. Third, the research provides minimal theory regarding “significant” relations; this article modifies the hypotheses to incorporate rational expectations. All in all, both evidence and theory regarding political effects are ambiguous.

The Changing Impact of Women’s Educational Attainment and Employment on the Timing of Births in Canada

This study examined the influence of maternal birth cohort on the timing and risk of childbearing in Canada. The analysis considered the impact of education and paid employment marital status contraceptive use region of residence country of birth and religious affiliation. The analysis relied on bivariate and multivariate models and the interactions between education and employment. Data were obtained from the 1995 General Social Survey of Canada among 3519 women of all marital statuses aged 18-49 years. The sample was stratified according to birth cohort. Bivariate results reveal that level of attainment was related to a negative linear relationship to proportions having a birth at all ages. Higher education was associated with lower proportions giving birth. A higher proportion at any educational level proceeded to a second birth. Second births were less strongly related to educational level. The negative effect of education on first and second parities was strongest among younger age groups at the highest educational level. Full-time regular employment was associated with increased proportions of women having first or second births. Multivariate analysis reveals that employment and education had the strongest impact on timing of births. Employment prior to a birth increased the risk of first and second births for all ages except the oldest group of second parity women. Education at first birth had a strong and significant negative impact on the risk of birth with controls for other factors. The greatest impact was among the youngest ages. Findings suggest a changing relationship over time between womens education and fertility.

Phenotype and Schooling among Mexican Americans

The study presented here examined the effect of phenotype (both skin color and physical features) on schooling attainment among Mexican Americans with data from the 1979 National Chicano Survey. It found that the lightest skin-toned and most European-looking quarter of the Mexican American population had about 1.5 more years of schooling than the darker and more Indian-looking majority. Differences in schooling by phenotype persisted with and without controls for other factors that have also been found to affect schooling. Phenotype was especially important among cohorts educated before World War II, although it continued to be important among later cohorts. Also, it had strong effects on schooling in Texas but virtually no effects in California and strong effects for those raised in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods but insignificant effects for those raised in English-speaking neighborhoods