Role Of Self-selection Research Articles

Immigration and crime: The role of self-selection and institutions

Contrary to popular perception, empirical evidence suggests that immigrants do not necessarily commit more crimes than natives, in spite of having lower legitimate earning opportunities. To make sense of this, we propose a novel theoretical framework based on a predator/prey model of crime, where endogenous migration decisions and career choices (between licit and illicit activities) are jointly determined. In this setting, we show that the involvement of migrants in crime crucially depends on self-selection into migration, as well as on productivity and institutional quality in the host economy. In particular, immigrants may display a lower crime rate than natives even if they are less productive on the honest labor market – and this result can still hold if career choices are revised after migration. We also find that stricter immigration policies could induce an adverse selection of migrants, and eventually attract more foreign-born criminals. Finally, a dynamic extension of our model can account for the higher crime rates of second-generation immigrants, and highlights the critical role of immigration and assimilation for the long-run evolution of crime and institutions in host countries.

Immigration and Crime: The Role of Self-Selection and Institutions

Contrary to popular perception, empirical evidence suggests that immigrants do not necessarily commit more crimes than natives, in spite of having lower legitimate earning opportunities. To make sense of this, we propose a novel theoretical framework based on a predator/prey model of crime, where endogenous migration decisions and career choices (between licit and illicit activities) are jointly determined. In this setting, we show that the involvement of migrants in crime crucially depends on self-selection into migration, as well as on productivity and institutional quality in the host economy. In particular, immigrants may display a lower crime rate than natives even if they are less productive on the honest labor market – and this result can still hold if career choices are revised after migration. We also find that stricter immigration policies could induce an adverse selection of migrants, and eventually attract more foreign-born criminals. Finally, a dynamic extension of our model can account for the higher crime rates of second-generation immigrants, and highlights the critical role of immigration and assimilation for the long-run evolution of crime and institutions in host countries.

Motivated by Money: Evidence on the Personalities of People who Choose to Work in Finance

In the wake of the global financial crisis, many studies have sought to assess the values and culture among professionals in finance. However, prior research is mostly cross-sectional and does not consider the role of self-selection and socialization — individuals with certain values are more likely to choose and remain working in finance and employees internalize the values and culture of their industry. This paper analyzes in a hazard model individual-level panel data from 464 banker in Germany surveyed over 2,000 times between 2000 and 2017. We assess the role of selection and socialization in shaping values in the finance industry. Results indicate that preferences for risk and money are already present before they start to work in finance and are not socialized in the sector. The results indicate a business norm in the financial sector that attracts professionals who think in a riskier and more income-focused manner. Average risk preferences of financial professionals were highest in the immediate years before the global financial crisis in 2007/08. We conclude that changing the culture in the finance industry requires a concerted effort involving recruitment and retention.

Social participation patterns and their associations with health and well-being for older adults.

Older adults are at an elevated risk of adverse health effects associated with social isolation and loneliness. Social participation is considered a modifiable determinant of health and well-being and has been proposed as a means to reduce this risk. However, there is limited knowledge to date about patterns of social activities among older adults. Using two waves of the Swiss Household Panel, a latent class analysis is performed to obtain discrete social participation profiles of adults aged 60 and older. Descriptive statistics and regression methods are used to study group compositions and estimate associations with self-assessed health, negative and positive affect, and life satisfaction. Once individual time-constant characteristics are controlled for, the majority of the positive associations between social participation and health or well-being found in the pooled data becomes small and insignificant, which is indicative of self-selection into different activity profiles. The role of self-selection into social participation implies that the design of interventions targeting social participation in the older adult population should be tailored to their heterogeneous needs and preferences.

Values in Business Schools: The Role of Self-Selection and Socialization

Contemporary business schools are expected to educate their students to embrace ethical and prosocial values. But can business schools rise to this challenge? Comparing a business school to another...

Establishment size and task-specific wages: Evidence from historical contract data

This study examines whether task-specific jobs are rewarded differently across establishments of different sizes and whether these rewards vary across distinct technologies. We found that the aggregate premium estimates on the impact of size on wages conceal significant differences between tasks and technologies and that these differences reflect unobserved individual heterogeneity. The role of self-selection of more productive workers into larger establishments is particularly substantial in the case of abstract tasks.

Self-Selection in Home Choice

The role of self-selection in shaping travel patterns, by affecting one's home location choice, is a critical issue. Developers, planners, and policy makers regularly debate to what extent the built environment and land use patterns can alleviate roadway congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, and myriad other urban problems. A study illustrates the use of Heckman's latent index model to ascertain travel impacts of neighborhood type in Austin, Texas. Under this approach, self-selection is formulated as sample selection bias in receiving a treatment. Here, treatment is defined to be one's residence in a suburban or rural zone, rather than Austin's central business district (CBD) and nearby urban zones. This approach of treatment or no-treatment is a meaningful advance in models of self-selection effects and requires estimation of three straightforward models. Depending on model specification used, results suggest that at least half (58% to 90%) of the differences in vehicle miles traveled observed between similar households living in CBD or urban versus rural or suburban neighborhoods of Austin is due to the location or treatment itself, whereas self-selection of such treatment (by households that wish to meet special travel needs or preferences) accounts for the remainder.

Can Urban Planning Reduce Obesity? The Role of Self-Selection in Explaining the Link between Weight and Urban Sprawl

I the United States, obesity has risen at an epidemic rate during the past 20 years (Flegal et al.). Recent studies by urban planning and public health researchers find that development patterns associated with urban sprawl are a significant determinant of obesity rates in the U.S. population (Ewing et al.; Frank, Andresen, and Schmid; Lopez). Several explanations are offered. First, poor connectivity in street networks and low-density and single-use development increase trip distances and reduce physical activity by making walking and bicycling impractical and unsafe. Second, low-density development reduces the viability of public transportation. As a result, people must commute to and from work by automobile, which can lead to traffic congestion and the diversion of time from activities such as exercising. Third, modern suburban developments do not adequately provide facilities such as parks that permit and encourage physical activity. An important assumption in the urban planning/public health studies is that urban form is exogenous to an individual’s weight.1 Thus, the researchers consider how an individual is affected by the pattern of land use where they reside, but do not account for the individual’s choice of residence. If weight affects an individual’s choice of the type of neighborhood to reside in, then the sprawl measures in earlier studies are endogenous regressors and the coefficient

The role of self selection, usage uncertainty and learning in the demand for local telephone service

Telephone services are often characterized by the presence of ‘fixed’ plans, involving only a fixed monthly fee, as well as ‘measured’ plans, with both fixed fees and per-unit charges for usage. Consumers are faced with the decisions of which plan to choose and how much to use the phone and these decisions are not, in general, independent. Due to the presence of a time lag between plan choice and usage decisions, consumers are uncertain about usage at the plan-choice stage. We develop a structural discrete/continuous model of plan choice and usage decisions of consumers that accounts for such uncertainty. Prior research has also found that consumers switch less often from fixed plans to measured plans to gain from potential savings than vice versa. Consumer uncertainty regarding their mean usage levels and different rates of learning by consumers in the two plans is a potential explanation for this phenomenon. We extend our discrete/continuous model to account for consumer learning about their mean usage and estimate different rates of learning for the two types of plans.

Returns to endogenous education: the case of Honduras

The rapid expansion of the education sector in developing countries and the scarcity of public funds have increased the need for an accurate evaluation of educational policies. Estimates of rates of return to education have often been used as an integral part of cost-benefit studies and programme evaluation efforts. This study uses household survey data from Honduras for 1990 to estimate returns to education that allow for worker heterogeneity and individual self-selection in the education process. A sequential estimation procedure is used that enables study of the interaction between educational attainment and earnings determination. It is found that accounting for endogenous educational attainment leads to substantially higher estimated returns to education (compared to traditional least squares estimates). The possible magnitude of the bias underscores the importance of recognizing the role of self-selection and comparative advantage in the education process.