Working papers SES

Working papers SES
The Working Papers SES collection is a series of research papers authored by members of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). This series exists since 1980 and the themes investigated reflect the different scientific orientations of the Faculty: economics, business administration, computer management, quantitative methods, social sciences and media and communication sciences. The contents of the research papers are the sole responsibility of their authors.

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Université de Fribourg

On the sensitivity of wage gap decompositions

Huber, Martin ; Solovyeva, Anna

(Working Papers SES ; 497)

This paper investigates the sensitivity of average wage gap decompositions to methods resting on different assumptions regarding endogeneity of observed characteristics, sample selection into employment, and estimators’functional form. Applying five distinct decomposition techniques to estimate the gender wage gap in the U.S. using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979,...

Université de Fribourg

Direct and indirect effects under sample selection and outcome attrition

Huber, Martin ; Solovyeva, Anna

(Working Papers SES ; 496)

This paper considers the evaluation of direct and indirect treatment effects, also known as mediation analysis, when outcomes are only observed for a subpopulation due to sample selection or outcome attrition. For identification, we combine sequential conditional independence assumptions on the assignment of the treatment and the mediator, i.e. the variable through which the indirect effect...

Université de Fribourg

Direct and indirect effects of continuous treatments based on generalized propensity score weighting

Hsu, Yu-Chin ; Huber, Martin ; Lee, Ying-Ying ; Pipoz, Layal

(Working papers SES ; 495)

This paper proposes semi- and nonparametric methods for disentangling the total causal effect of a continuous treatment on an outcome variable into its natural direct effect and the indirect effect that operates through one or several intermediate variables or mediators. Our approach is based on weighting observations by the inverse of two versions of the generalized propensity score (GPS),...

Université de Fribourg

Machine learning with screens for detecting bid-rigging cartels

Huber, Martin ; Imhof, David

(Working Papers SES ; 494)

We combine machine learning techniques with statistical screens computed from the distribution of bids in tenders within the Swiss construction sector to predict collusion through bid-rigging cartels. We assess the out of sample performance of this approach and find it to correctly classify more than 80% of the total of bidding processes as collusive or non-collusive. As the correct...

Université de Fribourg

The causalweight package for causal inference in R

Bodory, Hugo ; Huber, Martin

(Working Papers SES ; 493)

We describe R package “causalweight” for causal inference based on inverse probability weighting (IPW). The “causalweight” package offers a range of semiparametric methods for treatment or impact evaluation and mediation analysis, which incorporates intermediate outcomes for investigating causal mechanisms. Depending on the method, identification relies on selection on observables ...

Université de Fribourg

Instrument-based estimation with binarized treatments : issues and tests for the exclusion restriction

Andresen, Martin Eckhoff ; Huber, Martin

(Working Papers SES ; 492)

When estimating local average and marginal treatment effects using instrumental variables (IV), multivalued endogenous treatments are frequently binarized based on a specific threshold in treatment support. However, such binarization introduces a violation of the IV exclusion if (i) the IV affects the multivalued treatment within support areas below and/or above the threshold and (ii) such...

Université de Fribourg

Family firms and financial analyst activity

Eugster, Nicolas

(Working Papers SES ; 491)

This paper examines the relationship between ownership structure, analyst coverage, and forecast error for the entire population of non-financial companies listed on the Swiss Exchange for the period 2003-2013. The results show a negative association between concentrated ownership and analyst coverage for both family firms and firms held by a nonfamily blockholder. Furthermore, forecasts of...

Université de Fribourg

Founding family ownership, stock market returns, and agency problems

Eugster, Nicolas ; Isakov, Dušan

(Working Papers SES ; 490)

This paper explores the relationship between founding family ownership and stock market returns. Using the entire population of non-financial firms listed on the Swiss stock market for 2003–2013, we find that the stock returns of family firms are significantly higher than those of non-family firms after adjusting the returns for different risk factors and firm characteristics. Family firms...

Université de Fribourg

Including covariates in the regression discontinuity design

Frölich, Markus ; Huber, Martin

(Working Papers SES ; 489)

This paper proposes a fully nonparametric kernel method to account for observed covariates in regression discontinuity designs (RDD), which may increase precision of treatment effect estimation. It is shown that conditioning on covariates reduces the asymptotic variance and allows estimating the treatment effect at the rate of one-dimensional nonparametric regression, irrespective of the...

Université de Fribourg

Peer effects on perseverance

Buechel, Berno ; Mechtenberg, Lydia ; Petersen, Julia

(Working Papers SES ; 488)

Successful performance – be it in school, at the job, or in sports activities – requires perseverance, i.e., persistent work on a demanding task. We investigate in a controlled laboratory experiment how an individual’s social environment affects perseverance. We find evidence for two kinds of peer effects: being observed by a peer can serve as a commitment device, while observing a peer can...