Working papers SES

Working papers SES
La collezione Working Papers SES è costituita da una serie di quaderni di ricerca che presentano i diversi lavori svolti nell'ambito della Facoltà di scienze economiche e sociali dell'Università di Friborgo (Svizzera). La collezione esiste dal 1980 ed i temi affrontati riflettono i diversi orientamenti scientifici dei membri della Facoltà: economia politica, gestione aziendale, informatica di gestione, scienze sociali e scienze della comunicazione e dei media. Il contenuto dei lavori impegna la sola responsabilità degli autori.

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Université de Fribourg

Combining experimental evidence with machine learning to assess anti-corruption educational campaigns among Russian university students

Denisova-Schmidt, Elena ; Huber, Martin ; Leontyeva, Elvira ; Solovyeva, Anna

(Working Papers SES ; 487)

This paper examines how anti-corruption educational campaigns affect the attitudes of Russian university students towards corruption and academic integrity. About 2,000 survey participants were randomly assigned to one of four different information materials (brochures or videos) about the negative consequences of corruption or to a control group. Using machine learning to detect effect...

Université de Fribourg

The strength of weak leaders - an experiment on social influence and social learning in teams

Buechel, Berno ; Klössner, Stefan ; Lochmüller, Martin ; Rauhut, Heiko

(Working Papers SES ; 486)

We investigate how the selection process of a leader affects team performance with respect to social learning. We use a lab experiment in which an incentivized guessing task is repeated in a star network with the leader at the center. Leader selection is either based on competence, on self-confidence, or made at random. Teams with random leaders do not underperform compared to rather competent...

Université de Fribourg

The swing voter's curse in social networks

Buechel, Berno ; Mechtenberg, Lydia

(Working Papers SES ; 485)

We study private communication in social networks prior to a majority vote on two alternative policies. Some (or all) agents receive a private imperfect signal about which policy is correct. They can, but need not, recommend a policy to their neighbors in the social network prior to the vote. We show theoretically and empirically that communication can undermine efficiency of the vote and hence...

Université de Fribourg

Direct and indirect effects based on difference-in-differences with an application to political preferences following the Vietnam draft lottery

Deuchert, Eva ; Huber, Martin ; Schelker, Mark

(Working Papers SES ; 473 (revised))

This paper proposes a difference-in-differences approach for disentangling a total treatment effect on some outcome into a direct effect as well as an indirect effect operating through a binary intermediate variable – or mediator – within strata defined upon how the mediator reacts to the treatment. Imposing random treatment assignment along with specific common trend (and further)...

Université de Fribourg

Simple Statistical Screens to Detect Bid Rigging

Imhof, David

(Working Papers SES ; 484)

The paper applies simple statistical screens to a bid-rigging cartel in Switzerland, and shows how well the screens detect it by capturing the impact of collusion on the discrete distribution of the bids. In case of bid rigging, the support for the distribution of the bids decreases involving a lower variance, illustrated by the coefficient of variance and the kurtosis statistic. Furthermore,...

Université de Fribourg

Econometric tests to detect bid-rigging cartels: does it work?

Imhof, David

(Working Papers SES ; 483)

This paper tests how well the method proposed by Bajari and Ye (2003) performs to detect bidrigging cartels. In the case investigated in this paper, the bid-rigging cartel rigged all contracts during the collusive period, and all firms participated to the bid-rigging cartel. The two econometric tests constructed by Bajari and Ye (2003) produce a high number of false negative results: the tests do...

Université de Fribourg

Nonparametric estimation of natural direct and indirect effects based on inverse probability weighting

Hsu, Yu-Chin ; Huber, Martin ; Lai, Tsung Chih

(Working Papers SES ; 482)

Using a sequential conditional independence assumption, this paper discusses fully nonparametric estimation of natural direct and indirect causal effects in causal mediation analysis based on inverse probability weighting. We propose estimators of the average indirect effect of a binary treatment, which operates through intermediate variables (or mediators) on the causal path between the...

Université de Fribourg

A framework for separating individual treatment effects from spillover, interaction, and general equilibrium effects

Huber, Martin ; Steinmayr, Andreas

(Working Papers SES ; 481)

This paper suggests a causal framework for disentangling individual level treatment effects and interference effects, i.e., general equilibrium, spillover, or interaction effects related to treatment distribution. Thus, the framework allows for a relaxation of the Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA), which assumes away any form of treatment-dependent interference between study...

Université de Fribourg

Testing the validity of the compulsory schooling law instrument

Bolzern, Benjamin ; Huber, Martin

(Working Papers SES ; 480)

Changes in compulsory schooling laws have been proposed as an instrument for the endogenous choice of schooling. It has been argued that raising minimum schooling exogenously increases the educational attainment of a subset of pupils without directly affecting later life outcomes such as income or health. Using the method of Huber and Mellace (2015) and data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and...

Université de Fribourg

Evaluating local average and quantile treatment effects under endogeneity based on instruments : a review

Huber, Martin ; Wüthrich, Kaspar

(Working Papers SES ; 479)

This paper provides a review of methodological advancements in the evaluation of heterogeneous treatment effect models based on instrumental variable (IV) methods. We focus on models that achieve identification through a monotonicity assumption on the selection equation and analyze local average and quantile treatment effects for the subpopulation of compliers. We start with a comprehensive...