Research Seminars Series

Willingness to use application-based taxi pooling services: Impacts of fare, route matching, detour time, and waiting time

The rapid development of information technology and smartphone applications has introduced new and unique transportation services. This article introduces one of these recently established systems in South Korea, called application-based taxi pooling service (ATPS). The service differs from regular ridesharing in that the participating drivers are already registered taxi drivers. This study aims to investigate users’ willingness to use ATPS from the perspective of service attributes during the morning commute time and late-night. For this, a discrete choice experiment survey was conducted over one week in 2019, targeting 1,000 Seoul citizens who used taxis at least once over the past month. As a methodology, mixed-effect logistic regression modeling is used to jointly predict users’ behavioral processes of ATPS adoption for different choice experiments constructed based on the combination of four service attributes: fare, route matching degree, detour time, and waiting time. The estimated models revealed the dynamic impacts of all four service attributes on the acceptance of ATPS, which vary depending on the time of the day. In particular, the impacts of discounted fare were almost zero during late-night, and users brought higher value to the waiting and detour times. Users’ conventional taxi use experience and personal preferences were also found to be important elements in the acceptance of ATPS. The findings of this study will provide reasonable guidelines for the deployment of ridesharing services in car-dominant cities where citizens have not yet been introduced to the concept of ATPSs.

Crafting telework: A conceptual process model and some empirical evidence among individuals and teams

In this talk, I will describe a model explicating telework as a dynamic process, theorizing that teleworkers continuously adjust – their identities, boundaries, and relationships – to meet needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness in their work and nonwork roles. The model uses the lens of job crafting to posit changes teleworkers make to enhance work-nonwork balance and job performance, including time-related individual differences to account for contingencies in dynamic adjustments. I will also discuss how feedback from work and nonwork role partners and one's self-evaluation results in an iterative process of learning to telework over time. In the second part of the talk, I will present empirical evidence that offers preliminary support for the dynamic telework crafting model, based on data collected from individual teleworkers as well as teleworking teams.

News and regional development

It is well-recognized that news coverage varies significantly between countries. The differences include what events are reported at what frequencies and in what tones. It is also well established that these differences contribute to variations in the economic development of countries. In addition, substantial heterogeneity characterizes the news media at the subnational (regional) level, which is most evident in the large numbers of regional newspapers and media outlets. In contrast to the national level, this heterogeneity has received much less attention in contemporary literature. More precisely, little is known about the degree that newspaper readers in distinct locations are exposed to different information, topics, journalistic opinions, and sentiments. Similarly, how regional socio-economic characteristics shape local news and how these in turn influence people’s behavior is far from being sufficiently researched. More often than not, it is the lack of data limiting empirical investigations.

The presentation will give an overview of the contemporary literature and highlight existing research avenues. It will be based on several empirical investigations utilizing the recently established RegNeS database, which features more than 16 million German-language media headlines published between July 2019 and February 2023 obtained from more than 250 regional and national news outlets. The empirical studies give insights into the relationship between regional news and regions’ socioeconomic development from various angles including innovation activities being reflected in regional news and the latter’s impact on COVID19-related health behavior.

Mental health and school entry age: Relative age effects within cohort

There is an established literature looking at the effects of school entry age and age within cohort on general well-being, social capital, and measures of human capital formation. in primary and secondary school. Researchers have additionally turned their attention to longer term university and adult labor market outcomes. Prior results are mixed, but when statistically significant impacts are found they have typically been favorable. This study uses a nationwide sample of undergraduate college students from over 360 institutions to ascertain if relative age is related to reported mental health at graduation. Various identification strategies are incorporated into the study including Regression Discontinuity Design and Instrumental Variable (IV) methods incorporating student birth date relative to kindergarten age cutoff as well as relative age within cohort via ordered logit models. Results suggest being older within cohort to be positively related to increased to incidence of depression and homesickness in the last year at college graduation, more consistently for females.

Unsafe temperatures, unsafe jobs: The impact of weather conditions on work related injuries

We estimate the impact of temperatures on work related accident rates in Italy by using daily data on weather conditions matched to administrative daily data on work related accidents. The identification strategy of the causal effect relies on the plausible exogeneity of short-term daily temperature variations in a given spatial unit. We find that both high and cold temperatures impair occupational health by increasing workplace injury rates. The positive effect of warmer weather conditions on work related accident rates is larger for men, in manufacturing and service sectors, and for workplace injuries. Colder temperatures lead to a substantial increase in commuting accidents, especially during rainy days.

The impact of the pandemic on local government financial vulnerability

The COVID-19 pandemic cut across geographical, sectorial and policy boundaries and imposed difficult health, economic and social challenges. Among many learnings, after the 2007/8 global financial crisis and the austerity period which followed it, what happened in 2020 offers an important experience to make local governments more financially resilient and ready to deal with similar shocks. This paper builds on a recent framework to investigate the impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on LG financial vulnerability looking at both contingent and structural aspects. It addresses the need for a multi-country perspective on the effects of the pandemic and responds to calls to test existing models. Seven countries were chosen to represent different administrative contexts and traditions to understand what factors impact the local level in a time of crisis. Results demonstrate that not only contingent aspects, but also structural factors and the initial level of financial vulnerability influenced the responses to the pandemic, confirming findings about the importance of initial conditions and “path dependency” by previous studies.

Effects of Universal and Unconditional Cash Transfers on Child Maltreatment

We estimate the effects of cash transfers on child well-being. To do so, we leverage program eligibility due to date of birth cutoffs and year-to-year variation in payment size from a universal and unconditional cash transfer, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD). Using linked individual-level administrative data on PFD payments and child maltreatment referrals, we find that an additional $1,000 to families reduces the likelihood that a child is referred to Children’s Services by age 3 by 2.0 percentage points, or about 10 percent, on average. Effects are driven by declines in neglect and physical abuse. Additionally, we show that larger cash transfers increase the probability that children live with their mothers and lower mortality by age 5.

Why Do People Commit Crime: Evidence from Inmates' Survey.

This project aims to document inmates' knowledge, perceptions, and preferences and examine how they differ from the general population and how they change over time. The project will also test selected theories explaining the causes of criminal behavior in a unified framework. The analysis will be based on survey, experimental, and administrative data collected from inmates in Czech prisons. Data collection includes two waves of surveys with around 500 inmates and 220 students and one wave of surveys with 1000 subjects representing the general population. Surveying inmates twice is key to measuring how their knowledge, perceptions, and preferences evolve during their incarceration.

Informational Rents and the Excessive Entry Theorem: The Case of Hidden Action

Entry in a homogeneous Cournot-oligopoly is excessive if there is business stealing. This prediction assumes that production costs reduce profits and welfare equally. However, this need not be the case. If there is asymmetric information, suppliers or employees can utilize their superior knowledge to extract informational rents. Rent payments reduce profits and deter entry, but affect neither the optimal number of firms nor welfare directly. Therefore, entry becomes insufficient if informational rents are large enough. In the context of a moral hazard model, we show that insufficient entry occurs if entry costs are sufficiently high. Such costs lower the number of firms and, thereby, raise informational rents.

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