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Energy efficiency is the key to green development, and the government plays a vital role in energy efficiency. This paper clarifies the mechanism by which the Yangtze River Delta Economic Coordination Committee affects the energy efficiency of urban agglomeration by promoting market integration. Based on panel data of China's prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2017, we take the Yangtze River Delta Economic Coordination Committee as a quasi-natural experiment of government cooperation and use the difference-in-difference method to test whether this organization has enhanced the energy efficiency of urban agglomeration. The results show that the Yangtze River Delta Economic Coordination Committee can significantly improve energy efficiency in urban agglomerations. The mechanism analysis shows that it reduces the energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by enhancing the marketization level, perfecting the relationship between the government and the market, and improving the factor market development. The heterogeneity analysis shows that cities with lower city size, lower level of innovation, and cleaner industrial structures gain more benefits in energy efficiency from government cooperation in urban agglomeration. This paper provides empirical evidence for cities to realize integrated energy conservation through government cooperation and market integration.

We examined whether a policy banning corporal punishment enacted in Kenya in 2010 is associated with changes in Kenyan caregivers’ use of corporal punishment and beliefs in its effectiveness and normativeness, and compared to caregivers in six countries without bans in the same period. Using a longitudinal study with six waves of panel data (2008–2016), mothers ( N = 1086) in Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Thailand, and United States reported household use of corporal punishment and beliefs about its effectiveness and normativeness. Random intercept models and multi-group piecewise growth curve models indicated that the proportion of corporal punishment behaviors used by the Kenyan caregivers decreased post-ban at a significantly different rate compared to the caregivers in other countries in the same period. Beliefs of effectiveness of corporal punishment were declining among the caregivers in all sites, whereas the Kenyan mothers reported increasing perceptions of normativeness of corporal punishment post-ban, different from the other sites. While other contributing factors cannot be ruled out, our natural experiment suggests that corporal punishment decreased after a national ban, a shift that was not evident in sites without bans in the same period.

This paper examines the relation between crowd support and home advantage in men’s professional football in making use of a unique “natural experiment” induced by restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic: the so-called ghost games in the top three German football divisions at the end of the 2019/2020 season. We find that there is a reduced home advantage in the first division, whereas no change is observed in the second and third divisions. Our regression analysis indicates that the decrease in the home advantage and the heterogeneity across divisions are not sensitive to a variety of performance, location, and team covariates and are best explained through the lower occupancy rate in the stadia. Hence, the decrease in occupancy to zero at the ghost games has been less dramatic for teams that have been used to low occupancy rates. We cannot find strong evidence for a change in referee behavior or teams’ tactics as main impact channels of occupancy rates on the home advantage. Hence, we argue that psychological reasons are of higher importance.

Based on the panel data of 277 cities between 2003 and 2017 and a unique city-level dataset of green patent applications, this study employs the difference-in-differences (DID) method to evaluate the effect of China’s carbon emission trading scheme (ETS) pilots on urban green innovation. The findings indicate that China’s ETS pilots have a positive impact on urban green innovation, and that impact is more significant for municipalities than for prefecture-level cities. Furthermore, the impact on different categories of urban green innovation is heterogeneous. More specifically, China’s ETS pilots have significantly spurred urban green innovation that is closely related to energy conservation and emission reduction, including alternative energy production, transportation, energy conservation and so forth. Moreover, the facilitating effect of China’s ETS pilots on urban green innovation suffers from a lagging effect, which began to show a significant positive effect in 2016. Overall, this paper identifies the effect of China’s ETS pilots on urban green innovation, and suggests that the government should consider the heterogeneity of urban green innovation when designing national ETS policies.

Global health pandemics (such as COVID-19) can result in rapid changes to sanctionable behaviour, impacting society and culture in a multitude of ways. This study examined how pandemic culture and accompanying moral order was produced within and through social interaction during the first and second waves of COVID-19 in Australia. The data consisted of a corpus of 29 video-recorded paediatric palliative care consultations and were analysed using conversation analysis. Analysis showed how adherence to pandemic rules became morally expected, and moral concerns about actual or potential violations to these rules became relevant in and through social interaction during this period. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a natural experiment for how accountable actions and a moral order are negotiated in and through our social interactions when our taken-for-granted ‘natural facts of life’ change in response to a global public health crisis.

Sex and gender are key to people’s lives, and are the focus of scientific and popular interest and controversy. Sex-related psychological characteristics reflect more than socialization; they are influenced by sex hormones present during sensitive periods of development, particularly androgens that are present prenatally. Studies of females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) show how prenatal androgens affect behavior across the life span; these hormones have large effects on interest and engagement in gendered activities, moderate effects on spatial abilities, and relatively small (or no) effects on gender identity, gender cognitions, and gendered peer involvement. In addition to showing the complexity of androgens’ effects on gendered behavior, studies of females with CAH provide an opportunity to test theories of gender development, gain insight into how nature and nurture work together, and examine mechanisms of development. The implications of this work have often been misunderstood, so we consider what it means—and does not mean—for biology to influence gender-related behavior.

Holding two second-order elections simultaneously is expected to increase electoral participation. We exploit a natural experiment in which one group of Czech precincts was “as if” randomly assigned to holding subnational elections concurrently with senatorial ones. Using a unique data set containing variables on more than thirteen thousand precincts in five elections between 2000 and 2016, we detect a modest effect of concurrency only in the first election but no or inconsistent effect in the four subsequent contests. Furthermore, we report a strong effect of concurrency on invalid voting. We check for robustness using difference-in-differences design and matching techniques. Incongruent with existing theories, concurrency does not deliver on its promises and may come at a substantial cost to political representation. The surprising null effect on turnout is attributable to analyzing the effect of concurrency of the less salient on more salient elections.

What are the effects of state repression on public perceptions of police? And to what extent are these effects uniform or conditional on individuals’ loyalty to political authorities? I argue that repression by the police negatively affects how people evaluate the police, especially among those who do not support the ruling party. People who oppose the regime are more likely to fear the police following a repressive event relative to regime supporters. To test this argument, I leverage a unique research design opportunity that emerges from the social media tax protest led by Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (also known as Bobi Wine) and subsequent selective repression by the Uganda Police Force while a nationally representative survey on police and security was being administered in Uganda. I demonstrate selective repression of protesters decreased support for the police. These effects are largely driven by political loyalty; repression has a stronger effect on how members of the opposition evaluate the police relative to incumbent supporters.

This article exploits the Arab Spring, which occurred in 2011, as a natural experiment to study the effect of political upheavals on international travel. We find that foreign tourists’ demand to travel to countries experiencing Arab Spring episodes was sharply reduced and persisted after two years. We also find evidence of two different spillover effects: a tourism diversion to rest of the world, and a regional contagion to geographically nearby countries (other Arab countries that did not experience Arab Spring episodes and the Mediterranean region, although with heterogenous effects across individual countries). To disentangle how spillovers are channeled, we test whether geographical and cultural (Islamic) affinity play any role. We find that diversion is explained by the attitudes of Western tourists but not of those whose origin is Arabic. Furthermore, we find that the contagion caused by the Arab Spring is stronger for the nearest Muslim countries. JEL codes: F14, F51, H12, O11

In July 2018, the Minnesota Department of Corrections revised the criteria it uses to place soon-to-be-released prisoners on intensive supervision by shifting from mostly offense-based conditions to those based exclusively on risk. In doing so, this policy change provided a unique opportunity to evaluate not only the impact of intensive supervision on recidivism but also whether risk-based policies lead to better outcomes. Using Cox regression and negative binomial regression on a sample of 1,818 persons released in 2018, we found that intensive supervised release (ISR) significantly reduced the hazard for general, felony, and violent reoffending. We also found, however, that ISR significantly increased the risk of a technical violation revocation. The findings from our cost–benefit analysis showed that, despite the relatively high costs it incurred, ISR was a cost-effective intervention because it reduced reoffending for those with a higher risk of committing serious, violent crimes.

This article evaluate how cross-border labor mobility affects real estate price trends. To overcome the endogeneity of mobility choice, a natural experiment is used: The implementation of the “Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons” (AFMP) between the European Union (EU) and Switzerland, on 1 June 2007. This policy change the eligibility criteria for obtaining a cross-border permit by removing residence restrictions and creates a natural experiment for a difference-in-differences analysis. Based on French administrative data, results show that cross-border labor mobility does not affect house price trends in French border regions. However, the implementation of the AFMP has had a positive impact on the evolution of apartment prices in both the short term (six months) and the medium term (three years). In addition, the evolution of apartment prices shows sensitivity to distance from the border and to the housing quality segment.

The sharing economy has radically reshaped marketing thought and practice, and research has yet to examine whether and how platform-level buyer protection insurance (PPI) affects buyers and sellers in this economy. The authors exploit a natural experiment involving an unexpected system glitch during a PPI launch and estimate difference-in-differences models using over 5.4 million data points from a food sharing platform. Results suggest that PPI significantly increases buyer spending and seller revenue, affirming the benefits of this platform-level insurance in the sharing economy. The authors also uncover multifaceted buyer-side and seller-side responses that enable such benefits. PPI increases buyer spending by boosting product orders and variety-seeking behavior. Furthermore, it enhances seller revenue by increasing customer retention and acquisition. This work contributes to the literature by (1) putting a spotlight on the topic of PPI, a platform governance policy that reduces consumer risks and improves the efficacy of sharing platforms; (2) accounting for how PPI alters buyer and seller behaviors on a platform; (3) addressing what types of buyers and sellers benefit more or less from PPI; and (4) offering guidance for managers to improve platform reputation, marketplace efficiency, and consumer welfare in the context of the sharing economy.

Does hosting a sports team boost the visibility of a city among tourists? I test this proposition by looking at the effect of playing soccer’s UEFA Champions' League on air travel. I compare routes across cities that had their teams randomly drawn into the same group in the first phase of the competition to routes across cities hosting teams randomly allocated to different groups. The average effect of being drawn into the same group is between 5% and 8% more arrivals for the 3 months following the group stage, a period which coincides with a break in the competition. The first appearance of a team in the competition has a larger impact on air travel, providing suggesting evidence of diminishing returns of exposure.

We analyze a natural experiment in which policymakers in Pennsylvania first implemented, and later removed, reimbursements to districts for students exiting to brick and mortar and cyber charter schools. Generalized difference-in-difference models show that larger shares of students enrolling in charter schools predict decrements in spending, financial health, and achievement in sending districts; however, these relationships attenuate in years when districts receive reimbursements. After receiving reimbursements, districts with increased competition spent more on instruction and instructional support services, but not on facilities or non-instructional operations. Perhaps due to higher instructional expenditures, the relationship between competition and student achievement in reimbursement years is significantly less negative, and at times even positive, compared to non-reimbursement years. Cyber charter schools induce fewer instructional expenditures in districts than brick and mortar charter schools. The findings show clear policy choices can support traditional public systems experiencing competition.

Digital gatekeepers have greatly shaped the gatekeeping process of news consumption and news engagement, but how digital gatekeepers work is understudied. This study focuses on one example of digital gatekeepers, trending topics on social media, which aggregate the most popular search terms and present them to the public. We utilize a natural experiment on Weibo by analyzing user engagement data of 36,239 posts in three consecutive weeks, during which trending topics were removed for 1 week. We show that trending topics implemented two layers of gatekeeping: trending topics increased user engagement with top news posts within each news outlet and widened the engagement gap between popular posts and less popular ones (intra-outlet gatekeeping), and the increases in engagement with top news items were most salient among the least popular news outlets, thus reducing the inequality among outlets (inter-outlet gatekeeping).

This paper assesses the effect of the crowd size on home team advantage, using a natural experiment occurred in Brazilian football. In 2015, the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) quasi-randomly assigned games to be played under an alternative schedule on Sundays at 11 a.m. This measure significantly increased attendance in assigned games. Using this alternative schedule as an instrumental variable, we show that the exogenous increase in attendance did not increase home team advantage.

This study uses a natural experiment in Beirut, Lebanon, to investigate the effects of a street-level urban design intervention that improved the walking environment through a wider sidewalk, removal of a parking lane, raised junctions, and other elements. This study analyzes the impacts on pedestrian flow, pedestrian satisfaction with the walking experience, commercial activity, and business managers’ attitudes. Difference-in-difference regressions suggest that the main effect of such interventions is not necessarily an increase in pedestrian traffic, but instead safer pedestrian maneuvering and a better walking experience. It is also found through descriptive analysis that while businesses and shops experience increased business post-intervention, noticeable dissatisfaction with the intervention is reported by managers and owners. It is hypothesized that this dissatisfaction is a result of the lengthy construction process renovating and refurbishing the street, and the removal of parking spaces. Policy recommendations are drawn for the mitigation of business managers’ concerns and the enhancement of the walking environment for the design of future similar interventions.

The authors investigate the role of political ideology in consumer reactions to consumption regulations. First, they demonstrate via a natural experiment that conservatives (but not liberals) increase usage of mobile phones in cars after a law was enacted prohibiting that activity (Study 1). Then, through three lab experiments the authors illustrate that after consumers are exposed to consumption regulations from the government (e.g., laws that restrict consumption, warning labels designed by the Food and Drug Administration), conservatives (vs. liberals) are more likely to (1) use phones when restricted (Study 2), (2) purchase unhealthy foods (Study 3), and (3) view smoking e-cigarettes more favorably (Study 4). No such effects are observed when a nongovernment source is used, or when the message from the government is framed as a notification (vs. warning). These findings point to the important roles of political ideology and the message source in increasing reactance to consumption regulations, thereby mitigating the effectiveness of public policy initiatives undertaken by the government.

Objectives The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with state health departments, is the largest state-level surveillance system that includes a question on the intention status of pregnancies leading to live birth. In 2012, the question was changed to include an additional response option describing uncertainty before the pregnancy about the desire for pregnancy. This analysis investigated how this additional response option affected women’s responses. Methods We used the change in the pregnancy intention question in 2012 as a natural experiment, taking advantage of relatively stable distributions of pregnancy intentions during short periods of time in states. Using PRAMS data from 2009-2014 (N = 222 781), we used a regression discontinuity-in-time design to test for differences in the proportion of women choosing each response option in the periods before and after the question change. Results During 2012-2014, 13%-15% of women chose the new response option, “I wasn’t sure what I wanted.” The addition of the new response option substantially affected distributions of pregnancy intentions, drawing responses away from all answer choices except “I wanted to be pregnant then.” Effects were not uniform across age, parity, or race/ethnicity or across states. Conclusions These effects could influence estimated levels and trends of the proportion of births that are characterized as intended, mistimed, or unwanted, as well as estimates of differences between demographic groups. These findings will help to inform new strategies for measuring pregnancy and childbearing desires among women.

Soon after the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, Sisti and Baum-Baicker predicted that researchers “have an opportunity to conduct a natural experiment and examine the health effects of toxic stress.” In this article, the stressors related to the Trump presidency are delineated and understood as fertile ground for toxic stress reactions. The physical, behavioral, emotional, and interpersonal effects of this kind of unrelenting stress are detailed. Data presented were gathered from a variety of large-scale sources (e.g., American Psychological Association, Pew Research Center, Gallup) and research journals. Data strongly support the validity of the “Trump stress effect” and are viewed through the lenses of terror management theory, motive attribution asymmetry, and the Freudian and Kleinian unconscious.

In 1996, Germany introduced the Altersteilzeit (ATZ) policy, which provided incentives for partial retirement. Using linked establishment survey and administrative employment data, the authors estimate changes in part-time employment rates and retirement after ATZ. Among men, part-time work increased and retirements were postponed by at least 0.6 years without any displacement of full-time work. For women, the increases in working lives appeared to be even larger. These estimates are based on a nationally representative sample of firms. When analysis is restricted to a subset of firms with collective agreements covering partial retirement, and when the staggered timing of those agreements is used to identify estimates, the authors find extensions of working life of more than 1 year. Overall, these findings suggest that policies encouraging partial retirement may have potential for increasing the duration of working life.

This paper examines the causal effect of China’s 1999 accelerated expansion of higher education on the timing of finding a first skilled job among college graduates. To test hypotheses derived from applying relevant theories to the China case, we use a natural experiment. The analysis exploits the unique education and work history data of a nationally representative survey and estimates a causal inference model. We find that the 1999 expansion causes a delay in the landing of a skilled job among graduates from technical colleges, while graduates from 4-year colleges are not affected in job acquisition. We also find that family origins and individual social positions remain significant in the selectivity of entering college before and after education expansion acceleration. These findings shed new light on the universal phenomenon of early adulthood and social inequality in China.

How do natural disasters impact political trust in contemporary China and what is the causal mechanism? Existing literature indicates that the severity of disaster, government relief effort and information dissemination are three key factors influencing people’s political trust in the context of acute natural disasters. This study uses the Wenchuan earthquake as a natural experiment and focuses specifically on the survey data collected right before and after the earthquake. It finds that primarily due to the ‘rally round the flag’ effect and extensive media coverage, public trust in government officials at all levels rose significantly after the earthquake. During the crisis, state-run media played a vital intermediate role. The more a citizen was exposed to the official media coverage, the more likely his/her political trust was to increase. However, the division of work in disaster relief among different levels of government resulted in differences in the level of increase in trust. As local-level governments are often directly responsible for the rescue and post-earthquake relief, they gained the highest increase in political trust, while state-level officials gained the least. The short-run upsurge in political trust receded as time went by. Government mobilization and media coverage are core contributing factors to the increase in political trust during the post-disaster period. Nevertheless, the key to consolidating political legitimacy lies in long-term efforts to build good and effective governance.

This article analyses the causal effect of the 1993 electoral reform in New Zealand on party system fragmentation using the ‘synthetic’ control method. Previous studies using cross-national evidence suggest that electoral reforms change the number of parties. However, they do not take into account possible endogeneity problems and usually focus on their short-term effects. Since the electoral system in use in this country before the change was first past the post (FPTP), I can create a ‘synthetic’ control democracy that had the same institutional framework but did not modify the rules of the game. The results indicate that the electoral reform produced the expected effects on party system size at the electoral level, but that these effects tended to disappear in the long run. In contrast, electoral system effects at the legislative level were larger and stickier over time.

There has long been a major policy debate on the role of hospital ownership (private vs public) in medical system performance. China’s health care delivery system is mainly a public system. In 2000, a full privatization reform was implemented in the city of Suqian, offering a unique opportunity to assess possible effects of private delivery based on a major external shock to the existing system. Compared with all other cities in Jiangsu province since 2003, Suqian did not experience any greater increase either in total outpatient or inpatient expenditures. In the meantime, Suqian performed equally well as other cities in terms of changes in number of inpatient admissions and average inpatient days, and even better for mortality rate in emergency rooms. This study concludes that under appropriate public financing, private delivery can serve the public demand at least equally well as public providers in terms of cost inflations and utilizations.

A natural experiment is used to determine the effect of victim video statements (VVS) on the rate of early guilty pleas in cases of domestic violence. Participants were part of a trial conducted in 2017-2018 by New Zealand Police, in Counties Manukau District, South Auckland. Cases that met the eligibility criteria but did not result in a VVS formed the control group with written statements taken. Analyses were restricted to cases that proceeded to a court hearing (VVS group: n = 168, control group: n = 108). The key question was whether taking a VVS would increase the rate of early guilty pleas. A logistic regression model controlled two additional factors: (a) being bailed or remanded and (b) the seriousness of charges. VVS cases resulted in 44% early guilty pleas compared with 30% for those with written statements. VVS have a statistically significant increase in the odds of making a guilty plea, adjusted odds ratio (AOR) =1.77, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [1.02, 3.06], when controlling for the other factors. The results indicate that VVS can be used to reduce demand pressure on the criminal justice system. The findings are considered in terms of the complex relationship between offenders and victims that commonly results in the retraction of written statements.

To study the effect of the introduction of mediation-arbitration as a dispute resolution procedure on interest arbitration, the authors exploit a natural experiment in the arbitration institutions for police and firefighter sectors in the Canadian province of Ontario. They obtain estimates using a difference-in-difference estimator. Results show that the introduction of mediation-arbitration is significantly associated with increased use of arbitration by firefighters relative to the police. The article also draws on interviews with stakeholders to help explain the mechanisms that contribute to the increase in arbitration rates.

This study uses a natural experiment of school performance during Hurricane Rita in 2005 to investigate the impact of administrative intensity on student achievement in turbulent environments. Admi...

Using the impact of the Soviet Union’s collapse on the performance of theoretical mathematicians as a natural experiment, we attempt to resolve the controversy in prior research on whether specialists or generalists have superior creative performance. While many have highlighted generalists’ advantage due to access to a wider set of knowledge components, others have underlined the benefits that specialists can derive from their deep expertise. We argue that this disagreement might be partly driven by the fact that the pace of change in a knowledge domain shapes the relative return from being a specialist or a generalist. We show that generalist scientists performed best when the pace of change was slower and their ability to draw from diverse knowledge domains was an advantage in the field, but specialists gained advantage when the pace of change increased and their deeper expertise allowed them to use new knowledge created at the knowledge frontier. We discuss and test the roles of cognitive mechanisms and of competition for scarce resources. Specifically, we show that specialists became more desirable collaborators when the pace of change was faster, but when the pace of change was slower, generalists were more sought after as collaborators. Overall, our results highlight trade-offs associated with specialization for creative performance.

The legalization of recreational cannabis in Washington state (I-502) and Colorado (A-64) created a natural experiment with ancillary unknowns. Of these unknowns, one of the more heavily debated is that of the potential effects on public health and safety. Specific to public safety, advocates of legalization expected improvements in police effectiveness through the reduction in police time and attention to cannabis offenses, thus allowing them to reallocate resources to more serious offenses. Using 2010 to 2015 Uniform Crime Reports data, the research undertakes interrupted time-series analysis on the offenses known to be cleared by arrest to create monthly counts of violent and property crime clearance rate as well as disaggregated counts by crime type. Findings suggest no negative effects of legalization on crime clearance rates. Moreover, evidence suggests some crime clearance rates have improved. Our findings suggest legalization has resulted in improvements in some clearance rates.

We study the interplay between host countries’ characteristics and self-selection patterns in relation to refugees’ economic assimilation using a natural experiment in which immigrants from one region migrated to three destinations under similar circumstances. We focus on emigrants fleeing from Argentina and Chile during the military regimes there to the United States, Sweden, and Israel. We find that those refugees show patterns of selection and assimilation similar to those of economic immigrants. Immigrants to the United States and Israel exhibit better selection patterns and consequently faster assimilation than immigrants to Sweden even considering the positive effect of the Swedish market structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies indirect and direct colonial rule as causal factors in shaping support for democracy by exploiting a within-country natural experiment in Namibia. Throughout the colonial era, northern Namibia was indirectly ruled through a system of appointed indigenous traditional elites whereas colonial authorities directly ruled southern Namibia. This variation originally stems from where the progressive extension of direct German control was stopped after a rinderpest epidemic in the 1890s, and, thus, constitutes plausibly exogenous within-country variation in the form of colonial rule. Using this spatial discontinuity, we find that individuals in indirectly ruled areas are less likely to support democracy and turnout at elections. We explore potential mechanisms and find suggestive evidence that the greater influence of traditional leaders in indirectly ruled areas has socialized individuals to accept nonelectoral bases of political authority.

This research draws from the psychodynamic perspective of social identity theory to examine the causal effect of mergers and acquisitions involving a mismatch of external images on the sales force. Study 1, a natural longitudinal experiment, shows that a merger with a poorer-image firm immediately dilutes salespeople's organizational identification (OI), which in turn impairs their performance. As sense makers, salespeople who are more tenured experience stronger OI dilution, whereas those who perceive a high level of social inclusion experience weaker OI dilution. As sense givers, managers who emphasize the firm's strategic intent in their communication buffer the OI-dilution effect, whereas those who emphasize the firm's organizational culture aggravate the effect. Study 2, a scenario-based experiment, further demonstrates that the OI-dilution effect is stronger than the OI-enhancement effect from merging with a better-image firm. Furthermore, both studies confirm that the adverse effect of mergers and acquisitions that involve a mismatch of external image stems from image uncertainty rather than job uncertainty.

In this study, the authors assess the effects of a data breach announcement (DBA) by a multichannel retailer on customer behavior. They exploit a natural experiment and use individual customer transaction data from the retailer to conduct a detailed and systematic empirical examination of the effects of a DBA on customer spending and channel migration behavior. To identify the effects, the authors compare the change in customer behavior before and after the DBA between a treatment group (customers whose information is breached) and a control group (customers whose information is not breached) using the difference-in-differences modeling framework. They find that although the data breach results in a significant decrease in customer spending, customers of the firm migrate from the breached to the unbreached channels of the retailer. The findings further reflect that customers with a higher retailer patronage are more forgiving because the negative effects of the DBA are lower for customers with a higher level of patronage. The authors propose and empirically test for the role of customer data vulnerability as the behavioral mechanism that drives customer behavior subsequent to a DBA. The authors offer prescriptions for managers on how to engage with customers following DBAs.

This study examines the organizational dynamics of social media crowds, in particular, the influence of a crowd’s emotional expression on its solidarity. To identify the relationship between emotions expressed and solidarity, marked by sustained participation in the crowd, the study uses tweets from a unique population of crowds—those tweeting about ongoing National Football League games. Observing this population permits the use of game results as quasi-random treatments on crowds, helping to reduce confounding factors. Results indicate that participation in these crowds is self-sustaining in the medium term (1 week) and can be stimulated or suppressed by emotional expression in a short term (1 hour), depending on the discrete emotion expressed. In particular, anger encourages participation while sadness discourages it. Positive emotions and anxiety have a more nuanced relationship with participation.

A significant body of literature has focused on the impact of policy changes on consumption behaviour. Most of this literature looks at the impact of anticipated and durable changes, thereby ignoring the impact of unanticipated changes. In this context, exploiting a unique data set for India, the article examines the impact of a temporary ‘odd–even’ policy experiment in Delhi on second-hand car prices. The findings suggest that car prices on average, declined by 2.7 per cent after the policy announcement, although these prices subsequently recouped the initial losses. A disaggregation of car prices in terms of costs indicates that these results are driven by low-priced cars and, additionally, that cars with odd-number ending registrations commanded a premium in the market.

This study investigates time lapses that interrupt product consumption. Preeminent examples are commercial breaks during television or radio programming. The authors suggest that breaks facilitate consumers’ search for alternatives. Specifically, when there is so much uncertainty that consumers are unclear about utility levels of different products, they engage in costly search to resolve the uncertainty. For TV programming, breaks lower the opportunity cost of search, allowing the consumer to sample alternative channels without further interrupting the viewing experience on the current channel. Using data from the Chinese TV market, the authors estimate a sequential search model to study consumer TV channel choice behavior. The data contain a quasi-natural experiment due to a Chinese government policy change on commercial breaks. The natural experiment creates exogenous variations in the data that enable the empirical identification of heterogeneous consumer preference and search cost. The data patterns support the idea that viewers search for alternatives during commercial breaks. Drawing on the estimates, the authors investigate how the timing of breaks affects TV channels’ viewership, offering insights about how to strategically adjust the timing of breaks.

Using data from Rhode Island, and deploying a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design, this study capitalizes on a natural experiment in which schools, in accordance with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers, were sorted into performance categories based on a continuous performance measure. The lowest performing schools were then mandated to implement interventions. We find that schools implementing fewer interventions perform no differently than comparable schools without such requirements. Additionally, schools just required to implement more interventions performed worse than comparable schools implementing fewer. Finally, we find differences in the probability of student mobility from lower performing schools.

Exploiting the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) as an exogenous regulatory shock, we investigate whether board independence substitutes for external audit quality. Based on over 14,000 observations across 18 years, our difference-in-difference estimates show that firms forced to raise board independence are far less likely to employ a Big 4 auditor. In particular, board independence lowers the propensity to use a Big 4 auditor by approximately 38%. Firms with stronger board independence enjoy more effective governance and therefore do not need as much external audit quality as those with less effective governance do. Based on a natural experiment, our empirical strategy is far less vulnerable to endogeneity and is thus considerably more likely to show a causal effect, rather than merely an association.

This article examines the effect of carbon risk on firm performance, exploiting the Australia ratification of Kyoto Protocol in December 2007 as an exogenous shock. The article finds that polluters, firms in highest-emitting industries, experience a reduction in financial performance relative to controlling non-polluters subsequent to the ratification, and the effect is more pronounced among financially constrained firms. The results are robust to various definitions of polluters, measures of financial constraints, falsification tests on the timing of the Kyoto adoption and the impact of the Global Financial Crisis. The evidence suggests a negative association between carbon risk and firm performance.

Every state maintains some mechanism by which youths can be tried as adults in criminal courts. While scholars have long debated the inherent benefits or detriments of prosecuting youths as adults, empirical studies of actual outcomes have provided mixed findings and have been limited by problems of selection bias and jurisdictional differences in processing. The current research aims to further inform this literature by capitalizing on a policy change in Connecticut that raised the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 17 on January 1, 2010, creating a natural experiment to assess the recidivism differences for youths based upon the system of processing: juvenile versus adult court. Findings from a 2-year follow-up reveal that 16-year-olds processed in juvenile courts had substantially reduced rates of recidivism with odds of rearrest that were between .462 and .630 less than for 16-year-olds processed in adult courts dependent on model specification.

Does a major natural disaster change life satisfaction? This study is a rare natural experiment, in which roughly half of the respondents completed the survey before and the other half completed it after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011. A series of regression discontinuity design analyses showed that those who completed the survey after the earthquake reported being less satisfied with their lives than those who happened to complete the survey before the earthquake. There were no discontinuity on demographic variables and other consumer attitudes. The main findings remained virtually unchanged when we controlled for Big Five personality traits and demographic variables. Together, the current findings suggest that the experience of a major natural disaster changes their life satisfaction at least in the short run.

The authors estimate policy impacts of a generous parental benefit in Germany by using a natural experiment and German census data. They estimate policy effects for the short run (first two years after childbirth) as well as for the medium run (that is, three to five years after childbirth). Although the results confirm the evidence from previous studies for the short run, pronounced patterns emerge for the medium run. First, effects on mothers’ employment probability are positive, significant, and large, ranging up to 10%. These gains are driven primarily by increases in part-time employment and working hours but also by full-time employment for high-income mothers. Moreover, mothers return to their previous employers at significantly higher rates, and employers reward this by raising job quality. The overall positive and sizeable impacts of the reform are centered on mothers from the medium and high terciles of the income distribution; low-income mothers do not benefit.

This paper provides new evidence of occupational closure and rent-sharing in the labour market. In many labour market segments, occupational closure refers only to self-employed positions, but not to employees within these occupations. We study the relation of changes in entry regulation for firms and the corresponding economic consequences for employees within these firms. Based on bargaining theory, we argue that economic rents are shared with employees. In order to identify this ‘indirect’ channel of occupational closure, this paper uses a major reform in the German craft sector in 2004. This reform relaxes entry regulation into self-employment in more than half of the craft occupations. By using rich administrative data in a fixed-effects framework, we compare wages of employees in both markets pre- and post-reform. We find that employees in the reformed market are negatively affected after the reform. This proves the existence of former wage rents due to rent-sharing in closed market segments. This average wage effect, however, is not constant for all employees. If employees can make a credible threat to the employer to take advantage of deregulation and set up their own business, they can counteract the negative wage effects of the reform. As a consequence, our empirical results show that wages of young and skilled employees are less affected by the reform.

Theories on intergroup relations suggest that negative attitudes toward immigrants tend to rise when economic conditions deteriorate. However, these arguments were mostly tested during times of economic prosperity in Europe. We put this theoretical expectation to test by analyzing two rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS) with data from 14 West European immigration countries before (2006) and after (2010) the peak of the European economic crisis. Results show that anti-immigrant sentiments increased in countries where perceptions of economic insecurity also increased. Anti-immigrant sentiments decreased in countries where perceptions of economic insecurity declined. In contrast, changes in objective economic conditions (i.e. unemployment rates) during the same period of time did not display the expected effects in a similarly robust way.

We examine the (un)intended consequences of a mandatory dividend payout regulation for firms’ financial reporting choices using a natural experiment in China. Beginning in October 2008, China required firms desiring to raise new equity capital to maintain a cumulative dividend payout ratio of at least 30% over the past 3 years. We find that firms with a cumulative payout ratio from the prior year very close to but slightly lower than the mandated dividend threshold report lower discretionary accruals but do not increase dividends. In addition, this pattern is more pronounced in firms with greater cash flow deficits, firms with faster sales growth, and firms located in regions with lower bank development. We also find that the negative discretionary accruals are concentrated in firms with return on equity well in excess of another regulatory benchmark. In contrast, the only firms that increase dividends in response to the regulation are firms with a positive cumulative payout ratio far below the mandated threshold. Because dividend payout regulations have been suggested as a possible solution to agency problems, our results provide important policy feedback about the effectiveness of such regulations.