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We conduct a field experiment to test the non-monotonic effect of deadline length on task completion. Participants are invited to complete an online survey in which a donation goes to charity. They are given either one week, one month or no deadline to respond. Responses are lowest for the one-month deadline and highest when no deadline is specified. No deadline and the one-week deadline feature a large number of early responses, while providing a one-month deadline appears to give people permission to procrastinate. If they are inattentive, they might forget to complete the task.

The aim was to conduct a systematic review of real-world sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax evaluations and examine the overall impact on beverage purchases and dietary intake by meta-analysis. Medline, EconLit, Google Scholar, and Scopus databases were searched up to June 2018. SSB tax evaluations from any formal jurisdiction from cities to national governments were eligible if there was a comparison between pre-post tax (n = 11) or taxed and untaxed jurisdiction(s) (n = 6). The consumption outcome comprised sales, purchasing, and intake (reported by volume, energy, or frequency). Taxed and untaxed beverage consumption outcomes were examined separately by meta-analysis with adjustment for the size of each tax. The study was registered at PROSPERO (CRD42018100620). The equivalent of a 10% SSB tax was associated with an average decline in beverage purchases and dietary intake of 10.0% (95% CI: -5.0% to -14.7%, n = 17 studies, 6 jurisdictions) with considerable heterogeneity between results (I2 = 97%).The equivalent of a 10% SSB tax was also associated with a nonsignificant 1.9% increase in total untaxed beverage consumption (eg, water) (95% CI: -2.1% to 6.1%, n = 6 studies, 4 jurisdictions). Based on real-world evaluations, SSB taxes introduced in jurisdictions around the world appear to have been effective in reducing SSB purchases and dietary intake.

This paper examines the hypotheses that a greater stock of migrants in New Zealand from a particular country leads to more trade between that country and New Zealand, and a greater stock of New Zealanders living overseas in a particular country leads to more trade between that country and New Zealand. It also examines the relationships between migration, diaspora and tourism exports. The literature suggests that migrants can stimulate trade by lowering transaction costs, and by bringing with them preferences for goods produced in their home country. Our approach is to apply panel data techniques, within the framework of a standard gravity model of trade, to a dataset consisting of information on 233 countries in each of the 26 years between 1981 and 2006. We estimate a random effects panel sample selection model using correlated random effects. Our results indicate that migration does indeed stimulate trade. In our benchmark specification, merchandise exports from and imports to New Zealand both have a statistically significant relationship with numbers of migrants in New Zealand; imports also have a statistically significant relationship with numbers of New Zealanders overseas. Our results also suggest that migration stimulates imports more than exports.