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Survey researchers have carefully modified their data collection operations for various reasons, including the rising costs of data collection and the ongoing Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, both of which have made in-person interviewing difficult. For large national surveys that require household (HH) screening to determine survey eligibility, cost-efficient screening methods that do not include in-person visits need additional evaluation and testing. A new study, known as the American Family Health Study (AFHS), recently initiated data collection with a national probability sample, using a sequential mixed-mode mail/web protocol for push-to-web US HH screening (targeting persons aged 18–49 years). To better understand optimal approaches for this type of national screening effort, we embedded two randomized experiments in the AFHS data collection. The first tested the use of bilingual respondent materials where mailed invitations to the screener were sent in both English and Spanish to 50 percent of addresses with a high predicted likelihood of having a Spanish speaker and 10 percent of all other addresses. We found that the bilingual approach did not increase the response rate of high-likelihood Spanish-speaking addresses, but consistent with prior work, it increased the proportion of eligible Hispanic respondents identified among completed screeners, especially among addresses predicted to have a high likelihood of having Spanish speakers. The second tested a form of nonresponse follow-up, where a subsample of active sampled HHs that had not yet responded to the screening invitations was sent a priority mailing with a $5 incentive, adding to the $2 incentive provided for all sampled HHs in the initial screening invitation. We found this approach to be quite valuable for increasing the screening survey response rate.

We conducted a field survey of owners of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Yangon, Myanmar to investigate obstacles to business development in the region. The analysis focuses on access to credit, public services, and electricity. We find that relaxing loan collateral requirements is considered of prime importance, while access to bank loans is seen as problematic (equivalent to a 19 percentage point increase in the interest rate). Yet despite their widespread appeal to governments and donors, SME loans are found to have no discernible impact on perceived access to credit. Access to public services is hampered by cumbersome and time consuming procedures, often necessitating daylong trips to the capital for administrative procedures. Streamlining such procedures could yield annual savings of up to US $4700 per business. With regard to electricity, the biggest problems are installing new connections and the unreliability of supply. For benchmarking of concerns, we showed respondents vignettes describing hypothetical businesses facing a particular difficulty, and asked them to rate the gravity of the problem. Although we find some differences in response scales across socio-economic and ethnic groups, the qualitative conclusions about which problems are most important generally hold. This suggests that broad-based policy intervention aimed at easing a particular difficulty can be implemented.

The Understanding America Study (UAS) is a probability-based, nationally representative internet panel. This document describes the methods used for sampling and weighting UAS surveys. UAS members are drawn from multiple sampling frames, and new batches of are added regularly. For most batches, we use an adaptive sampling algorithm, by first drawing zip codes whose distributions complement the distributions in the panel and then randomly sampling addresses from the United States Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File within the selected zip codes. Accordingly, weights are constructed in two stages. In the first stage, we construct base weights that account for differences in the sampling strategies for different frames. In a second stage, we construct poststratification weights to adjust for selective nonresponse.

This paper offers econometric evidence that corruption and foreign direct investment (FDI) can co-evolve if conditional on the level of development, the type of regimes, and the level of natural resource endowment. In conventional FDI empirical studies, the perceived corruption level in host countries is treated as being exogenous. Corruption, however, is also found to be endogenous to FDI depending upon economic circumstances and political conditions prevailing in host countries. The impact of FDI on corruption in host economies is found to vary across economies if disaggregated samples are used. Asian economies show a different pattern as compared to other regions. African economies display two distinct trends in their association with FDI activities if conditional on resource availability. The minimum threshold level of income beyond which increased inflow of FDI will result in lower corruption increases with the increased availability of resources. The impact is much greater for resource-rich developing economies managed by authoritarian regimes. To account for the joint-determination of corruption and FDI in resource-rich developing economies, this paper proposes a system of simultaneous equations to consistently estimate the parameters of the structural equations for three disaggregated samples. Results obtained from 2sls estimations confirm that there is a simultaneity issue as the coefficients for corruption variable as well as FDI are highly significant. The coefficients of other major determinants of corruption and FDI are also robust and strong. The consumption of FDI in resource-rich African economies results in higher corruption than it is in resource-rich Middle Eastern economies.

BackgroundPhysical activity (PA) is important for maintaining health, but there are fundamental unanswered questions on how best it should be measured.MethodsWe measured PA in the Netherlands (n=748), the USA (n=540) and England (n=254), both by a 7 day wrist-worn accelerometer and by self-reports. The self-reports included a global self-report on PA and a report on the frequency of vigorous, moderate and mild activity.ResultsThe self-reported data showed only minor differences across countries and across groups within countries (such as different age groups or working vs non-working respondents). The accelerometer data, however, showed large differences; the Dutch and English appeared to be much more physically active than Americans h (For instance, among respondents aged 50 years or older 38% of Americans are in the lowest activity quintile of the Dutch distribution). In addition, accelerometer data showed a sharp decline of PA with age, while no such pattern was observed in self-reports. The differences between objective measures and self-reports occurred for both types of self-reports.ConclusionIt is clear that self-reports and objective measures tell vastly different stories, suggesting that across countries people use different response scales when answering questions about how physically active they are.

This paper presents results from a resume audit study to examine the demand for work experience accumulated in overseas labor markets relative to local labor market. This is the first labor market audit study performed in a developing country, and I discuss the challenges that must be considered in this context. Overall, I do not find statistically significant effects that foreign experience is favored by employers, but this aggregate effect masks heterogeneity. Specifically, software developers and programmers with foreign experience are highly favored by employers, particular if the experience has been gained in Singapore. The demand for Singapore experience among software developers and programmers is mainly driven by foreign employers. I also find that software developers and programmers living in a wealthy neighborhood receive as many first callbacks from employers as those having Singapore experience. The positive return to living in a wealthy neighborhood is mainly due to local employers. Among accountants and engineers, when using the full sample, I find no systematic and significant difference in callback rates between foreign and local applicants. When restricting the sample to job applications in which only one applicant (out of two applicants) receives callback from employers, I find a significant positive effect for engineers with foreign experience and a significant negative effect for accountants with foreign experience. I also find gender gaps in callback rates among accountants and engineers: female accountants are more likely to receive callback than male accountants; in contrast, female engineers are less likely to receive callbacks than male engineers.

Addresses the top five constraints inhibiting the development of the labor markets and the private sector in Burma.

We conducted a field study in the city of Yangon, Myanmar to investigate major obstacles to business development in the region. The analysis focuses on three aspects of the business environment that are considered to be top constraints among Myanmar small and medium enterprises (SMEs): (1) access to credit, (2) access to public services, and (3) access to electricity. By using anchoring vignettes we are both able to correct for possible differences in response scales across respondents and to elicit which characteristics of the business environment are seen as most difficult. Although we find some significant differences in response scales across different groups of respondents, their effects on qualitative conclusions are minor. The analysis of vignette ratings reveals that in terms of access to credit relaxing collateral requirements is considered of prime importance, while access to bank loans is seen as very problematic (equivalent to a 19 percentage points increase in the loan interest rate). Access to public services is another impediment, with cumbersome and time consuming procedures, often necessitating daylong trips to the capital for administrative procedures. Improving such procedures would be equivalent with average annual savings equal to US $4,700 per business. Results from the vignette analysis indicate that getting new electricity connections and unreliable electricity supply are perceived by our respondents to be the most difficult in getting access to electricity.