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Raymond Fisman
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Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
The Review of Economics and Statistics (2016) 98 (3): 415–427.
Published: 01 July 2016
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We study the role of labor inputs in religious attendance using data on Oklahoma Methodist congregations from 1961 to 2003. Pastors play a significant role in church growth: replacing a 25th percentile pastor with a 75th percentile one increases annual attendance growth by 3%. A pastor’s performance in his or her first church (largely the result of random assignment) predicts future performance, suggesting a causal effect of pastors on growth. The deployment of pastors by the church indicates efficient use of labor: low-performing pastors are more likely to be rotated or exit the sample, and high-performing pastors are moved to larger congregations.
Includes: Supplementary data
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
The Review of Economics and Statistics (2008) 90 (3): 587–592.
Published: 01 August 2008
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Traditional explanations for indirect trade through an entrepôt focus on savings in transport costs and the role of specialized agents in processing and distribution. We provide an alternative perspective based on the potential for entrepôts to facilitate tariff evasion. Using data on direct exports to mainland China and indirect exports via Hong Kong SAR, we find that the indirect export rate rises with the Chinese tariff rate, despite the absence of any legal tax advantage to sending goods via Hong Kong SAR. We present several robustness tests to rule out plausible alternative hypotheses based on existing explanations for entrepôt trade.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
The Review of Economics and Statistics (2006) 88 (1): 61–68.
Published: 01 February 2006
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This paper studies the effect of foreign competition on the extent of forecasting bias. I focus on two biases often described in the behavioral economics literature: overoptimism and excessive belief in trends. Using data from firm-level surveys in five African countries, I show that firms that do not face foreign competition generate forecasts of sales growth that have greater trend and optimism biases than firms that have foreign competitors. I further provide evidence that these erroneous forecasts have real effects on firms' inventory management.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
The Review of Economics and Statistics (2004) 86 (1): 345–352.
Published: 01 February 2004
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Previous work has claimed that monopoly power facilitates the provision of credit, because monopolists are better able to enforce payment. Here, we argue that if relationship-specific investments are required by borrowers to establish creditworthiness, monopoly power may reduce credit provision because holdup problems ex post will deter borrowers from investing in establishing creditworthiness. Empirically, we examine the relationship between monopoly power and credit provision, using data on the supply relationships of firms in five African countries. Consistent with the up-front investment story, we find that monopoly power is negatively associated with credit provision, and that this correlation is stronger in older supplier relationships. Because the data include several observations per firm, we are able to utilize firm fixed effects, thus netting out unobserved firm characteristics that may have been driving results in earlier studies.