Russell Thomson , Sarah Hegarty , Elizabeth Webster
{"title":"Female consumer preferences and workplace diversity: Evidence from the box office","authors":"Russell Thomson , Sarah Hegarty , Elizabeth Webster","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107166","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107166","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite widespread belief in the significance of female screenwriters depicting the female experience, there is little quantitative evidence that audiences differentiate writer gender or that it affects box office performance. We examine the relationship between the gender of screenwriters and box office returns using data on the gender of writers for 4749 films released between 2000 and 2022, and their box office performance in up to 95 consumer markets with varying levels of female purchasing power. Our identification strategy allows us to control for unobserved attributes of film quality which otherwise confound attribution of box office returns to the gender representation either on or off screen. Our data indicates that female-written films attract a premium in consumer markets where women have greater discretion over spending.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"237 ","pages":"Article 107166"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144766814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Collective sanction enforcement: New experimental evidence from two societies","authors":"Kenju Kamei , Smriti Sharma , Matthew J. Walker","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107138","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107138","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper presents the first experimental study on how higher-order punishment affects third-party sanction enforcement in the presence of multiple third parties. The design varies across treatments the number of third parties witnessing a norm violation and the opportunities available for third parties to costly punish each other after observing their peers’ enforcement actions. To test generalizability of higher-order enforcement effects, the experiment is conducted across two contrasting societies – India and the United Kingdom – using a prisoner’s dilemma game. These societies are selected for their positions at opposite ends of the tight-loose ancestral kinship spectrum. In both societies, third parties punish defectors who exploit their paired cooperators more strongly than any other person, consistent with prior research. Yet, punitive patterns differ. In the UK, third parties punish defectors less frequently and less strongly when other third parties are present; when higher-order punishments are available among third parties, their failure to punish defectors and acts of anti-social punishment invite strong higher-order punishment from their peers, which encourages their pro-social first-order punishments and makes mutual cooperation a Nash equilibrium outcome in the primary cooperation dilemma. However, in India, overall punishment levels are lower, group size and incentive structure changes have no discernible effects, and higher-order punishments are not better disciplined. These findings support a model of norm conformity for the UK and do not contradict such a model for India.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"237 ","pages":"Article 107138"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144766812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"LGBTQ+ individuals in the Mexican labor market: Queerphobia, sorting, and observable outcomes","authors":"Emilio Gutierrez , Adrian Rubli","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107186","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107186","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Understanding the relationship between LGBTQ<span><math><mo>+</mo></math></span> identities and labor market outcomes is crucial for designing effective policies. We explore this understudied topic using rich data from the first national survey on sexual orientation and gender identity in Mexico. We find that employment rates among LGBTQ<span><math><mo>+</mo></math></span> minorities are generally lower than those of cisgender heterosexual men. We link labor market outcomes to prejudice by documenting occupational sorting: minorities are over-represented in sectors with lower stigma. Additionally, while most LGBTQ<span><math><mo>+</mo></math></span> identities are more likely to hold leadership positions than cisgender heterosexual men, they are also more likely to report workplace victimization and exclusion. We exercise caution in interpreting these gaps due to evidence of endogenous selection into occupations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"237 ","pages":"Article 107186"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144757927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The long-term effect of western customs institution on firm innovation in China","authors":"Gan Jin , Günther G. Schulze","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107154","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107154","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Can cultural norms fostered by historical institutions affect today’s firm innovation? We analyze a historical experiment in China in 1902, when the foreign-run Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMC), known for its efficient and transparent governance, took over <em>some</em> of the Chinese Native Customs stations and improved their governance. Using a large data set of contemporary industrial firms in China and an IV strategy that exploits the takeover criterion for identification, we show that firms in locations historically affected by the CMC rules exhibit higher innovation intensities today, which can be attributed to the persisting norms of honesty and lawfulness embedded in the CMC institution. They reduce corruption and misconduct for local governments and firms, even though the formal CMC institution was abolished in 1949.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"237 ","pages":"Article 107154"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144757928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Deborah A. Cobb-Clark , Sarah C. Dahmann , Daniel A. Kamhöfer , Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch
{"title":"Schooling and Self-Control","authors":"Deborah A. Cobb-Clark , Sarah C. Dahmann , Daniel A. Kamhöfer , Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107147","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107147","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While there is an established positive relationship between self-control and education, the direction of causality remains a matter of debate. We make a contribution to resolving this issue by exploiting a series of Australian and German educational reforms that increased minimum education requirements as a source of exogenous variation in education levels. We find no evidence that an additional year of schooling increased the self-control of those people affected by the reforms, though our limited estimation power makes our estimates somewhat imprecise. Thus, while enhancing self-control through school-based interventions may be feasible, simply increasing the time early school leavers spend in formal education does not seem to meaningfully increase their self-control.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"237 ","pages":"Article 107147"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144757926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tacit knowledge in management roles: Evidence from the use of expatriates in South Korean MNCs","authors":"Carmen Astorne, Joonhyung Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107158","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107158","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study the use of tacit knowledge in management roles for a MNC through the lens of a knowledge hierarchy model. We use data on labor mobility of MNCs headquartered in South Korea. Given that South Korea is one of the least diverse countries in terms of ethnicity, culture, and language, and that Korean is an uncommon language isolated from other language families, the use of expatriates instead of locals serves as a means of transferring tacit knowledge from headquarters to foreign affiliates. We investigate how the use of expatriates changes for executive and manager layers as foreign affiliates expand or contract. In particular, we analyze foreign affiliates that expand with and without changing their organization of hierarchical layers. When affiliates expand by adding an organizational layer, we find that the new layer mostly comprises expatriates, while the need for expatriates in the layer immediately below declines. Similarly, when affiliates contract by dropping a layer, the need for expatriates in the layer immediately below increases. When foreign affiliates expand (contract) without reorganizing, they require more (fewer) Korean expatriates at the management layers as well. These results are robust to accounting for sectoral complexity and monitoring intensity, suggesting that expatriate use is not influenced by R&D intensity or monitoring duties, and that the need for tacit knowledge in management is stable across sectors. Moreover, expatriate usage in management does not change with affiliate age, suggesting no evidence that expatriates’ tacit knowledge is converted into explicit knowledge at the foreign affiliate level.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"237 ","pages":"Article 107158"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144748638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The unintended consequence of trade liberalization: Input tariff reduction and firm energy rebound effect in China","authors":"Kerui Du , Xueyue Liu , Cheng Zhao","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107116","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107116","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies the impact of input tariff reductions on firms’ energy rebound effect in China. We present a theoretical framework to elucidate how input tariff reduction shapes the factor substitution and output expansion that determine the rebound effect. Our empirical strategy employs a difference-in-difference-in-differences method that is robust to endogeneity concerns regarding energy efficiency and compares the energy rebound effect of Chinese manufacturers across industries that experienced varying degrees of input tariff reductions following WTO accession. We find that firms more affected by input tariff reductions experience a significantly larger exacerbation in their energy rebound effect than those less affected. We also find evidence suggesting that this effect is mainly driven by output expansion. Our results highlight a hidden cost of trade liberalization, that is, an intensified energy rebound effect leads firms to fail to realize anticipated energy savings and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions following improvements in energy efficiency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"237 ","pages":"Article 107116"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144748639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Stefanie Ehmann , Patrick Kampkötter , Julian Wenzel , Stefanie Wolter
{"title":"In the hand of the family: Management practices and perceived job quality","authors":"Stefanie Ehmann , Patrick Kampkötter , Julian Wenzel , Stefanie Wolter","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107135","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107135","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the use and implications of management practices in family-owned firms compared to firms with dispersed ownership. We make use of a longitudinal, representative employer–employee dataset with detailed data on firm-level management practices and family firm management types. The analysis reveals that differences in the adoption of structured management practices are predominantly driven by management type rather than ownership. Family-owned firms led by family members implement significantly fewer formal management practices, whereas those managed by non-family managers adopt more structured practices, though still below the levels observed in firms with dispersed ownership. Yet, employees in family-owned firms, particularly those with non-family managers, rate job quality (e.g., job satisfaction, procedural fairness, leadership quality) similarly or superior despite fewer formal practices. These findings suggest that informal practices and a distinctive firm culture in family-owned firms may foster employee motivation and partially substitute for formal management structures. Importantly, additional heterogeneity analyses reveal that this substitution is only effective for lower-skilled employees and those in non-managerial positions, while formal management practices remain critical for higher-skilled and supervisory roles.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"237 ","pages":"Article 107135"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144721776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Victor Le Coz , Michael Benzaquen , Damien Challet
{"title":"A minimal model of money creation within secured interbank markets","authors":"Victor Le Coz , Michael Benzaquen , Damien Challet","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107142","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107142","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We propose a minimal model of the secured interbank network able to shed light on recent money markets puzzles. We find that excess liquidity emerges due to the interactions between the reserves and liquidity ratio constraints; the appearance of evergreen repurchase agreements and collateral re-use emerges as a simple answer to banks’ counterparty risk and liquidity ratio regulation. In line with prevailing theories, re-use increases with collateral scarcity. In our agent-based model, banks create money endogenously to meet the funding requests of economic agents. The latter generate payment shocks to the banking system by reallocating their deposits. Banks absorbs these shocks thanks to repurchase agreements, while respecting reserves, liquidity, and leverage constraints. The resulting network is denser and more robust to stress scenarios than an unsecured one; in addition, the stable bank trading relationships network exhibits a core–periphery structure. Finally, we show how this model can be used as a tool for stress testing and monetary policy design.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"237 ","pages":"Article 107142"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144713982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lina Koppel , Amanda M. Lindkvist , Gustav Tinghög
{"title":"Scientific normative dissonance: A large-scale survey of researchers’ subscription to scientific norms and counternorms across academic fields","authors":"Lina Koppel , Amanda M. Lindkvist , Gustav Tinghög","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107140","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107140","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate the extent to which researchers hold morally competing ideals related to scientific norms, which we refer to as scientific normative dissonance. Researchers (<em>n</em> = 11,050) indicated their agreement with four general scientific norms (communality, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism) and counternorms (individualism, particularism, self-interestedness, and organized dogmatism). Results indicate systematic differences in the relative norm–counternorm subscription (i.e., scientific normative dissonance) across academic fields, academic seniority, and genders. Specifically, normative dissonance was higher among researchers in the medical and health sciences (vs. researchers in social sciences, humanities, or natural sciences), more senior researchers, and male researchers. Our findings have implications for fostering ethical research environments and aligning research practices and incentive structures with scientific ideals.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":"237 ","pages":"Article 107140"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144711795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}