Recent ucsbecon_econ196h items

Is the All-NBA Selection Process Biased? Examining the Effect of Market Size on Media Member Votes for All-NBA Teams

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines the effect of market size on the votes for the National Basketball Association’s All-NBA teams. While the All-NBA teams are intended to represent the league’s best players, prior research suggests that media members vote based on factors other than performance. I hypothesize that a player on a large market team is more likely to receive votes than a player with comparable performance but on a small market team. Using All-NBA ballots from five consecutive seasons and Nielsen television market sizes, I employ a two-part model approach to determine the effects of market size, being born outside the United States, representing an East Coast team, and Team Win-Loss Percentage on All-NBA votes. I find that the effect of market size on All-NBA votes is unclear, but Team Win-Loss Percentage has a significant positive effect. Future studies could introduce other factors to the models such as age and race.

Refugees and Their Effects on Voting in Host Countries: A German Social Analysis

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The decision by Germany to lead the effort against the refugee crisis in 2015 sparked controversy amongmany of its native population. With over a million new refugees in 2015 and 2016 alone fleeing war andterorrism from mainly Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, member’s of Germany’s far-right were outraged bythe decision. The AfD used the controversy to create a platform and gain popularity. They eventuallygained the third most votes in the 2017 federal election, the first time in 60 years that an openlynationalistic party would enter parliament. In this paper, we analyze how an increasing number ofrefugees affects voting sentiment in Germany. We search for causal effects of refugee numbers on votingfor far-right political parties. We perform our analysis with multiple regression models, mainly relying onfixed effects to determine causality. Although our initial hypothesis was that there should be a positiverelationship between the refugee share and voting for far-right political parties,...

Content and Competition in Local Newspaper Markets

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I propose a methodology to isolate the effect of competition on media content using local newspaper closures as an exogenous change in competition to closured newspapers’ competitors. I define five topical metrics and construct a specialized categorization scheme to measure newspaper content over time. By comparing content across the periods before and after a newspapers’ competitor closes, I hold all factors that may affect content constant save the level of competition in the market and chronological time. Following the theoretical model proposed by Perego and Yuksel (2020), I hypothesize that decreasing competition should incentivize general content and disincentivize specialized content. I test my hypothesis on a case-study of 13 local newspapers in California over the period from 2000 to 2020. I am unable to differentiate the effect of decreasing competition from other time-related factors, and therefore cannot make a definitive conclusion from the limited data. However,...

False-Positive Social Psychology: How Deviations from Preregistrations Affect the Probability of False-Positive Significance

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Numerous solutions have been proposed to address the replication crisis, in which numeroushigh-profile empirical research studies cannot be replicated by other research teams. One possibleexplanation is that researchers have the option to adjust their data analyses after viewingthe results, inflating false positive rates. One popular solution is study preregistration, the practiceof developing the data analysis plan before the data is collected. However, preregistrationsonly alleviate replication problems if researchers are held accountable to their analysis plans.Across two related studies, we explore the effectiveness of preregistration in its current form.In Study 1, we audit recent preregistered publications from a major psychology journal andobserve deviations in 19 of 32 papers. In Study 2, we simulate the effects of generic deviationson the false-positive rate. We find that deviations that run more or more varied tests causelarger changes, tripling the false-positive rate...

Would Origin and Type of Undergraduate Universities Affect Ph.D. Ranking? Evidence From 2021-2022 Job Market

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The proportion of international Ph.D. candidates has been increasing in recentyears, and the growing importance of international candidates requires researchersto pay more attention to the differences between them and Americancandidates. Using information collected from CVs on the 2021-2022 economicsPh.D. job market, we find that international candidates are more likely to havea previous graduate degree before a Ph.D., and less likely to have full time RAexperiences and a background in math. The results of this study suggest thatseveral variables have positive effects on Ph.D program rankings: graduatingfrom a highly ranked undergraduate institution, having full time RA experiences,and coming from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, or Latin America,while candidates attending an unranked undergraduate institution and an liberalarts college are less likely to graduate from highly ranked Ph.D. programs.

Sitting Down During Hard Times: Why Has American Labor Force Participation Declined?

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In order to understand why labor force participation (andemployment rate) have declined in the United States over the pasttwo decades, declines in the employment to population ratio wereregressed against minimum wage, labor laws and labor forcecharacteristics during the last three major recession periods. Theresults yielded little significant effects of minimum wage orunionization, but a strong negative effect of the percent of the laborforce employed in the service sector.

Political Ideology and Early Restaurant Avoidance During Covid-19

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This paper studies whether political ideology affected early restaurant avoidance behavior during Covid-19 in March 2020. Early conflicting narratives about the severity of Covid-19 driven by political leaders and media outlets with liberal versus conservative views may impact the speed in which Republican and Democratic cities adopt safety measures such as avoiding dining at restaurants. I use data on seated dining rates at restaurants from OpenTable and find that cities in the United States with more Democratic voters saw faster declines in seated dining. I also find that cities with more Covid-19 cases saw faster declines in seated dining rates, but this effect is concentrated on early adopter cities. These findings have public health implications which suggest that effective public health policy should take the influence of politics on behavior into account.

Risk Aversion and Theft as a Source of Risk

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This paper seeks to show that the potential to lose money as a result of theft has adifferent effect on an individual’s risk aversion than the potential to lose money due to chance.This would indicate that an individual’s risk aversion is inconsistent under different scenarios,contrasting current literature that assumes an individual’s risk aversion is independent of thesituation they are in. We attempt to show this through an experiment that frames loss in the formof theft. We use Amazon Mechanical Turk to gather responses to our experiment online. We findthat our treatment has no statistical effect, that people do not act in a way that is inconsistent withtheir risk aversion simply because of the possibility of theft.

An Analysis of the Causal Effects of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act on California Farm Organizational Structure

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

An Analysis of the Causal Effects of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act on California Farm Organizational Structure

Rent Control and its Effect on the Availability of Rental Units

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This paper uses the introduction of municipal rent control legislation in East Palo Alto,California in 2010 to estimate the effects of rent control. I examine housing data from theAmerican Community Survey (years 2000 and 2006) and the American Community Survey‘Place’ Data Profiles (years 2010-2019) to determine how city-level rent control regulationimpacted the local housing market, specifically in terms of the availability of rental units. Myresults suggest that rent control legislation had no statistically significant effect on theavailability of rental units, which I approximate with the proportion of total housing unitsoccupied by renters. However, further investigation indicates this legislation did little to mitigatethe increase of median rental prices in comparison to the rates of Fairfield (control group) orCalifornia. These findings suggest further research is needed to fully understand the efficacy andimpact of rent control legislation in East Palo Alto.

Lost in Translation? The Impact of Increasing Funding on High SchoolGraduation Rates of English Language Learners

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lost in Translation? The Impact of Increasing Funding on High SchoolGraduation Rates of English Language Learners

How COVID-19 Influences Smoking Prevalence in the United States

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Although the negative health consequences of tobacco use are well-informed, smokers usuallydo not have an incentive to quit smoking immediately as the smoking interventions are notcompulsory and the illness caused by smoking is distant in time. Smoking behavior is denselystudied and proved to be associated with a wide range of genetic, social, and psychologicalfactors. This study is to learn how does COVID-19 spread influence the smoking prevalence inthe United State. The results show that smoking behavior is not geographically affected by thestrictness of lockdown orders and the severity of coronavirus spread. However, the cigaretteconsumption is associated with COVID-19 with a negative significance if people encounterdepression during COVID-19. The outcome provides some important information for thecessation-related organizations: it is necessary to take care of smokers’ emotion status in theprocess of quitting during COVID-19.

Renewable Energy Adoption and its Impact on U.S. Energy Systems

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, I investigate how oil price shocks and volatility affect adoption ofrenewable energy technologies by private businesses and households. Additionally, I analyze thechanges in electric utilities’ energy supplies sourced from fossil fuel-powered generators asprivate renewable energy adoption increases. This paper considers net energy metering programadoption as a measure of renewable energy technology uptake. I estimate two models on a paneldataset of electric utility-level data of net energy metering programs. The empirical resultsindicate that oil price shocks and oil price volatility reduce renewable energy adoption throughnet metering programs by a significant magnitude. The findings also show that greater customernet metering subscription significantly reduces utilities’ reliance on fossil fuels for their retailelectricity supplies. Coal and natural gas generator usage is most reduced, while oil-firedgenerator reliance is affected fractionally. Recommendations...

Mapping your Future: Do College Locations Impact Future Earnings and Job Placement?

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This paper analyzes the effects of urbanization on college graduates’ future earnings and job placement rates. I hypothesize that students attending institutions in urban areas benefit from local knowledge spillovers through greater exposure to human capital and R&D at nearby firms, which translates to higher future earnings and job placement rates. Using data from the 2016/2017 Baccalaureate and Beyond data set (National Center for Education Statistics), I employ three regression models to investigate the relationship between urbanization and annualized salaries, employment, and employment requiring a bachelor's degree. I find that urbanization does not have a significant effect on earnings or job placement. Due to limitations in my model design and data, this study warrants further research. Examining state and county characteristics (e.g., percentage of college graduates in the labor force, average incomes) will help account for the variation of human capital among urban...

Economic Decline and the Foster Care System: Evidence from The Great Recession

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines the effects of the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 on the number ofchildren entering foster care due to maltreatment using data1 for 2004 to 2015. I usestandard OLS regressions with heteroskedastic robust standard errors in order toexamine the impact of the Great Recession, measured by the yearly unemployment rate,on children entering foster care due to physical abuse or neglect. Overall, I find littleevidence that there was an impact of the unemployment rate on entry into foster care.However, when looking across racial and ethnic groups, I find that Black children andAsian children were more or less susceptible, respectively, to entering foster care due tomaltreatment when there were increases in the unemployment rate during and after theGreat Recession.

The Effect of Double Majoring in Undergraduate on Earnings: Using Propensity Score Matching

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This study provides an estimation and methodology update on previous paper that studies the effect of having a second major in undergraduate on future earnings. Using 2019 National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) data and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method, I find that double majoring increases earnings by around 3% for the general population, and this earnings premium is more remarkable for people under the age of 40, which amounts to about 4%. While the proportion of double majors in the population drops from over 20% in 2003 to slightly above 13% in 2019, the returns to double majoring increase from around 2.5% since 2003. I also compare results from OLS regressions and PSM and argue that PSM can relax some of the parametric assumptions imposed by OLS regressions and hence reduce misspecification and extrapolation bias from OLS regressions, which previous literature on this topic relies on.

How California’s Wildfires Spark Migration

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores the relationship between California wildfires and human migration, and whetherit can be reasonably assumed that California counties with a higher frequency and/or severity ofwildfires experience greater out-migration than counties that experience a lower fire risk. Usingcounty-to-county migration data from 2010 to 2018 and wildfire data from 2009 to 2017, I runregressions with two different models: the multiple regression and fixed-effect model. Sourcecounties, i.e. counties where people are migrating from, observed in this study are only in California,but destination counties, i.e. counties where people are migrating to, include all counties in the U.S.In the case where destination counties are out of state, I aggregate counties by state so that I havecounty-to-county flows within California and county-to-state flows for the other 49 states. While itis possible to find literature that explores the effects of extreme climate events on human migration,little...

The Impact of Innovation: Does Venture CapitalFunding Stimulate Increases in Social Mobility?

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Innovation appears to have a direct impact on broad measures of social mobility. The mechanism thought to be behind this is Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction, where new entrant firms develop more sophisticated technologies in an incessant process of industrial turnover. Thus, the gains in social mobility are dependent on the success of new entrant firms.We hypothesize that in regions with dense concentrations of venture capital funding, new entrant firms will be more successful, and this will amplify the effect that innovation has on mobility. This study contributes meaningful nuance to the argument that innovation causes increases in mobility by showing that the effect may vary in magnitude depending on influencing factors such as venture investment.

Social Media Activism's Impact on Global Retailers

Thu, 9 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This paper investigates the impact of social media movements on shareholders' wealth. The #WhoMadeMyClothes Twitter campaign is an annual social media movement that emerged after the collapse of the Rana Plaza, a building in Bangladesh that housed five garment factories, in April 2013. The global campaign serves as a remembrance day for the factory victims and gives social media users an outlet to address ethical concerns towards apparel retail companies that were buyers of the Rana Plaza factories. My research investigates how this Twitter campaign, in specially April 2015, impacted the stock returns of the companies involved in the Rana Plaza collapse. My analysis is based on 180 publicly traded, global apparel and retail firms. I find an overall negative stock market reaction towards the US firms, regardless of their relationship to the factories, when aggregating over the all active campaign days. However, when pooling firms from all represented countries, I find that only...

Financial Risk Tolerance Among Same-sex and Mixed-sex Couples

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This paper investigates the willingness to take financial risks among same-sex and mixed-sex couples. Using cross-sectional data from Survey of Consumer Finances, I employed multivariate and fixed-effect probability regression models and find a higher level of self-reported financial risk tolerance among gay couples as compared to heterosexual couples and lesbian couples. Risk tolerance difference in actual investment behaviors, including participation in stock and bond market and percentage of liquid assets invested in stocks, were not statistically significant.

International Competition and Industrial Upgrading Strategies in the Global Apparel Industry

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This paper serves as an exploratory study of the global apparel manufacturing industry during the time of the phaseout of the Multifiber Arrangement system of quotas. Underlying the analysis is the goal of identifying a causal relationship between increased international competition and country-level investment in product, process, and supply-chain upgrading. To examine this association, I focus on trade data in the years shortly before and after the MFA quotas were phased out- after which countries could export free from many of the limitations in place before. The resulting surplus of clothing and textile production worldwide provides an ideal environment to study the effects of increased competition on the apparel industries in different countries. Previous literature has linked competition to upgrading; however, this paper takes a novel approach by measuring competition in relation to the shifting trade dynamics at the time of the MFA phaseout. Also, this paper departs from...

Does Trouble in the Economy Lead to Trouble at School?

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In this study, I attempt to identify whether deteriorating macroeconomic health can lead primary and secondary students to get into more trouble at school. Previous literature suggests that family-level job loss increases child problem behavior, mostly by increasing internalizing problem behaviors such as anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal. I suggest that this follows children into the classroom, leading to increased disciplinary actions by schools. Using county-level data in Arkansas from the fifteen school years between 2004 and 2018, I employ multiple regression and fixed-effect models to examine the effects of changes in unemployment on various disciplinary outcomes (out-of-school suspensions, in-school suspensions, expulsions, and corporal punishment) for students in primary and secondary schools. Due to inconsistencies in Arkansas' discipline data, the results presented in this paper should be approached with skepticism. Only one result is consistent among the regression...

Asian-American Executive Compensation in the Fortune 500

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I study executive compensation in a sample of Fortune 500 executives, to determine whether Asian American executives were compensated less than their peers in 2019. The regression model controlled for two measures of company size (total revenues and number of employees), stock price performance and industry fixed effects; at a 95% level, I find a statistically insignificant salary gap between Asians as a group and non-Asian executives. For East Asian executives, however, I find a large and statistically significant log salary gap relative to non-Asians of over 50 percent (53.6 log points). This indicates that, in 2019, East Asian top executives in the Fortune 500 were paid substantially less than non-Asians who were managing companies of similar size and profitability in the same industry. A larger sample would be needed to improve the precision of the estimates.

Drought and Disparity: Labor Market Spillover in the 2012 to 2016 California Drought

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Natural events such as drought can sometimes create ripple effects within closely related industries in local economies, reducing income and welfare. From 2012 to 2016 California experienced its most hydrologically severe occurrence of drought in the last 1,200 years. I investigate the impact of this drought by comparing heavily impacted agricultural counties to agriculturally similar counties in the Central Valley of California. Using a difference in difference strategy to analyze changes during the occurrence of the drought, I find substantial decreases in agricultural employment and wages in the affected counties. Despite this, I find no relative contractions overall in closely related tradable or non-tradable industries. When this impact is dissected, I observe substantial reductions in Hispanic worker employment and income. I also find evidence of a proportionate increase in construction employment, raising the possibility that these occupations were substituted to reduce...

International Affiliations Make You More Competitive:Evidence from Chinese Economics Publications

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

International cooperation is increasingly important for the growth of specialized knowledge in Economics. This paper examines the effect of the international affiliations of Chinese authors on their tenure-track publications. We say that a paper has international affiliations if it has one of the following three components: foreign co-authors, concurrent placements in foreign institutions for Chinese authors, and Ph.D. degrees earned in foreign institutions by Chinese authors. We find that foreign co-authors and foreign placements significantly increase the probability of tenure-track publications. The foreign degree also has a positive coefficient in logistic regression, but a statistical significance is lacking.

Experimental Evidence of Magical Thinking in Public Goods Experiments

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Consistent behavior in public goods games is well documented. Typically, participants begin with large contributions to the public good, but contribution rates decline as more iterations of the game are played. However, the impact of magical thinking on contributions to a public goods game has yet to be examined. We hypothesize that, when participants erroneously believe they can use their contribution to set a social norm, contribution rates will be higher. To test this hypothesis, we had participants play a public goods game, and gave them either no additional information or told them that there is a real probability that their contribution would be recorded first. We found no significant difference in contributions between the treatment and control groups. However, magical thinking was ubiquitous across groups, suggesting that magical thinking is a normative feature of behavior in public goods games that is robust to certain manipulations.

Return to English Fluency Among Race and Education

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Language fluency is defined as an important factor of human capital for immigrant workers. The fluency premium (FP) is the incremental payment for English proficiency between similar workers. Using data from the American Community Survey, this paper investigates the overall English fluency premium for immigrant workers and the difference in the return to English fluency among 4 major race groups while controlling for counties, jobs, and year fixed effects It is determined with OLS that generally, the FP is about 14.5% for all immigrants and around 5% for immigrants who arrived before their 18th birthday. After applying IV, the FP is measured at 23.5%. There are also significant differences in the FP in both samples among the 4 major race groups and skill levels.

The Age-Position Effect in the NFL Free-Agent Labor Market

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The National Football League (NFL) is a unique economic environment for athletes and teams that fails to conform to typical labor-wage markets. Athletes in the National Football League have extremely short careers due to the physically demanding nature of football, creating a unique trajectory of earnings. Varying importance of positions and different career lengths as a result of disproportionate amount of contact leads to a difference in pay amongst position groups, despite apparent differences in skill. This paper examines the factors that go into determining contract length and amount (primary focus on age and position), as well as the discrepancy of earnings between position groups

How Gender-based Relationships Between a Student and Advisor in Economics Ph.D. Programs Impact Future Student Success

Mon, 8 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines how an economics PhD student's gender-based relationship with their advisor impacts their success. Women are historically underrepresented in the field of economics, and this paper examines student-advisor gender configurations to determine if the gender matching of a student and advisor is an early indicator of future success. I use data on the first job placement of a student, their PhD advisor, and their tenure status at their first job to determine if there are gender differences in the success rate of students with female advisors. This paper finds that female advisors are more likely to have female students and that there is no gender difference in the success rate of students with female advisors.

The Effects of Knowledge and Perceptions of Campus Mental Health Services on College Students’ Academic Performance

Mon, 8 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This study investigates how knowledge and perceptions about mental health and campus services affect the academic performance of college students. Using the 2017-2018 Healthy Minds Study, this analysis focuses on the differences in prevalence of anxiety and depression, in addition to opinions and awareness of mental health services across academic degree. By using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), Generalized Anxiety Disorders (GAD-7), and survey data on students’ attitudes, knowledge, and utilization of campus mental health services, Grade Point Average (GPA) is evaluated to measure these effects on academic performance using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). This study ultimately finds that knowledge and personal stigma have significance impacts on academic performance, especially when controlling for depression and anxiety prevalence. These findings can be used to help colleges and universities effectively promote the use of mental health services by destigmatizing mental...

THE IMPACT OF DACA ON UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANTS:Analyzing Heterogeneous Treatment Effects of Temporary Work Authorization

Mon, 8 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program benefits hundreds of thousands ofundocumented immigrant youths today. With the policy under threat of being rescinded, it iscrucial to understand how it has affected these young unauthorized immigrants in order tounderstand the potential consequences of ending such a program. In order to fully assess the effectsand possible incentives created by DACA, I use the program’s eligibility requirement to constructa sample of potentially eligible individuals. Using a difference-In-differences method, I analyzethe overall effect of this policy on different education and labor outcomes across different groups.I find that it has increased their likelihood of working by increasing the probability of entering thelabor force and decreasing the probability of being unemployed. I also find evidence ofheterogeneity across age and ethnic groups for some labor and educational outcomes. The resultsindicate that it incentivizes investment in...

Recessions in Higher Education: A Study of Faculty Sensitivities to Changes in Funding Vis-à-vis Periods of Recession

Mon, 8 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This paper analyzes the degree to which faculty at public universities are further impacted by the financial difficulties brought about by recessions than their private counterpart and how that trend has changed over time. Contracting state budgets for public universities and dips in endowment revenue for private universities compel these institutions to cut back on large-scale spending, such as faculty, or garner the missing revenue from other sources, such as raising the cost of tuition. We consider the number of faculty and their respective salaries as our outcomes of interest. We hypothesized that public universities would fare worse during economic downturns than private universities primarily due to specific vulnerabilities in their funding relative to private universities. Using university-level fixed effects, we consider university faculty dis-aggregated by rank, sex, and salary. This study contributes to some existing literature on recessions and their relationship to...

Does Rhetoric Help Stock Returns? A Tex tAnalysis of Unicorn S-1 Documents

Mon, 8 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This paper seeks to develop and analyze a relationship between venture capitalinvestment, rhetorical corporate strategies, and public stock performance. Examiningevery firm since 2000 that went public at a market cap of 1 billion USD or above, I analyzethe rhetoric of unicorns and its relation to risk. Using SEC archives of S-1 financialdocuments and two sentiment dictionaries, I attempt to capture levels of positive languagein firms’ business summaries and negative language in its risk factors. Using this data, Itest the correlation between a firm’s venture capital investment and its S-1 language, aswell as the relationship between a firm’s S-1 rhetoric and its ensuing stock performanceas a public company. A significant positive correlation is established between venturecapital investment and a firm’s levels of positive language in their business summaries, aswell as a significant positive correlation between venture capital investment and a firm’slevels of negative language...

The Truth about the ‘Top 5’: How Good are They?

Mon, 8 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, I will address the immense amount of importance that economic academia places on being published in one of the ‘Top 5’ academic journals, and attempt to discern whether or not the preeminence of these five is truly well-deserved. Using simple regression-based analysis and complimentary descriptive statistics, I find that in terms of five-year Impact Factors there is little variation amongst the ‘Top 5’ and other top performing journals. In addition, I find that these five are surprisingly not the top performing economic journals. To supplement these findings, I also analyze general time trends to indicate which journal fields are experiencing the most growth. General Interest journals, which four of the five ‘Top 5’ are, are not experiencing nearly as much growth as their contemporaries suggesting that the differences between the five and other journals in terms of their Impact Factors may continue to diminish as journals of faster growing fields continue to attract...

Peer Effect and Risk Aversion