Suchergebnisse

The basic regression discontinuity design (RDD) has less statistical power than a randomized control trial (RCT) with the same sample size. Adding a no-treatment comparison function to the basic RDD creates a comparative RDD (CRD); and when this function comes from the pretest value of the study outcome, a CRD-Pre design results. We use a within-study comparison (WSC) to examine the power of CRD-Pre relative to both basic RDD and RCT. We first build the theoretical foundation for power in CRD-Pre, then derive the relevant variance formulae, and finally compare them to the theoretical RCT variance. We conclude from this theoretical part of this article that (1) CRD-Pre's power gain depends on the partial correlation between the pretest and posttest measures after conditioning on the assignment variable, (2) CRD-Pre is less responsive than basic RDD to how the assignment variable is distributed and where the cutoff is located, and (3) under a variety of conditions, the efficiency of CRD-Pre is very close to that of the RCT. Data from the National Head Start Impact Study are then used to construct RCT, RDD, and CRD-Pre designs and to compare their power. The empirical results indicate (1) a high level of correspondence between the predicted and obtained power results for RDD and CRD-Pre relative to the RCT, and (2) power levels in CRD-Pre and RCT that are very close. The study is unique among WSCs for its focus on the correspondence between RCT and observational study standard errors rather than means.

To align this study with the scholarship on disaggregating the monolithic concept of nationalism in the Chinese context, the authors differentiate economic and cultural nationalisms, and conceptualise them as the manifestations of nationalistic sentiments in economic and cultural domains. Using data from the supplemental survey of the 2008 Chinese General Social Survey, findings have shown that economic and cultural nationalisms are weakly associated; age and education have greater effects on cultural nationalism than on economic nationalism; social status is negatively associated with economic nationalism but has no effect on cultural nationalism. (China/GIGA)

This paper explores two political factors for their potential effects on urban land supply in China: corruption, and competition for promotion. We find that standard urban economic predictions hold in the sense that both population and income increases are strongly significant determinants for the increase in urban land supply. Conditional on these demand-side factors, we find that the usage of two-stage auctions (as a proxy for corruption) is highly correlated with the increase in land supply. The corruption effects are strongest for commercial land, followed by residential land and then industrial land. To shed light on the competition motives among prefectural leaders, we examine how the number of years in office affects land supply, and distinguish among different hypotheses. Our empirical results showrobust rising trends in land sales (both in quantity and revenue). Theseresults are consistent with the hypothesis that the impatience and anxiety in later years from not being promoted may contribute to the increase in land sales revenue in later years; they are inconsistent with the hypothesis that prefectural leaders may give up and become more corrupt in later years. We also find that prefectural leaders may aim for larger land sales revenue overall in the first few (around 5) years in office instead of larger revenue in the first couple years.