Jay K. Walker

A Smart Break? College Tenure Interruption and Graduating Student Outcomes

Using data from a longitudinal survey of college students from over 400 institutions, we examine the impacts of occupational internship programs and voluntary academic leave on returning academic achievement, post-college ambitions, and general facets of the college experience. Previous literature on college internships has focused on labor market effects and the literature on academic leave has emphasized its causes. Much less has been done to analyze effects of these occurrences on collegiate outcomes. College internships are found to have a positive effect on grades, increase desires to work full-time or attend graduate school immediately following graduation, and slightly increase ambitions to have administrative responsibilities and be financially well off. Voluntary academic leave is found to have only negative effects on collegiate outcomes, including study habits and academic achievement upon return. Implied policy implications are that colleges and universities should champion internship programs but discourage college tenure interruption for other reasons.

Game, set, and match: Do women and men perform differently in competitive situations?

This paper analyzes potential gender differences in competitive environments using a sample of over 100,000 professional tennis matches. Focusing on two phenomena of the labor and sports economics literature, we find robust evidence for (i) the hot-hand effect (an additional win in the most recent ten matches raises the likelihood of winning by 3.1 to 3.3 percent) and (ii) the clutch-player effect, as top players are excelling in Grand Slam tournaments, the most important events. Overall, we find virtually no gender differences for the hot-hand effect and only minor distinctions for the clutch-player effect.

Religiosity and the Impact of Religious Secondary Schooling

ABSTRACT Using a nationally representative longitudinal survey and incorporating propensity score matching methods, we follow secondary school students post-graduation to determine how Catholic and private religious schooling impacts religiosity. There is an established literature examining the Catholic school impact on collegiate and labor market outcomes, although many families may choose Catholic or private religious schooling in efforts to instill religiosity. Our results show that Catholic and private religious secondary schooling exhibits relationships related to increasing religious participation shortly after high school graduation, although as time progresses these effects are less consistent. The largest and most robust finding is for male Catholic school attendees.

The Opinions of Economics Majors before and after Learning Economics.

Abstract Using longitudinal data on undergraduates from 463 American colleges and universities from 1994–99, the authors examine how majoring in economics affects student opinions on 13 social, political, and economic issues. Economics majors were found to begin and end their college tenure with differing opinions on several issues when compared to other majors, and studying economics was found to be related to changes in several opinions. On the whole, studying economics appeared to increase beliefs in favor of personal freedom and decrease support for government intervention in markets. However, the authors find little evidence that economics majors leave college more united on their opinions when compared to the general student population.

Silence is Golden: Railroad Noise Pollution and Property Values

This paper uses a unique dataset containing property values and manually collected noise measurements in Memphis, Tennessee to estimate the impact of train noise pollution on commercial and residential property values. Results show that a residential property exposed to 65 decibels or greater of railroad noise results in a 14 to 18 percent decrease in property value. Once a 65 decibel measure is included, there is no additional impact on price of distance to the closest railroad crossing. For commercial property, neither crossing proximity nor noise level significantly affect property value. The results provide evidence of a negative externality that is created by railroad noise for households and the need for more exact measures of noise levels. The findings are also consistent with previous literature suggesting firms have different ideas than individuals about desirable locational attributes.

Going Greek: Academics, Personal Change, and Life after College

Change • January/February 2016 Wesley Routon (prouton@ggc.edu; https://sites.google.com/site/wesrouton/) is an assistant professor of economics at Georgia Gwinnett College. His primary research interests are in labor and education economics. Jay Walker (jwalker@niagara.edu; http://www.jaykwalker.com) is an assistant professor of economics at Niagara University. His primary research interests are in the economics of education, religion, and the gender gap. Going Greek

Good girl, bad boy: Corrupt behavior in professional tennis

This paper identifies matches on the male and female professional tennis tours in which one player faces a high payoff from being “on the bubble” of direct entry into one of the lucrative Grand Slam tournaments, while their opposition does not. Analyzing over 378,000 matches provides strong evidence for corrupt behavior on the mens tour, as bubble players are substantially more likely to beat better ranked opponents when a win is desperately needed. However, we find no such evidence on the womens tour. These results prevail throughout a series of extensions and robustness checks, highlighting gender differences regarding corrupt and unethical behavior, but also concerning collusion. We especially find evidence for collusion once monetary incentives are further increased. Finally, the market for sports betting does not seem to be aware of this phenomenon, suggesting a market imperfection and further confirming our suspicion of irregular activities in mens tennis.

Beyond the Ivory Tower: Labor Market Returns to Greek Membership

Using a nationally representative sample of college graduates, we estimate the post-collegiate labor market effects of fraternity and sorority membership during undergraduate tenure. We find that, after controlling for relevant factors, former sorority members’ labor market outcomes are indistinguishable from those of other female college graduates. Former fraternity membership, however, appears to result in an increased likelihood of self-employment of about 10 percentage points and a sizable wage premium. Former fraternity members are indistinguishable from other male college graduates in terms of labor market status, historical unemployment, subjective beliefs of personal job security, job satisfaction, and satisfaction with earnings.

Helping Others, Helping Myself: Collegiate Experiences and Graduates’ Altruistic and Wealth Aspirations:

National statistics disclose that college graduates are more prone to volunteerism than nongraduates. These statistics motivate the question of exactly what college experiences are most likely to change a student’s altruistic goals and whether these same experiences alter a student’s self-interest. Using data from a longitudinal survey of American college students from 457 institutions of higher learning, we examine how the importance of altruistic acts and personal wealth aspirations changes during undergraduate tenure, and estimate the determinants of these changes. Among other results, we find major of study, certain collegiate activities, relative academic success, the ethnicity and background of roommates, institutional characteristics, and within-college labor market participation all play roles in shaping both the altruistic and personal wealth aspirations of individuals.

Referent Points and Taxpayers’ Compliance: Insights into Taxpayers’ Risk Preferences for Honest Reporting

Prior research (Schepanski and Shearer, 1995; Alm and Torgler, 2011) relying on prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) shows that taxpayers’ compliance is influenced by their perception of whether they owe more or less taxes than they anticipated: Taxpayers are more likely to cheat on their taxes when they perceive that they are in a tax “loss” position as compared to a tax “gain”. Yet what remains to be understood is what exactly constitutes the referent point that separates a tax loss from a tax gain. In an attempt to provide in-depth insight of what constitutes the referent point for taxpayers, we observe taxpayers filing their actual tax return and investigate the extent to which different proxies for the referent point used in prior literature best differentiates between taxpayers’ preference to cheat or file their taxes honestly. Our findings indicate that expected asset position is critical to influencing taxpayers’ ethical behavior. This revelation is important as it suggests that taxpayers’ perceptions influence their tendency to report honestly and comply with tax authorities. Our research is important to the tax authority for determining how to encourage voluntary tax payments, and contributes to the tax ethics literature by clarifying the point which differentiates between taxpayers’ tax gain and tax losses. and in so doing, their tendency to file their taxes honestly.