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home / university of oregon / department of economics / eugene / oregon
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Glen Waddell received his doctorate in economics from Purdue University in 2000 and is currently an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon. He is also a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany, and a Research Affiliate of the Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education (WPEHE).
courses
published research Download all published papers.
forthcoming "Spacey Parents: Spatial Autoregressive Patterns in Inbound FDI," S. Brakman and H. Garretsen (eds.), Foreign Direct Investment and the Multinational Enterprise, MIT Press (with Bruce Blonigen, Ron Davies and Helen Naughton). (An earlier version appears as NBER WP11466.) 2008 "Work Hard, Not Smart: Stock Options in Executive Compensation," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (with Jack Barron). view abstract This paper examines the optimal equity compensation for executives. When executives choose a level of effort to devote to gathering information and a criterion for acting on the information gathered, the optimal exercise price involves a tradeoff; a higher exercise price moves the executive's decision criterion away from first-best but provides leverage that moves the executive's effort toward first-best. This tradeoff depends on a variety of factors, including the potential influence of decisions on firm value. We document empirical regularities consistent with the theory, such as that options are relatively less prevalent in the equity compensation of more-senior executives.
2008 "Consumer and Competitor Reactions: Evidence from a Retail-Gasoline Field Experiment," International Journal of Industrial Organization (with Jack Barron and John Umbeck). view abstract In response to a price change by a single seller, it is common for the density of sellers in the market to influence both the quantity response of consumers and the price response of other sellers. Using field experiment data collected around a series of exogenously imposed price changes we find that an individual retailer with a larger number of competitors faces a more-responsive demand. This finding is fundamental to a predicted inverse relationship between market prices and the number of competitors. We also examine the reaction of rival stations to exogenous price changes, and find that the magnitude of a competitor's response is inversely related to the density of stations in the market.
2007 "Spatial Competition and the Price of College," Economic Inquiry (with Dan McMillen and Larry Singell). view abstract This paper provides the first evidence that universities compete directly on price, and that the market for students depends on the proximity of competitors. Exploiting detailed data from private U.S. universities, price competition is tested by introducing geographic proximity into a spatial-autoregressive tuition model. Standard spatial models show that list and net tuition are inversely related to distance between institutions, consistent with price competition in higher education. An extension to the spatial econometrics literature relaxes a constraint that estimated spatial relationships are common across all observations, implying that spatial effects differ across classes of institutions.
2007 "Money for Nothing? The Impact of Changes in the Pell Grant Program on Institutional Revenues and the Placement of Needy Students," Education Finance and Policy (with Brad Curs and Larry Singell). view abstract Using new institution-level data we assess the impact of changing federal aid levels on institution-level Pell revenues. Using various policy instruments associated with Pell generosity, we quantify the sensitivity of institutional Pell revenues to the generosity of the Pell Grant program. In general, we find an elastic response of institutional Pell revenues with respect to the maximum Pell award, where other policy instruments associated with Pell generosity are found to have an inelastic or zero impact. We also document significant asymmetries across institutional selectivity, both in magnitude and in terms of which channel accounts for the measured sensitivity - award values directly or institutional enrollment. In the end, exogenous changes in the Federal Pell Grant program are found to correlate strongly with changes in the distribution of needy students and revenues across institution quality.
2007 "FDI in Space: Spatial Autoregressive Relationships in Foreign Direct Investment," European Economic Review (with Bruce Blonigen, Ron Davies and Helen Naughton). view abstract (An earlier version appears as NBER WP10939.) There are a number of theoretical reasons why FDI into a host country may depend on the FDI in proximate countries. Such spatial interdependence has been largely ignored by the empirical FDI literature, with only a couple recent papers accounting for such issues in their estimation. This paper conducts a general examination of spatial interactions in empirical FDI models using data on US outbound FDI activity. We find that estimated relationships of traditional determinants of FDI are surprisingly robust to inclusion of terms to capture spatial interdependence, even though such interdependence is estimated to be significant. However, we find that both the traditional determinants of FDI and the estimated spatial interdependence are quite sensitive to the sample of countries one examines.
2007 "The Pell Program at Thirty Years," in J.C. Smart (ed.), Higher Education Handbook of Theory and Research, Vol. XXII, 281-334. New York: Springer (with Brad Curs and Larry Singell). 2006 "Hope for the Pell? Institutional Effects in the Intersection of Merit-Based and Need-Based Aid," Southern Economic Journal (with Brad Curs and Larry Singell). view abstract Prior empirical evidence finds that general enrollment effects of merit-aid programs such as the Georgia Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally (HOPE) scholarship are large and significant, while the effects of need-based aid programs such as the Pell grant are modest and often insignificant. This paper uses new panel data on Pell awards to examine the influence of the Georgia HOPE scholarship on needy-student enrollments. We demonstrate that the introduction of merit aid in Georgia generally improves the college access of needy students and has been leveraged into greater federal Pell assistance. While institution-specific increases in both Pell enrollment and funding are largest at two-year and less selective four-year institutions, the results suggest that Pell students are not crowded out of more selective schools by HOPE's intent to retain the best Georgia high school students, as might have been anticipated.
2006 "Labor-Market Consequences of Poor Attitude and Low Self-Esteem in Youth," Economic Inquiry. view abstract Using longitudinal data on a cohort of high-school graduates, I show that youth who reveal poor attitude and self-esteem subsequently attain fewer years of postsecondary education relative to their high school cohort, are less likely to be employed 14 years following high school and, where working for pay, realize lower earnings. Furthermore, I find evidence that poor attitude and self-esteem in high school are significant predictors of structural outcomes, such as the degree of supervision under which individuals subsequently work, job characteristics, and on-the-job activities. These relationships suggest that real economic consequence exist in fostering positive attitude and self-esteem in youth.
2003 "Executive Rank, Pay and Project Selection," Journal of Financial Economics (with Jack Barron). view abstract This paper extends the literature on executive compensation by developing and testing a principal-agent model in the context of project selection. The model's focus on executive project selection decisions highlights the multidimensional nature of executive choices that affect the value of the firm. An executive not only makes an effort choice that determines the quality of information on which to base a decision but also sets the decision criteria for selecting projects. A project selection framework is also shown to introduce endogenous uncertainty into compensation that can influence the executive's effort choice. Using an extensive data set, our empirical work supports the main hypotheses of the model, including the significance of executive rank in determining the extent of use of incentive pay in general and equity-based incentive pay in particular.
2000 "The Effects of High School Athletic Participation on Education and Labor Market Outcomes," The Review of Economics and Statistics (with Jack Barron and Brad Ewing). view abstract We introduce a simple allocation-of-time model to explain the high school athletic participation choice and the implications of this choice for educational and labor market outcomes. Four different factors that could explain athletic participation are identified in the context of this model. A variety of tests of the model are provided using two data sets: the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. We find some evidence that athletic participation directly affects wages and educational attainment. However, much of the effect of athletic participation on wages and educational attainment appears to reflect differences across individuals in ability or value of leisure.
working papers"Corruption, Decentralization and Yardstick Competition," under review, (with Oz Dincer and Chris Ellis). view abstract Several empirical studies have found a negative relationship between corruption and the decentralization of the powers to tax and spend. In this paper we explain this phenomenon using a model of Yardstick Competition. Using data on federal corruption-related convictions in U.S. states we propose and test a spatial autoregressive model of corruption, providing new evidence in support of the theoretical findings.
"Interdependency in Performance," IZA Discussion Paper No. 2944, under review, (with Kelii Haraguchi). view abstract We empirically model performance in the final round of a multiple-round tournament as a spatially autoregressive process, allowing us to sign and quantify the endogenous interactions between competitors. Doing so speaks to significant regularities in the data that suggest that a player's own performance generally tends to improve with the improving performance of competitors. However, we also find significant asymmetries in the interdependency of player performance that suggest that social interactions, even those found in a fairly straightforward game, can be rather complex. For example, while the positive complementarity in performance is particularly strong between tied players, own performance suffers in response to improving performance of lagging, lower-ability competitors.
"Discontinued Operations and Turnover Among Top Executives," Working Paper, University of Oregon (with Jack Barron and Dmitriy Chulkov). I couldn't sleep one summer night so ended up writing a short follow-up piece on Harbaugh (2003), which must be read first in order to appreciate my contribution to this growing literature. My comment is availble here.
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  students' thoughts: Department Seminar Series: As organizer of the department's seminar series, feel free to email me if I can be of assistance. A hobby? Music
Some of what is on my iPod?
Some favourites?
The Dead Mother , Edvard Munch, 1899-1900 (130 Kb); Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 35 3/8 in; Kunsthalle, Bremen. (I appreciate the child's ability to eliminate the undesirable by impeding her sense of hearing. My daughter rarely covers her ears, but she does like to cover her eyes.) 
The Declaration of Arbroath was penned on 6 April 1320 in the Arbroath Abbey. The Declaration was signed and bore the seals of 38 Scottish Lords. In Rome, the Pope accepted the Scottish case for independence. 
Frank Lloyd Wright and George Mann Neidecken. Desk for the Avery Coonley House, Riverside, Illinois, 1908, Oak, 144.9 x 102 x 60.6 cm. Restricted gift of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, 1972.304, www.artic.edu. (Aesthetic appeal aside, I covet the clean work surface such a desk would promote.) Other odd bits... Field, 28cm x 28cm, Pastel.  Shapes, 40cm x 49cm, Acrylic.  Elements, 24cm x 36cm, Pastel. This is what the childen and I came up with while Mom was enjoying a well-deserved break. |
| © 2008 Glen R. Waddell |
