中文目錄?（機翻）
1.經(jīng)濟不確定性與企業(yè)決策（ECMA2023）
2.人工智能和生產(chǎn)力（JEBO2023）
3.管理質(zhì)量和生產(chǎn)力（RES2023）
4.文化與生育率轉(zhuǎn)變（RES2023）
5.酒文化和CEO社會關(guān)系（JEBO2023）

1.The Effect of Macroeconomic Uncertainty on Firm Decisions

Using a new survey of firms in New Zealand, we document how exogenous variation in the macroeconomic uncertainty perceived by firms affects their economic decisions. We use randomized information treatments that provide different types of information about the first and/or second moments of future economic growth to generate exogenous changes in the perceived macroeconomic uncertainty of some firms. The effects on their decisions relative to their initial plans as well as relative to an untreated control group are measured in a follow-up survey six months later. We find that as firms become more uncertain, they reduce their prices, employment, and investment, their sales decline, and they become less likely to invest in new technologies or open new facilities. These ex post effects of uncertainty are similar to how firms say they would respond to higher uncertainty when asked hypothetical questions.

2.Artificial intelligence and firm-level productivity

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often regarded as the next general-purpose technology with a rapid, penetrating, and far-reaching use over a broad number of industrial sectors. The main feature of new general-purpose technology is to enable new ways of production that may increase productivity. However, to date, only a few studies have investigated the likely productivity effects of AI at the firm-level, presumably due to limited data availability. We exploit unique survey data on firms’ adoption of AI technology and estimate its productivity effects with a sample of German firms. We employ both a cross-sectional dataset and a panel database. To address the potential endogeneity of AI adoption, we also implement IV estimators. We find positive and significant associations between the use of AI and firm productivity. This finding holds for different measures of AI usage, i.e., an indicator variable of AI adoption, and the intensity with which firms use AI methods in their business processes.

3.Managerial Quality and Productivity Dynamics??

Do productivity and managerial quality vary within the firm?If so which managerial traits and practices matter most for team productivity? Combining granular garment production data with survey data on managers across 120 production lines in India, we document substantial productivity dispersion both across teams producing overlapping products and within team over the course of production runs, and structurally link this variation to a comprehensive assessment of supervisor quality. We find that factors related to managerial attention and control are the most important for enabling line productivity, both more impactful than traditionally emphasized dimensions like cognitive skills and tenure. We document that one mechanism by which specific managerial practices contribute to productivity is by way of enabling faster learning-by-doing. In-sample pay patterns suggest potential net gains from screening for or training in less readily measured dimensions of managerial quality, as pass-through of productivity contributions to pay is incomplete.

4.Culture and the Historical Fertility Transition

The historical transition to a low fertility regime was central for long-run growth, but what caused it? Existing economic explanations largely focus on the economic incentives to limit fertility. This article presents new evidence highlighting the importance of cultural forces as a complementary driver of the fertility transition. We leverage a sharp change in fertility in Britain in 1877 and document large synchronized declines in fertility among culturally British households residing outside of Britain, in Canada, the US, and South Africa, relative to their non-British neighbours. We propose a plausible catalyst for the change: the famous Bradlaugh–Besant trial of 1877.

5.Drinking into friends: Alcohol drinking culture and CEO social connections

The impacts of a CEO's social connections to a firm have received much attention. However, less is known on between-CEOs differences in building connections. This paper is a step towards filling this gap by investigating whether CEOs social connections are influenced by China's local alcohol drinking culture. We use the sample of Chinese listed companies to test our hypotheses. We find that CEOs whose firms are located in regions with strong alcohol drinking culture have more social connections, both inside and outside the firms. We further find that the drinking culture only significantly affects the social connections of male CEOs, but not female CEOs. These findings remain robust after accounting for endogeneity by instrumental variable approach and matched sample analysis. Besides, we find CEO's inter-firm but not intra-firm social connections established from alcohol drinking can help firms acquire more trade credit.