We estimate valuations of time using detailed consumer choice data from a large European ride hail platform, where drivers bid on trips and consumers choose between a set of potential rides with different prices and waiting times. We estimate consumer demand as a function of prices and waiting times. While demand is responsive to both, price elasticities are on average four times higher than waiting-time elasticities. We show how these estimates can be mapped into values of time that vary by place, person, and time of day. Regarding variation within a day, the value of time during non-work hours is 16% lower than during work hours. Regarding the spatial dimension, our value of time measures are highly correlated both with real estate prices and urban GPS travel flows. A variance decomposition reveals that most of the substantial heterogeneity in the value of time is explained by individual differences as opposed to place or time of day. In contrast with other studies that focus on long run choices we do not find evidence of spatial sorting. We apply our measures to quantify the opportunity cost of traffic congestion in Prague, which we estimate at $483,000 per day.

Joe Castiglione saw his first baseball game in the Bronx.

Banks usually hold large amounts of domestic public debt which makes them vulnerable to their own sovereign’s default risk. At the same time, governments often resort to costly public bailouts when their domestic banking sector is in trouble. We investigate how the interbank network structure and the distribution of sovereign debt holdings jointly affect the optimal bailout policy in the presence of this "doom loop". Rescuing banks with high domestic sovereign exposure is optimal if these banks are sufficiently central in the network, even though that requires larger bailout expenditures than rescuing low-exposure banks. Our findings imply that highly central banks can use exposure to their own government as a strategic tool to increase the likelihood of being bailed out. Our model thus illustrates how the "doom loop" exacerbates the "too interconnected to fail" problem in banking.

This paper proposes a new methodology for estimating teacher value-added. Rather than imposing a normality assumption on unobserved teacher quality (as in the standard empirical Bayes approach), our nonparametric estimator permits the underlying distribution to be estimated directly and in a computationally feasible way. The resulting estimates fit the unobserved distribution very well regardless of the form it takes, as we show in Monte Carlo simulations. Implementing the nonparametric approach in practice using two separate large-scale administrative data sets, we find the estimated teacher value-added distributions depart from normality and differ from each other. To draw out the policy implications of our method, we first consider a widely-discussed policy to release teachers at the bottom of the value-added distribution, comparing predicted test score gains under our nonparametric approach with those using parametric empirical Bayes. Here the parametric method predicts similar policy gains in one data set while overestimating those in the other by a substantial margin. We also show the predicted gains from teacher retention policies can be underestimated significantly based on the parametric method. In general, the results highlight the benefit of our nonparametric empirical Bayes approach, given that the unobserved distribution of value-added is likely to be context-specific.

How should the design of incentives vary with agent time preferences? We develop two predictions. First, “bundling” the payment function over time – specifically by making the payment for future effort increase in current effort – is more effective if individuals are impatient over effort. Second, increasing the frequency of payment is more effective if individuals are impatient over payment. We test the efficacy of time-bundling and payment frequency, and their interactions with impatience, using a randomized evaluation of an incentive program for exercise among diabetics in India. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, bundling payments over time meaningfully increases effort among the impatient relative to the patient. In contrast, increasing payment frequency has limited efficacy, suggesting limited impatience over payments. On average, incentives increase daily steps by 1,266 (13 minutes of brisk walking) and improve health.

The corona crisis has hit the German economy at full force. Already, 470,000 applications have been filed for a German government subsidy that prevents employees from getting laid off, 20 times more than the previous record during the 2009 financial crisis.

Glenn, a former boxer and owner of popular Times Square bar Jimmy's Corner, died of coronavirus early Thursday morning at 89.

Ohio State University will pay about $41 million to settle a dozen lawsuits by 162 men alleging sexual abuse by a team doctor, Richard Strauss.

Last Feb. 14, Gov. Cuomo signed the Child Victims Act into law. He did it in the newsroom of the Daily News, because it was this paper that, over many years, spotlighted the wrenching cases of people abused as children, perversely prevented from seeking justice as adults.

The Fells Point house that played Meg Ryan’s character’s home in 1993's “Sleepless in Seattle" is for sale, with an asking price of $575,000.

The sprawling Baltimore County home once inhabited by Orioles stars Cal Ripken Jr. and Adam Jones is back on the market after less than six months.

We develop a multi-risk SIR model (MR-SIR) where infection, hospitalization and fatality rates vary between groups—in particular between the “young”, “the middle-aged” and the “old”. Our MR-SIR model enables a tractable quantitative analysis of optimal policy similar to those already developed in the context of the homogeneous-agent SIR models. For baseline parameter values for the COVID-19 pandemic applied to the US, we find that optimal policies differentially targeting risk/age groups significantly outperform optimal uniform policies and most of the gains can be realized by having stricter lockdown policies on the oldest group. For example, for the same economic cost (24.3% decline in GDP), optimal semi–targeted or fully-targeted policies reduce mortality from 1.83% to 0.71% (thus, saving 2.7 million lives) relative to optimal uniform policies. Intuitively, a strict and long lockdown for the most vulnerable group both reduces infections and enables less strict lockdowns for the lower-risk groups. We also study the impacts of social distancing, the matching technology, the expected arrival time of a vaccine, and testing with or without tracing on optimal policies. Overall, targeted policies that are combined with measures that reduce interactions between groups and increase testing and isolation of the infected can minimize both economic losses and deaths in our model.

We construct a quantitative model of an economy hit by an epidemic. People differ by age and skill, and choose occupations and whether to commute to work or work from home, to maximize their income and minimize their fear of infection. Occupations differ by wage, infection risk, and the productivity loss when working from home. By setting the model parameters to replicate the progression of COVID-19 in South Korea and the United Kingdom, we obtain three key results. First, government-imposed lock-downs may not present a clear trade-off between GDP and public health, as commonly believed, even though its immediate effect is to reduce GDP and infections by forcing people to work from home. A premature lifting of the lock-down raises GDP temporarily, but infections rise over the next months to a level at which many people choose to work from home, where they are less productive, driven by the fear of infection. A longer lock-down eventually mitigates the GDP loss as well as flattens the infection curve. Second, if the UK had adopted South Korean policies, its GDP loss and infections would have been substantially smaller both in the short and the long run. This is not because Korea implemented policies sooner, but because aggressive testing and tracking more effectively reduce infections and disrupt the economy less than a blanket lock-down. Finally, low-skill workers and self-employed lose the most from the epidemic and also from the government policies. However, the policy of issuing “visas” to those who have antibodies will disproportionately benefit the low-skilled, by relieving them of the fear of infection and also by allowing them to get back to work.

We model optimal e-cigarette regulation and estimate key sufficient statistics. Using tax changes and scanner data, we estimate relatively elastic demand and limited substitution between e-cigarettes and combustible cigarettes. In sample surveys, historical smoking declines for high- and low-vaping demographics were unchanged after e-cigarettes were introduced; this demographic shift-share identification also suggests limited substitution. We field a new survey of experts, who report that vaping is almost as harmful as smoking cigarettes. In our model, these results imply that current e-cigarette taxes are far below the social optimum, but Monte Carlo simulations highlight substantial uncertainty.

Yousef Selassie, 19, pleaded not guilty to first-degree grand larceny, identity theft and other charges at his Manhattan Supreme Court appearance for the lucrative scheme that operated from January through May this past year.

Rubin, now a genteel 72-year-old Staten Island resident, alleges in a newly-filed Child Victims Act lawsuit that he was sexually abused on a weekly basis between 1960-65 by a cabal of five predatory teachers at the prestigious school.

Mamadou Bah, 19, an immigrant from Senegal who dreamt of playing pro basketball, died after he stumbled into Gentlemen’s Quarters Salon on Church Ave. near Ocean Ave. in Flatbush just before 10 p.m. Tuesday.

The murder may have happened outside the city.

The funeral was held for Rav Yosef Kalish, 63, an Amshinover rebbe who was hospitalized with COVID-19 last week and died Sunday morning, The Associated Press reported.

The results from the city’s annual foster care census showed a precipitous decline from the 1990s, when there were 50,000 kids in foster care, and a continued improvement from 2010, when there were 17,000.

You’re not normal.
What I mean is, when it comes to seeing your blog, you don’t view it like a normal, everyday reader. Sorry to be the one to break it to you.
You know how looking at your significant other day in and day out makes you immune to some of his or her more distinctive traits? You no longer notice the scar or the flamboyant hand gesture. It’s human nature to take things for granted.
Let’s go against ...

The post How To Test Blog Elements For Conversion Optimization appeared first on RSS Feed Converter.

If you work in the search engine optimization sector, you’ve probably heard too many times that ‘link-building is dead’. Well, yes and no.
Yes, because links alone won’t get you far these days. Search engines are constantly updating their algorithm; weeding out unnatural links or penalizing sites with spammy content. In fact, Google’s recent Phantom Update affected both small and large websites as it targeted thin, overused, and duplicated content.
No, because links are still the lifeblood of SEO and ...

The post How To Optimize Your Website Without Link-Building appeared first on RSS Feed Converter.

Connacht GAA president Gerry McGovern believes the risks of a return to playing action this year are too high and has instead urged the Association to focus completely on the 2021 All-Ireland Championships.

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the US government brought about a collection of fiscal stimulus measures: the 2020 CARES Act. Among other provisions, this Act directed cash payments to households. We analyze households’ spending responses using high-frequency transaction data. We also explore heterogeneity by income levels, recent income declines, and liquidity. We find that households respond rapidly to receipt of stimulus payments, with spending increasing by $0.25-$0.35 per dollar of stimulus during the first 10 days. Households with lower incomes, greater income drops, and lower levels of liquidity display stronger responses. Liquidity plays the most important role, with no observed spending response for households with high levels of bank account balances. Relative to the effects of previous economic stimulus programs in 2001 and 2008, we see much smaller increases in durables spending and larger increases in spending on food, likely reflecting the impact of shelter-in-place orders and supply disruptions. We hope that our results inform the current debate about appropriate policy measures.

We develop a model of financial crises with both a financial amplification mechanism, via frictional intermediation, and a role for sentiment, via time-varying beliefs about an illiquidity state. We confront the model with data on credit spreads, equity prices, credit, and output across the financial crisis cycle. In particular, we ask the model to match data on the frothy pre-crisis behavior of asset markets and credit, the sharp transition to a crisis where asset values fall, disintermediation occurs and output falls, and the post-crisis period characterized by a slow recovery in output. We find that a pure amplification mechanism quantitatively matches the crisis and aftermath period but fails to match the pre-crisis evidence. Mixing sentiment and amplification allows the model to additionally match the pre-crisis evidence. We consider two versions of sentiment, a Bayesian belief updating process and one that overweighs recent observations. We find that both models match the crisis patterns qualitatively, generating froth pre-crisis, non-linear behavior in the crisis, and slow recovery. The non-Bayesian model improves quantitatively on the Bayesian model in matching the extent of the pre-crisis froth.

Shelter in place orders (SIPOs) require residents to remain home for all but essential activities such as purchasing food or medicine, caring for others, exercise, or traveling for employment deemed essential. Between March 19 and April 20, 2020, 40 states and the District of Columbia adopted SIPOs. This study explores the impact of SIPOs on health, with particular attention to heterogeneity in their impacts. First, using daily state-level social distancing data from SafeGraph and a difference-in-differences approach, we document that adoption of a SIPO was associated with a 5 to 10 percent increase in the rate at which state residents remained in their homes full-time. Then, using daily state-level coronavirus case data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we find that approximately three weeks following the adoption of a SIPO, cumulative COVID-19 cases fell by 44 percent. Event-study analyses confirm common COVID-19 case trends in the week prior to SIPO adoption and show that SIPO-induced case reductions grew larger over time. However, this average effect masks important heterogeneity across states — early adopters and high population density states appear to reap larger benefits from their SIPOs. Finally, we find that statewide SIPOs were associated with a reduction in coronavirus-related deaths, but estimated mortality effects were imprecisely estimated.

NY Gov. Cuomo extended a “lookback window” created as part of the Child Victims Act last year that allows child sex abuse survivors of all ages to file civil suits beyond the normal statute of limitations.

Researchers are developing robots that use AI to read emotions and social cues, making them better at interacting with humans. Are they a solution to labor shortages in fields like health care and education, a threat to human workers, or both?

Killing red tide cells en masse can unleash their potent toxin. That means researchers need to get creative.

Thousands of fossils from Colorado show how plants and animals evolved together after an asteroid devastated life on Earth.

Researchers used artificial intelligence to reevaluate elevations vulnerable to rising sea levels.

We'll continuously update this story as more news comes in.
( Photos: 10, Comments: 256 )

The global pandemic is shifting timelines and expectations, as brands rush to fix disrupted supply chains and adjust their product offerings in response.
( Photos: 4, Comments: 58 )

If this coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we must prepare for the next one, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Wednesday.

Déanfar machnamh ar mhalairt phlean do scrúduithe na hArdteistiméireachta a chuirfidh an tAire Oideachais Joe McHugh os comhair chruinniú comhaireachta ar maidin. Sin a dúirt foinsí sinsireacha comhrialtais le RTÉ.

Tá sé deimhnithe ag an Aire Oideachais agus Eolaíochta, Joe McHugh go bhfuil scrúduithe na hArdteistiméireachta don bhliain seo curtha ar ceal agus go bhfuil Plean "C", mar a bhfaighfidh daltaí grádanna tuartha óna meánscoil féin, le teacht ina n-áit.

With the U.S. now leading the world in COVID-19 infections, it's time for the nation to stay at home.

The federal stimulus checks go to people with Social Security numbers, leaving out millions who work in the U.S. without permission, but who pay taxes.

Positive initial feedback from the "NBA 2K" Players Tournament suggests it could be a viable alternative moving forward, organizers said.

I'm choosing to be hopeful in these dark days. And I'm starting with something simple: a sourdough starter.

I believed life's little moments were worthy of a great newspaper, not because they were happening to me, but because they were happening to everyone.

Many people quarantining at home as a result of the coronavirus crisis are noticing time passing a little more strangely than usual. For one thing, there are fewer signals differentiating a Sunday from a Monday.

Which school has the most No. 1 NFL draft picks of all-time? This is where the rivalry between USC and Notre Dame flares up once again.

If only such important decisions weren't in the hands of Trump, a president so obviously unprepared and ill-equipped to make them.

The days run together during the coronavirus quarantine, but a jigsaw puzzle and a brief family moment help define them.

Dancing at home during the shutdown is the coronavirus pandemic's bathtub gin.

The Angels failed to land a standout starter, or even Ross Stripling, during the offseason, but manager Joe Maddon expressed confidence in second-year starters.

Former first-round pick Dylan Bundy has battled injuries and declining velocity, but he's no longer in the AL East and the Angels hope his best years are ahead.