Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn this article, we study the effect of the Pole Position in Formula 1 history on the outcome of the race. Using data for every race between 1950 and 2013, we use two approaches to quantify the effect of being on Pole. First, we estimate the effect on the probability of winning the race using a logit model. Second, we estimate a Poisson model to express the effect in terms of finishing positions. We find that the Pole sitter does have a significant advantage over the other drivers on the grid: two positions at the finish line or about a 10 percentage point higher probability of winning the race. These estimates capture the effect controlling for various confounding factors and a rich set of fixed effects, including driver ability, track characteristics and constructor performance. We also document that the effect varies over seasons.

This paper examines the association between economic development and two measures of public spending on education, namely the 'national effort' (total spending as a percentage of GDP) and 'budget share' (total spending as a percentage of total government spending). Using data for a large sample of countries from 1989 to 2015, we illustrate a novel application of Wagner's law. We compare mean levels of national effort and budget share measures for economically and politically distinct groups of countries. We find that the signs of the associations between the level of economic development and the two education spending measures differ. This implies that richer countries have larger public sectors than do poorer countries, consistent with Wagner's Law. The findings are summarized in the form of three inequality propositions about the national effort, budget share and size of government for richer versus poorer countries. In addition, for comparable levels of economic development, democratic countries tend to spend more on education than is the case for their non-democratic counterparts.