Leading papers in a journal’s issue attract, on average, more citations than those that follow. It is, however, difficult to assess whether they are of better quality (as is often suggested), or whether this happens just because they appear first in an issue. We make use of a natural...

European countries in which universities rely on public funding increasingly follow the lead of the United Kingdom and run Research Assessment Exercises. Given the subjective nature of such evaluations, some scientists prefer verifiable measures such as citation counts. This, however, also is...

Leading papers in a journal’s issue attract, on average, more citations than those that follow. It is, however, difficult to assess whether they are of better quality (as is often suggested), or whether this happens just because they appear first in an issue. We make use of a natural...

We use a dataset that allows us to circumvent a number of estimation difficulties that have plagued previous studies of the relationship between information and abstention. Our results show that information is a major determinant of abstention. © 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.

We analyze the voting behavior and ratings of judges in a popular song contest held every year in Europe. The dataset makes it possible to analyze the determinants of success, and gives a rare opportunity to run a direct test of vote trading, or logrolling. Though the votes cast may appear as...

As in large elections, substantialabstention is frequently observed inlegislative assemblies. This paper analyzesroll call votes from the third and fourthlegislatures (1989–1999) of the EuropeanParliament to test predictions from threetypes of theories of abstention: (1)decision-theoretic...

This Paper uses monthly data from a differentiated market dominated by a duopoly to analyse the nature of interactions between competitor firms. The incumbent, Canal Satellite, and the entrant, TPS, have dominated the French satellite pay-TV market, characterized by a monopoly until the end of...