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If individuals process information differently when it is accessed electronically rather than on paper, then the transition from paper to electronic text may affect learning and retention. Using a randomized experiment, we compare learning outcomes of economics students who use electronic teaching tools with students who access the same material on paper. We find that students who submit homework online complete more assignments but have lower classroom attendance rates. However, there is no effect on exam scores. This suggests that while an electronic medium may enable instructional material to be accessed more easily, it does not significantly impact learning. JEL Classification: A22, 1. Introduction Information is increasingly accessed and read electronically rather than in print, as evidenced by the decline of newspaper circulation rates in favor of online versions (Plambeck 2010). In [...]

Rewards for publications in good economics journals are very high, and submission fees and other monetary costs associated with submitting an existing manuscript are low. Consequently, the editorial delay (especially the first-response time—the time until the first editorial decision), by postponing monetary rewards to publication, constitutes the major submission cost (from the author's perspective). Reducing the delay will induce many additional submissions of low-quality papers to good journals, increasing significantly the workload of editors and referees. Moreover, the rejection rate will increase and cause papers to be rejected more times before publication, offsetting at least some of the shorter first-response times. As a result, the efforts of many editors to reduce the editorial delay, although attracting more submissions to their journals, may have adverse effects from a social perspective, and the optimal delay might be longer than the current average of four months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Were 1986 Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan's formative contributions to political economy inspired in significant part by hostility to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision? Nancy MacLean's 2017 Democracy in Chains argues that public choice economics emerged from an opportunistic alliance with Virginia's "Massive Resistance" to school integration and should thus be situated within the racially tinged tradition of southern conservatism. While Buchanan wrote very little on the economics of race, archival evidence and his published works do not support this thesis. Buchanan's work is better understood with reference to his Chicago school mentor Frank Knight and the Italian public finance tradition rather than southern conservatism. To the contrary, we suggest Buchanan believed the competitive processes generated by an educational voucher system would likely undermine rather than rescue the racially segregated status quo. Furthermore, Buchanan's associations and activities suggest that racial hierarchy was not part of his normative vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between foreign aid and economic growth has been the subject of much controversy. A recent theme suggesting that aid promotes growth, but only in a good policy environment has ratchet up that debate. In this paper, we assess the importance of policy and aid in generating growth when the aid, policy, and growth relationship is nonlinear. This allows us to examine the varying effects of aid and policy in different data segments, which we do without imposing any particular structure on the underlying relationship. We find that policy is an important determinant of growth. We also find partial corroboration of the view that aid is growth enhancing in a good policy environment, and some evidence of diminishing returns to aid. These findings suggest that nonlinearities if not appropriately addressed fail to capture the detailed underlying dynamics and thereby mask some key features of the aid-policy-growth relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are articles by authors with institutional connections or personal ties to the publishing journal's editor(s)/coeditors of lower quality than those authored without such connections? Examination of articles published in six core economics journals in 1990 found that articles authored by those with such connections, especially service on the publishing journal's editorial board, are statistically and numerically of higher quality than articles by those without such connections. In addition, this quality difference does not decrease over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses national data from 1975 to 2003 to examine which alternative academic disciplines were chosen by undergraduates as if they were complements to, or substitutes for, an economics major. One familiar hypothesis suggests that majoring in economics is a reluctant choice for students more interested in a business major. However, when the proportion of economics majors is considered across all disciplines, I find a striking inverse relation between the shares of graduating majors in economics and those in biology; no relationship between any other two disciplines is closer. The paper closes with speculations about possible reasons for the strong negative relation between the shares of graduates in biology and economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the expected equity premium constructed from survey forecasts is consistent with the implications of the rational belief approach or the distorted belief approach to explaining the equity premium puzzle. To address this question, a panel data model with a fixed individual effect and a business cycle effect is analyzed. The results appear more favorable to the distorted belief approach. The average expected equity premium is lower than the average realized equity premium during the sample period. The average bias across economists is significant and varies over the business cycle, which is consistent with distorted beliefs that are excessively pessimistic over expansions and excessively optimistic over contractions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study supplier-firm interactions to explain firms' outsourcing relationships. We show that in an imperfect information setup a firm learns about the quality of its suppliers through repeated interaction. As the firm determines the suppliers' quality with greater precision, it gives a greater proportion of its contracts to these ‘better’ suppliers. We report evidence from African manufacturing firms that is consistent with our hypothesis: both frequency and volume of transactions increase with the length of a firm's relationship with its supplier. These effects are stronger in poor contracting environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequently, parties make sequential decisions regarding investments for which the probability of success or failure is dependent on the amount of total investment. This paper reports a series of experiments involving a costly investment game that is derived from the catalytic finance model of Morris and Shin (Global games: Theory and applications. In Advances in Economics and Econometrics, Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of the Econometric Society, edited by M. Dewatripont, L. Hansen, and S. Turnovsky. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, pp. 56-114). The sequential nature of investments is such that the second investment could function as a complement to the initial investment or simply serve as a substitute to it, thereby creating moral hazard. The features of this game are similar to those of the ultimatum game. However, there are several key differences between the games that may account for the high frequency of materially self-interested behavior that we observe, particularly among second movers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do richer people have higher saving rates? The short-run and long-run consumption functions have different answers to this question, which results in the ‘consumption puzzle’ that was a focus of macroeconomic research in the 1950s and 1960s. In a recent empirical contribution, Dynan, Skinner, and Zeldes (2004) revive this old question and make this ‘consumption puzzle’ more intriguing, by showing that the average propensity to consume decreases not only with current income but also with lifetime income. This paper provides a model that helps resolve this puzzle from an intergenerational perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on product homogeneity and Cournot competition, past literature has uniformly shown that ad valorem taxation welfare dominates unit taxation in noncompetitive markets. This paper allows goods in a market to be heterogeneous and firms to be Bertrand competing. We confirm the short-run findings of others that consumer welfare and overall welfare are always higher under ad valorem taxation. However, ad valorem taxation generates larger profits (hence Pareto dominates) only when market demand is elastic, perhaps explaining the persistence of unit taxation in markets with inelastic demand. The effects on ad valorem Pareto dominance of within- and between-market substitutability, number of firms in the taxed market, and the level of taxation are also investigated. In the long run, an equal-revenue substitution of ad valorem taxation for unit taxation reduces consumer price, which is welfare improving, but also reduces variety when market demand is elastic, which is welfare decreasing. Nonetheless, ad valorem welfare dominance still holds in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From January 1, 2018, through December 31, 2018, the Editorial Office received 335 new manuscript submissions. Since 2010, the Editor and Co-Editors have started systematically exercising the option to return manuscripts to authors without referee review. The Board of Associate Editors offers advice to the Editors in the evaluation of manuscripts. [Extracted from the article]

This paper focuses on third-degree price discrimination by an upstream firm with some degree of monopoly power. Downstream firms fall into two categories: efficient and inefficient, according to their relative costs of transforming a unit of the upstream good into a unit of final product. Under ordinary static conditions, price discrimination favors the inefficient firms, which have more elastic demands. We consider, however, the possibility that discrimination in the opposite direction can alter the downstream market structure toward greater efficiency. Discriminatory pricing, then, involves charging a higher price to the less efficient firms. Such pricing is shown to be both potentially profitable for the upstream firm and welfare improving as average consumer prices fall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to fight relatively high inflation, many developing countries try to manage their nominal exchange rates through official intervention. In addition, developing countries tend to have high transportation costs, tariffs, and nontariff barriers. These factors are among the sources of generating nonlinearity in real exchange rates and hence some nonlinear adjustment toward purchasing power parity (PPP) in developing countries. In this paper, we employ monthly real effective exchange rate (REER) data of 88 developing countries and test the null of nonstationarity versus an alternative of linear stationarity by the means of a conventional unit root test and compare the results with those obtained from a new test in which the null is the same but the alternative hypothesis is nonlinear stationarity. The latter test supports the PPP theory in more developing countries compared with the former test, suggesting that nonlinear adjustment toward PPP in developing countries is an important phenomenon. Reported country characterizations indicate that reversion in REER occurs more often for high-inflation countries and for countries with high flexibility in their exchange rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we report the results of an experiment designed to study the behavior of a laboratory macroeconomy with two stable steady states. The economy has the structure of an optimal growth model in which resources are allocated between consumption and investment over a sequence of time periods. The economy is decentralized, with a market for capital in operation. We find that the economy often falls into the Pareto-inferior steady state, which can be viewed as a poverty trap. The initial endowment of capital stock is varied as a treatment variable in the experiment, and the economy is more likely to reach the optimal steady state when its initial endowment is high than when it is low. Organizing the economy with a central planner directing economic activity fails to induce it to reach the optimal steady state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Bayesian Model Averaging, we examine whether inflation's effects on economic growth are robust to model uncertainty across numerous specifications. Cross-sectional data provide little evidence of a robust inflation-growth relationship, even after allowing for non-linear effects. Panel data with fixed effects suggest inflation is one of the more robust variables affecting growth, and non-linear results suggest that high inflation observations drive the results. However, this robustness is lost when estimation is carried out with instrumental variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive literature in education shows little relationship between teaching and research. Authors advance the notion that research enhances teaching, but they typically ignore the prospect of teaching enhancing research. We report the results of a survey of active researchers in economics who were asked if they could cite a specific instance in which their research was substantively influenced by their teaching. About 50% reported such an experience, with a further 35% indicating, without prompting, that their teaching had a very positive effect on their research in general. Their comments identify a variety of channels through which teaching influences research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes U.S. airline price and passenger data disaggregated at the fare class level for the year 2000. We find that although average prices to and from most airlines' hubs tend to be higher than those throughout the remainder of their .systems, much of the difference can be explained by passenger mix (i.e., the proportion of leisure versus business passengers). Our results suggest, therefore, that many of the reported ‘hub premiums’ in the previous literature may be overstated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Watts of Purdue University organized this symposium as a session at the 2002 Southern Economic Association Meetings in New Orleans. He invited five economists, who are specialists in economic education and other areas, to comment on William Becket's paper, "How to make economics the sexy social science," which first appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education (December 7, 2001). Their comments and Professor Becker's response appear below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The U.S. economy experienced significant increases in the degree of income inequality over the past two decades.... In this paper we consider the effects of race, age, female headship, and college education on the distribution of family income by developing a multivariate methodology that allows us to gauge the influence of one factor while holding other determinants of family incomes constant. Over the period studied we find that race had only a minor effect on the overall size distribution of income. Age had a somewhat greater effect than race. In contrast, the impact of female heads and college education were quite substantial. The multivariate estimates reveal that the effects of female heads and college education both increase the Gini to a much greater extent than the progressivity of federal income taxes decreases it. The effects of college education and female headed families on inequality have grown larger across time, while the influence of age has declined. We find that the effects of race on inequality have changed little over the 1976 to 1989 period.", (excerpt)

"In this paper we have considered two unfunded social security programs. Under the conventional system, benefits are related to aggregate fertility; under the hypothetical fertility-related system, benefits are directly linked to individual fertility. The effects on fertility and per capita growth rates of the two social security systems are examined in the context of endogenous growth." The relative merits of the two systems for developing and developed countries are considered. The authors conclude that "the conventional social security system existing in many developed nations may be desirable to...developing countries in reducing population and promoting economic growth. On the other hand, the hypothetical fertility-related system may be useful to developed countries as far as increasing fertility is concerned.", (excerpt)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of the onset of a chronic disease--arthritis--on work behavior over life cycle. Arthritis is an excellent health condition to study in this context for at least two reasons. First, while arthritis is a painful and crippling disease, it is rarely lifethreatening.[3] Thus, the major impact of this disease is reflected by the influence it has on the capacity to work. Second, arthritis is the most common chronic disease and second leading cause of work disability in the United States [11]. In fact, the Arthritis Foundation reports that more than 40 million Americans or one in seven persons have some form of this disease. Considerable evidence exists documenting the negative impact poor health has on labor market activity. Nevertheless, since most of these analyses are cross-sectional, the findings only indicate the relationship between health and work at a moment in time. This paper examines the effect of the onset of a chronic disease--arthritis--on work behavior over the life cycle. The methodology used--the hazard model--provides an estimate of the duration of employment after disease onset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper, therefore, starts with a brief discussion of the more general controversies between the two academic centers. The methodological attacks of the London School will be elaborated in the next section, after which the theoretical criticisms of Keynes will be examined. In this latter section an attempt will be made to show that Keynes misinterpreted Pigou's theory of unemployment. A summary will conclude the paper. The Keynesian and Hicksian research programs which emerged from the methodological and theoretical developments of the 1930s had quite disparate views with respect to the efficiency of the market mechanism and the role of government in the economy. The common bond between them, viz., criticisms of Pigovian economics, however, helped bring about the demise of this now "inconsistent," now "normative" body of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses economic methodology to examine how the Iran-Contra affair has modified the behavior of the political hostage-takers in the Mid-East. Before the arms for hostages policies, hostage-takers had to satisfy ideological beliefs under a large degree of uncertainty. The reactions of the U.S. government to abducting American citizens could not have been accurately anticipated. Therefore, taking hostages was perceived as a highly risky proposition with an uncertain outcome. With the advent of arms for hostages policies, the uncertainty surrounding the U.S. reaction was reduced to minimal levels. The U.S. government pursued covert actions with the purpose of trading arms for hostages. As a result, the hostage issue became synonymous with commerce since the value of a hostage was determined by the quantity of arms. After uncovering the covert activities, hostage-taking continues without much uncertainty since it is doubtful that military actions are underway to free the hostages given the current circumstances facing the U.S. administration. The paper uses the theory of expected utility and revenue maximization to model the behavior of hostage-takers prior and during the arms for hostages deals. As will be demonstrated later, arms shipments are considered to have modified the behavior of hostage-takers by adding deterministic economics to what was originally viewed as a stochastic utility maximization problem. The next section presents the behavior of hostage-takers before the covert arms for hostages deals. In section III, this behavior is modified to reflect the hostage situation during the exchange of arms for hostages. Section IV contains concluding comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the quantitative and qualitative publishing success of the top 50 economics departments (as reported by GMT) over the 13-year period 1971-83, as well as the quantitative and qualitative publishing success and placement success of graduates of those departments. Moreover, this paper presents findings regarding how departments are faring in these respects over time. My approach is somewhat of a radical departure from the one employed by previous researchers--rather than examine average productivity of a compositionally-variable department over that time period, I examine the publication performance record of the faculty current to the '83-'84 academic year. Average publishing performance (like average baseball performance) over some previous time period is not necessarily a good predictor of the future performance of the faculty of a given department (or the present baseball team), particularly since changes in size and/or composition of the faculty (team) may influence output greatly. From a measurement perspective, the real issue is, who are the George Steinbrenners of the economics profession--i.e., who has attracted the top talent at any given time t?[2] To the extent that departmental rankings truly serve the employment possibilities and quality-of-education screening functions (for would-be graduate students) outlined by GMT, then criteria upon which such rankings are based ought reasonably to reflect upon the degree to which, at least in an ordinal sense, these functions are fulfilled by the specified departments. In this paper, I argue that departmental rankings based on qualitative measures of faculty publishing performance, as well as measures of graduate student placement and publication success (qualitative and quantitative) may be equally revealing, if not superior to, rankings based solely on quantitative aspects of publishing performance, in terms of providing the information suggested previously. At the very least, these... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use a highly simplified model to examine the variability of the Okun coefficient. The model incorporates the major behavioral characteristics which have been used to explain potential output. Based on a derived expression for the coefficient, we calculate annual estimates of it for the U.S. economy since 1954 and delineate the importance of the major behavioral characteristics of the model which explain its variability over time.
In this paper we demonstrate the variability of the Okun coefficient over time and evaluate the major factors in potential output models which influence the magnitude of the coefficient and its variability. Our results support the hypothesis that changes in labor productivity are the single most important factor influencing the magnitude and variability of the coefficient with direct changes in employment, induced changes in average weekly hours, and induced changes in labor force participation rates following in decreasing order of importance.
Assuming the model and the estimates of the structural parameters employed in the simulation exercises are reasonable for the economy during the period under investigation, the study provides useful insights into both the usefulness of the Okun coefficient as a basis for economic policy and the relative importance of the factors which influence its magnitude and variability. The conclusions reached are necessarily tentative, as would be the case for any study of this type. However, the approach indicates that while the Okun coefficient may remain a useful tool for estimating potential output and predicting the unemployment rate, the factors influencing its variability must be taken into account when it is used in formulating economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the saving (or dissaving) behavior of the retired aged using data from the 1963 and 1964 Federal Reserve surveys of wealth [9; 8]. These data have been used before to examine age-specific saving patterns [8; 3], but in those studies the specification of saving behavior was the same for all age classes. Here, models are formulated specifically for the aged: attention is focused on the saving/wealth ratio as the favored dependent variable, and factors such as life expectancy and bequest intentions are included. The analysis is restricted to the retired, rather than all the aged, because it is employment status rather than number of years lived that distinguish the aged economically.
The evidence examined in this paper indicates that most of the retired aged do not dissave their wealth so fast as would be expected on the basis of simple life-cycle saving theory. 7. This finding is perhaps a more striking contradiction of the life-cycle theory than the test of dissaving rates examined above. However, when equation (3) is estimated for the complete sample, the coefficient on wealth is positive but not significant. Among the retired, those who have the greatest rates of dissaving are those with modest levels of wealth and income. Some evidence suggests that owning a home or desiring to leave a bequest may inhibit dissaving, but the findings are mixed. These results are based on an analysis of fungible wealth, and do not include the wealth value of pensions and Social Security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While several attempts have been made to identify the independent influence of preference similarity on trade propensities, such as multiple regressions and partial tank order correlations, we feel that a better test of the Linder hypothesis can be designed. In this paper we propose an alternative test; one which we feel is superior to the existing studies in its ability to deal with the distance problem. Specifically, by testing the theory in terms of changes in propensities to trade against changes in income differences between two points in time, the influence of distance is eliminated.
In this paper we have tested the Linder hypothesis using an intertemporal method which we feel is more robust than previous studies in the sense that the impact of distance is taken into account. The results do not support the Linder hypothesis. While the Linder thesis bas been supported in the past with studies employing cross-section evidence, those studies have not been free of the impact of distance.
While the results reported here do not support the Linder thesis, it is prudent to mention some possible limitations of this study. This study uses total trade rather than trade in manufactures and uses per capita income to measure preference similarity. While these variables were also employed by Linder, they are still surrogates for the variables discussed by Linder in his theory. Also the intertemporal analysis in the process of holding constant the influence of distance may introduce other unaccounted for variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper lays the basic theoretical framework for the analysis of the consumer-managed firm. The theory of the consumer cooperative has received little rigorous theoretical analysis thus far, particularly in the economics literature. In 1945 Enke [3] examined the welfare implications of the cooperative under the assumption that the cooperative maximized profit plus consumers' surplus. Since then, the vast majority of the literature concerning cooperatives has appeared in agricultural economics journals and has focused almost exclusively upon producer and marketing cooperatives.[1]
This paper is to some extent perhaps an extension of Enke's work, but it is based on a framework of utility maximization, which greatly differentiates it from Enke's paper and from every other related paper in the agricultural economics literature. Furthermore, the utility-maximizing framework employed here is the most applicable for analysis of cooperative groups consuming final products.
After discussing briefly why cooperatives exist, we set forth the equilibrium conditions that determine optimal output, price and size of membership, under two alternative assumptions: (1) members have the same utility functions and incomes and (2) they differ in those characteristics. Similar results are obtained under each assumption. After analyzing the comparative statics results, we examine some welfare implications of the model, compare these implications with those resulting from the assumption that the cooperative maximizes profit plus consumer surplus, and set forth some models that permit consumer-managed firms to sell some output to individuals who are not members of the cooperative.
The most important conclusion of this paper is that consumer-owned, consumer-managed firms, organized to maximize the utility of each member, reach the same long-run equilibrium position as the perfectly competitive firm, if the cooperatives can freely determine the number of members. This... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our purpose in this paper is threefold. First, we discuss the recent development of the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) [6]. Second, we point out the desirable and undesirable aspects of using citations found in the SSCI as a means of measuring the scientific productivity of economics departments and individual economists. Third, we illustrate the use of citations as a measure of the worth of departments and individuals by ranking by total and mean citations the 20 Southern departments covered in the Niemi study.
There are numerous dimensions which can be used to evaluate individual economists and economics departments. in this paper we discussed one dimension, the number of citations received, which heretofore has not been used for the purposes of evaluation. Our ranking of Southern departments of economics is not the final work on the subject. Our purpose has been only to provide additional information from which one may form subjective evaluations. There are deficiencies in this ranking system which cannot be overcome or which can only be overcome at considerable research costs, and these deficiencies have been noted. The study does provide an additional basis on which to judge how much or how little the written work of economists is being used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an application of the economic theory of fertility formulated by Becker [1] and Mincer [9] to the fertility behavior of U. S. rural-farm women and to the differences between rural and urban fertility.
Though serious doubts have been raised about economic theories of fertility (most fundamentally whether fertility behavior is a matter of choice at all [3; 4]), this approach is useful in explaining cross-sectional differences in fertility. Although it cannot be claimed that the regression model used in this paper provides a completely specified aggregate fertility function, it does explain a substantial fraction of state variation in fertility, for both the rural-farm and urban populations. Of course, the model would not be expected to predict variations in fertility among individual families nearly so well; here randomly-distributed characteristics which cancel out in state aggregates would be much more important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a theoretical analysis of the necessary and sufficient conditions for an individual to affect group decisions and/or changes of groups themselves. It is an attempt to first conceptualize the relevant aspects of an individual's ability or inability to control facets of his environment which are a product of social interaction. Secondly, then, the paper relates these concepts in the form of theorems giving conditions by which social change can be attained or prevented.[1]
The conceptual framework developed below considers the question of social change from a choice-theoretic point of view. This in turn requires that the usual model of choice used in economics and decision theory be expanded in order to deal with the various problems which arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs related to developments in the Southern Economic Association in the U.S. The list of officers who were elected during the Southern Economic Association meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana is presented. Daniel P. McMillen, Paul T. Seaman and Larry D. Singell Jr. has received the annual Georgescu-Roegen Prize in Economics. The paper "Inefficiency in Cadavaric Organ Procurement," has also received the runner up ranking of the Georgescu-Roegen Prize in Economics.

Provides statistics on the number of manuscripts received by the "Southern Economic Journal." New manuscript submissions from January 1 though December 31, 2004; Distribution of editorial decision lags between submission and first response to author; Number of manuscripts submitted and published between 1997 and 2004.

The article provides information on the manuscript submission received from January 1, 2006, through December 31, 2006 by the Editorial Office of "Southern Economic Journal." The time between submission and the journal's first response, whether to reject, ask for a revision, or accept a manuscript for the 289 manuscripts submitted during 2006 is shown. The distribution of published papers in 2005 and 2003 by subject is presented.

This article conveys information and advice about the job market process for candidates completing their PhDs in economics in the United States. I discuss the mechanics of the job market process in great detail, from the preparatory work before the market starts to the steps after accepting an offer. Throughout, I answer common job market-related questions and discuss ways to make the process more manageable and less stressful. The focus is on students from non-top-tier universities, although the advice applies equally well to students from top schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]