arXiv subjects

Samiha Tariq

Publications and source records attributed to Samiha Tariq.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Priced In or Bet On? Cram-School Lessons, Jeonse Leases, and Expected Appreciation in Seoul

South Korean families spend heavily on hagwons, private cram schools that prepare students for the university entrance exam. This paper asks what access to them is worth in housing and whether the premium includes expected appreciation. Using 2,197,510 Seoul apartment sales and jeonse (lump-sum deposit lease) contracts from 2015 to 2026, located with a new business-address geocoder, the analysis compares flats within the same middle-school assignment zone and month. Flats near hagwons preparing high-school students for the exam sell and lease for more: moving from the median complex to the 97th percentile of such hagwons within 500 meters is associated with sale prices 11.8% and jeonse deposits 7.3% higher, or 5.6% and 5.9% with complex size held fixed. Hagwons teaching younger children add no sale premium once these are held fixed. A larger premium in deposits than in prices across complexes reflects convenience: buyers pay less than renters to live near shops and services, above all repair and personal services. For the same flat type, complex and month, hagwon access produces no detectable change in the jeonse-to-price ratio, although the test detects the reconstruction value of old buildings; nearby shops raise it. Hagwon access is thus capitalized in proportion into prices and deposits, as expected of a current-flow amenity without extra expected appreciation. New tenants pay no lasting premium over renewing tenants, and deposits did not respond to major education-policy announcements. The housing premium is a cost of the education race that measures of tutoring spending omit.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2026

The Accommodation Trap: Survival Dependence, Communication, and the Allocation of Invisible Work

This paper develops a theory of accommodation traps in workplace hierarchies. Workers with weak outside options face a higher relational cost of appearing unavailable, resistant, or difficult, and so adopt accommodative communication (extra deference, softened boundaries, visible flexibility) to preserve the employment relationship. This short-run strategy is also an informative signal: a friction-minimizing supervisor rationally infers that an accommodating worker is less likely to resist, and assigns that worker the invisible, low-promotability work. The signal harms the worker who sends it. Unlike agents in ratchet-effect models, who conceal information that would invite heavier demands, dependent workers reveal their low refusal cost, because the relational value of accommodating rises with dependence. The resulting inequality requires no productivity difference and no taste for discrimination, and the supervisor's beliefs are correct, so correcting beliefs cannot remove it. When visible work builds outside options and invisible work erodes them, the allocation becomes self-reinforcing, and even workers who start out identical are locked into unequal roles with probability one. The equilibrium is privately rational for every party yet socially inefficient whenever diminishing returns to outside options outweigh the supervisor's friction cost. Attaching recognition to invisible work, rotating it by rule, or limiting managerial discretion each weakens or breaks the link from communication to assignment that sustains the trap.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2026

Skill, Luck, or Imitation? What Actually Pays in Creator Markets

A small share of online creators earn fortunes while most earn almost nothing. What separates them: skill, luck, or copying what works? This paper measures what YouTube vloggers actually produce: 3,728 thumbnails, 385 hours of speech (2.9 million words), and video titles and tags, linked to complete view histories of 56,419 videos. Its central sample follows channels from their first upload, including the many that never took off, which most creator statistics miss. The data show that what goes into a video does not predict its success: 36 measures of images, speech and text explain at most 1.1% of the differences in views within a channel, even though they can tell what kind of video it is. Practice does not help either: forty more videos without a hit add nothing. Nothing accumulates except a hit. A channel's first hit raises the views of everything it publishes afterwards by 164% on average, a result that survives all 17 robustness checks. Creators respond by copying their hit, both its look and its topic, yet only copying the topic pays; copying the look adds nothing measurable. A simple model explains why. A hit is a lasting prize, so entering can make sense despite long odds, and because the platform's statistics describe a hit without separating its causes, copying everything about it is the sensible response. Platforms could redirect creators' effort toward what pays by showing whether a hit's topic or its look drove its success.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2026

Hype Has Worth: Attention, Sentiment, and NFT Valuation in Major Ethereum Collections

Do online narratives leave a measurable imprint on prices in markets for digital or cultural goods? This paper evaluates how community attention and sentiment relate to valuation in major Ethereum NFT collections after accounting for time effects, market-wide conditions, and persistent visual heterogeneity. Transaction data for large generative collections are merged with Reddit-based discourse measures available for 25 collections, covering 87{,}696 secondary-market sales from January 2021 through March 2025. Visual differences are absorbed by a transparent, within-collection standardized index built from explicit image traits and aggregated via PCA. Discourse is summarized at the collection-by-bin level using discussion intensity and lexicon-based tone measures, with smoothing to reduce noise when text volume is sparse. A mixed-effects specification with a Mundlak within--between decomposition separates persistent cross-collection differences from within-collection fluctuations. Valuations align most strongly with sustained collection-level attention and sentiment environments; within collections, short-horizon negativity is consistently associated with higher prices, and attention is most informative when measured as cumulative engagement over multiple prior windows.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2025

Pixels to Prices: Visual Traits, Market Cycles, and the Economics of NFT Valuation

Pixels and market cycles both move NFT prices. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique digital assets, often used to represent ownership of digital art, collectibles, and other media, secured on blockchain networks like Ethereum. The rise of NFTs has led to the creation of a multi-billion-dollar market for digital art and collectibles, making it a key area of interest for researchers, artists, and investors. Using 94,039 transactions from 26 major generative Ethereum collections, this study extracts 196 machine-quantified image descriptors - color, composition, palette structure, geometry, texture, and deep-learning embeddings - and applies a three-stage filter to identify stable predictors for hedonic regression. A static mixed-effects model shows that market sentiment and transparent, interpretable image traits have significant and independent pricing power: higher focal saturation, tighter compositional concentration, and greater curvature are rewarded, while clutter, heavy line work, and dispersed palettes are discounted; deep embeddings add limited incremental value once explicit traits are included. To assess state dependence, a Bayesian dynamic mixed-effects panel with cycle effects is estimated, allowing Composition Focus - Saturation - the ratio of saturation in the central region to the whole image, capturing vividness and concentration at the focal area - to vary across market regimes. Collection-level heterogeneity (brand premia) is absorbed by random effects. The time-varying coefficients exhibit clear regime sensitivity, with stronger premia in expansionary phases and weaker or negative loadings in downturns, while the grand-mean effect is small on average. Overall, NFT prices reflect both observable digital product characteristics and market regimes, and the framework offers a cycle-aware tool for asset pricing, platform strategy, and market design in digital art markets.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2025

Borrowing on Belief? Consumer Confidence and U.S. Credit -- A VECM Study

This study explores the interdependent relationship between consumer credit and consumer confidence in the United States using monthly data from January 1978 to August 2024. Utilizing a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), the analysis focuses on the interplay between household borrowing behaviour and consumer sentiment while controlling for macroeconomic factors such as interest rates, inflation, unemployment, and money supply. The results reveal a stable long-run equilibrium: heightened consumer confidence is associated with increased credit utilization, reflecting greater financial optimism among households. In the short run, shifts in consumer confidence exert relatively modest immediate influence on credit usage, whereas consumer credit adjusts slowly, displaying significant inertia. Impulse-response analysis confirms that shocks to consumer confidence generate sustained positive effects on borrowing, while unexpected increases in credit initially depress sentiment but only fleetingly. These findings underscore the critical role of the relationship between consumer confidence and credit-market dynamics and highlight its policy relevance for fostering balanced and stable household finances.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2025

Cognitive Biases at Play? Insights from a Bayesian Game Framework

This paper examines the impact of cognitive biases on financial decision-making through a static Bayesian game framework. While traditional economic theory assumes fully rational investors, real-world choices are often shaped by loss aversion, overconfidence, and herd behavior. Integrating psychological insights with economic game theory, the model studies strategic interactions among investors who allocate wealth between risky and risk-free assets. Solving for the Bayesian Nash Equilibrium reveals that each bias distorts optimal portfolios and alters aggregate market dynamics. The results echo Herbert Simon's notion of bounded rationality, showing how biases can generate market inefficiencies, price bubbles, and crashes. The findings highlight the importance of incorporating psychological factors into economic models to guide policies that foster market stability and more informed financial decision-making.

econ.TH↗