U.S. Presidential election impact on Canadian and Mexican stock markets

Recent empirical evidence indicates that the delay in the 2000 presidential election results impacted the stock market performance in the United States. In the present study we examine the impact of the same delay on the performance of the Canadian and Mexican stock markets. We find evidence indicating that both the Canadian and the Mexican stock markets were affected negatively during the period. This study not only shows that the Mexican and Canadian stock markets are closely integrated with their American counterparts but also indicates that the markets of these countries follow the U.S. presidential elections as closely as U.S. markets do. The authors thank the Department of Economics and Finance, Texas A&M University-Commerce, for financial support to purchase some of the data used in the study.     

Assessing the effects of U.S. shocks on the Canadian economy using alternative identification methods

This paper investigates the extent of the transmission of U.S. supply and demand shocks to the Canadian economy using three different identification methods. Our findings are robust across identifications. We show that over the flexible exchange rate period, U.S. shocks tend to intensify Canadian business cycles, while they reduce the mean of Canadian prices and inflation. We also find that overall Canadian output is less sensitive to U.S. disturbances than found in earlier studies. Moreover, when the structural shocks are allowed to be correlated across countries, Canadian shocks explain around 18% of U.S. real GDP growth long run forecast error variance.     

On-duty and Off-duty: Employee Right to Privacy and Employer’s Right to Control in the Private Sector

The changing legal landscape of the right of the employer to control and monitor employee behavior is examined. Two distinct areas are defined: behavioral monitoring and behavioral restrictions. Relevant statutory laws and the developing common law are discussed. We also examine potential employee reactions to such policies by evaluating the reactions of graduate students to six employer policies including weight restrictions, grooming requirements, use of GPS locators, drug testing, ban on off-duty smoking, and email and internet monitoring. Students responded to these policies by determining the reasonable interest of the employer in the behaviors being monitored or controlled and the manner in which policies were implemented. Their comments suggest that employees may accept some level of monitoring or behavioral restrictions if the employer can make a convincing social account of the need for a policy. Additionally, the policy must be clearly communicated and properly implemented. However, restrictions on off-duty behavior were typically poorly received with the exception of illegal drug use.     

Smoking in the Workplace: Balancing Smoker and Nonsmoker Rights

The tobacco industry presents an interesting American dilemma. While warning against the use of tobacco and striving for a smokeless society the U.S. government subsidizes the growth of tobacco. The economic impact of smoking is, on balance, negative for users, nonusers and society. The federal government does not legislate the use of tobacco but most states and many municipalities have smoking laws. Although such laws vary they normally attempt to protect the rights of both smokers and nonsmokers. Workplace smoking policies also vary but generally focus on applicable laws, health research findings, employee preferences, involvement in policy determination, formalization and communication, and smoking cessation programs.     

Disability status,individual variable pay,and pay satisfaction: Does relational and institutional trust make a difference?

Although prior research suggests that disabled employees have different needs in the context of some HRM practices, we know little about their reactions to reward systems. We address this gap in the literature by testing a model using the 2011 British Workplace Employee Relations Survey (disabled employees, n = 1,251; nondisabled employees, n = 9,959; workplaces, n = 1,806) and find that disabled employees report lower levels of pay satisfaction than nondisabled employees, and when compensated based on individual performance, the difference in pay satisfaction is larger. We suggest that relational (derived from trust in management) and institutional (derived from firm‐wide policies and HRM practices, both intended to provide equitable treatment to disabled employees) forms of trust play important roles. The results of multilevel analyses show that when trust in management is high, the difference in pay satisfaction under variable pay is reduced. We find just the opposite for employees who work in organizations with a formal disability policy but without supportive HRM practices; the gap in pay satisfaction is exacerbated. However, the combination of the presence of a firm‐wide policy and HRM practices reduced the difference in pay satisfaction. Implications of the findings for theory, future research, and management practice are discussed.     

Correlates of Drug Testing Attitudes in a Sample of Blue Collar Workers

Using responses from 1429 workers employed in the wood products industry, we examine the relationship between drug testing (DT) attitudes and several demographic, organizational, job attitude, and job outcome variables. After controlling for age and marital status, analyses revealed moderate correlations between DT attitudes and alcohol and drug variables, DT program characteristics, organizational, and work attitude variables. DT attitudes were weakly but significantly related to absences, late work arrivals, accidents, and injuries. Implications of the findings and future research suggestions are discussed.     

Cost of equity for Canadian and U.S. sectors

A two-stage CAPM approach is used to generate cost-of-equity estimates and sources of their uncertainty for 10 GICS sectors in Canada and the U.S. under the assumption of relatively integrated North American economies and equity markets. The estimated cost of equity for the Canadian sectors is, on average, about the same as that of the U.S. sectors, but with a higher estimation error. The estimation error of the market risk premium is the most important uncertainty component for the equity cost estimates, except for Canadian Utilities where beta uncertainty is the most important component. Beta and interaction effects play a relatively more important role in Canada due to relatively more volatile sector betas in Canada. Our study suggests that: (1) Canadian cost of equity should be estimated in an integrated market rather than a segmented market and (2) higher importance should be given to estimating the dynamics of betas for the Canadian sectors.     

Industry characteristics and the law of one price

The paper investigates the law of one price (LOP), using 84 Canada/U.S. manufacturing prices over 1961–1996. We find that while there is a long-run relationship between Canadian and U.S. prices, industries vary in terms of adherence to the LOP. In industries with higher degree of market competition and integration, the correlation between Canadian and U.S. prices becomes stronger.     

Blood Sports and Cherry Pie

Abstract . The results are reported of empirically testing two hypotheses relating to violence in a professional team sport: one, that hockey fans have a taste for violence (bockey is a “blood sport”) so that, in general, game attendance and violence in the National Hockey League are positively related; and two, more specifically, that the more extreme degrees of violence are positively associated with American, not Canadian, attendance. The data are game by game data for the 1983/84 season, violence is measured by various categories of penalty minutes (minors, majors, misconducts), and the model is a system of two reduced form equations. The results confirm that there is a significant and positive relationship between aggregate measures of violence (total penalty minutes) and attendance for games played in both American and Canadian cities; and there is a significant positive relationship between the more extreme forms of violence (proxied by majors and misconducts) and attendance only in American cities     

Counter-intuitive effects of domestic law enforcement policies in the United States

In spite of the increase in domestic law enforcement policies in the U.S. drug related crime has followed a non-monotonic trend and cocaine and heroin prices, instead of increasing, have been dropping or remained stable over time. All this in a context of an increase in these drugs’ consumption during the 1980s and a small decrease during the 1990s. This paper provides an explanation to these counter-intuitive effects of domestic law enforcement policies. We model how drug lords respond to this type of policy within a conflict framework over the control of distribution activities for illegal drugs, which is novel. The model predicts drug distribution activities, drug prices and drug consumption. These predictions appear to be consistent with the empirical evidence in the United States.     

Employee attitudes toward drug testing: Effects of individual characteristics and employment setting

Testing for the presence of drug continues to gain popularity as a method for controlling drug use in the workplace. It is important that employers understand how potential applicants and current employees will react to the various types and purposes of drug testing. Employees (n = 529) were interviewed to investigate the role of attitudes toward drugs and work setting characteristics in explaining acceptance or rejection of drug testing. Individuals believing users should be held responsible for becoming dependent on cocaine, who felt the primary cause of cocaine addiction was weak moral character, and those who felt cocaine users should be treated as criminals were more supportive of drug screening and the testing of current employees.     

Corporate bond market interdependence: Credit spread correlation between and within U.S. and Canadian corporate bond markets

This study investigates the correlation and interdependence between and within the U.S. and Canadian corporate bond markets. The empirical framework adopted allows credit spreads to depend on common systematic risk factors derived from structural models and incorporates dynamic conditional correlations (DCC) between spreads. Results show that there is a surprisingly weak correlation between the two markets in normal times. However, during crises, there is a sudden and strong increase in the correlation between U.S. and Canadian credit spreads. The analysis of credit spread correlation within each market also shows an unusual increase in credit spread correlations between sectors and between risk classes in the U.S. during the 2007–2009 global financial crisis. This increase persists over the post-crisis period. By contrast, in Canada, credit spread correlations between sectors remain remarkably stable over time, suggesting an interdependence of credit spreads within the Canadian market.     

The impact of oil on equity returns of Canadian and U.S. Railways and airlines

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between oil price movements and equity returns of railways and airline in Canada and the U.S. Using a robust set of oil measures, which includes both West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Western Canadian Select (WCS) data, this research finds that railways and airlines react uniquely to oil price movements. Specifically, equity returns of railways in Canada and airlines in the U.S. tend to be negatively impacted by positive movements in WTI. Equity returns of airlines in Canada and railways in the U.S show limited evidence of any impact. Additional estimations suggest that equity returns of airlines react asymmetrically and that information regarding oil price movements may gradually diffuse over time. With the changing North American energy landscape (e.g., oil sands and shale oil), the increased reliance on transporting crude oil via railways should lead academics and practitioners to further research in this area.     

American Indians and Natural Resource Development: Indigenous Peoples'Land, Now Sought After, Has Produced New Indian-White Problems

Abstract . In the colonial period of U.S. history, American Indian tribes enjoyed the status of political sovereigns, and dealt as equals with the English Crown and colonial authorities. In the years following U.S. independence, legal, administrative, and military actions were used to redefine the meaning of tribal sovereignty. Conceptualizing these developments, “captive nations” refers to the limited sovereignty of tribes and their isolation and detachment from mainstream American society. Recently, natural resource development on their land and especially the discovery of energy resources has had a major impact on the structure of Federal-Indian relations and the political status of Indian tribes in American society. Willingly or unwillingly, many tribes are in the process of renegotiating their status with the Federal Government as a consequence of the resource development. As a result, these former captive nations are now more aptly described as “internal colonies.”     

Paid Parental Leave: An Employee Right or Still An Ideal? An Analysis of the Situation in Québec in Comparison with North America

Over recent years, parental leave policy in Canada has evolved quite considerably. Since 2001, Canadian employees have a right to a 1 year paid parental leave; those in the province of Québec have a better paid, more flexible regime. This paper first shows that Québec is somewhat of an exception in the North American context, with its inclusive mode of governance which contributes to positive policies in terms of family and childcare. This is due to a few elements: the recognition of a declining birthrate, but more importantly the significant involvement and actions of women’s advocacy organizations, in the context of an inclusive governance of family policy. We will defend the hypothesis that Québec has adopted a cumulative (or work–family balance) model in the field of work–family relation, while the US and English Canada tend to still resort mainly to a laissez-faire attitude, which to this day has limited employee rights in terms of parental leave, but also in terms of child care.     

The daily relationship between U.S. asset prices and stock prices of American countries

The daily transmission of U.S. comprehensive stock indices to foreign stock markets has been studied extensively, but the transmission may just be that the foreign stock prices respond to news underlying the change in the U.S. stock indices. Besides the regularly economic announcements, news relevant for the U.S. economy may include qualitative news and non-economic events. Due the daily nature of the news, there is no appropriate reference as to its impact on the U.S. or foreign economy and the only accessible reference probably is the change in the financial asset prices. But the U.S. stock index is general in nature and cannot be used to offer specific information about the U.S. economy. Some U.S. asset prices other than stock indices may reveal more specific information about the U.S. economy. Looking into the daily relationship between these U.S. asset prices and stock indices of four American countries in two periods with drastically different economic conditions, this study finds that the daily relationship between these U.S. asset prices and foreign stock prices is consistent with the prevailing U.S. economic fundamentals. From the relationship we identify some U.S. economic conditions foreign stock prices respond to. These economic conditions include real economic shocks, monetary policies, and business default risks.     

美国新能源政策、影响及对策

美国的新能源政策引起世界的广泛关注。本文在分析其主要新能源政策的基础上,分析其对美国科技、经济、国际竞争与我国可能产生的影响,从做好能源产业转型、提高应对气候变化的能力、制定能源发展战略规划、创新体制、完善机制以及加强国际合作等方面,提出我国发展能源技术与产业的对策。     

The effect of job impact,job interdependence,and employee characteristics on the acceptability of a drug-testing policy

Increasingly employers are testing employees for illicit drug use. Employees vary in their degree of acceptance of drug-testing policies. Both job and individual characteristics are hypothesized to affect individuals’ reactions to drug-testing policies. The first study reported here investigated the effect of job impact, job interdependence, sex, and age on four aspects of the acceptability of a drug-testing policy. While there was no effect for the job characteristics, both age and sex had significant effects. A follow-up study which focused solely on employee characteristics replicated the age effect. Implications are discussed.     

Working Capital Management,the Credit Crisis,and Hedging Strategies: Canadian Evidence

This study uses a sample of Canadian natural resource firms during the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–2008 to examine the influence of firm hedging strategies on their working capital management. Our evidence implies that increased cash holdings and derivatives are alternative ways of hedging risk, and also provides another perspective on the U.S. “trapped cash” controversy as our sample firms are not R&D intensive and do not face the same tax regime as U.S. multinationals.     

A dynamic CAPM with supply effect: Theory and empirical results

Breeden [Breeden, D. T. (1979). An intertemporal asset pricing model with stochastic consumption and investment opportunities. Journal of Financial Economics 7, 265–196] and Grinols [Grinols, E. L. (1984). Production and risk leveling in the intertemporal capital asset pricing model. The Journal of Finance 39, 5, 1571–1595] and Cox et al. [Cox, J. C., Ingersoll, J. E., Jr., & Ross, S. A. (1985). An intertemporal general equilibrium model of asset prices. Econometrica 53, 363–384] have described the importance of supply side for the capital asset pricing. Black [Black, S. W. (1976). Rational response to shocks in a dynamic model of capital asset pricing. American Economic Review 66, 767–779] derives a dynamic, multiperiod CAPM, integrating endogenous demand and supply. However, Black's theoretically elegant model has never been empirically tested for its implications in dynamic asset pricing. We first theoretically extend Black's CAPM. Then we use price, dividend per share and earnings per share to test the existence of supply effect with U.S. equity data. We find the supply effect is important in U.S. domestic stock markets. This finding holds as we break the companies listed in the S&P 500 into ten portfolios by different level of payout ratio. It also holds consistently if we use individual stock data.