Matching Matters in 401(k) Plan Participation

This study offers new evidence on the effects of the matching contributions made by employers to 401(k) plan accounts on plan participation rates, exploiting microdata from the National Compensation Survey, a large, nationally representative, establishment dataset. It addresses the potential endogeneity of the matching contributions by employing coworker and labor market characteristics as instruments. The results indicate that employer matches have substantial effects. They also indicate that higher match rates tend to be correlated with workers having lower propensities to save; correcting for this endogeneity produces estimates that are bigger than those seen through direct cross‐sectional comparisons.     

Does the Stock Market Compensate Banks for Diversifying into the Insurance Business?

This paper explores a wide range of corporate restructurings, all available deals from wire services, in the banking and insurance sectors that led to bancassurance ventures. An event study methodology is employed to calculate excess returns on and around the deals’ announcement date. Using both univariate and multivariate analysis the paper finds bank driven mergers, deal's size and regional categorization all triggering positive and significant market reactions. Unlike the univariate framework, multivariate analysis shows that geographic focus and language are not significant factors. The results also indicate that markets are indifferent with respect to bank withdrawals from the bank‐insurance operations. Finally, Canadian, U.S. and European bank‐insurance deals produce positive results, while Australasian bidders offer statistically insignificant equity returns.     

Business is Show Business: Management Presentations as Performance

While there is continual scholarly interest in the ‘organization as theatre’ metaphor, extant dramaturgical perspectives limit the ability to account for aesthetic experiences in theatrical situations. This study provides a different methodological lens for looking at ‘theatre’ in organizations and illustrates that an inclusion of performance theory can be particularly valuable for understanding aesthetic techniques which are increasingly employed in organizations. Responding to calls for aesthetic studies, this article analyses large‐scale management presentations such as annual general meetings, press conferences, and analyst meetings ‘as performance’ instead of re‐labelling them as if they were drama. Drawing on the latest theatre theory and introducing a tool for performance analysis, the study accounts for the aesthetic experience and describes the complex interplay of scenography, lighting, clothing, managers' performance style, rhetoric, and audience interaction, showing that these organizational events are co‐created and contested theatrical performances with a potential for resistance and possible change as well as for persuasion.     

Are Unrealistic Assumptions/Simplifications Acceptable? Some Methodological Issues in Economics

Are unrealistic assumptions acceptable? If results are not changed in a misleading way, they are acceptable. The same assumption may be acceptable in one context and not in another. Assuming identical pairs of individuals in the parity and limit theorems in general equilibrium theory is acceptable as results are not changed substantially. The alleged equivalence of the first‐price and second‐price auctions is based on misleading assumptions; Coase's case against taxing pollution is based on a misleading all‐or‐nothing comparison. The contrasting results (neutrality versus non‐neutrality of money) of perfect versus imperfect competition in macroeconomics with important real‐world policy relevance are also used to illustrate the point.     

An Empirical Comparison Between the Synthetic Control Method and HSIAO et al.'s Panel Data Approach to Program Evaluation

We compare two program evaluation methodologies: the synthetic control method and the panel data approach. We apply both methods to estimate the effect of the political and economic integration of Hong Kong. The results obtained differ depending on the methodology used. We then conduct a simulation that shows that the synthetic control method results in a post‐treatment mean squared error, mean absolute percentage error, and mean error with a smaller interquartile range, whenever there is a good enough match. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evolving splines and seasonal unit roots in weekly agricultural prices

The univariate statistical properties of agricultural price series need to be examined as a first step in the analysis of price transmission mechanisms. However, in the case of weekly price series, increasingly available, the testing procedures usually applied in this step are not suitable to deal with evolving seasonal effects. In this study, a method of testing for seasonal unit roots in weekly series of agricultural prices is described. When the deterministic seasonal component does not remain constant over time, the restricted evolving spline model (RESM) is shown to be a useful parametric formulation to capture the deterministic seasonal pattern. Therefore, the RESM model should be included as a deterministic component in auxiliary regression for unit root tests at seasonal frequencies. This proposal is applied to three weekly series of Canary Islands banana prices. From the standard seasonal unit root tests, the null hypothesis is failed to be rejected at the 5% or 10% significance level at some seasonal frequencies for each one of the series. Once critical values are obtained by simulation exercises when the RESM model is included, the hypotheses of unit root are rejected at each one of the seasonal frequencies for all of the three series.     

Gender,life cycle,and family ‘strategies’ among the poor: the Barcelona workhouse, 1762–1805

Poor relief has received less attention from historians of southern Europe compared with northern Europe. This article seeks to challenge the frequent assumption that the strength of family ties in southern Europe mitigated the need for welfare provision. It provides new data for men and boys entering the Barcelona workhouse in the period 1780–1803, and compares these with data from an earlier study of women and girls who entered the same institution over the period 1762–1805. We establish the characteristics of those who sought relief in terms of age, place of origin, marital status, and occupation. We use the information on reasons for entry and exit to ascertain family circumstances. We show that there were significant differences between males and females in terms of why they entered and left, and length of stay, particularly among the elderly. The bulk of the population of the workhouse, however, was comprised of children and adolescents. For this group, entry into the workhouse represented not just a temporary solution to life cycle poverty and periodic unemployment, but also a longer‐term strategy aimed at smoothing entry into the labour market.     

The Geography of Innovation in China and India

The BRICS countries in general, and China and India in particular, are now widely regarded as the areas of the world likely to challenge the economic leadership of the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). A large part of this challenge will come from rapid technological catch‐up by China and India. Yet, despite a recent rise in interest, there is limited knowledge about how and where innovation takes place in these two leading emerging countries and to what extent the Chinese and Indian territorial systems of innovation differ from those in the EU or the US. In this article we explore the geography of innovation in China and India, concentrating on understanding key territorial‐level innovation trends by country, region and technology field, using the US and the EU as benchmarks. We find significant contrasts between the geography of innovation in China and India and that of the US and the EU. First, the degree of concentration of innovative activities in both countries is extremely high. Levels of agglomeration of innovation in the coastal provinces of China, as well as in Delhi and the South of India, significantly exceed the levels of agglomeration found in the USA and the EU. Secondly, China has witnessed a more rapid increase in the degree of concentration of innovation than India. We posit that the differences in the geography of innovation between, on the one hand, China and India and, on the other hand, between these countries and the developed world are rooted in different institutional settings, different systems of innovation and different national innovation strategies.