Opening Constructive Dialogues Between Business Ethics Research and the Sociology of Morality: Introduction to the Thematic Symposium

Journal of Business Ethics - Over the last decade, scholars across the wide spectrum of the discipline of sociology have started to reengage with questions on morality and moral phenomena. The...     

Firms’ reactions to public information on business practices: The case of search advertising

Quantitative Marketing and Economics - We use five years of bidding data to examine the reaction of advertisers to widely disseminated press on the lack of effectiveness of brand search advertising...     

Skills,population aging,and the pattern of international trade

Some cognitive functions, such as the ability to update skills and adapt to changes in working conditions, are known to vary with age. With population aging it becomes increasingly difficult for firms to find workers with up‐to‐date skills. As a result, countries with aging populations start losing comparative advantage in industries that rely heavily on those skills. We test this hypothesis and find robust evidence for a significant negative effect of population aging on comparative advantage of a country in industries that are intensive in skill adaptability of labor force, in both the cross‐sectional and the dynamic panel data sets.     

The effect of the Canada‐US Free Trade Agreement on Canadian multilateral trade liberalization

In this paper show that the Canada‐US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) tariff preferences have triggered a decline in Canadian external tariffs, explaining a two percentage point reduction in the average tariff between 1989 and 1998. Next, we found that industries that generate the least export rent to the US firms experienced deeper tariff cuts in Canada; this result provides evidence of cooperation in trade policies between the US and Canada. Finally, we estimate the effect of the CUSFTA on the intensity of industrial lobbying for trade policy in Canada and find no relationship between preferential trade liberalization and lobbying activity.     

Informal employment in developing countries : Opportunity or last resort?

There is an ongoing debate among researchers and policy makers, whether informal sector employment is a result of competitive market forces or labor market segmentation. More recently it has been argued that none of the two theories sufficiently explains informal employment, but that the informal sector shows a heterogenous structure. For some workers the informal sector is an attractive employment opportunity, whereas for others - rationed out of the formal sector - the informal sector is a strategy of last resort. To test the empirical relevance of this hypothesis we formulate an econometric model which allows for several unobserved segments within the informal sector and apply it to the urban labor market in Côte d'Ivoire.     

MULTIPLE EVENT INCIDENCE AND DURATION ANALYSIS FOR CREDIT DATA INCORPORATING NON‐STOCHASTIC LOAN MATURITY

Applications of duration analysis in economics and finance exclusively employ methods for events of stochastic duration. In application to credit data, previous research incorrectly treats the time to predetermined maturity events as censored stochastic event times. The medical literature has binary parametric ‘cure rate’ models that deal with populations that never experienced the modelled event. We propose and develop a multinomial parametric incidence and duration model, incorporating such populations. In the class of cure rate models, this is the first fully parametric multinomial model and is the first framework to accommodate an event with predetermined duration. The methodology is applied to unsecured personal loan credit data provided by one of Australia's largest financial services organizations. This framework is shown to be more flexible and predictive through a simulation and empirical study that reveals: simulation results of estimated parameters with a large reduction in bias; superior forecasting of duration; explanatory variables can act in different directions upon incidence and duration; and variables exist that are statistically significant in explaining only incidence or duration. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Neighborhood Effect of Real Estate Maintenance

We investigate the economics of real estate investment when maintenance of a property enhances neighborhood value. Because a property owner does not recognize this positive externality for his/her neighbor, he/she under-maintains. Smaller properties benefit most from this externality. We show that subsidizing the maintenance expenses of properties can induce socially optimal maintenance. Without disturbing social optimality, the maintenance subsidy can be financed with either a flat tax or a tax that is proportional to the land value or the cost of the improvement. The flat tax is less costly. Commonly used subsidies in the real estate industry based on loan guarantees do not promote socially optimal maintenance.     

The Inevitability of Marketwide Underpricing of Mortgage Default Risk

Lenders are frequently accused of mispricing the put option embedded in nonrecourse lending. Prior research shows one lender's incentives to underprice. Here, we identify the conditions for a marketwide underpricing equilibrium. We demonstrate that, in a market with many players, given sufficient time, a race to the bottom and marketwide mispricing are inevitable. Underpricing occurs because bank managers and shareholders exploit mispriced deposit insurance. We show that the probability of the underpricing equilibrium increases with time since the previous market crash and that the more volatile the underlying asset market, the more likely it is subject to underpricing.     

Space-Varying Regression Coefficients: A Semi-parametric Approach Applied to Real Estate Markets

This paper presents a method for estimating home values by non-parametrically incorporating the physical location of the properties. Specifically, I allow the parameters of the observed covariates to vary in space. This approach mitigates one of the biggest deficiencies inherent in hedonic pricing models–omitted variables. I demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method using real estate transaction data from Los Angeles County. The estimation finds a substantial spatial variation of the marginal values of the hedonic characteristics and provides an insight into the segmentation of the market. The proposed method is an extension of semi-parametric multi-dimensional k-nearest-neighbor smoothing. It alleviates a fundamental problem known as the curse of dimensionality by incorporating parametric components into a non-parametric estimation.     

When Do Opening Stock Returns Tend to be Higher?

Abstract

In this study, I make an effort to formulate a trading rule that would make use of some systematic interday patterns in individual stocks’ opening returns. I analyze intraday price data on all the stocks that were S&P 500 Index constituents during the period from 1993 to 2012. I document that if the general market direction of the previous day's opening session is controlled for, then a stock's opening return tends to be higher if, on the previous trading day, its opening return was relatively high (either positive, or higher than the same day's opening market return) and its open-to-close return was relatively low (either non-positive, or lower than or equal to the same day's open-to-close market return). Finally, for the sampling period, I construct two different investment portfolios involving a long position in the stocks on the days when, according to the findings, their opening returns are expected to be high and a short position in the stocks on the days when, according to the findings, their opening returns are expected to be low. Both portfolios are found to yield significantly positive returns, providing evidence for the practical applicability of the documented patterns in opening stock prices.