Mortgage lending in Chicago and Los Angeles: A paired testing study of the pre-application process

In 2000, the Urban Institute paired African-American and Hispanic testers with whites and sent the pairs to visit lenders in Chicago and Los Angeles, in order to inquire about information on obtaining a home mortgage. In Chicago, African Americans and Hispanics systematically received less information and assistance than comparable whites; while in Los Angeles, the treatment of minority and white testers did not differ statistically from each other. Multivariate analyses for Chicago indicate that large lenders treat minorities more favorably than smaller lenders and that lenders with substantial numbers of applications from African-Americans treat African-Americans more favorably than lenders with predominantly white application pools.     

Financial deregulation and productivity growth in banking sector: empirical evidence from Bangladesh

This article examines the effects of regulatory reform on productivity growth in the Bangladesh banking industry. We use a unique balanced panel dataset comprising bank-level annual data from the early deregulation year (1984) to the most recent available period (2012) from major commercial banks in Bangladesh. Applying the Färe-Primont index, the paper provides estimates of productivity growth and identifies sources of total factor productivity (TFP) change. Empirical results show the sample banks have experienced positive TFP change after the financial deregulation. On average, TFP growth is higher in private banks than their public sector counterparts in the post-reform period. In addition, the decomposition analysis shows technological progress is the main driver of productivity change. Similar results are obtained by using the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Thus, empirical results remain robust irrespective of the methodology used. The regression analysis finds a positive technical change in the first stage of the reform program, i.e. during the transition period, as leading banks employ advanced technology to compete with potential new entrants. The result also shows that the banking industry still remains concentrated within the state-owned banks.     

Estimating efficiency spillovers with state level evidence for manufacturing in the US

Unit specific effects are often used to estimate non-spatial efficiency. We extend such estimators to the case where there is spatial autoregressive dependence and introduce the concept of spillover efficiency. Intuitively, we present an approach to benchmark how successful units are at exporting and importing productive performance to and from other units.     

Reflective Judgement: Understanding Entrepreneurship as Ethical Practice

Recently, the ethical rather than just the economic resonance of entrepreneurship has attracted attention with researchers highlighting entrepreneurship and ethics as interwoven processes of value creation and management. Recognising that traditional normative perspectives on ethics are limited in application in entrepreneurial contexts, this stream of research has theorised entrepreneurship and ethics as the pragmatic production of useful effects through the alignment of public–private values. In this article, we critique this view and use Kant’s concept of reflective judgement as discussed in his Critique of the Power of Judgement to theorise ethical entrepreneurial practice as the capacity to routinely break free from current conventions through the imaginative creation and use of self-legislating maxims. Through an analysis of the narratives of 12 entrepreneurs, we suggest there are three dimensions to reflective judgement in entrepreneurial contexts: (1) Social Performance; (2) Public Challenge and; (3) Personal Autonomy. Whilst the entrepreneurs were alive to the importance of commercial return, their narratives demonstrated further concern for, and commitment to, standards that they rationally and imaginatively felt as being appropriate. In our discussion, we integrate the findings into existing theoretical categories from entrepreneurship studies to better appreciate ethics within the context of value creation.     

Investor activism and takeovers

Recent work documents large positive abnormal returns when a hedge fund announces activist intentions regarding a publicly listed firm. We show that these returns are largely explained by the ability of activists to force target firms into a takeover. For a comprehensive sample of 13D filings by portfolio investors between 1993 and 2006, announcement returns and long-term abnormal returns are high for targets that are ultimately acquired, but not detectably different from zero for firms that remain independent. Firms targeted by activists are more likely than control firms to get acquired. Finally, activist investors’ portfolios perform poorly during a period in which market wide takeover interest declined.     

Stock price fragility

We study the relation between the ownership structure of financial assets and non-fundamental risk. We define an asset to be fragile if it is susceptible to non-fundamental shifts in demand. An asset can be fragile because of concentrated ownership, or because its owners face correlated or volatile liquidity shocks, i.e., they must buy or sell at the same time. We formalize this idea and apply it to mutual fund ownership of US stocks. Consistent with our predictions, fragility strongly predicts price volatility. We then extend the logic of fragility to investigate two natural extensions: (1) the forecast of stock return comovement and (2) the potentially destabilizing impact of arbitrageurs on stock prices.     

The search for relative value in bonds

Comparing asset swap spreads across bonds is a widely used tool for measuring relative value. This approach leads portfolio managers to increase their risk exposure in ways that are not transparent. Credit default swaps are utilized to demonstrate that viewing wide asset swaps as an indicator of relative value is a mirage. The paper documents the empirical regularities in the term structure of credit spreads and spread volatilities that make this result possible. In addition, we present empirical evidence of the imprint made on corporate bond returns by the widespread use of the asset swaps data.     

The impact of liquidity on option prices

This study illustrates the impact of both spot and option liquidity levels on option prices. Using implied volatility to measure the option price structure, our empirical results reveal that even after controlling for the systematic risk of Duan and Wei ( 2009 ), a clear link remains between option prices and liquidity; with a reduction (increase) in spot (option) liquidity, there is a corresponding increase in the level of the implied volatility curve. The former is consistent with the explanation on hedging costs provided by Cetin, Jarrow, Protter, and Warachka ( 2006 ), whereas the latter is consistent with the “illiquidity premium” hypothesis of Amihud and Mendelson ( 1986a ). This study also shows that the slope of the implied volatility curve can be partially explained by option liquidity. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark     

Environmental Management Systems (EMS) of Tour Operators: Learning from Each Other

This research determined to what extent tour operators in Western Canada who use natural, public-owned assets as a main feature of their business operations have developed formal or informal environmental management systems (EMS)and which EMS elements they use most frequently and most successfully. Furthermore, the research investigated which variables drive the use of EMS elements to ensure good environmental performance. The findings suggest that those operators who seek environmentally related business outcomes, possess supply-side tourism development values, and have more business experience, will have developed more sophisticated EMS and find these systems more useful in ensuring good environmental performance. With this information, park officials can develop a plan for knowledge sharing and the education of all tour operators. Park officials can design appropriate training and development programmes by considering the barriers that they might encounter in encouraging tour operators to implement certain policies and procedures. Tour operators can transfer some elements of EMS, widely recognised as useful, to other tour operators by ‘assimilation’, as few barriers exist to the implementation of these elements. However, if beliefs and attitudes must change before operators will use an element, learning by ‘accommodation’ will be a more appropriate approach.