Product Market Competition and Human Resource Practices in the Retail Food Sector

In the wake of Wal‐Mart and other mass merchandisers’ entry into food retailing, the nature of competition in the industry has changed radically. Using longitudinal data on workers and firms to construct measures of compensation and churning for traditional food retailers, this paper examines how these measures change in response to mass merchandiser entry. While there is considerable heterogeneity across retail food establishments, human resource practices are persistent even in the face of new external competition.     

An English Assessment of Scotland's Education Spending Needs

Scotland has much higher public expenditure per head than England, but little work has been done to compare Scottish and English needs. We compare their needs for school education, and we show that if the Formula Spending Share approach that is used to estimate English local authorities' needs were applied in Scotland, then Scotland would be found to need about 3 per cent more per pupil than England; however, this English approach may slightly underestimate Scotland's needs. We also show that the Grant Aided Expenditure approach that is actually used to estimate Scottish local authorities' needs may be about 7 per cent more generous than the English approach. Finally, we find that the correlation between the relative education needs for different authorities as assessed by the Scottish approach and their relative needs as assessed by the English approach is only modest; this implies that there may be serious shortcomings in at least one approach.     

An Unbiased Reexamination of Stock Market Volatility

Recent work demonstrates serious statistical problems with standard volatility tests. This paper proposes new tests that are unbiased in small samples and that do not require assumptions of stationarity. The new tests continue to find evidence against the model positing rational expectations and a constant required rate of return on equity.     

Temporary Layoffs and Unemployment in Canada

The importance of temporary layoffs in measured unemployment has not been solidly established empirically. Clark and Summers (1 979) maintain that these separations account for only a small fraction of U.S. unemployment. Administrative data analyzed in this paper show that temporay layoffs are an important feature of the Canadian labor market. Approximately 35 per cent of the variation in the Canadian unemployment rate over time can be accounted for by changes in temporary layoffs and about 45 per cent by variations in all temporary employment separations.     

The Structure of Voluntary Disclosure Narratives: Evidence from Tone Dispersion

We examine tone dispersion, or the degree to which tone words are spread evenly within a narrative, to evaluate whether narrative structure provides insight into managers’ voluntary disclosures and users’ responses to those disclosures. We find that tone dispersion is associated with current aggregate and disaggregated performance and future performance, managers’ financial reporting decisions, and managers’ incentives and actions to manage perceptions. Furthermore, we find that tone dispersion is associated with analysts’ and investors’ responses to conference call narratives. Our results suggest that tone dispersion both reflects and affects the information that managers convey through their narratives.     

Is a VC Partnership Greater Than the Sum of Its Partners?

This paper investigates whether individual venture capitalists have repeatable investment skill and the extent to which their skill is impacted by the venture capital (VC) firm where they work. We examine a unique data set that tracks the performance of individual venture capitalists' investments over time and as they move between firms. We find evidence of skill and exit style differences even among venture partners investing at the same VC firm at the same time. Furthermore, our estimates suggest the partners' human capital is two to five times more important than the VC firm's organizational capital in explaining performance.     

Testing Commitment Models of Monetary Policy: Evidence from OECD Economies

Inflation in many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries was low in the 1960s, rose for a time before peaking in the 1970s or early 1980s, and then fell back to initial levels. This paper shows that a simple time inconsistency model of monetary policy does not explain OECD inflation outcomes, except in the United States. The hypothesis that time inconsistency mattered only in earlier decades fits the data no better than the baseline model. We find some, albeit limited support for a model in which inflation spills over from the United States into other countries as a result of exchange rate targeting.     

On Norms: A Typology with Discussion

There is a lack of consensus in the literature, spanning multiple fields, on what exactly a norm is and furthermore on the characteristics differentiating types of norms. This paper provides definitions and a simple typology of norms with a focus on useful, objective distinctions. It is hoped that such a typology will add to the scientific rigor of communication, modeling, and clarity of thought on norms within economics and possibly other disciplines. The viability of “more complete” typologies, which often suffer from a lack of clear criteria for differentiating types of norms, is questioned. Two main properties of a norm are emphasized: (1) whether or not the behavior is simply what is done or whether it is what one should do, and (2) the source of sanctions for violating a norm, whether oneself, others, both or neither.     

WHEN DO CONSUMERS SEARCH?*

This paper provides empirical evidence relating search to price movements. We measure consumer search directly from traffic statistics for web sites that report gasoline prices. We show empirically that consumers search more as prices rise than they do when prices fall. Asymmetric search patterns have consequences for price behavior. Our findings indicate that retail margins are squeezed by increased search. In addition, we show that there is more price dispersion when prices are falling than when prices are either stable or rising. Our results provide a search‐based explanation for the ‘rockets and feathers’ phenomenon of asymmetric price adjustment.