Present bias for monetary and dietary rewards

Experimental Economics - Economists model self-control problems through time-inconsistent preferences. Empirical tests of these preferences largely rely on experimental elicitation using monetary...     

Age misreporting: An empirical investigation using the New Zealand contingents in the Second Boer War

This is a first focused examination of age misreporting in military recruitment. We take advantage of an original dataset comprised of New Zealand military personnel records in the Second Boer War matched with birth historical records. First, we find that age misrepresentation is common: about one third of soldiers on our dataset misreport their ages. Second, we find that soldiers the estimated age-specific mean heights do not change significantly when we change from using reported ages to using true ages. Researchers can prioritise the investigation of true ages on those reporting to be 21 or younger.     

Corporate social responsibility and bank liquidity creation

Under the stakeholder theory hypothesis, reputable corporate social responsibility (CSR) banks are expected to attract more loans and deposits, which in turn strengthens their ability to create liquidity. Our findings support this view. Further analyses reveal that the positive effect of CSR on liquidity creation differs depending on bank size, bank capital, and type of financial crisis. In addition, deposit growth, loan growth, lending rate, and funding rate are potential channels through which CSR influences bank liquidity creation. The findings are not driven by an endogeneity issue.     

Love thy neighbour: Evidence from capital structure decisions

We examine how the peer effects arising not only from the leading firm but also from a slightly better performing firm affect the capital structure decisions of a firm. There is a large body of literature documenting the importance of peer effects, but it is unclear whether managers pay close attention to activities of slightly better performers. This study uses both book- and market-value based approaches to estimate the peer effect measures. Our analysis shows that: (1) our peer effect measures induce the convergence of the follower firms' capital structure towards better performing firms; and (2) the capital structure converges more towards a slightly better performer.