The Impact of the London Bombings on the Well-Being of Adolescent Muslims*

We exploit the timing of the London bombings of July 2005, coinciding with a large-scale national survey of adolescents, to identify the impact of extremist Islamic terror attacks on the well-being of adolescent Muslims. Our analysis reveals interesting gender differences. We find evidence of a decline in the happiness of Muslim teenage girls after the bombings, which is also accompanied by a rise in expectations of facing discrimination in the labour market. These findings are robust to several falsification tests. However, we fail to uncover compelling evidence of any impact of the bombings on Muslim teenage boys.     

Asymmetric impact of earnings news on investor uncertainty

We describe a model that predicts an asymmetric impact of disclosure on investor uncertainty. We show that good news tends to resolve more uncertainty than bad news, and that uncertainty can be revised upwards if the investors' prior belief is sufficiently strong and the signal is sufficiently bad. This result is in contrast to classical disclosure models, where new information always resolves uncertainty and the change in uncertainty depends only on the relative precision of the news. Using option-implied volatility as a proxy for uncertainty, we find strong support for our predictions. We also show that our results are robust to competing explanations, notably to the leverage effect and volatility feedback, as well as to the jump risk induced in anticipation of the earnings announcements.     

Direct intervention or indirect support? The effects of cooperative control measures on farmers’ implementation of quality and safety standards

In recent years, labor-intensive agricultural products from developing countries have exhibited inferior performance in international trade due to quality and safety incidents, among which pesticide residue is a major issue. Aiming to improve food quality and safety in the context of cooperatives, we introduced three categories of control measures: outcome control, process control and social control. Based on the Pre-Harvest Interval Standard (PHIS), we selected three indices, farmers’ implementation rate of PHIS, absolute distance to PHIS and relative distance to PHIS, to evaluate appropriateness of pesticides use, reduction of pesticide residue and safety improvements of agricultural products. By using random sampling survey data, we empirically analyzed the marginal effects of control measures and their combinations on food quality and safety standards. The empirical results show that implementing process control, namely, unified production standards or supply of unified agricultural inputs, can comprehensively improve farmers’ implementation rate of PHIS, absolute distance and relative distance to PHIS respectively by 34.9%, 3.2 days and 46.0% on average. While the effects of outcome control (safety inspection) and social control (bonus-penalty incentive or training) are restricted to other measures. Therefore, we suggest cooperatives should take farmers’ features, implementation conditions and the effects of control measures into consideration in order to make a sustainable management plan for improving food quality and safety and enhancing competitiveness in international markets.     

林权流转价格及其影响因素分析

以林农拥有的活立木为研究对象,利用2007—2017年浙江省1546宗活立木流转样本,采用多元线性回归实证分析了是否在林权交易中心交易对活立木流转价格存在影响。结果表明:关键解释变量是否在林权交易中心进行交易对活立木流转价格具有显著的正向影响;流转面积、单位面积蓄积、区域虚拟变量、坡度等对流转价格都产生一定程度的影响;流转期限对流转价格的影响不大。因此,需要加强对林权交易中心的宣传,降低相关的交易成本,从而吸引更多的小规模林农参与交易。     

Challenges and Changes in Gendered Poverty: The Feminization,De-Feminization,and Re-Feminization of Poverty in Latin America

Despite reductions in poverty generally, recent trends in Latin American countries show processes of both de-feminization and re-feminization of poverty. A rise in the numbers of women to men living in income-poor households has occurred despite feminized anti-poverty programs, most notably conditional cash transfers (CCTs), which target resources to women. This paper shows that methodological differences in what, how, and who is the focus of measurement may influence patterns of poverty “feminization.” It also suggests that feminized policy interventions might in themselves be playing a role in the re-feminization of poverty, not least because of data and definitional limitations in the way female-headed households and, relatedly, women’s poverty are understood. The somewhat paradoxical interactions between the feminization of household headship, the feminization of poverty, and the feminization of anti-poverty programs present interesting challenges for redressing gender gaps in poverty within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.     

CEO internal experience and voluntary disclosure quality: Evidence from management forecasts

Internally‐promoted CEOs should have a deep understanding of their firm's products, supply chain, operations, business climate, corporate culture, and how to navigate among employees to get the information they need. Thus, we argue that internally‐promoted CEOs are likely to produce higher quality disclosure than outsider CEOs. Using a sample of US firms from the S&P1500 index from 2001 to 2011, we hand‐collect whether a CEO is hired from inside the firm and, if so, the number of years they worked at the firm before becoming CEO. We then examine whether managers with more internal experience issue higher quality disclosures and offer three main findings. First, CEOs with more internal experience are more likely to issue voluntary earnings forecasts than those managers with less internal experience as well as those managers hired from outside the firm. Second, CEOs with more internal experience issue more accurate earnings forecasts than those managers with less internal experience as well as those managers hired from outside the firm. Finally, investors react more strongly to forecasts issued by insider CEOs than to those issued by outsider CEOs. In additional analysis, we find no evidence that these results extend to mandatory reporting quality (i.e., accruals quality, restatements, or internal control weaknesses), perhaps because mandatory disclosure is subjected to heavy oversight by the board of directors, auditors, and regulators. Overall, our findings suggest that when managers have work experience with the firm prior to becoming the CEO, the firm's voluntary disclosure is of higher quality.     

Bidding for Firms with Unknown Characteristics

When a region successfully attracts a firm by offering subsidies, the firm often commits itself to performance targets in terms of employment. In this paper, we interpret these firm‐specific targets as a consequence of incomplete information. We analyze a model of two regions that compete for a firm, assuming that the firm's productivity is ex ante unknown. We show that performance targets often induce overemployment in high‐productivity firms, and that tax credits are often superior to lump‐sum payments. Moreover, when regions differ in wage rates, the low‐wage region wins the bid and has a higher surplus than under complete information. Finally, we show that, under incomplete information, bidding might not lead to efficient firm location.     

Price Effects on Compound Commodities

We examine the effect of simultaneous price changes on the total demand for a group of goods, which we call a compound commodity. Specifically, we consider unit and proportional cost components (e.g., taxes, transportation costs) imposed on compound commodities. If the unit cost is positive, then the proportional cost raises the relative price of the more expensive good, and thus induces substitution towards the less expensive good within this group. Then, the substitution effect of the proportional cost for a compound commodity is non‐negative if and only if the compound commodity and the other goods are, on average, not strongly substitutable.