Is it still helpful to talk about proto‐industrialization? Some suggestions from a Catalan case study

The concept of proto‐industrialization is considered by many historians to have outlived its usefulness. This article seeks to argue the contrary, using a case study from Catalonia, in southern Europe, which provides a rare example of early industrialization on the periphery of Europe. Using an in‐depth study of an important proto‐industrial community, Igualada, the article puts forward two key arguments. First, it shows how the proto‐industrialization of the woollen industry and later the cotton industry shaped the transition to the factory. There were important continuities throughout in terms of human capital and organization of production; in particular, the persistence of the family as unit of production. Second, the impact of proto‐industrialization on the family economy is shown to have had important consequences for demographic behaviour. As in other areas of Europe, there was a notable impact on age at marriage and on marital fertility. Equally important, however, was the impact on mortality and migration, aspects that have been neglected by historians. In particular, the high infant and child mortality rates for Igualada suggest that historians need to rethink the effect of proto‐industrialization upon life chances.     

Clothing outshopping in a rural Western community

Statistics reveal that over half of all women are gainfully employed outside the home. Professional working women have a certain status to maintain and it is reasonable to assume that their clothing needs might differ from women who are employed in other occupations and who remain in the home. Recent research has shown that considerable shopping occurs out of the local retail trade area (termed outshopping). Product-specific outshopping research has revealed clothing to be a product consumers are willing to out-shop to obtain. Professionally employed women might have to resort to outshopping more often than the other women in order to meet their clothing needs. For this project outshopping was defined to be the percentage of shopping which occurred at least 50 miles from the test site. This research represents the combined efforts of a graduate class studying trends in fashion merchandising; a telephone survey was developed and conducted by the class and responses from 100 female consumers were analysed using multiple step-wise regression. It was predicted and found that clothing outshopping behaviour could be significantly predicted by the degree of satisfaction with local retailing and number of children remaining in the home. Including the two variables professional/non-professional working status, and the age of female respondent as predictors, did not significantly improve the ability to predict outshopping behaviour. The implications for retailers are discussed.     

AUTHORITY,RISK, AND PERFORMANCE INCENTIVES: EVIDENCE FROM DIVISION MANAGER POSITIONS INSIDE FIRMS*

I show that performance incentives vary by decision‐making authority of division managers. For division managers with broader authority, i.e., those designated as corporate officers, both the sensitivity of pay to global performance measures and the relative importance of global to local measures are larger, relative to non‐officers. There is no difference in sensitivity of pay to local measures by officer status. These results support theories suggesting that authority over project selection combined with incentives designed to maximize firm performance, as well as induce effort for the division, are important in incentive design for division managers. Consistent with earlier findings, the evidence strongly supports one of the main predictions of the principal‐agent model, that is, a negative tradeoff between risk and incentives.     

Asset Revaluations and Assessment of Borrowing Capacity

Prior research has found support for contracting, political cost and information asymmetry explanations for managements’ decision to revalue non-current assets. This study proposes that asset revaluations occur to signal available borrowing capacity via an increase in collateral values at the time of increases in secured debt and that the economic benefits associated with an asset revaluation will be greatest for firms when they are experiencing times of declining cash flows from operations. Results imply that firms that have undertaken an asset revaluation are more likely to be experiencing declining cash flows from operations than firms that have not revalued. This study also investigates whether the incidence of valuations coincides with increases in levels of secured borrowings due to lenders’ demands for current values of assets offered as collateral. The evidence indicates that firms are more likely to record an asset revaluation if they have increased their secured borrowings, and that most non-year-end revaluations emanate directly from contracting with lenders.     

Dissecting the Long-Term Performance of the Chinese Stock Market

Domestically listed Chinese (A-share) firms have lower stock returns than externally listed Chinese, developed, and emerging country firms during 2000 to 2018. They also have lower net cash flows than matched unlisted Chinese firms. The underperformance of both stock and accounting returns is more pronounced for large A-share firms, while small firms show no underperformance along either dimension. Investor sentiment explains low stock returns in the cross-country and within-A-share samples. Institutional deficiencies in listing and delisting processes and weak corporate governance in terms of shareholder value creation are consistent with the underperformance in stock returns and net cash flows.     

ASSESSING THE WELFARE IMPACT OF TAX REFORM: A CASE STUDY OF THE 2001 U.S. TAX CUT

This paper implements a relatively simple methodological approach to estimate the impact on family welfare of a specific tax reform. The measured impact can differ greatly from simple marginal tax rate comparisons, and conclusions about the distribution of the welfare impact can vary depending on the basis of comparison. For example, absolute welfare gains from the 2001 U.S. tax reform were concentrated among the highest and lowest income families, whereas welfare gains measured as a share of pre‐tax income are found to be nearly monotonically declining in income.     

FABRIC SPECIALITY STORES: CONSUMER DISSATISFACTION WITH SELECTED IN-STORE ATTRIBUTES

This consumer dissatisfaction study focused on selected in-store attributes of the fabric speciality store. The procedure was to select fifteen fabric speciality stores at random in the Phoenix area and distribute thirty questionnaires to customers at each store. The 264 returns were analysed by examining the respondents' comments about the fabric speciality store most often shopped in, the respondents' ratings of the statements concerning the average fabric speciality store's attributes and the complaints the respondents made to fabric speciality stores. The fabric speciality store attributes found to be both important and dissatisfying included: salesperson's helpfulness, variety of fabrics, quality of fabrics, salesperson's product knowledge and fabric price.     

INFLATION HISTORY AND THE SACRIFICE RATIO: EPISODE-SPECIFIC EVIDENCE

This article examines whether episode-specific analysis can show a negative relationship between inflation and the slope of the Phillips curve that has been found in cross-country analysis. While the relationship between inflation and the Phillips curve slope is widely accepted from cross-country analysis, it has remained unproven in previous episode-specific studies. By defining inflation history as a weighted average of past inflation, this study finds a negative effect of inflation history on the sacrifice ratio, which is what is expected from the cross-country analysis. The negative relationship does not disappear even after including other conventional determinants of the sacrifice ratio. ( JEL E52, E31)     

JOB SEPARATION OUTCOMES OF WELFARE HIRES: INSIGHT FROM LINKED PERSONNEL AND STATE ADMINISTRATIVE DATA

This article makes use of a unique personnel data set and state administrative data to follow welfare and nonwelfare hires that separate from similar jobs with the same firm. Welfare hires are more likely to be on welfare after separation but are equally likely as similarly low–skilled nonwelfare hires to transition to another job after separation. Among those with a new job, welfare hires experience a significantly lower wage gain, suggesting that welfare hires would benefit (even more than nonwelfare hires) from focused assistance with job search and transition skills. ( JEL H53, J62, C35)