Evidence of a glass ceiling for arts and culture professionals in Korea

Using the five available waves of the Wage Structure Survey data, this study employs quantile decomposition to investigate the existence of a glass ceiling among Korean professionals. The decomposition results for all professional workers show an inverse U-shape, which implies no evidence of a glass ceiling. However, we find a monotonically increasing pattern for arts and culture professionals, indicating strong evidence of a glass ceiling on their labour market. This result implies that, as the wage quantile moves from lower to higher levels, female professionals in arts and culture jobs face significant barriers to career advancement. This analysis supports the recent assertion of UNESCO that gender equality in culture is not immune to inequalities and discrimination.     

Early Retirement and Bridge Employment Intentions Among Older Workers in Singapore

This paper examined the relevance of 14 demographic, cognitive, and affective factors in individuals' intentions to voluntarily retire early and to secure bridge employment after retirement. Results based on a sample of 361 respondents aged between 40 and 59 suggested that marital status, perceived negative age-health relationship, gender psychological readiness for retirement, and family orientation were related to early retirement intentions. Work centrality, perceived organisational attitude towards older employees, and psychological readiness for early retirement were related to bridge employment intentions. Implications for research were discussed.     

Stationary solution to the overlapping generations model of fiat money: Experimental evidence

Overlapping generations model of fiat money yields an infinity of competitive equilibrium solutions, only one of which is stationary. Economies reported in this paper involved a sequence of overlapping generations of three or four individuals; each individual lived for two periods. In their young age individuals were endowed with chips that could be traded for fiat money wish the individuals of the old generation. In their old age, individuals could exchange their units o flat money for the consumption good. Results of the experiments exhibit some support for the stationary solution. The results are robust to two designs of exchange institutions (double oral auctior and supply schedule auction) and to two different endogenous ways of converting money into chips at the end of the game (average price prevailing during the last period the game is actually played and the average price forecast made during the last period the game is actually played).A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the Economic Science Association and at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The authors are grateful for comments received from various participants at both presentations. Financial support was provided by the McKnight Foundation, the Honeywell Foundation, National Science Foundation (SES 89-12552), and Richard. M. and Margaret Cyert Family Funds.     

Make it Your Own: How Process Valence and Self‐Construal Affect Evaluation of Self‐Made Products

Self‐production, participation of consumers in the production process of products for their own consumption, leads to consumers’ enhanced evaluations of the self‐made products. Three experimental studies investigate how and why self‐production affects consumers’ product evaluations and reveal that not all production experiences create additional value for all consumers. In particular, Studies 1 and 2, using hypothetical stories and real experiences, show that only positive (vs. negative) production experiences enhance evaluations of self‐made products over products made by others. Positive (but not negative) experiences decrease the psychological distance between the self and the product and strengthen identification with it. Study 3 manipulates self‐construal (independent vs. interdependent) to investigate its role on evaluation of self‐made products and products made with close others as a group (i.e., group‐made). Consumers with independent self‐construal evaluate self‐made (vs. other‐made) products more favorably only if the process is positive. However, consumers with interdependent self‐construal evaluate self‐made products more favorably even if the process is negative. Additionally, consumers with interdependent (vs. independent) self‐construal exhibit more favorable evaluation of group‐made products. Finally, even if consumers know how another person feels while making a product, other people's process emotions do not affect consumers’ product judgments as strongly as their own experienced process emotions.     

How about selling commodity futures losers?

This paper explores the benefits of extending the investment universe to commodity futures, from the perspective of momentum traders. We find that the growth-optimal portfolio includes negative (positive) weights on commodity futures losers (stock winners). Motivated by this finding, we construct a joint momentum strategy, buying stock winners and selling commodity futures losers, and show that it generates an average monthly return of up to 1.91% and provides much lower skewness (0.04) and kurtosis (1.27) than a traditional stock momentum strategy. It also greatly improves profitability, especially in unfavorable market states, and thus effectively manages tail risk.     

The price of going green: the role of greenness in green bond markets

In this paper, we empirically investigate how greenness information is priced in the green bond market. Our comparison of liquidity-adjusted yield premiums of green bonds versus synthetic conventional bonds indicates that, on average, there is no robust and significant yield premium or discount on green bonds. However, green bonds certified by an external reviewer enjoy a discount of about 6 bps. Furthermore, green bonds that obtain a Climate Bonds Initiative certificate show a discount of around 15 bps. The findings suggest that a universally accepted greenness measure can benefit the development of the green bond market.     

Anchored putter ban: An examination of whether anchored putting impacts career success and putting performance

The Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) Tour ban on anchored putting (Rule 14‐1b) took effect on January 1, 2016. The ban remains controversial because the governance decision appears to have been made without adequate empirical evidence. Accordingly, to investigate the efficacy of the ban, the impact of using anchored putters on PGA golfers' career success and putting performance was examined. PGA golfers ranked in the top 125 were studied from 2009 to 2015. The analysis revealed an anchored putter offered no unfair advantage with regard to improving players' career success or putting performance when compared with standard putter usage by PGA golfers.     

Sources of Fluctuations in the Real Exchange Rates and Trade Balances of the G‐7: A Sign Restriction VAR Approach

This paper estimates structural vector autoregression models of output, the real exchange rate and trade balance for the group of seven leading advanced economies (G‐7). Unlike previous studies, we do not impose long‐run purchasing power parity as an identifying assumption; instead, the shocks underlying the model are structurally identified using a set of theory‐consistent sign restrictions. Empirical results show that nominal shocks account for most of the long‐run variability in trade balances across the G‐7 countries. We are able to attribute this finding to long‐run movements in the real exchange rate, as the real exchange rate is significantly affected by nominal shocks in the long run.     

Auditors' Responses to Workload Imbalance and the Impact on Audit Quality*

Using detailed data for fieldwork hours and audit hours by rank from audit engagements in Korea, we examine whether audits conducted under workload imbalance, proxied by busy‐season audits, impair audit quality, and how auditors adjust staff assignments for busy‐season audits. We generally find that busy‐season audits are associated with lower audit quality, and that audit firms reduce the involvement of senior auditors during busy‐season audits. In addition, the greater the involvement of senior auditors and junior auditors, the lesser the deterioration in audit quality. Finally, although there is no increase in interim audits in response to workload imbalance during busy seasons, increasing interim audits can mitigate the negative impact of busy‐season audits on audit quality. Our results are relevant to auditors and regulators, who have expressed concerns about the adverse effects of workload imbalance on audit quality.