The Intergenerational Supply of Loggers Under Conditions of Declining Economic Well-Being

This paper addresses the supply-side explanations of a logger shortage by estimating an occupational choice model that considers the role of earnings, nonpecuniary determinants and intergenerational factors. Our results showed that: (1) relative earnings have no statistically significant effect on career choice; (2) improvement in the public image of loggers substantially increases entry into logging; and (3) a strong intergenerational supply linkage exists but is currently being eroded.     

The Public Health Implications of Consumers' Environmental Concern and Their Willingness to Pay for an Eco‐Friendly Product

Environmental concern has been an important topic for more than 40 years and has recently become even more critical with today's concerns about creating a sustainable and healthy environment. This research examines factors affecting an individual's willingness to pay more for an environmentally friendly product. Our results show that willingness to pay more differs across demographic groups. We also find that individuals who rate concern for waste as highly important are willing to spend more money on an eco‐friendly product. Consequently, our findings provide insight into the development of appropriate educational strategies for different consumer groups to encourage consumers to purchase eco‐friendly products, with a goal of creating a healthier environment for current and future generations.     

Bringing It Home: A Study of the Incentives Surrounding the Repatriation of Foreign Earnings Under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004

The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (the Act) creates a temporary tax holiday that effectively reduces the U.S. tax rate on repatriations from foreign subsidiaries from 35% to 5.25%. Firms receive the reduced tax rate by electing to take an 85% dividends received deduction on repatriations in 2004 or 2005. This paper investigates the characteristics of firms that repatriate under the Act and how they use the repatriated funds. We find that firms that repatriate under the Act have lower investment opportunities and higher free cash flows than nonrepatriating firms. Further, we find that repatriating firms increase share repurchases during 2005 by approximately $60 billion more than nonrepatriating firms, an amount that cannot be explained by differences in earnings between the two groups of firms. This increase represents about 20% of the $291.6 billion repatriated by our sample firms under the Act.     

The Price Effect of Option Introduction

This paper examines the price effect of option introduction from 1974 to 1980. The introduction of individual options causes a permanent price increase in the underlying security, beginning approximately three days before introduction. The price effect appears to be associated with introduction, and not announcement, throughout the sample period. Excess returns volatility declines with option introduction. Systematic risk is unchanged. There is a positive relation between the price increase and a measure of activity in the options market.     

An assessment of the effect of fabric conditioner in the final rinse

An objective and subjective assessment of sample fabrics is made from pre-wash through to wash and use of a fabric conditioner in order to determine the physical handling measurements which can be used to assess the perceived output quality from these processes.     

The Role of Performance Management and Control Systems in Public-Sector Reform: Victorian Health Care Networks

This paper examines the way organisational responses to public-sector reform initiatives shape the nature and extent of achievable outcomes. The mandated creation of multi-hospital networks in Victoria is used as a representative example of amalgamation initiatives observed in both the private and public sectors. This study explores the extent to which performance management and control system choices made by two hospital networks enhance or stymie the achievement of intended amalgamation objectives. The study indicates that the evaluation of amalgamation and other public policy initiatives at a sector level cannot be made independently of the discretion left to management regarding means of implementing these initiatives.     

Global Land Grabbing and Trajectories of Agrarian Change: A Preliminary Analysis

‘Land grab’ has become a catch‐all phrase to refer to the current explosion of (trans)national commercial land transactions mainly revolving around the production and export of food, animal feed, biofuels, timber and minerals. Two key dimensions of the current land grab – namely, the politics of changes in land use and property relations change (and the links between them) – are not sufficiently explored in the current literature. We attempt to address this gap by offering a preliminary analysis through an analytical approach that suggests some typologies as a step towards a fuller and better understanding of the politics of global land grabbing.     

Ex Ante Skewness and Expected Stock Returns

We use option prices to estimate ex ante higher moments of the underlying individual securities’ risk‐neutral returns distribution. We find that individual securities’ risk‐neutral volatility, skewness, and kurtosis are strongly related to future returns. Specifically, we find a negative (positive) relation between ex ante volatility (kurtosis) and subsequent returns in the cross‐section, and more ex ante negatively (positively) skewed returns yield subsequent higher (lower) returns. We analyze the extent to which these returns relations represent compensation for risk and find evidence that, even after controlling for differences in co‐moments, individual securities’ skewness matters.     

Long-Term Market Overreaction or Biases in Computed Returns?

We show that the returns to the typical long-term contrarian strategy implemented in previous studies are upwardly biased because they are calculated by cumulating single-period (monthly) returns over long intervals. The cumulation process not only cumulates “true” returns but also the upward bias in single-period returns induced by measurement errors. We also show that the remaining “true” returns to loser or winner firms have no relation to overreaction. This study has important implications for event studies that use cumulative returns to assess the impact of information events.