WHY WAIT?: EXAMINING DELAYED WIC PARTICIPATION AMONG PREGNANT WOMEN

Despite the benefits of prenatal participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), many eligible women either do not participate or begin participation late in their pregnancies. Using recent nationally representative data, we find that more disadvantaged women are more likely to access WIC and, with some notable exceptions, to participate earlier in their pregnancies. Hispanic women, especially those with language difficulties, enroll in WIC later in their pregnancies. Early WIC participation, particularly among teenagers, is less likely among women experiencing a first birth and depends on the mother’s early recognition of her pregnancy. (JEL I18, I30)     

Behind the Scenes: The Corporate Governance Preferences of Institutional Investors

We survey institutional investors to better understand their role in the corporate governance of firms. Consistent with a number of theories, we document widespread behind‐the‐scenes intervention as well as governance‐motivated exit. These governance mechanisms are viewed as complementary devices, with intervention typically occurring prior to a potential exit. We further find that long‐term investors and investors that are less concerned about stock liquidity intervene more intensively. Finally, we find that most investors use proxy advisors and believe that the information provided by such advisors improves their own voting decisions.     

Of Tournaments and Temptations: An Analysis of Managerial Incentives in the Mutual Fund Industry

We test the hypothesis that when their compensation is linked to relative performance, managers of investment portfolios likely to end up as “losers” will manipulate fund risk differently than those managing portfolios likely to be “winners.” An empirical investigation of the performance of 334 growth-oriented mutual funds during 1976 to 1991 demonstrates that mid-year losers tend to increase fund volatility in the latter part of an annual assessment period to a greater extent than mid-year winners. Furthermore, we show that this effect became stronger as industry growth and investor awareness of fund performance increased over time.     

Investment Management and Risk Sharing with Multiple Managers

This paper addresses the investor's decision to employ multiple managers for the management of investment funds. Under conditions such that specialization of managers and diversification among managers are not motives for the use of multiple managers, the paper shows that risk sharing considerations may be sufficient. A model is developed in which the decision to use multiple managers is explicitly treated, and conditions are studied such that an increase or decrease in the number of managers would be desirable. Under some conditions, a multiple manager solution is preferred over a single manager solution.     

Institutions and Individuals at the Turn-of-the-Year

This article evaluates the tax-loss-selling hypothesis against the window-dressing hypothesis as explanations for turn-of-the-year anomalies. We examine differences between securities dominated by individual investors versus those dominated by institutional investors and find that the effect is more pervasive in the former. Controlling for capitalization, we find that in early January (late December), stocks with greater individual investor interest outperform (underperform) stocks with greater institutional investor interest. These results hold for both stocks that previously appreciated in value and stocks that previously depreciated in value. The results are most consistent with the tax-loss-selling hypothesis as an explanation for the turn-of-the-year effect.     

Knowing What Others Know: Coordination Motives in Information Acquisition

We explore how optimal information choices change the predictions of strategic models. When a large number of agents play a game with strategic complementarity, information choices exhibit complementarity as well: if an agent wants to do what others do, they want to know what others know. This makes heterogeneous beliefs difficult to sustain and may generate multiple equilibria. In models with substitutability, agents prefer to differentiate their information choices. We use these theoretical results to examine the role of information choice in recent price-setting models and to propose modelling techniques that ensure equilibrium uniqueness.     

Time‐Varying Fund Manager Skill

We propose a new definition of skill as general cognitive ability to pick stocks or time the market. We find evidence for stock picking in booms and market timing in recessions. Moreover, the same fund managers that pick stocks well in expansions also time the market well in recessions. These fund managers significantly outperform other funds and passive benchmarks. Our results suggest a new measure of managerial ability that weighs a fund's market timing more in recessions and stock picking more in booms. The measure displays more persistence than either market timing or stock picking alone and predicts fund performance.