Governments’ payment discipline: The macroeconomic impact of public payment delays and arrears

This paper considers the impact of changes in governments’ payment discipline on the private sector. We argue that increased delays in public payments can affect private sector liquidity and profits and hence ultimately economic growth. We test this prediction empirically for European Union countries using two complementary approaches. First, we use annual panel data, including a newly constructed proxy for government arrears. Using panel data techniques, including methods that allow for endogeneity, we find that payment delays and to some extent estimated arrears lead to a higher likelihood of bankruptcy, lower profits and lower economic growth. While this approach allows a broad set of variables to be included, it restricts the number of time periods. We therefore complement it with a Bayesian VAR approach on quarterly data for selected countries faced with significant payment delays. With this second approach, we also find that the likelihood of bankruptcies rises when the governments increase the average payment period.     

Don’t fear risk,learn about it: how familiarity reduces perceived risk

This article suggests that learning about basic concepts concerning the risk and return of assets will reduce perceived risk. We show experimentally that people who learn about these basic concepts are willing to allocate more money to risky assets and consider the asset’s return relative to its risk.     

Public subsidies and new ventures’ use of bank loans

Access to financial resources is crucial for young firms to strive. To foster innovation and growth in these firms, governments address financing constraints by initiating public support programs. For such financial support to be effective, it is, however, important that firms are able to augment publicly provided resources with additional means. This study examines the relationship between new ventures’ subsidy receipt and long-term bank loans. Studying new ventures founded between 2005 and 2009 in Germany, we test whether the subsidy itself facilitates use to bank financing. Applying econometric techniques that account for the endogenous nature of a subsidy receipt, we find that subsidized young firms are more likely to use bank loans and to have obtained a larger share of their financing mix from banks. We further show that this effect is stronger in highly information-opaque sectors. These results suggest that the effect may be attributed to an information value carried by the grant that is relevant to banks’ loan assessment procedures, especially when new venture value is difficult to judge.     

Credible enough? Forward guidance and perceived National Bank of Poland’s policy rule

Forward guidance effectiveness is conditional upon its credibility. This policy, when taken as credible, should reduce the perceived impact of macroeconomic variables on the interest rate. Using the Taylor rule framework and employing micro-level data set, we test the perception of monetary policy in Poland among professional forecasters. Our results show that the Taylor principle is violated in the forward guidance period, which provides evidence for forward guidance credibility.     

Welfare use and children’s longer-term achievement

We investigate the effects of mothers’ welfare use on children’s longer-term performance. To address issues of improper comparison groups and the endogenous nature of welfare participation, we focus on less-educated single mothers and adopt a correction function approach. Data are drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 – Children and Young Adult from 1994 to 2010. Estimation results confirm the positive longer-term effects of mothers’ welfare use. On average, a child whose mother used welfare in all 20 quarters after childbirth experiences a 0.56-point increase in their yearly high school grade point average, is 12% more likely to graduate from high school and earns $1112.76 more in the first-observed income than a child whose mother does not.     

Convergence of the world’s energy use

This paper uses the sequential panel selection method to examine the convergence of the energy use of 107 countries. It contributes by analyzing the order of convergence and the factors affecting the difference in convergence using improved methods. We provide robust evidence to indicate that seven out of ten countries have been convergent during the period examined, and strong decoupling across countries does not exist. Additionally, high-income and upper-middle-income countries show convergence characteristics earlier than lower middle-income and low-income countries. This means that high-income and upper-middle-income countries are the first to achieve steady-state levels by adjusting their industrial structure and adopting new technologies, and energy exporters have dominant control over energy use. We find that energy-exporting countries converge before energy importers do. These results mean that the energy use of most countries is in accordance with the convergence theory. It also shows that GDP per capita, industrialization level and latitude have great impacts on convergence, especially for industrialization. Our research provides a reference for countries around the world to adjust their energy use policies and to realize a rational flow of energy resources.     

Does Benford’s Law hold in economic research and forecasting?

First and higher order digits in data sets of natural and socio-economic processes often follow a distribution called Benford’s law. This phenomenon has been used in business and scientific applications, especially in fraud detection for financial data. In this paper, we analyse whether Benford’s law holds in economic research and forecasting. First, we examine the distribution of regression coefficients and standard errors in research papers, published in Empirica and Applied Economics Letters. Second, we analyse forecasts of GDP growth and CPI inflation in Germany, published in Consensus Forecasts. There are two main findings: The relative frequencies of the first and second digits in economic research are broadly consistent with Benford’s law. In sharp contrast, the second digits of Consensus Forecasts exhibit a massive excess of zeros and fives, raising doubts on their information content.     

Physicians’ use of medical technology: an analysis of the introduction and subsequent failure of drug-eluting stents

Using data on cardiac patients in Florida hospitals from 2003 to 2007, we analyse the adoption and deadoption of a major new medical technology, drug-eluting stents (DESs). The Food and Drug Administration approved DESs in April 2003 and physicians rapidly adopted the new technology. In March 2006, a presentation was made at the American Cardiology Conference which showed that patients receiving DES in real-world settings suffered higher rates of mortality and myocardial infarction than those receiving stents without drugs. We examine the utilization of DES from April 2003 to the end of 2007. Using a hospital fixed-effects model, we find that board-certified and top-trained physicians were initially quicker to adopt DES. Over time, this effect dissipated and top-trained physicians were less likely to use DES by the time new clinical trials indicated they could be problematic. After the news, board-certified and top-ranked physicians were less likely to change their behaviour. Physicians’ own experience also contributes to the use of technology and the effects are stronger for non-board-certified physicians. We conclude that even within hospitals, physician training and experience play an important role in explaining differences in rates of technology use.     

Adoption and use of technology with low litigation risk – the case of financial reporting on Twitter by ASX companies

ABSTRACT

Corporate adoption of technology faces challenges such as resource constraints and litigation risk. To investigate if low litigation risk encourages technology adoption and its use, this paper investigates corporate financial reporting on Twitter, a voluntary corporate disclosure practice without obvious litigation risk in Australia. This study reviews 4,540 financial reporting related tweets from 222 ASX listed companies’ Twitter accounts. An examination of tweet sentiment reveals a positive reporting bias, as listed companies are more willing to disclose positive financial reporting information on Twitter. A comparison of corporate financial reporting tweets prior to and after 2013 reveals that use of Twitter for opportunistic voluntary disclosure is gaining popularity, a trend that warrants close attention by regulators in order to protect investors from selective disclosure with reporting bias.     

Chinese firms’ crash risk and CEO media exposure

This study uses panel data from China over the period 2008–2015 to examine the effect of CEO media exposure on crash risk. We show that CEO media coverage in Chinese firms has a wide dispersion and mitigates crash risk at firms. Our study confirms the important role of media to monitor effectively firm behaviours in China.     

Consumers’ preferences for the attributes of post-PC: results of a contingent ranking study

With the explosive growth of the internet and the change in consumer demand, post-PC is emerging as a substitute for the existing desktop PC and laptop PC. post-PC is a new computer which is portable with wireless networking, cheaper than the existing PC and specializing in the specific functions that consumers want. Rudimentary post-PCs such as PDA, web-pad and smart-phone are already in use. In the future, owing to technological progress, the heterogeneity of related companies and the low entry barrier, various post-PCs will be developed. This paper attempts to analyse consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for post-PC with such attributes as portability, CPU speed, data input method (using key board or electric pen), monitor size, and price. To this end, a contingent ranking method is applied, which makes the respondents rank hypothetical post-PC alternatives featuring various combinations of attributes, via a survey data collected in Korea. Using the estimated WTP, the shape and the capacity of future post-PC are predicted and policy implications drawn for national- and company-level R&D strategies.     

Assessing impact of regulatory risk on shareholders’ wealth

Research indicates that regulatory risk increases required return on investment by investors and causes underinvestment in industries with high sunk costs. The effects of regulatory changes may be measured by estimating the abnormal returns associated with the event. The results may suggest to regulators what should be encouraged or avoided. This article utilizes a fixed effects regression to examine abnormal returns from changes in Philippine nationalization regulations. The results are consistent with extant literature. Supreme Court decisions, which increased uncertainty and regulatory risk, produced negative abnormal returns. The initial release of draft implementing rules did not produce statistically significant effects, but a succeeding draft favouring liberalization, produced positive abnormal returns.     

Shatterbelts and conflict behaviour: The effect of globalisation on ‘high risk’ states

This article ties together seemingly disparate literatures (those of globalisation and ‘shatterbelt states') as a means of investigating the changing conflict behaviour of high‐risk states. The objective of this research is to ascertain empirically whether the circumstances that generate aggression by high‐risk states are the same as those for others. In addition, by examining how conflict behaviour has changed over time, and in conjunction with trade openness, these tests speak to the importance of economic interdependence as a mitigating counterforce to aggressive tendencies. The results indicate that domestic instability and fragmentation are more directly tied to high‐risk state behaviour than are systemic influences. In contrast, the probability that low‐risk states originate or participate in conflicts, and resort to violence, is tied to international factors. Surprisingly, increased repression seems to result from the opposite circumstances. For high‐risk states, changes in repressive behaviour are tied to the external environment while low‐risk states seem prone to change levels of repression in conjunction with their internal conditions. Lastly, and most importantly, trade openness has an important pacifying effect on high‐risk states, but appears to be irrelevant to the conflict behaviour of all others. Globalisation, it appears, mitigates the violence that is often initiated by high‐risk states. These results offer important preliminary evidence for understanding high risk‐states and the strategies that may reduce their aggressiveness.     

How users’ Internet experience affects the adoption of mobile payment: a mediation model

Mobile payment becomes a convenient way to complete transactions due to the increasing popularity of mobile devices and the maturity of related technologies. Users’ experience of using computers and the Internet in financial activities largely affects their intention to use mobile payment. Combining the Technology Acceptance Model and Innovation Diffusion Theory, we examined the mediating effect of five factors, that is, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, compatibility, risk, and privacy concern, in the relationship between Internet experience and the adoption of mobile payment. Data from 922 mobile users supported the partial mediating effects of the five factors.     

From the ‘econometrics of capital punishment’ to the ‘capital punishment’ of econometrics: on the use and abuse of sensitivity analysis

The academic debate over the deterrent effect of capital punishment has intensified again with a major policy outcome at stake. About two dozen empirical studies have recently emerged that explore the issue. Donohue and Wolfers (2005 Donohue, J and Wolfers, J. 2005. Uses and abuses of empirical evidence in the death penalty debate. Stanford Law Review, 58: 791–845. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) claim to have examined the recent studies and shown the evidence not to be robust to specification changes. We argue that the narrow scope of their study does not warrant this claim. Moreover, focusing on our two studies that they have examined, we show the deterrence findings to be robust, while their work has serious flaws and their reporting appears to be selective. The selectivity is biased towards showing ‘no deterrence’.     

The Effect of Consumers’ Real-World Choice Sets on Inferences from Stated Preference Surveys

For stated preference (SP) studies, we develop a model that assesses the influence of choice set misspecification arising from the omission of perceived substitutes among real-world alternatives in the same class of goods. This problem is most likely to be present when individuals are allowed to select a “no purchase” option instead of being forced to choose from an explicit set of SP alternatives with hypothetical attribute levels. A convenient feature of our model is that researchers do not need to know exactly which omitted real substitute the individual most prefers, only the set of real substitutes that exists. In our empirical illustration, a comparison of rival models suggests researchers who overlook the presence of perceived real alternatives related to an SP experiment can end up with noticeably biased welfare estimates. Our more-general model suggests that it may be prudent for future SP researchers to anticipate, then test and possibly correct for, distortions in utility parameter estimates that result from this problem.      

Employment and the risk of domestic violence: does the breadwinner’s gender matter?

This article studies the effect on the risk of female victimization of the employment status of the woman and her partner. We use individual-level data from the violence against women surveys for Spain, which also provide information on income and a rich set of sociodemographic characteristics. To address the potential endogeneity of the binary employment indicators, we exploit exogenous geographical information on the employment and unemployment rates by gender and age, within a multivariate probit framework. Our estimation results show that male partner employment plays a major role in the risk of physical violence, while female employment only lowers it when her partner is employed too. The lowest risk appears for more egalitarian couples in which both partners are employed.     

The role of price risk in China’s agricultural and fisheries exports to the US

This article explores the effect of price risk on the US importers’ optimal allocation of agriculture imports between the major supplier, China, and other competing countries. We first modify a demand system to account for the impacts of own-price risk and cross-price risk, and then apply the model to 16 agricultural and fisheries commodities exported to the US. The estimation results show that importers are sensitive to price risks of 14 Chinese commodities. Comparisons between price risk–trade relations of agricultural and fisheries products and between trade effects of cross-price risk on Chinese goods and substitutes provide strong evidence for explaining the observed trade patterns. Our study highlights the importance of price stability in promoting international trade, especially from developing countries to developed countries.     

Banks’ efficiency and credit risk analysis using by-production approach: the case of Iranian banks

This article uses a by-production approach that integrates credit risk to monitor bank efficiency. The method overcomes the possible misspecification issues of the commonly assumed weak disposability (WDA) of undesirable outputs. In addition, our measure extends the classic by-production approach by including statistical aspects through subsampling techniques. We have also provided an algorithm to correct related infeasibilities. Using this approach, we investigate the performance of Iranian banks and credit risk management in the sector for the period 1998–2012. Non-performing loans (NPLs) have been used as an undesirable output and proxy for credit risk in our models. Based on our empirical results, although the banks generally exhibited efficiency improvements over time, their credit risk performance deteriorated considerably after the regulatory changes introduced in 2005. These findings confirm that credit quality can be monitored more actively across Iranian banks.     

Balancing the risk of ‘Lazearian’ interrupters and the benefits of educational and social peers: tracing parental preferences for class-size reduction

Using Danish survey data from a choice experiment, parental preferences for class-size reduction are estimated. While parents with children in large classes are willing to pay for class-size reduction, parents with children in small classes are reluctant and even express negative utility for further class-size reduction. We interpret this as parents balancing the risk of ‘Lazearian’ interrupters and the benefits of educational and social peers when forming their preferences for class size.