Banks and securities markets: Corporate financing in Germany and the United Kingdom

This paper compares corporate financing in the German bank-based and UK market-based systems. Large German firms pay out a lower proportion of their profits as dividends and finance a larger proportion of their investments from retentions. German banks extend more long-term finance to medium-sized firms but UK firms raise more new equity. The paper tests alternative theories of corporate finance. It finds no relation between finance and taxation, and information theories only receive limited support. Instead, it concludes that control models of corporate finance are consistent with observed patterns of finance.     

Optimal wages for politicians

I consider a society that has to decide on the wage that it offers for an elected official. Potential candidates differ in their abilities, which determines their effectiveness in office and their opportunity cost. They consider the wage when deciding whether to enter as candidates, and if they do, how hard to campaign. The remuneration for the official that maximizes ordinary citizens’ expected utility is a function of the proportion of competent voters who are better informed about the quality of the candidates and are not influenced by the campaign. I use the data on U.S. governor salaries over six decades to evaluate some implications of the model. Specifically, the proportion of the state's population with a bachelor's degree—a proxy for the proportion of competent voters—is negatively correlated with the governors’ salaries when controlled for other factors.     

农户参与农业保险的意愿与需求:山东的调查

通过对山东省400农户农业保险的问卷调查,反映农户的风险意识、参与农业保险的意愿及对农业保险的需求,分析农户参与农业保险比重低的原因,进而得出调查结论:自然灾害频发的现实需要农业保险,面对自然风险农户的保险意识淡漠,政策性农业保险是调动农户参与农业保险的重要保障,农业保险的经营模式可能成为农户参保与否的重要决策因素。应采取加强农业保险的宣传工作、培育发展农村专业合作组织、强化政府在农业保险中的作用和积极探索农业保险制度模式等相关对策措施。     

Why are Some Salespeople More Aggressive than Others?

Why are salespeople in certain industries (such as cars and mattresses) aggressive, while their counterparts in other industries (such as luxury boutiques) relatively customer-oriented? Using a principal-agent-customer model, this paper demonstrates that the level of salesperson aggressiveness depends on: (1) the proportion of customers with a high willingness to pay; (2) whether or not customers are well-informed and (3) repeat customers. If the proportion of customers with a high willingness to pay is relatively large, then salespeople tend to be customer-oriented. By contrast, if the proportion of customers with a high willingness to pay is relatively small, then salespeople tend to be aggressive toward uninformed customers while well-informed customers shun the store. Finally, if the proportion of customers with a high willingness to pay is relatively small, then in an infinitely repeated game, the agent can close sales with well-informed customers without being aggressive, provided that the principal is patient enough about future profit.     

新疆少数民族大学生就业状况调查分析

充分发挥少数民族大学毕业生的积极作用,提高其就业比率,对于新疆实现跨越式发展具有重要的现实意义。本文借助调查资料对新疆少数民族大学毕业生的就业状况进行了分析,发现少数民族大学毕业生还存在就业比例低、对就业压力的感知度较低;就业单位对其认知程度较低,其就业模式主要为正规就业;少数民族大学毕业生自身对现实的感受与客观现实存在明显偏差等问题。针对上述问题本文提出,借助政府行政手段,提高少数民族大学毕业生就业比例;实施民汉合校,加强文化交流;注重能力培养,提高综合素质;建立失业救助制度,完善就业保障机制等措施来扩大少数民族大学生的就业空间。     

Thought on self-innovation of Shanxi Province based on the comparisons of intellectual property among central six provinces

On the background that Chinese government puts forward the strategy of Central Regional Development, this paper compares the current situation among central six provinces including quantity of registered trade marks and their proportion respectively, the quantity of China top brand products and their proportion respectively, the proportion of China famous brand and the current situation of patent. Together, based on these comparisons, the author compares the capacity for innovation among these six provinces. The conclusion is that the construction of intellectual property in Shanxi, which is one of important elements effecting the establishment of regional innovation system, is relatively backward. Therefore, setting up the platform of policy, economy and technology is the important foundation to realize Shanxi self-innovation.     

Examining Agency Conflict in Horse Racing

We study UK horse racing for signs of conflict between horse owners (principals) and trainers (agents). Trainers often prepare their own horses for races in addition to having outsiders' horses in their care. Utilizing betting market data to infer the expected performance of a horse, we find that owner–trainer horses outperform outsider–trainer horses, indicating that this principal–agent relationship is characterized by agent shirking. If the owner holds a large proportion of the horses in the trainer's stable, the shirking effect may be mitigated but not eradicated. In a separate result, we find that outsider–trainer horses are more inconsistent than their owner–trainer peers. As inconsistency is a sign of betting market manipulation, this suggests that the agent in this setting extracts a second, informational rent from the principal.     

A new anatomy of the retirement process in Japan

In Japan, retirement is a gradual process that transpires over a particularly long period of time. Using large scale micro-level datasets from the Survey of Employment of the Elderly compiled by the Japanese government, we provide some stylized facts on the development of retirement behavior since the 1980s and explore factors affecting the individual retirement decision. First, we observed a general declining trend in the proportion of retired individuals aged 55–59 (especially females) while the proportion of retired individuals aged 65–69 (especially males) increased. Second, the survival analysis on actual retirement age shows that those who are more educated are more likely to retire earlier and those who experienced mandatory retirement are less likely. Third, the survival analysis on the expected retirement age shows that individuals who are satisfied with their job in terms of nonmonetary rewards are less likely to retire earlier.     

Mother’s Gender Preferences and Child Schooling in Ethiopia

This paper empirically investigates whether the quantity deficit in the children of the mother’s preferred gender is compensated through their favorable treatment in terms of investment in schooling (what we call a compensating hypothesis) in an environment where schooling opportunities are limited. We use data from siblings in two rounds of the demographic and health surveys of Ethiopia for empirical analysis. Using the gender ratio of the mother’s own siblings and the birth of same sex twins as instruments for gender ratio gap, we estimate binary choice models with clustering for school attendance using generalized instrumental variable techniques with interactive instruments. Our empirical evidence appears to be consistent with the compensating hypothesis that the larger the excess of actual proportion of girls over the mother’s desired proportion, the smaller a girl’s chance of attending school and the bigger a boy’s chance of attending school will be.     

Usury legislation,cash, and credit: the development of the female investor in the late Tudor and Stuart periods1

This article uses testamentary evidence from Lincoln diocesan court between the 1570s and the 1690s to examine links between inheritance, a rise in money‐lending amongst single women, and an increase in the proportion of women that never married. Two trends emerge: first, more fathers after the 1570s chose to bequeath cash to their daughters; second, they were more likely to restrict access to this portion by age rather than marriage. Assisted by a softening of attitudes towards interest‐bearing lending, these changes offered some single women a measure of financial independence that may have impacted on their marriage decisions.     

Cost - effectiveness analysis in practice: A case study of domestic water supplies in an African country

British aid policy calls for a large proportion of the programme to go to the poorest people in the poorest countries. This case study illustrates ways in which project selection and appraisal can aid this aim for projects whose output is non-tradeable and non-marketed but which may often be important to a poverty-focused programme. It attempts to demonstrate a framework by which such projects can consistently be examined paying particular attention to their objectives, the nature of their beneficiaries, and the recurrent budgetary implications for the host Government.     

Adopting external currencies for trade growth in the Pacific

This article reviews the currency and trade experiences of the six Pacific states that issue their own currencies: Fiji, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu. At independence, these states were advised to adopt their own currencies by the colonial powers, the International Monetary Fund, and other international organisations. The former imperial countries dominated Pacific trade, but empirical data indicate that a large and increasing proportion of trade, now with emerging Asia, denominates its trade in US dollars. This article shows that the six Pacific states manage their currencies in relation to the US dollar. Optimal currency area theory suggests that independent Pacific states would gain substantially by adopting the US dollar in the place of their own currencies. Gravity‐model estimations for all Pacific islands were used to test this hypothesis. The results suggest that replacing their own currencies with an external currency, such as the US dollar, would substantially stimulate the independent Pacific states' trade.     

Employers’ stereotypes and taste-based discrimination

Studies founded on Becker's theory of employers’ taste-based discrimination show that discrimination arises not from “taste” but from “prejudice,” “belief,” and “stereotype.” However whether the “employer” is the source of discrimination remains unanswered. Thus, survey research using employers as a sample is indispensable to address this issue. In this study, we use a unique data set that employers can identify to analyze whether their gender stereotypes are the source of gender discrimination. The analysis showed that employers' strong stereotypes reduced women's proportion in companies. Furthermore, when the employer is a woman, her stereotype strongly influences women's proportion.     

Measurement of deprivation and poverty based on the proportion spent on food: An exploratory exercise

This paper attempts to broaden the scope of poverty measurement. First, a brief review of measurements based on monetary and nutritional norms is presented. Then, it is suggested that data on the proportion spent on food (PSF) by per capita expenditure can be exploited to measure the incidence of deprivation and the incidence of poverty. It is postulated that until the food needs are satisfied, people spend relatively more of their incremental income on food and this behaviour reveals itself as increasing or invariant PSF as income (or expenditure) increases up to a critical level. The proportion of people up to that critical level are deprived of the required food and the proportion constitutes the incidence of deprivation. The average expenditure at the deprivation point (the PSF level from where its decline is clear-cut and smooth) can be used to develop an arbitrary poverty line. Data for rural India are used to illustrate the measurement of deprivation and poverty.     

Single Mothers in Russia: Household Strategies for Coping with Poverty

During the 1990s, the proportion of female-headed households as well as their poverty risk has increased rapidly. Seven rounds of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) are used to investigate the role that household living arrangements play in single-mother family income dynamics and the major factors that affect the income status of mother-only families in Russia. Enhanced earning power of the single parent as well as a higher level of child benefits increases the likelihood that the single parent family lives separately from other relatives. Increasingly single mothers are choosing to co-reside with other relatives or adults in times of economic stress.     

Businessmen and land ownership in the late nineteenth century

This article analyses the proportions of personal to real estate wealth for a group of 295 businessmen profiled in the Dictionary of business biography . It shows that businessmen who owned land on a large scale in the late nineteenth century were a comparatively small group who retained a small proportion of their total wealth in landed assets. Low levels of social mobility are identified as a function of land purchase, and new insights are given into the relationship between wealth, status, and land ownership. Any integration of business and landed wealth in this period was not a consequence of businessmen becoming landowners.     

Consumption,financial wealth and labor income in Korea

By examining the relationship between consumption, financial wealth and labor income in Korea, this paper presents three key findings. First, we find evidence that Korean households hold a larger proportion of their wealth in human capital instead of financial wealth, compared to households in other countries. Potentially, this finding appears consistent with Koreans’ enthusiasm for human development through education despite low government funding. Another important finding is that only financial wealth fluctuations contain a large portion of temporary components. Hence, financial wealth is mainly responsible for adjustments to restore the long-run relationship between consumption, financial wealth and labor income during the examined period. Third, and perhaps most interestingly, this paper finds that before the 1997 Asian financial crisis, households in Korea had difficulty smoothing their consumption over time. This finding may be at least partly attributable to households’ limited access to bank loans and their low level of financial wealth accumulation prior to the crisis. In contrast, we find little evidence that households’ consumption behavior has changed during the recent global financial crisis.     

Female salaries and careers in British banking, 1915–41

Women were first employed in large numbers by the British banking industry during the First World War, and were an essential part of the industry's labour force thereafter. During the interwar period, women were often confined to routine back office positions, and could not advance past the level of clerk. Evidence from Williams Deacon's Bank shows that the salaries of younger women were very similar to their male counterparts; however, an ever-widening gender pay gap emerged after about 5 years seniority. The main reasons for this pay gap were higher exit rates for women, largely due to marriage bars, and lower returns to seniority. Promotion restrictions, though ubiquitous, account for a relatively small proportion of the gender pay gap. Despite the pay gap, the marriage bar, and the lack of promotion opportunities, a sizable proportion of female clerks were very loyal to the Bank and remained for 10 or more years. This was due to the absence of better opportunities elsewhere in the labour market.     

上市金融企业高管薪酬体系及其监管制度催生

以我国上市金融企业为样本,采用实证研究的方法分析金融企业高管薪酬与绩效的相关性及其影响因素。研究发现,我国上市金融企业高管薪酬与公司绩效之间没有明显的相关性,高管的固定薪酬在整体薪酬中仍然占有较大比重并且相对稳定,其整体薪酬受到市场绩效指标影响的程度比财务绩效指标的程度高。这说明我国上市金融企业薪酬结构设计存在基本薪酬过于稳定且在整体薪酬中占比较高;薪酬设计缺乏弹性;对高管的薪酬激励主要以短期为主,缺乏与绩效挂钩的中长期激励等问题。须结合我国国情,对我国上市金融企业高管薪酬进行制度设计。     

The quantity–quality trade-off related to investment in healthy human capital: New evidence from the implementation of the “selective two-child policy” in China

Using data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), and employing the “selective two-child policy” as a quasi-natural experiment, this study provides empirical evidence of Becker’s quantity-quality tradeoff theory. We find that the selective two-child policy reduced households’ investment in health insurance for their first-child. The proportion of participated families and the amount invested in health insurance declined significantly among families in which one spouse was an only child. The reduction in investment in health insurance was more substantial when the first-child was a girl and when the first-child was younger. One likely mechanism was the wage penalty for motherhood. The relaxed birth policy led to a significant reduction in women’s income. As a result, households’ financial resources became more limited, and their budgets became tighter, leading to reductions in investments in the health of first-child.