The impact of political connections on government bailout: the 2008 credit crunch in the United States

Why is there so little money in contributions to political action committees (PAC) in United States’ politics? While there may be several explanations for this puzzle, we consider corporate PAC contributions as an insurance-like instrument that induces firms’ expectations of safeguard at times of grave need, with the 2008 credit crunch as a case in point. Given the unlikely occurrence of a credit crunch, few financial firms invest in PAC contributions. However, we find firms that make PAC contributions may gain ex ante benefits of corporate PACs as protection from financial distress by undertaking profitable but risky projects that later become illiquid assets while requiring the bailout money during the 2008 credit crunch. We also find that both consistent PAC investments over election cycles and subsequent lobbying activity to corporate PACs further allow firms to utilize their political ties as safeguard and demand additional bailout money. Our instrumental variable analysis confirms that firms with prior experience in political investments are found to enhance the likelihood and effectiveness of PAC contributions and related political investments.     

The impact of international outsourcing on individual employment security: A micro-level analysis

The paper analyzes how international outsourcing affected individual employment security. The analysis is carried out at the micro-level, combining monthly spell data from household panel data and industry-level outsourcing measures. By utilizing micro-level data, problems such as aggregation and potential endogeneity bias, as well as crude skill approximations that regularly hamper industry level displacement studies, can be reduced considerably. The main finding is that international outsourcing significantly lowers individual employment security. Interestingly, the effect does, however, not differ between high-, medium-, and low-skilled workers but only varies with job duration.     

Residential energy demand in the United States: A regional econometric analysis

A static equilibrium and a dynamic partial adjustment model of residential demand for electricity and natural gas are presented and estimated for the United States over a recent period characterized by sharply increasing energy prices. The static model is estimated using Ordinary Least Squares while the instrumental variables method is used for the dynamic partial adjustment model. The estimates of long-run elasticities suggest the residential demand for electricity and natural gas are price and income elastic. Intercept and slope dummies used in the models identify significant regional differences in demand functions.     

The pattern of demand in the United States.

The objective of this paper is to examine the demand for goods and services in the United States using the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS). The focus is on testing the theoretical properties of demand. The model fits the data well. The suggestion is that food, clothing, housing and transportation are necessities while medical care and recreation are luxuries. The notion of homogeneity is generally accepted while symmetry is soundly rejected. Finally, negativity is shown to hold.     

Measuring voting power in an international institution: the United States and the inter-American development bank

This paper applies a measure of relative voting power to the weighted voting system of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). Almost all assessments of internal governance of the IADB and other international financial institutions make reference to members' votes as a proxy for relative influence. But as this paper demonstrates, voting weights are misleading. The number of votes a country has in a weighted voting system does not necessarily denote its ability to affect outcomes. The conventional wisdom holds that the United States is omnipotent in the IADB because it has a large number (over 30 percent) of all the votes. This paper reveals that the U.S. obtains much more control over outcomes than originally intended by the institutions' designers. Received: September 2000 / Accepted: October 2001     

The optimal timing of initial public offerings in the course of privatization: Theory and an illustrative application

Privatization has been studied primarily from the standpoint of the post-privatization performance of state-owned firms (SOEs) or of various ways of valuing and privatizing them, but little attention has been paid to the timing of privatization. In this paper we use real options analysis to consider a situation where the government has the option to delay a planned privatization in the expectation that exogenous events may make the firm more valuable to outside investors in the future. In addition to considering the theoretical aspects of the problem, we apply our model to Taiwan's privatization program to add to the understanding of the role of option value in an actual privatization program. Our results suggest that the (mis)timing of privatization represents significant losses for the government and for investors.     

The distribution of changes in manufacturing employment and the impact of the minimum wage

That employment for workers in durable goods industries is more sensitive to the pace of economic activity than for non-durable goods employees is not a surprising result. What is noteworthy about the conclusions of this study, however, is the manner in which increases in the minimum wage have altered the distribution of employment and sensitivity to short-run changes in employment of production workers in manufacturing industries. By focusing on the distribution of employment and how that distribution changes over the cycle, estimates of some aspects of the impact of the minimum wage that have not previously been analyzed have been developed.The evidence indicates that increases in the minimum wage over the period 1947–1975 have had a significant impact on employment patterns. Minimum wage legislation has had the effect of decreasing the share of projected employment and increasing vulnerability to cyclical changes in employment for the group of workers most ‘marginal’ to the work force low-wage industry employees. Hence, as a result of increased minimum wages, low-wage industry employees are able to obtain fewer jobs during periods of normal employment growth and their jobs are less secure in the face of short-run employment variations.Minimum wage legislation has undoubtedly resulted in higher wages for some of the relatively-low-productivity workers who were able to obtain employment than these workers would have received in its absence. The cost in terms of lost employment opportunities and cyclical vulnerability of jobs, however, has apparently been borne most heavily by low-wage industry employees. The primary beneficiaries of the shifts in the pattern of employment shares occasioned by minimum wage increases were high-wage industry workers, particularly in the ordnance, food, tobacco, and petroleum industries.     

Reapplication and extension: intergenerational mobility in the United States

This paper replicates and extends Solon's [Am. Econ. Rev. 82 (1992) 393–408.] article “Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States ”. The results confirm previous findings about the degree of transmission in earnings and consumption from fathers to sons. The correlation between fathers' and sons' earnings lies in the neighborhood of 0.4 and the correlation in consumption is larger. Using the sons' outcomes when they are 5 years older does not alter the estimates of the correlation in earnings, but the estimates of the correlation in consumption are smaller and closer to the estimates of the correlation in earnings. The estimates that use consumption data are sensitive to whether sons' 1984 or 1989 outcomes are used and to whether one adjusts for family size and structure.     

The impact of management on the engagement and well-being of high emotional labour employees

Australia, like many other countries, suffers high turnover of nurses and police officers. Contributions to effectively manage the turnover challenge have been called for, and there are few Australian studies of nursing/policing turnover intentions. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of supervisor–subordinate relationships and perceived organisational support (POS) upon engagement, well-being, organisational commitment and turnover intentions. Second, we examined the similarities and differences between nursing and policing work contexts. The retention of nurses/police has been investigated from traditional management perspectives; however, we used a different theoretical approach – social exchange theory – and evaluated its utility as a framework. Findings are from Australian data collected during 2010–2011 from 510 nurses and 193 police officers, using a survey-based, self-report strategy. Partial least squares path modelling was used to analyse these data. Results indicated that for both samples, engagement predicts well-being and then, well-being predicts affective commitment and intentions to leave. MANOVA results suggested that nurses had significantly higher levels of satisfaction with their supervisor–subordinate relationships, POS, engagement, well-being and affective commitment than police officers. Only the intention to leave was similar for both groups. Given that turnover can be influenced by supervisors/management, this study provides new knowledge about targeted retention strategies.     

Innovative practices in public procurement partnerships: The case of the United States

Public procurement partnerships represent a new approach to conducting government acquisition. These partnerships are predicated on the notion that governments today simply lack the requisite knowledge, skills and financing to provide core public services and acquire sophisticated services, IT and knowledge development by themselves. Instead, governments need to enlist the collective energies of the governmental, business and non-profit (third) sectors. This research looks at the concept of public procurement partnerships in the United States and the major trends promoting their use. Two case examples of public procurement partnerships are presented; one from the perspective of a government partner, the other from the perspective of a private (third) sector partner.     

浅谈美中两国学校心理学的职业化方向

面对21世纪社会、教育和个人发展的更高要求,我国学校心理学的职业化方向整体水平还比较落后。学习借鉴美国有益的经验与做法,更加科学、有效地促进我国学校心理学的职业化方向,是当前我国学校心理教育的一项重要课题。本文作者根据美国学校心理学的特点和当前中国学校心理学的发展实际,提出了中国学校心理学发展的职业化方向。     

The Effect of Incentive Regulation in Telecommunications in the United States

Incentive regulation is now an important regulatory tool in the telecommunications industry in the United States. The issue explored here is whether incentive regulation has resulted in an increase in productive efficiency. After providing an overview of the nature of incentive regulation, one methodology for measuring the effects of incentive regulation on productive efficiency is reviewed. This methodology is data envelopment analysis (DEA) and allows for the measurement of both scale efficiency and technical efficiency of individual local exchange carriers. The results indicate that most local exchange carriers were technically efficient over the 1988–1998 period. Four LECs, however, consistently demonstrate scale inefficiency. In the aggregate, however, based on the DEA results there was no identifiable improvement in aggregate LECs' technical efficiency between 1988 and 1998. Subsequently, an alternative methodology, a stochastic frontier production function approach, is considered. The results from this methodology confirm that there was no change in technical efficiency over the period of study, something that incentive regulation was specifically designed to enhance.     

The Impact of Incentive Regulation on Service Quality in Telecommunications in the United States

Incentive regulation in the form of price caps was adopted for interstate access servicein 1991 as a way to provide local exchange carriers with an incentive to improve theirproductive efficiency. An issue that has arisen with the adoption of price cap regulationis whether deterioration in service quality for interstate access service has been an unintended consequence. The analysis in this paper uses several different measures ofservice quality, including the average installation interval, the percent of commitmentsmet, total trouble reports, and the average repair interval for both switched access service and special access service, to investigate empirically whether there has been a decline in service quality between 1991 and 2000. The results are conclusive. Overall service quality has fallen. To rectify the situation, a proposal is offered to adjust the price cap index to penalize LECs who fail to provide an acceptable level of aggregate service quality.     

浅析中美高校贷款

中国和美国这两个国家,不仅是经济大国,也是教育大国。他们有不同的经济政治制度,也有不同的文化背景。这两个国家的高校贷款问题也是不一样的。本文将从高校贷款产生和现状,高校贷款利率,高校贷款形式三方面进行比较。     

My Comments on the Values of The United States——Equality of Opportunity and Competition

In spite of the gap,these cultural values have played an important role in forming the basic characteristics of Americans and in American social life.     

The adoption of HIV/AIDS policies and practices in businesses in Botswana: an exploratory study

This paper contributes to an under-researched area through an exploration of the factors motivating the adoption of HIV/AIDS policies and practices in businesses in Botswana. The focus of analysis is a developing country where HIV/AIDS is acknowledged to have had a detrimental impact on its human resources. The objective of this research was to assess whether a voluntary, non-legally binding National Policy on HIV/AIDS is an adequate motivator for the adoption of HIV/AIDS policies in businesses. The study engaged employers and managers across a number of key sectors in Botswana. The findings are explored through a theoretical lens that acknowledges institutional isomorphism and rational economic decision-making as potential motivating factors. The data indicate that the National Policy on HIV/AIDS had motivated certain businesses to adopt such policies, but a variety of other factors were also found to be involved in this process. There was, however, lack of engagement with the National Policy and with issues surrounding HIV/AIDS by a high number of the participating organisations. The research findings reveal the complexity of factors involved in adopting HIV/AIDS policies in a developing country, and therefore provide an insight in an under-researched area. They can serve as a foundation for future research on human resource management policies and practices in relation to HIV/AIDS in African economies.     

美日中小企业融资方式给中国的启示

本文首先对美日两国的中小企业的融资方式进行比较,然后又研究了中国中小企业的融资的方式,并与美日进行比较,在此基础上得出对中国中小企业融资方式的经验和启示。