The Effect of Windfall Gains on the Sunk-Cost Effect

Prior research has extensively documented the sunk-cost effect – an irrational attention to irrecoverable past costs while making pending investment or consumption decisions. In a series of experiments, we show that the sunk-cost effect weakens and sometimes disappears when consumers receive a windfall (unexpected) income at the time of making a decision. This unbudgeted income allows consumers to write off their past losses, thereby eliminating the pressure to consume in order to satisfactorily close the account. We further show that the similarity between the nature of the windfall income and the past sunk-cost moderates this relationship. More generally, we argue that mental accounts can be flexible and consumers may have discretion in moving money between different mental accounts.     

Is the emergence of new sovereign wealth funds a fashion phenomenon?

The paper deals with the important financial policy issue of the decision for a country to establish a sovereign wealth fund (SWF). Using a large-scale database, we analyze the economic, political and institutional factors that should be considered in such a decision. In particular, we test if the emergence of SWFs and more specifically of a specific type of SWFs can be explained by the following factors: the excess foreign exchange reserves due to natural resources rents or persistent current account surpluses; the volatility of commodity prices; the appreciation of the real exchange rate leading to the “Dutch Disease” effect and the governance of the country. The results suggest that countries with excess foreign exchange reserves, which are dependent on a commodity and which suffer from an appreciation of the real exchange rate are more likely to create a fund. We also find that commodity-based funds tend to be established in low democratic countries. Finally, our results suggest that the factors driving SWFs creation are different depending on the origin of the funding (commodity or non-commodity) and the macroeconomic objective(s) assigned to the fund. Our results may be of interest for policymakers debating whether or not it can be optimal for the country to establish a SWF.     

A systematic approach for ranking football players within an integrated DEA‐OWA framework

The ranking of players has always been an important input for key decisions in the football industry. This paper introduces a systematic methodology for ranking football players through objective performance factors within a framework that integrates data envelopment analysis and ordered weighted averaging operators. Players from European Premier League Football clubs are selected and ranked under a decision setting that involves the players' desirable and undesirable performance factors alongside the attitude of the decision maker. The robustness of the proposed methodology is evaluated using different levels of optimism of the decision maker.     

Board Effectiveness and the Voluntary Disclosure of Climate Change Information

This paper examines the relationship between board of directors' effectiveness and voluntary climate change disclosures. Since risk management and reporting fall under the board's responsibility, we relate board effectiveness to the firm's decision to voluntarily respond to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) annual questionnaire as well as the quality of disclosures about climate‐change‐related risks and strategies to mitigate them. Our results show a positive association between board effectiveness and the firm's decision to answer the CDP questionnaire as well as its carbon disclosure quality. The paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the determinants of voluntary climate change disclosures. Our findings highlight the importance of the board of directors' role in enhancing the transparency and relevance of voluntary disclosures of climate change business impacts. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Enhancing Security Value by Ownership Restrictions: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

We present new evidence from a natural experiment to show circumstances in which ownership restrictions can enhance value. Our evidence is based on multiple restricted bond issues by an emerging market issuer at 150 basis points lower than comparable bonds, resulting in a billion dollars saving. This is intriguing: how can an emerging market issuer with junk bond ratings obtain such low yields? We argue ownership restrictions enhance value since they enable an issuer to precommit to renegotiate efficiently with a favored clientele in the potential default states, thereby circumventing deadweight costs of prolonged negotiations, particularly when the restricted clientele also values the underlying collateral higher than other investors. Ownership restrictions can also result in a transfer of value from holders of unrestricted bonds to holders of restricted bonds because of implicit seniority of the latter. We empirically test and find support for both value enhancement and value transfer and show robustness to several alternative explanations. Our evidence suggests that firms can benefit from designing securities with ownership restrictions, by offering new securities exclusively to investors who value them the most.     

Separation of Ownership from Control and Acquiring Firm Performance: The Case of Family Ownership in Canada

Abstract:   This study investigates the relationship between ownership structure and acquiring firm performance. A large proportion of Canadian public companies have controlling shareholders (families) that often exercise control over voting rights while holding a small fraction of the cash flow rights. This is achieved through the concurrent use of dual class voting shares and stock pyramids. Many suggest that these ownership structures involve larger agency costs than those imposed by dispersed ownership structures and that they distort corporate decisions with respect to investment choices such as acquisitions. We find that average acquiring firm announcement period abnormal returns for our sample of 327 Canadian transactions are positive over the 1998–2002 period. Cash deals, acquisitions of unlisted targets and cross‐border deals have a positive impact on value creation. Governance mechanisms (outside block‐holders, unrelated directors and small board size) also have a positive influence on the acquiring firm performance. Further, the positive abnormal returns are greater for family firms. We do not find that separation of ownership and control has a negative impact on performance. These results suggest that, contrary to other jurisdictions offering poor minority shareholder protection or poor corporate governance, separation of control and ownership is not viewed as leading to value destroying mergers and acquisitions, i.e., market participants do not perceive families as using M&A to obtain private benefits at the expense of minority shareholders. We do find a non‐monotonic relationship between ownership level and acquiring firm abnormal returns. Ownership of a majority of the cash flow rights has a negative impact on announcement returns. This is consistent with the view that large shareholders may undertake less risky projects as their wealth invested in the firm increases.     

Economics, Psychology, and Social Dynamics of Consumer Bidding in Auctions

With increasing numbers of consumers in auction marketplaces, we highlight some recent approaches that bring additional economic, social, and psychological factors to bear on existing economic theory to better understand and explain consumers' behavior in auctions. We also highlight specific research streams that could contribute towards enriching existing economic models of bidding behavior in emerging market mechanisms. This paper is based on the special session at the 6th Triennial Invitational Choice Symposium, University of Colorado Boulder, June 2004 (co-chaired by the first two authors).     

Anticipated monetary policy and real output: evidence from Latin American countries

This paper is an empirical investigation of the effects of anticipated and unanticipated monetary policies on real output for 13 LDCs in Latin and Central America. The well-know Mishkin econometric procedure is applied to the annual IMF date for the decomposition of actual money growth into anticipated and unanticipated components and the evidence of significant relation between anticipated money supply and real output for each country is reported. The results derived in this paper thus provide additional empirical support for the validity of the ‘non-classical rational expectations’ macro models of Fisher, and Phelps and Taylor.     

Impact of wireless telecommunications standards and regulation on the evolution of wireless technologies and services over Internet protocol

Beginning with the historical role and importance of multi-physical standards in wireless telecommunications for the future in the US, Japan and Europe, this paper provides a cohesive vision of how wireless communication, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) is likely to develop. Also covered in this paper are its benefits, the technical and regulatory support required to realize this vision and an assessment of its potential impact on the structure of the telecommunications industry. Although the competitive structure of the Internet is relatively open, several factors, such as frequency allocation policy and radio interface standards, could block the efficient evolution of wireless services to an IP platform. The paper proposes two major technical requirements to enable effective competition in wireless VoIP and achieve greater technical productivity.