Memberships Levels in U. S. Private Clubs During the 2008–2010 Economic Downturn

This study measured membership changes in private clubs in the United States during the economic downturn from 2008 to 2010. Specifically examined were the changes clubs experienced with their number of members, waiting lists, and attrition rates. A letter was sent via e-mail to the same 1,000 private clubs that were sent a survey in a similar study conducted by Ferreira and Gustafson (2006 Ferreira, R. R. and Gustafson, C. M. 2006. Declining memberships during an economic downturn in U.S. private clubs. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, 7(2/3): 3–18. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) The managers of these clubs were members of the Club Managers Association of America. The majority of respondents managed country clubs and member-owned clubs, representing different areas of the United States. An overall response rate of 53% was achieved. Most clubs experienced a decrease in the overall number of members and an increase in annual attrition rate. Fewer clubs reported having a waiting list of members wanting to join. The clubs without waiting lists reported a larger number of membership openings in their clubs. The results of this study suggest the levels of memberships in many private clubs are heavily influenced by economic conditions. An implication from this study is that clubs need to implement membership development strategies during economic downturns because of the decline in the number of members, candidates proposed, and waiting lists during these periods.     

Central bank disclosure as a macroprudential tool for financial stability

The Basel Capital Accord (pillar 3) states that disclosure of information (transparency) is essential to financial stability. This study analyzes, through inflation reports, the disclosure of information from the Central Bank of Brazil concerning the credit market. We consider credit risk and capital buffers as measures of financial stability in this analysis. Furthermore, in order to measure the perception of the monetary authority on the credit market, we built two indices based on the central bank’s communication on credit development. We performed a panel data analysis based on a sample of 125 banks for the period from June 1999 to September 2014 (7000 observations). The findings suggest that central bank communication regarding expectations concerning the credit market contributes to financial stability. Therefore, this kind of communication of central banks (about credit development) may constitute an important macroprudential tool to improve financial stability.     

You can take it with you: Proposition 13 tax benefits,residential mobility,and willingness to pay for housing amenities

The endogeneity of prices has long been recognized as the main identification problem in the estimation of marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for the characteristics of a given product. This issue is particularly important in the housing market, since a number of housing and neighborhood features are unobserved by the econometrician. This paper proposes the use of a well defined type of transaction costs–moving costs generated by property tax laws–to deal with this type of omitted variable bias. California's Proposition 13 property tax law is the source of variation in transaction costs used in the empirical analysis. Beyond its fiscal consequences, Proposition 13 created a lock-in effect on housing choice because of the implicit tax break enjoyed by homeowners living in the same house for a long time. Its importance to homeowners is estimated from a natural experiment created by two amendments that allow households headed by an individual over the age of 55 to transfer the implicit tax benefit to a new home. Indeed, 55-year old homeowners have 25% higher moving rates than those of comparable 54 year olds. These transaction costs from the property tax laws are then incorporated into a household sorting model. The key insight is that because of the property tax laws, different potential buyers may have different user costs for the same house. The exogenous property tax component of this user cost is then used as an instrumental variable. I find that MWTP estimates for housing characteristics are approximately 100% upward biased when the choice model does not account for the price endogeneity.     

Strategic R&D investment,competitive toughness and growth

We show, within a single industry, the possibility that R&D‐investment is non‐monotonically related to competitive toughness: increasing when competition is soft and decreasing when competition is tough. This possibility results from the combination of a Schumpeterian markup squeezing effect discouraging innovation, and a concentration effect spurring innovators. It is obtained in a sectoral model where the number of innovators is random and where non‐successful investors may remain productive. The result is extended to a multisectoral stochastic endogenous growth model with overlapping generations of consumers and firms, the number of which is endogenously determined in the capital market.     

Calm After the Storms: Income Distribution and Welfare in Chile, 1987-94

After rising during most—but not all—of the 1960–85period, inequality in Chile seems to have stabilized since around1987. Following the stormy period of economic and politicalreforms of the 1970s and 1980s, no statistically significantLorenz dominance results could be detected since 1987. Scalarmeasures of inequality confirm this picture of stability, butsuggest a slight change in the shape of the density function,with some compression at the bottom being "compensated for"by a stretching at the top. As inequality remained broadly stable,sustained economic growth led to substantial welfare improvementsand poverty reduction, according to a range of measures andwith respect to three different poverty lines. Poverty mixedstochastic dominance tests confirm this result. All of thesefindings are robust to different choices of equivalence scales.     

Sense and sensibility: Testing an attention-based view of organizational responses to social issues

According to attention-based theories, to explain organizational attention is to explain organizational behavior. In our study, we test the model of situated attention and firm behavior by examining the effects of attention structures and allocation of attention on organizational outcomes. We hypothesize a positive relationship between attention structures and the allocation of organizational attention that, in turn, has an effect on financial performance. Using a unique data set composed of indicators of social responsibility published by 338 Brazilian organizations between 2001 and 2007, we find support for our hypotheses. Our findings suggest that organizational attention to social issues fully mediates the relationship between attention structures and financial performance.     

Conditional beta pricing models: A nonparametric approach

We propose a two-stage procedure to estimate conditional beta pricing models that allows for flexibility in the dynamics of asset betas and market prices of risk (MPR). First, conditional betas are estimated nonparametrically for each asset and period using the time-series of previous data. Then, time-varying MPR are estimated from the cross-section of returns and betas. We prove the consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimators. We also perform Monte Carlo simulations for the conditional version of the three-factor model of Fama and French (1993) and show that nonparametrically estimated betas outperform rolling betas under different specifications of beta dynamics. Using return data on the 25 size and book-to-market sorted portfolios, we find that the nonparametric procedure produces a better fit of the three-factor model to the data, less biased estimates of MPR and lower pricing errors than the Fama–MacBeth procedure with betas estimated under several alternative parametric specifications.     

Firm Shutdown During the Financial and the Sovereign Debt Crises: Empirical Evidence from Portugal

This paper examines Portuguese firms’ survival over the business cycle and investigates whether the effect of firm size varies across the phases of the cycle and with the type of shock associated with periods of economic contraction. Our results show that smaller firms are more likely to shut down than larger firms. Within each size band, however, we found that during the two crises examined, micro firms experienced hazards of closing (relative to large firms) at least similar to those observed in the pre-crisis period, while medium-sized firms were found to have been more vulnerable during the financial crisis period but showed more resilience during the sovereign debt crisis. The results suggest that during the sovereign debt crisis, firms faced a higher probability of closing than they did during the financial crisis.     

Rising Food Prices and Household Welfare: Evidence from Brazil in 2008

Food price inflation in Brazil in the 12 months to June 2008 was 18%, whereas overall inflation was 7%. Using spatially disaggregated monthly data on consumer prices and two different household surveys, we estimate the welfare consequences of these food price increases, and their distribution across households. Because Brazil is a large food producer, with a predominantly wage‐earning agricultural labour force, our estimates include general equilibrium effects on market and transfer incomes, as well as the standard estimates of changes in consumer surplus. Although the expenditure (or consumer surplus) effects were large, negative and markedly regressive everywhere, estimates of the market‐income effect were positive and progressive, particularly in rural areas. Because of this effect on the rural poor, and of the partial protection afforded by increases in two large social assistance benefits, the overall impact of higher food prices in Brazil was U‐shaped, with middle‐income groups suffering larger proportional losses than the very poor. Nevertheless, as Brazil is 80% urban, higher food prices still led to a greater incidence and depth of poverty at the national level.     

Women in the boardroom and their impact on governance and performance

We show that female directors have a significant impact on board inputs and firm outcomes. In a sample of US firms, we find that female directors have better attendance records than male directors, male directors have fewer attendance problems the more gender-diverse the board is, and women are more likely to join monitoring committees. These results suggest that gender-diverse boards allocate more effort to monitoring. Accordingly, we find that chief executive officer turnover is more sensitive to stock performance and directors receive more equity-based compensation in firms with more gender-diverse boards. However, the average effect of gender diversity on firm performance is negative. This negative effect is driven by companies with fewer takeover defenses. Our results suggest that mandating gender quotas for directors can reduce firm value for well-governed firms.