Budget Cuts, Social Assistance and Voluntary Unemployment

The theory of optimal taxation has shown that bunching can be optimal under certain circumstances so that low–skilled agents are not offered any work incentives. Optimal bunching balances the marginal costs of voluntary unemployment and the marginal reduction in information rents for high–skilled workers. This paper demonstrates how the optimal scheme will change if the budget is cut. It shows that a tighter budget constraint will lead to more voluntary unemployment and less work incentives.     

The effect of reforms on employment flexibility in Chinese SOEs, 1980–94

This paper tries to document the increased flexibility in employment relations in Chinese SOEs until 1994, as well as the effects this had on productivity and on the allocation of workers. A number of measures were introduced to enhance such flexibility, such as autonomy in the decision to hire and fire workers, and a new contract status which could at least in theory be terminated. This was aimed at improving the motivation as well as the allocation of workers across firms. Both should have improved the productivity of SOEs. The evidence found, however, indicates that these measures had few effects. This conclusion is based first on turnover data where hardly any change is found. Estimates of productivity and allocative efficiency gains lead to the same conclusion. This confirms the view that the Chinese state sector reforms regarding employment decisions remained very limited in scope until 1994. JEL classification: P23, P31, J63.     

The Role of Know-How in Corporate Rejuvenation: The Case of Rover

This paper focuses on the strategic context of the K-engine innovation at Rover Group. The argument is that during the 1960s and 1970s, British Leyland's attempt to establish engineering and development capabilities was undermined by a lack of financial commitment by top management, and numerous occasions of corporate reorganisation. Later, the strategic alliance with Honda provided an opportunity for Rover's corporate rejuvenation, and was part of a clearer top management focus on how to bring new products to the market. The strategic alliance also gave Rover the chance to gain crucial organisational competencies and know-how from this joint venture. This is in contrast to previous European-Japanese joint ventures, which often saw the Japanese partner on the receiving end of know-how transfer.     

Accounting Choices: Variation in Managerial Opportunism

This study focuses on variation in managers' accounting choices given motivations to use accounting accruals opportunistically. Prior research identifies a number of motivations arising from accounting–based contracts that encourage opportunistic reporting by managers. However, prior research implicitly assumes all managers respond identically to the same contractual motivations. This study identifies variation in managers' responses to contractual motivations involving accruals that is related to managers' stewardship of corporate assets. Evidence shows that modeling how managers use corporate assets enhances the explanation of their accounting choices given motivations to (a) use accruals opportunistically, and (b) to smooth income via accruals. Managers with high ratings on judicious use of corporate assets are less responsive to motivations to use accruals opportunistically, and to smooth income via accruals, than managers with low ratings. This evidence suggests that not all managers are equally opportunistic, and that modeling this factor helps explain cross–sectional differences in managers' accounting choices.     

Zeitungsberichte im Alltagsgespräch

The article analyses media use and media effects in the Wilhelmine empire. Based on secret police reports covering conversations in pubs, it tackles the question if and how the working and lower middle classes talked about newspaper stories. An analysis of conversations about selected scandals complements this focus, which is also discussed in relation to various theories of media effects. The study highlights the strong influence of the media in the decades around 1900. People in pubs quickly and extensively picked up topics covered in the press and used them in political conversations. All of the selected scandals were also debated in pubs. Newspaper readers had an astonishingly detailed knowledge even of events unrelated to their everyday life. Workers in particular often adopted the arguments presented in the Social Democratic press. However, they appropriated news quite often in a self-willed and unconventional way. News reports were connected with personal experiences, twisted in a playful and humorous way, or loaded with emotional exaggerations.     

Explicit Representation of the Minimal Variance Portfolio in Markets Driven by Lévy Processes

In a market driven by a Lévy martingale, we consider a claim ξ. We study the problem of minimal variance hedging and we give an explicit formula for the minimal variance portfolio in terms of Malliavin derivatives. We discuss two types of stochastic (Malliavin) derivatives for ξ: one based on the chaos expansion in terms of iterated integrals with respect to the power jump processes and one based on the chaos expansion in terms of iterated integrals with respect to the Wiener process and the Poisson random measure components. We study the relation between these two expansions, the corresponding two derivatives, and the corresponding versions of the Clark-Haussmann-Ocone theorem.