Neglected Risks in the Communication of Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Offerings

Examining the contractual disclosures during the sale of private-label residential mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis, we find that textual contents in the risk-factor section predict subsequent losses and yet were not reflected in pricing. Insurance companies, especially life insurers and insurers with low regulatory capital ratios, are more exposed to textual risks. Consistent with issuers hedging litigation risks with disclosure, we find that textual contents are associated with second-lien underreporting and preissuance written communications. Overall, we find that investors neglected risks in the purportedly safe assets before the crisis.     

TRANSACTION COST IMPAIRMENTS TO INTERNATIONAL TRADE: LESSONS FROM EGYPT

Increasing evidence indicates the relative importance of transaction costs in international market penetration by LDC manufactured goods exporters. This paper identifies the sources and nature of these costs and recommends policies capable of helping LDC exporters overcome transaction cost-based obstacles to such exports. Data for the analysis are from questionnaires addressed to samples of manufactures exporters and trading intermediaries in Egypt.     

The Impact of Public Information on the Stock Market

We study the relation between the number of news announcements reported daily by Dow Jones & Company and aggregate measures of securities market activity including trading volume and market returns. We find that the number of Dow Jones announcements and market activity are directly related and that the results are robust to the addition of factors previously found to influence financial markets such as day-of-the-week dummy variables, news importance as proxied by large New York Times headlines and major macroeconomic announcements, and noninformation sources of market activity as measured by dividend capture and triple witching trading. However, the observed relation between news and market activity is not particularly strong and the patterns in news announcements do not explain the day-of-the-week seasonalities in market activity. Our analysis of the Dow Jones database confirms the difficulty of linking volume and volatility to observed measures of information.     

Labour and Tory Economic Policies: Both Frustrated by Non-Economic Forces?

Professor Rose demonstrates how the Thatcher Government's progress is much closer to that of her Labour predecessor than is realised. His graphs demonstrate dramatically how much political courage will be required to prevent welfare spending and trade union obstructions to growth dragging Government policies into the same traps.     

A General Neutral Profits Tax

‘We need investment decisions based on future market assessments, not future tax assessments’ (Chancellor of the Exchequer, Budget Speech 1984) ‘… an ideal tax system would be as neutral as possible towards private decisions’ (US Treasury, 1984, vol. 1, p. 13)     

The Great American Job Creation Machine in Comparative Perspective

Job creation is mainly a product of demographic changes and changes in social structure, particularly an increased supply of young and/or cheap labor. It is unrelated to unemployment rates or other measures of economic performance and their causes; it results in lower earnings growth and slower long-run productivity gains. If job creation is little affected by demand policies, the appropriate response is less boasting about employment gains and more attention to reshaping the supply and quality of labor.     

How Are Firms Sold?

As measured by the number of bidders that publicly attempt to acquire a target, the takeover arena in the 1990s appears noncompetitive. However, we provide novel data on the pre‐public, private takeover process that indicates that public takeover activity is only the tip of the iceberg of actual takeover competition during the 1990s. We show a highly competitive market where half of the targets are auctioned among multiple bidders, while the remainder negotiate with a single bidder. In event study analysis, we find that the wealth effects for target shareholders are comparable in auctions and negotiations.