Informed Trading in Corporate Bonds Prior to Earnings Announcements

This paper examines the information content of corporate bond trading prior to earnings announcements using data from both NAIC and TRACE. We find that the direction of pre‐announcement bond trading is closely related to earnings surprises. This link is most evident prior to negative news and in high‐yield bonds. Further, abnormal bond trading during the pre‐announcement period can help predict both earnings surprises and post‐announcement bond returns. Such predictive ability of bond trading largely originates from institutional‐sized trades and is concentrated in the issuer's most actively traded bond. Finally, even after accounting for transactions costs, informed bond trading can generate significant net profits, especially prior to the release of bad news.     

EFFICIENCY AND BARGAINING POWER IN THE INTERBANK LOAN MARKET

Using detailed transactions‐level data on interbank loans, we examine the efficiency of an overnight interbank lending market and the bargaining power of its participants. Our analysis relies on the equilibrium concept of the core, which imposes a set of no‐arbitrage conditions on trades in the market. For Canada's Large Value Transfer System, we show that although the market is fairly efficient, systemic inefficiency persists throughout our sample. The level of inefficiency matches distinct phases of both the Bank of Canada's operations as well as phases of the 2007–8 financial crisis. We find that bargaining power tilted sharply toward borrowers as the financial crisis progressed and (surprisingly) toward riskier borrowers.     

Upward and downward complementarity: the meso core of evolutionary growth theory

We propose that the concept of complementarity can take two distinct meanings in evolutionary economics: one referring to Adam Smith’s notion of increasing specialization and the division of labour, which we denote ‘downward complementarity’ (wholes into new parts); and a second type that refers to the discovery of emergent complementarity between extant or new components and products, which we call ‘upward complementarity’ (parts into new wholes). We outline this new conception and explore some of its analytic and theoretic implications.     

Efficient decentralized fiscal and environmental policy: A dual purpose Henry George tax

One consequence of decentralized responsibility to set tax policy and environmental standards is that local governments might try to attract industry and jobs by underproviding local public goods with lower taxes or lax environmental standards or both. But if local authorities exploit fixed property site (i.e., land) taxation to fund local public goods, affect firm migration, and internalize potential local emission rents, herein we find decentralized efficiency is supported. This result reflects a dual form of the classic Henry George theorem previously overlooked.     

一个有远见的税收制度应当关注未来的税基——特朗普新税法的成本分析及政策建议

20世纪50年代以来,美国企业所得税税率持续下降,政府税收收入也处于较低水平。2017年,特朗普新税法的实施大幅度降低了企业所得税税率,导致政府税收损失远超预期。然而,新税法实施后,美国企业投资和长期经济增长并没有明显改善。本文认为,一个国家经济效率主要取决于税基而非税率,美国政府应通过税收制度改革,增加对企业投资和研发投入的激励,从而扩大税基,实现经济的长期改善。     

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: Why It Fails to Deter Bribery as a Global Market Entry Strategy

Recent studies (Cragg and Woof, Bus Soc Rev 107(1):98–144, 2002; Weismann, J Bus Ethics 88:615–66, 2009) revealed that in the first 28 years of its existence, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was not enforced by the federal government. The Weismann study further concluded that the FCPA, designed by Congress as a self-regulatory model of corporate governance, failed to achieve the regulatory goal of deterring global bribery by U.S. companies. The current article addresses the reasons that the FCPA remains an ineffective measure to control bribery as a global market entry strategy despite the highly publicized 2006 Department of Justice initiative to increase prosecutions and tighten enforcement efforts. The failure arises out of both the increased use of informal dispositions of case prosecutions, (including non-prosecution and deferred prosecution agreements), which has made “getting caught” merely an increased “cost of doing business” and the failure to close the regulatory gaps in the statute that permit violators to slip through the enforcement net. The article updates and compiles the case prosecution data for every reported case prosecuted between 1977 and 2011. That data are then compared to the results of a 2010 integrity risk survey performed by Deloitte Financial Advisory Services and Forbes which reveal a widely held global business perception that compliance and integrity risks appear to be rising sharply and that the FCPA is ineffective in deterring bribery and corruption in foreign markets. The article aims to serve as a predictive tool for policy makers and business professionals in assessing risk in the global markets, particularly as commerce intensifies in the BRIC countries, notable for bribery and corruption.     

Varieties of capitalism,neoliberalism and the economic crisis of 2008–?

This article examines the responses of national governments to the economic crisis that commenced in 2008. We argue that the current search for new bases for accumulation is leading to reforms designed to weaken the position of labour. Moreover, the tendency towards a weakening of labour's position was already evident across different ‘varieties of capitalism’ before the crisis erupted. We discuss the implications for comparative institutional analysis and stress the need for a renewed focus on the underlying dynamics of capitalist economies.     

An annual index of Irish industrial production, 1800–1913

We assemble the Irish industrial data currently available for the years 1800–1921, the period during which the entire island was in a political union with Great Britain, and construct an annual index of Irish industrial output for 1800–1913. We also construct a new industrial price index. Irish industrial output grew by an average of 1.3 per cent per annum between 1800 and the outbreak of the First World War. Industrial growth was slightly slower than previously thought, especially during the two decades immediately preceding the Great Famine. While Ireland did not experience absolute deindustrialisation either before the Famine or afterwards, its industrial growth was disappointing when considered in a comparative perspective.