The family life cycle concept revisited: a need for new considerations

While the family life cycle concept is widely used in the consumer behaviour literature, its value for explaining variation in buyer behaviour is less than it could be. The major problems with the concept as presently used are that: (1) it was borrowed from sociology without any basic revisions for consumer behaviour use; (2) it is presently generally operationalized as a static classificatory scheme and therefore cannot account for changing family structure; and (3) researchers have failed to link family life cycle to the concept lifestyle - another concept so crucial to explaining variations in buyer behaviour. The present paper focuses on these shortcomings and presents a model designed to make the concept more useful. Furthermore, a way of testing the model is offered. Data are presented which emphasize the need for any model to be able to incorporate the rapid change the American family is presently undergoing.     

The Effectiveness of OSHA Penalties: A Stock-Market-Based Test

This study examines shareholder reactions to the announcements of OSHA penalties in the press over the years 1979-89. The analysis demonstrates that investors react negatively to the announced sanctions over the time interval immediately surrounding the announcement day. The decreases in the values of the subject firms are, however, found to be unrelated to the relative size of the penalty, to the number of non-record-keeping violations, and to whether the penalties were attributable to employee injury or death. The findings suggest that for the stockholders the nature of the announced OSHA sanctions is largely irrelevant, and they further point toward a reassessment of the assumed deterrent impact of the penalities.     

The Behavior of Stock Prices Around Institutional Trades

All trades executed by 37 large investment management firms from July 1986 to December 1988 are used to study the price impact and execution cost of the entire sequence (“package”) of trades that we interpret as an order. We find that market impact and trading cost are related to firm capitalization, relative package size, and, most importantly, to the identity of the management firm behind the trade. Money managers with high demands for immediacy tend to be associated with larger market impact.     

Taxes,Default Risk,and Yield Spreads

This paper develops a model of bond prices and yield spreads that incorporates the effect of both taxes and differences in default probabilities. The tax loss consequences of default are recognized. Traditionally, tax-free (municipal) bond yields have been viewed as linearly related to taxable yields with a slope coefficient equal to one minus the tax rate and the intercept representing differences in default risk. While our model supports the linearity assumption, it implies that the slope and intercept are both functions of both the break-even tax rate and the default probability(ies). Clientele effects among both municipal and taxable bonds are demonstrated. Finally, the implied marginal tax rates and the implied default probabilities are estimated for different categories of municipal bonds.     

A COMPARISON OF FERTILITY ADAPTATION BETWEEN MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS TO THE U.S. AND INTERNAL MIGRANTS IN MEXICO

This paper compares fertility levels of Mexican internal migrants with United States immigrants from Mexico, in an attempt to shed light on the issues of selection and adaptation in immigration literature. The data show that U.S. immigrants from Mexico have similar levels of fertility to those of urban-urban migrants in Mexico. Though somewhat speculative, the analyses suggest that some fertility adaptation does take place. New directions for research which would be of a less speculative nature are discussed.     

Consumer Welfare and Inefficiency Among Regulated Industries

While the issue of efficiency on the side of production is still not a settled question, it is generally agreed that competition is more conductive to efficiency—both allocative and X—than monopoly. When the monopoly is regulated, i.e., receiving a rate of return less than it would if left unregulated but greater than the market rate of return, both allocative and X-inefficiency result. Since the degree of inefficiency amounts to a tax on consumers, the question of inefficiency in production has a twin companion in the form of consumer welfare losses. This is particularly true for many public utilities upon which low income families spend a large proportion of their income. The quasi tax that the regulated monopolist exacts neither generates a flow of public goods nor increases returns to shareholders. It is a particularly burdensome levy because the rate structure is highly regressive.     

中国国有工业企业劳动力冗员问题研究

科尔奈发展的预算软约束理论提出了一个引人注目的关于国营企业冗员现象的解释。然而这类文献有时忽略这样一种现象,即政府、特别是转型经济中的政府往往会让国有企业(SOES)追求一些非经济目标,并通过补贴和政策性贷款来为此提供资助。通过对大约700家国有企业的研究,我们发现在不减轻企业社会负担的情况下,预算约束的硬化是直接导致九十年代初中国国企冗员上升的主要原因之一。     

Momentum Strategies

We examine whether the predictability of future returns from past returns is due to the market's underreaction to information, in particular to past earnings news. Past return and past earnings surprise each predict large drifts in future returns after controlling for the other. Market risk, size, and book–to–market effects do not explain the drifts. There is little evidence of subsequent reversals in the returns of stocks with high price and earnings momentum. Security analysts' earnings forecasts also respond sluggishly to past news, especially in the case of stocks with the worst past performance. The results suggest a market that responds only gradually to new information.     

How Markets Process Information: News Releases and Volatility

We examine the impact of scheduled macroeconomic news announcements on interest rate and foreign exchange futures markets. We find these announcements are responsible for most of the observed time-of-day and day-of-the-week volatility patterns in these markets. While the bulk of the price adjustment to a major announcement occurs within the first minute, volatility remains substantially higher than normal for roughly fifteen minutes and slightly elevated for several hours. Nonetheless, these subsequent price adjustments are basically independent of the first minute's return. We identify those announcements with the greatest impact on these markets.