Commodity money inflation: theory and evidence from France in 1350–1436

This paper presents a theory of inflation in commodity money and supports it by evidence from inflationary episodes in France during the 14th and 15th centuries. The paper shows that commodity money can be inflated similarly to fiat money through repeated debasements, which act like devaluations. Furthermore, as with fiat money, demand for commodity money falls with inflation. However, at high rates of inflation demand for commodity money becomes insensitive to inflation, since commodity money has intrinsic value in addition to its transactions value. Finally, we show that anticipated stabilization reduces demand for commodity money.     

Technical change in the commercial aircraft industry, 1925–1975

The American commercial aircraft industry has complied an extremely impressive record of performance in innovation and growth in output. This paper assesses the impact of government policy during a fifty-year period upon innovative performance and market structure in the commercial aircraft industry. In general, this apparent success of government policies in supporting rapid technical change in the industry reflects the impact of these policies upon both the supply of technological knowledge and the demand for innovative aircraft designs. The success of this policy structure has implications for technology policies in other industries.     

An Incomplete Audit at the Earnings Announcement: Implications for Financial Reporting Quality and the Market's Response to Earnings

There has been a substantial increase, since 2004, in the number of firms that announce annual earnings before audit completion as opposed to after audit completion. In this study, we argue that earnings announced before audit completion are associated with lower financial reporting quality and investor perceptions that earnings are more likely to be overstated. Consistent with this expectation, we document that the market places more (less) weight on good (bad) earnings news for earnings announced after audit completion relative to earnings announced before audit completion. We continue to find this differential market response when we expand the returns window to include the 10‐K filing date, suggesting that the differential response is not driven by investors' temporary concerns about earnings revisions between the earnings announcement and the 10‐K filing date or by differential GAAP disclosures in the earnings announcement, as suggested in prior research. Finally, as a direct test of financial reporting quality, we show that earnings announced with a completed audit are less likely to be restated in the future, are less likely to meet or beat expectations, and are associated with fewer income‐increasing discretionary accruals than those announced with an incomplete audit.     

Complementarities and competition: Unpacking the drivers of entrants' technology choices in the solar photovoltaic industry

Entrants in new industries pursue distinct technologies in hopes of winning the technology competition and achieving sustainable competitive advantage. We draw on the complementary assets framework to predict entrants' technology choices in an emerging industry. Evidence from the global solar photovoltaic industry supports our arguments that entrants are more likely to choose technologies with higher technical performance and for which key complementary assets are available in the ecosystem. However, diversifying entrants are more likely to trade off superior performance for complementary asset availability whereas start‐up entrants are more likely to trade off complementary asset availability for superior performance. This difference is largely due to diversifying entrants with pre‐entry capabilities related to the industry. The study offers a novel illustration of how complementarities and competition shape entry strategies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Not all Risk Taking is Born Equal: The Behavioral Agency Model and CEO's Perception of Firm Efficacy

We examine the relationship between agent (CEO) risk bearing and the quality of executive risk‐taking outcomes, by examining the contingency effect of CEO perceived firm efficacy. In doing so, we extend the behavioral agency model (BAM) beyond predictions of risk magnitude to examining how CEO risk‐taking outcomes differ qualitatively in response to risk bearing. We argue that CEO risk bearing (due to stock options or cash compensation) will positively influence performance outcomes in the presence of higher perceived firm efficacy. However, this positive influence reverses when efficacy is lower. We demonstrate the utility of firm efficacy in exploring the effect of agent risk bearing on performance outcomes and provide the insight that the CEO pay‐performance relationship is influenced by the CEO’s perception of firm efficacy. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Forecasting time-varying covariance with a range-based dynamic conditional correlation model

This paper proposes a range-based dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) model combined by the return-based DCC model and the conditional autoregressive range (CARR) model. The substantial gain in efficiency of volatility estimation can boost the accuracy for estimating time-varying covariances. As to the empirical study, we use the S&P 500 stock index and the 10-year treasury bond futures to examine both in-sample and out-of-sample results for six models, including MA100, EWMA_, CCC_, BEKK, return-based DCC, and range-based DCC. Of all the models considered, the range-based DCC model is largely supported in estimating and forecasting the covariance matrices.     

Rethinking economic development

I provide a summary, reflection and assessment of the current state of economic development in both the policy and academic worlds. In terms of development policy, currently, the primary focus is on policy interventions, namely, foreign aid, aimed at fixing the “deficiencies” of developing countries. Academic research also has a similar focus, except with an emphasis in rigorous evaluation of interventions to estimate causal effects. A standard set of versatile quantitative tools is used, e.g., experimental and quasi‐experimental methods, which can be easily applied in a range of settings to estimate the causal effects of policies, which are typically presumed to be similar across contexts. In this article, I take a step back and ask whether the current practices are the best that we can do. Are foreign aid and policy interventions the best options we have for poverty alleviation? What else can be done? Is our current research strategy, characterized by rigorous but a lack of context‐specific analysis, the best method of analysis? Is there a role for other research methods, for a deeper understanding of the local context and for more collaboration with local scholars?     

Should refusal to sell be illegal?

We analyse a private firm's decision of whether to refuse to sell to a particular group of consumers whose interaction with other consumers generates negative externalities. The literature has rarely incorporated this motive directly into the firm's profit-maximisation problem. Discriminatory refusal-to-sell policies can increase profits and consumer utility among those affected by the negative externality. Of course it also reduces utility among consumers who are refused, raising the possibility of an indeterminate effect on social welfare. We obtain a stark and rather surprising result: The refusal-to-sell policy is socially optimal whenever it is individually optimal for a profit-maximising firm to adopt such a policy. No legislation or regulation is required from a social-welfare perspective (under the assumptions used in the specification of the social welfare function). We prove this result analytically for the case of linear demand functions. Numerical simulations show that the result also holds for constant-price-elasticity demand functions.     

Schooling,numeracy, and wealth accumulation: A study involving an agrarian population

Accumulating wealth is one of the main concerns for consumers. Higher education is widely associated with higher wealth, but the underlying reasons for this association remain unclear. Using data from a field study conducted with 218 adults in agrarian communities in Peru's Andean highlands, we explored the extent to which education, non-numeric fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, and numeracy skills were related to wealth. Wealth was measured using data on asset ownership (e.g., owning a fridge) and housing characteristics (e.g., toilet facilities). Structural equation modeling revealed that the level of schooling was associated with greater numeracy as well as greater non-numeric fluid and crystallized intelligence; only greater numeracy was associated with greater wealth. Our findings are consistent with the idea that education is linked with financial outcomes, at least in part, through the enhancement of cognitive skills, particularly numeracy that then leads to greater wealth accumulation.