The Impacts of Unemployment on Alternative Poverty Rates

The analysis uses March Current Population Survey data to estimate state-level cross-section/time-series models of the effects of the unemployment rate on alternative poverty rates. The measures include the official headcount rate, and alternatives based higher thresholds, revised equivalence scales and income defined as inclusive and exclusive of taxes and cash and in-kind transfers. The estimated effects turn critically on the measurement approaches, both for the total sample population and for four population sub-groups. For several alternative poverty rate measures, the unemployment rate has no significant impact on poverty. By contrast, real per-capita median earnings have strong and consistently negative effects on the poverty rates of all groups studied. The findings thus provide important lessons for researchers exploring the links between economic conditions and poverty, and for policy makers developing poverty reduction strategies.     

Corporate Board Composition, Protocols, and Voting Behavior: Experimental Evidence

We examine voting by a board designed to mitigate conflicts of interest between privately informed insiders and owners. Our model demonstrates that, as argued by researchers and the business press, boards with a majority of trustworthy but uninformed “watchdogs” can implement institutionally preferred policies. Our laboratory experiments strongly support this conclusion. Our model also highlights the necessity of penalties on insiders when there is dissension among board members. However, penalties for dissent appeared to have little impact on the experimental outcomes.     

American-style Indexed Executive Stock Options

This paper develops a new pricing model for American-style indexed executive stock options. We rely on a basic model framework and an indexation scheme first proposed by Johnson and Tian (2000a) in their analysis of European-style indexed options. Our derivation of the valuation formula represents an instructive example of the usefulness of the change-of-numeraire technique. In the paper's numerical section we implement the valuation formula and demonstrate that not only may the early exercise premium be significant but also that the delta of the American-style option is typically much larger than the delta of the otherwise identical (value-matched) European-style option. Vega is higher for indexed options than for conventional options but largely independent of whether the options are European- or American-style. This has important implications for the design of executive compensation contracts. We finally extend the analysis to cover the case where the option contracts are subject to delayed vesting. We show that for realistic parameter values, delayed vesting leads only to a moderate reduction in the value of the American-style indexed executive stock option.     

Ill-behaviour of transformation-frontiers with environmental quality versus pollution

If one looks at environmental quality N as a renewable natural resource (with its own natural dynamics) which is changed by emissions Z, then one gets a better understanding of the shape of the damage function. In the case of a logistic growth dynamics one obtains a well-shaped transformation frontier N(Z), even in a two-species natural dynamics. For a more general natural interaction in the framework of a prey-predator model one obtains the possibilities of a cusp catastrophe which makes the transformation frontier N(Z) ill-shaped for the standard arguments of economists and their most favoured environmental policy instruments.     

Computing equilibria of GEI by relocalization on a Grassmann manifold

An algorithm is described to compute equilibria of the general economic model with incomplete asset markets, that is, of GEI. The algorithm is based on the existence of a route of zeros of a homotopy whose domain includes the price simplex and a Grassmann Manifold. This route is followed, in effect, by localizing and following diffeomorphic pieces in Euclidean space, and by relocalizing as is necessary.     

Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese guidebooks

This study investigates the presentations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as postwar tourism destinations in a selection of Japanese-language guidebooks. Comparison is made between commonly voiced criticisms of Japanese attitudes toward the two atom-bombed sites and the tourism activities suggested by the publications themselves. An expected presentation emphasizing Japanese suffering as a result of the atom bombs is not found in the guides, but neither is an openness to discussion of the war. The conclusions reached find Hiroshima standing as emblematic of the rebuilding nation as a whole, while Nagasaki remains largely outside of the social and cultural dynamics of postwar Japan.