The Incentive Effects of Inequality: An Experimental Investigation

The effect of inequality on economic growth and efficiency is often debated. Our study investigates a behavioral phenomenon through which inequality might have adverse effects on economic growth. In particular we investigate whether or not individuals exhibit a discouragement effect in the face of inequality that leads to lower work effort. If such an effect exists, it provides a mechanism for converting even idiosyncratic inequality into sustained inequality with adverse consequences for the individuals being affected by the inequality and the economy as a whole. We investigate this phenomenon using an economic experiment to allow us to cleanly vary the nature of inequality and to allow us to directly observe several characteristics of the workers. We find robust support for the existence of a discouragement effect lending credibility to the claims that such an effect would exist in external situations among workers confronted with disadvantageous inequality.     

Do actions speak louder than words? An empirical investigation of corporate environmental reputation

In this study, we investigate the extent to which firms’ environmental performance is reflected in perceptions of their environmental reputation and whether environmental disclosure serves to mediate the negative aspects of poorer environmental performance associated with those assessments. We also examine whether differences in environmental performance and environmental disclosure appear to be associated with membership selection to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), a factor we also believe may be associated with perceptions of environmental reputation. Based on a cross-sectional sample of 92 US firms from environmentally sensitive industries, we find that environmental performance measured using Trucost environmental performance scores is negatively related to both reputation scores and membership in the DJSI. We argue this is due to the more extensive disclosure levels of firms that are worse performers and the finding of a significant positive relation between environmental disclosure and both the environmental reputation measures and DJSI membership. Finally, we show that the DJSI designation positively influences perceptions of corporate reputation. Overall, our results suggest that voluntary environmental disclosure appears to mediate the effect of poor environmental performance on environmental reputation. Perhaps more troubling, our results also suggest that membership in the DJSI appears to be driven more by what firms say than what they do. Thus, like voluntary disclosure, the DJSI may actually be hindering improved future corporate environmental performance.     

Effect of the Actual Size Rule Under Market Stress

We examine the introduction of the Actual Size Rule (ASR) on Nasdaq during a control period and a period of market stress. We find that market makers in both ASR and Non-ASR stocks reduce quotation sizes and widen spreads when under stress but the reduction of quotation size and increase in spread width are significantly larger for ASR stocks. We also examine October 27, when the market was under the most severe stress. We find ASR and Non-ASR stocks have similar reductions in time-weighted quotation ask size when compared with the control sample but ASR bid sizes are about 10% smaller than Non-ASR bid sizes. Our findings imply that the ASR rule may significantly reduce market quality under times of market stress. JEL Classification: 14, G15, G18     

Factors influencing the adoption of ICT tools in Kerala marine fisheries sector: an analytic hierarchy process approach

Adoption of a new ICT tool in the fisheries sector depends on several factors such as ease of use, affordable cost, information, and time. All these factors determine the preference of an existing tool over others for productivity enhancement. Which ICT tool is more beneficial than others is a continuing debate among researchers. However, the literature currently lacks detailed studies of fishermen criteria for selecting the best ICT tools in the marine fisheries sector. This paper is based on a framework which explains the factors influencing the adoption of ICT tools for the better fish catch, with the help of a multi-criteria decision making approach, called Analytic Hierarchy Process. Also, in the study we have compared the results of analysis using AHP with popular method TOPSIS and the obtained results were validated. The Study also assesses scientifically, which is the most important ICT tool for fishing through a case study in Northern and Southern parts of Kerala, a state in the southern India. The Study finds that Global Positioning System (GPS) is the most beneficial and important ICT tool in marine fishing. In contrast to the earlier studies, the results show that wireless set is important than other tools like mobile phone and echo-sounder for multi-day fishing. The cost-benefit analysis also supports findings of the study.     

Trading Volume-Induced Spatial Autocorrelation in Real Estate Prices

Spatial dependence is often seen as a problem in econometrics rather than in economics. This study seeks to find an economic explanation for spatially correlated real estate prices. We posit spatial dependence as a process to discover price information from neighboring property transactions. Weaker spatial dependence is expected when price information in the immediate vicinity of a subject property is abundant. In the context of apartment buildings, in addition to the more commonly known horizontal dependence, there is also spatial dependence in the vertical dimension within the same building. Based on more than 18,000 transactions of highly homogeneous apartment units in Hong Kong, we found that the trading volume of a building depresses horizontal spatial dependence, but raises vertical spatial dependence. This not only confirmed the role of trading volume in the real estate price discovery process, but also questioned the validity of constant spatial autocorrelation assumption adopted in many studies.     

Boardroom centrality and firm performance

Firms with central boards of directors earn superior risk-adjusted stock returns. A long (short) position in the most (least) central firms earns average annual returns of 4.68%. Firms with central boards also experience higher future return-on-assets growth and more positive analyst forecast errors. Return prediction, return-on-assets growth, and analyst errors are concentrated among high growth opportunity firms or firms confronting adverse circumstances, consistent with boardroom connections mattering most for firms standing to benefit most from information and resources exchanged through boardroom networks. Overall, our results suggest that director networks provide economic benefits that are not immediately reflected in stock prices.     

Beyond necessity versus opportunity entrepreneurship: some lessons from English deprived urban neighbourhoods

When discussing the motivations of entrepreneurs, it has become commonplace to represent them dichotomously as either necessity or opportunity driven. This paper evaluates critically this dualistic depiction of entrepreneurs’ motives through an examination of the rationales of entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs living in a deprived urban neighbourhood of an English city, a group of entrepreneurs who have been conventionally depicted as largely driven by necessity into entrepreneurship in the absence of alternative means of livelihood. Reporting the results of a face-to-face questionnaire conducted in 2008 with 459 respondents and a further 18 follow-up in-depth interviews, the finding is that forcing individual entrepreneurs’ motives into one or other of these categories grossly over-simplifies their rationales which in lived practice are not only a mixture of both opportunity and necessity but also temporally fluid shifting most often from more necessity- to more opportunity-oriented rationales. The outcome is to reveal that the opportunity versus necessity dichotomy, which uses the perceptions of an entrepreneur’s originating condition as the defining feature of their motivations, is a misleading way of categorising types of entrepreneurship not only because motivations change over time but also because entrepreneurs are frequently driven by both necessity as well as opportunity factors. The result is a call to move beyond the conventional either/or depiction of opportunity versus necessity entrepreneurship and towards a richer, more nuanced and dynamic appreciation of entrepreneurs’ motivations.