THE PLACE OF MANAGERS IN INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

The discussion of industrial democracy in Britain has exploded in the last few years, but the result has been to write an agenda which has still to be worked through, not to reveal a consensus which can be written into action at once.     

Building more business with industrial direct mail advertising

One of the most effective tools of promotion in industrial markets, though often misused and little understood, is the proper use of direct mail. This article focuses upon the major considerations, with numerous examples, for planning and executing different direct mail programs.     

A note on black economic well-being in the North and West

Conclusion These very positive gains in economic well-being for certain categories of black families do not surprise us. Those in which the head is under 35 and live in the North and the West have had relatively more opportunity open to them as a result of some of the strong enforcement policies of the late sixties and affirmative action programs. This group of the black population, by and large, is better educated, more mobile, and more job-ready. It is, therefore, in a position to be more productive and thereby earn relatively higher incomes when society relaxes some of its discriminating tendencies. No such advantages, however, are available to the households headed by females or older households which comprise the overwhelming members of families in poverty.     

Jackknifing Bond Option Prices

Prices of interest rate derivative securities depend cruciallyon the mean reversion parameters of the underlying diffusions.These parameters are subject to estimation bias when standardmethods are used. The estimation bias can be substantial evenin very large samples and much more serious than the discretizationbias, and it translates into a bias in pricing bond optionsand other derivative securities that is important in practicalwork. This article proposes a very general and computationallyinexpensive method of bias reduction that is based on Quenouille's(1956; Biometrika, 43, 353–360) jackknife. We show howthe method can be applied directly to the options price itselfas well as the coefficients in the models. We investigate itsperformance in a Monte Carlo study. Empirical applications toU.S. dollar swap rates highlight the differences between bondand option prices implied by the jackknife procedure and thoseimplied by the standard approach. These differences are largeand suggest that bias reduction in pricing options is importantin practical applications.     

Are Firms Underleveraged? An Examination of the Effect of Leverage on Default Probabilities

A commonly held view in corporate finance is that firms are less leveraged than they should be, given the potentially large tax benefits of debt. In this paper, I study the effect of firms' leverage on default probabilities as represented by the firms' ratings. Using an instrumental variable approach, I find that the leverage's effect on ratings is three times stronger than it is if the endogeneity of leverage is ignored. This stronger effect results in a higher impact of leverage on the ex ante costs of financial distress, which can offset the current estimates of the tax benefits of debt.