STRIKE BEHAVIOUR WHEN MARKET SHARE MATTERS

This paper analyses the dynamics of strike incidence when afirm's market share affects its future profitability. Inventoryaccumulation is assumed to be impossible, so during a strikesales are zero, thereby reducing future demand. Anticipationof the future effects of a strike leads to lower wage settlementsand a lower probability of disagreement. Thus strike incidenceis reduced. Furthermore a recent strike may make a further oneless or more likely, depending on the union's reservation wageand the precise way that market share evolves. This may helpto explain some conflicting empirical results.     

Overconfidence,Compensation Contracts,and Capital Budgeting

A risk‐averse manager's overconfidence makes him less conservative. As a result, it is cheaper for firms to motivate him to pursue valuable risky projects. When compensation endogenously adjusts to reflect outside opportunities, moderate levels of overconfidence lead firms to offer the manager flatter compensation contracts that make him better off. Overconfident managers are also more attractive to firms than their rational counterparts because overconfidence commits them to exert effort to learn about projects. Still, too much overconfidence is detrimental to the manager since it leads him to accept highly convex compensation contracts that expose him to excessive risk.     

Real Options—An Introduction and an Application to R&D Valuation

In this short paper, we summarize the real options approach and show how it can be used to introduce flexibility into the capital budgeting process. We then go on to show an application of real option evaluation to research and development valuation in the pharmaceutical industry. Our calculations and illustrations are in Excel and can be easily replicated.     

U.S. Monetary Policy and International Bond Markets

This paper analyzes how U.S. monetary policy affects the pricing of dollar‐denominated sovereign debt. We document that yields on dollar‐denominated sovereign bonds are highly responsive to U.S. monetary policy surprises—during both the conventional and unconventional policy regimes—and that the passthrough of unconventional policy to foreign bond yields is, on balance, comparable to that of conventional policy. In addition, a conventional U.S. monetary easing (tightening) leads to a significant narrowing (widening) of credit spreads on sovereign bonds issued by countries with a speculative‐grade credit rating but has no effect on the corresponding weighted average of bilateral exchange rates for a basket of currencies from the same set of risky countries; this indicates that an unanticipated tightening of U.S. monetary policy widens credit spreads on risky sovereign debt directly through the financial channel, as opposed to indirectly through the exchange rate channel. During the unconventional policy regime, yields on both investment‐ and speculative‐grade sovereign bonds move one‐to‐one with policy‐induced fluctuations in yields on comparable U.S. Treasuries. We also examine whether the response of sovereign credit spreads to US monetary policy differs between policy easings and tightenings and find no evidence of such asymmetry.     

Race,Ethnicity, and Credit Card Marketing

There is a vast literature on discrepancies in consumer credit related to race and ethnicity. I explore a pattern that was first identified in aggregate data by Han, Keys, and Li ( 2011 ) in their study of credit access: Blacks were approximately 27% less likely to receive offers from credit card lenders during the sample period, even after controlling for variables such as credit history, household income, and local economic conditions. Hispanics were 17% less likely to receive an offer, after including controls. The discrepancy is robust to lender‐specific regressions and the inclusion of a large number of explanatory variables. My findings imply that marketing is an important area for analysis of discrimination in consumer credit. Due to the likely need for confidential information in further analysis, investigation by an appropriate regulatory agency such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be useful.