Unemployment rates in postbellum America: 1869–1899

An annual series for U.S. unemployment rates for the period 1869–1899 is estimated. The series reflects the cyclical economic fluctuations of the period clearly, including the protracted depressions of the 1870s and 1890s. It indicates that these depressions were much less severe than the Great Depression of the 1930s, but somewhat more severe than the depressed periods of the post-World War II years. Annual series for labor force, employment, and unemployment also are presented.     

The Influence of Long-Term Performance Plans on Earnings Management and Firm Performance

Boards of directors often implement long-term performance plans (LTPP) to focus management's attention on enhancing long-term shareholder value instead of concentrating their efforts on short-term earnings. This study provides estimation results suggesting that firms that compensate managers with LTPP are associated with lower levels of managed earnings than firms that have only short-term bonus plans. In addition, we find evidence that suggests that firms with long-term performance plans have significantly higher annual returns than firms that have only short-term bonus plans. We also find that firms with long-term performance plans are typically larger firms with smaller managerial ownership and larger institutional ownership than firms without long-term performance plans.     

The effects of rent asymmetries in experimental auction markets

We report the results of twelve ‘double-auction’ market experiments designed to analyze the effects of asymmetric induced supply and demand configurations on the price convergence path toward a competitive equilibrium. The proposition (convergence bias) that prices tend to approach the competitive equilibrium from above (below) when consumer surplus is greater (less) than producer surplus cannot be rejected. We do, however, reject the proposition (convergence symmetry) that these convergence biases are of equal absolute magnitude. Excesses of producer over consumer surplus are found to have a more pronounced effect on the sequence of contract prices.     

Urbanization in Developing Countries

The rapid urbanization in many developing countries over thepast half century seems to have been accompanied by excessivelyhigh levels of concentration of the urban population in verylarge cities. Some degree of urban concentration may be desirableinitially to reduce inter- and intraregional infrastructureexpenditures. But in a mature system of cities, economic activityis more spread out. Standardized manufacturing production tendsto be deconcentrated into smaller and medium-size metropolitanareas, whereas production in large metropolitan areas focuseson services, research and development, and nonstandardized manufacturing.The costs of excessive concentration (traffic accidents, healthcosts from exposure to high levels of air and water pollution,and time lost to long commutes) stem from the large size ofmegacities and underdeveloped institutions and human resourcesfor urban planning and management. Alleviating excessively highurban concentration requires investments in interregional transportand telecommunications to facilitate deconcentration of industry.It also requires fiscal deconcentration, so that interior citiescan raise the fiscal resources and provide the services neededto compete with primate cities for industry and population.      

The Two Faces of Adam Smith

Adam Smith's two major works are based on apparently contradictory themes in human nature: noncooperative self-interest and other-regarding sympathy. These views are not contradictory if we distinguish impersonal market exchange and personal exchange. Noncooperative behavior in the former maximizes the gains from exchange, the basis of specialization and wealth creation. Cooperative behavior in personal exchange is based on reciprocity—trading gifts, favors, and assistance across time—which maximizes the gains from social exchange. That people can be both cooperative and noncooperative is corroborated in laboratory experiments and is postulated to stem from a self-interested propensity for exchange in markets and friendships.     

The Value Relevance of Multiple Occurrences of Nonrecurring Items

Discontinued operations, special items, or extraordinary items typically are nonrecurring items in firms' income statements. As such, prior research has theorized that these items are of minimal relevance to market valuation of the firm, since they are transitory in nature. Moreover, anecdotal evidence in the financial press is supportive of this notion. We examine firms that report either single or multiple occurrences of such items over a rolling six-year period between 1977 and 1996 and find in both cases that such items are value-relevant. When multiple occurrences are not partitioned by type (discontinued operations, special items, or extraordinary items), the more recent such event in the series has a negative effect upon market value of equity, whether it has had a positive or negative effect upon net income.This is consistent with at least two possible explanations, multiple occurrences of such items indicate firms in financial difficulty, or multiple occurrences indicate firms whose managers have engaged in repeated attempts at earnings management, and that the most recent attempt is being devalued by the market. We find patterns of discretionary accruals consistent with managers engaging in upward earnings management prior to multiple write-downs using special items. We also find that firms with multiple write-downs are more likely to go into liquidation or bankruptcy within the next five years. We find that single occurrences also are value-relevant and are positively correlated with market values. Tests on the sample when partitioned by type lead to similar results, though signs of the effects upon net income change in some instances.     

The Dynamics of Jabotabek Development

This paper examines the dynamics of urban development of the Jakarta metropolitan region, called Jabotabek, from 1980 through the early 1990s. We focus on the rapidly changing spatial allocation of residences and business, finding that Jabotabek is following expected developmental patterns but faces special and some critical problems Population densities remain unusually high and urban development is hindered by very poor land market institutions—weakly defined property rights particularly for traditional low income residents, complete lack of active land use planning, and relatively low infrastructure investments. Industry is rapidly suburbanising to take of advantage of low land prices and wages in suburban Botabek. With toll road construction east and west from the city, within the five-year period 1986–1991, Jabotabek moved from being a monocentric city where core city industrial activity dominated to a predominantly multi-centred city. These developments and implicit government policy have hurt small-scale industry, which ultimately will hinder the whole development process. Issues of spatial mismatch, where low income workers' residences and workplaces become inordinately spatially separated due to government policies in land markets, herald increasing problems of urban underemployment and social unrest.