Correlates of Union Support in NLRB Elections

Bargaining unit, union, industry, and geographic correlates of union support in NLRB certification and decertification elections for the period 1977 to 1979 are analyzed using similar regression specifications. Several relationships are found to be significant; however, an examination of the magnitude of the estimated coefficients suggests only unit size and union organizing effort affect outcomes in more than a small percentage of all certification elections.     

The Estimation of Quality-adjusted Rates of Return in Stamp Auctions

The stamp auction market exemplifies markets in which a dominant feature is the quality variation in the traded assets. The observed price changes are a mixture of the “true” price change and the quality variation. This paper applies the time series signal extraction method to obtain estimates of quality-adjusted rates of return and quality-adjusted price indexes for stamp auction price series. The method is applicable to other areas in which there is quality variation or in which values are observed with error. Some features of stamps as an investment are also examined.     

Estimating Private Equity Returns from Limited Partner Cash Flows

We introduce a methodology to estimate the historical time series of returns to investment in private equity funds. The approach requires only an unbalanced panel of cash contributions and distributions accruing to limited partners and is robust to sparse data. We decompose private equity returns from 1994 to 2015 into a component due to traded factors and a time‐varying private equity premium not spanned by publicly traded factors. We find cyclicality in private equity returns that differs according to fund type and is consistent with the conjecture that capital market segmentation contributes to private equity returns.     

Cultural Integration and Its Discontents

A community's culture is defined by the preferences and equilibrium behaviours of its members. Contacts among communities alter individual cultures through two interrelated mechanisms: behavioural adaptations driven by pay-offs to coordination, and preference changes shaped by socialization and self-persuasion. This paper explores the workings of these mechanisms through a model of cultural integration in which preferences and behaviours vary continuously. It identifies a broad set of conditions under which cross-cultural contacts promote cultural hybridization. The analysis suggests that policies to support social integration serve to homogenize preferences across communities, thereby undermining a key objective of multiculturalism. Yielding fresh insights into strategies pursued to influence cultural trends, it also shows that communities benefit from having other communities adjust their behaviours.     

A Class of Two‐Group Polarization Measures

The phenomenon of income polarization is generally associated with a disappearing middle class but there does not seem to be a generally accepted definition of this notion. We characterize classes of polarization quasi‐orderings and polarization measures in a framework where there are two income groups separated by the median. The axioms we employ are variants of within‐group clustering and between‐group spread properties, and an independence property. Furthermore, we illustrate that attempts to extend the axioms to more general settings severely restrict their appeal and conclude that alternative approaches may be required to capture concepts involving polarization.     

Information Disclosure and Consumer Credit Knowledge: A Longitudinal Analysis

Early evaluations of Truth-in-Lending have observed impressive gains in consumer knowledge about interest rates. Contrary to original goals, consumers with more education, income, and debt experience have benefited far more than low-income and minority consumers. How will these results change over time as consumers gain credit experience with the aid of disclosure? Has disclosure improved consumer understanding about finance charges, and what factors beyond socio-economic status might have enhanced consumer knowledge of credit terms? These questions are addressed in this report of a large sample of California households surveyed at two points in time. The longitudinal analysis shows individual changes in knowledge, the effects of credit experience on learning, and a projection of future levels of credit knowledge.     

House Price Markups and Mortgage Defaults

The transaction price of identical housing units can vary widely due to heterogeneity in buyer and seller preferences, matching, and search costs, generating what we term “markups” above or below the average market price. We measure markups for 3.4 million purchase-money mortgages and show that they can predict mortgage defaults and credit losses conditional on default even after accounting for collateral coverage (loan-to-value ratio) and a comprehensive set of other covariates. The findings suggest that standard collateral coverage estimation may be inaccurate, with implications for both individual and portfolio-level credit risk assessment.