An Increase in the Federal Minimum Wage: Good for Employees,Bad for Stockholders?

International Advances in Economic Research -     

What motivates exchangeable debt offerings?

Debt that is convertible into shares of a company other than the issuer is called exchangeable debt. Most firms that issue exchangeable debt hold large blocks of shares in several companies, and in this paper we study factors that influence the selection of a particular block to serve as the underlying asset for an exchangeable debt issue. Comparisons between issuers' holdings in different firms shed light on issuers' performance as monitors as well as their ability to engage in market timing. Holdings attached to these issues display superior past operating performance, but after the offer, both operating performance and stock returns decline. In contrast, we do not find similar systematic performance patters for the “other holdings” of exchangeable debt issuers.     

Rights in rem,Article 5 and the EC Insolvency Regulation: an English perspective

The treatment of security interests is central to any insolvency régime, national or transnational. Under Article 5 of the EC Regulation on Insolvency Proceedings (E.C. 1346/2000) extensive protection is given to a security interest—or right in rem—over assets of the debtor situate in a Member State other than one in which insolvency proceedings have been opened. The absence, thus far, of any significant body of European case law on Article 5, allows commentators to put forward a range of views on how Article 5 ought to be applied. This article aims to examine the scope of Article 5 protection both conceptually and in terms of illustrations drawn largely from English insolvency law and practice. Particular attention is given to the following issues: what is meant by the ‘opening of insolvency proceedings’ with reference to Article 5; when a liquidator may pay off the holder of a right in rem; whether the rules under the Regulation for determining the situs of an asset alter the English common law position; whether Article 5 prohibits the discharge of an underlying debt by way of a restructuring plan; the position of unsecured creditors who attempt to acquire rights in rem prior to the opening of insolvency proceedings; and whether the English court's equitable jurisdiction to enforce a charge which does not comply with the lex situs, survives the coming into force of the Regulation. Through the discussion of these topics, this article seeks to identify an approach to the interpretation of Article 5 which is consistent not only across the wide range of issues identified but also with the broad policy objectives underlying the treatment of in rem rights in the Regulation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Racial Differences in Civic Participation and Charitable Giving: The Confounding Effects of Educational Attainment and Unmeasured Ability

In this paper we use human capital theory to follow the links from educational attainment to civic engagement, and to other pro-social behaviors such as charitable giving and volunteering, and in so doing we offer a cautionary explanation for observed racial differences in civic participation, giving, and volunteering. Our argument is that when, in a racialized society such as the U.S., the costs and benefits of education differ by race, and when innate ability is an unmeasured source of heterogeneity across individuals, controlling for educational attainment and not for ability will create spurious race effects in empirical studies of behaviors that depend on both education and ability. Because (1) blacks at any level of educational attainment are predicted to be of higher average ability than equally educated whites and (2) higher ability is associated with higher levels of civic participation, a regression of civic participation on educational attainment and race will produce a positive coefficient on the dummy variable that takes on a value of one if the subject is African American. Using data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, we find strong support for the interpretation of race effects as spurious artifacts of having included data on educational attainment without measures of innate ability.     

Is Targeted Tax Competition Less Harmful than its Remedies?

Some governments have recently called for international accords restricting the use of preferential taxes targeted to attract mobile tax bases from abroad. Are such agreements likely to discourage tax competition or conversely cause it to spread? We study a general model of competition for multiple tax bases and establish conditions for a restriction on preferential regimes to increase or decrease tax revenues. Our results show that restrictions are most likely to be desirable when tax bases are on average highly responsive to a coordinated increase in tax rates by all governments, and when tax bases with large domestic elasticities are also more mobile internationally. Our analysis allows us to reconcile the apparently contradictory results of the previous literature.     

Returning young adults: Implications for marketers

This article examines a growing phenomenon termed returning young adults or RYAs. It looks at currently held beliefs about the group, examines characteristics of a matched sample of RYAs and persons not living at home, and discusses implications about the viability of the RYA group as a segment of interest to marketers. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.