Homemakers' household-work time in single-parent and two-parent families

The purpose of this study was to determine if a significant difference existed between single-parent family homemakers and two-parent family homemakers regarding the amount of time spent in selected household tasks. The examination of the impacts of selected socio-demographic variables on the amount of time spent in total household work and the component tasks by the homemakers was also a part of this study.     

Bargaining Effects of the Mandatory-Permissive Distinction

This study uses a laboratory experiment to examine empirically the effect of the mandatory permissive distinction on the negotiation of wages, employment guarantees, and advertising expenditures. Results suggest that negotiators spend more time bargaining over a smaller settlement range when an issue is mandatory than when it is permissive. Further, tentative findings provide no evidence that negotiators can circumvent the distinction through the use of tradeoffs across issues or bargaining power.     

Corporate Loan Securitization and the Standardization of Financial Covenants

We examine whether syndicated loans securitized through collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) have more standardized financial covenants. We proxy for the standardization of covenants using the textual similarity of their contractual definitions. We find that securitized loans are associated with higher covenant standardization than nonsecuritized institutional loans. In addition, we show that CLOs with more diverse or frequently rebalanced portfolios are more likely to purchase loans with standardized covenants, potentially because standardization alleviates information processing costs related to loan monitoring and screening. We also document that covenant standardization is associated with greater loan and CLO note rating agreement between credit rating agencies, further supporting the relation between lower information costs and covenant standardization. Overall, our study provides evidence that loan securitization is related to the design of standardized financial covenants.