Tax penalties on fluctuating incomes: estimates from longitudinal data

Progressive personal income taxes can cause individuals with fluctuating incomes to pay more taxes over time than individuals with constant incomes of the same average value. The implicit tax penalty violates principles of equity and may harm efficiency by discouraging risk-taking activities, such as entrepreneurship. This paper uses longitudinal data to estimate the tax penalties in six panels of Canadian data from 1993 to 2010. The effects of various income averaging policies for mitigating tax penalties are then examined.     

Auditor monitoring and verification in financial contracts: evidence from earnouts and SFAS 141(R)

We study how monitoring and verification of accounting-based performance benchmarks influences the design and efficiency of earnout contracts. Earnouts are commonly used to resolve agency conflicts arising in mergers and acquisitions, but these contracts create measurement and other agency problems when contingent payments are tied to future accounting-based performance. Exploiting changes in auditor monitoring of earnouts that arose as\ a consequence of SFAS 141(R), we find that acquisition contracts are more likely to incorporate accounting-based earnouts and that contingent payments tied to accounting-based performance benchmarks make up a larger portion of the consideration when acquiring firms have high-quality auditors. We also find that market reactions to announcements of earnout deals are more positive after SFAS 141(R) for acquisitions most susceptible to disputes over accounting-based performance metrics and these results are more pronounced for acquiring firms with high-quality auditors. By exploiting the features of this unique setting, we illuminate the role of monitoring and verification of accounting information in financial contracts.     

Monte Carlo theoretical trials of methods for assessing statistical significance for differences between adjusted odds ratios

Odds are generally defined as the number of successes divided by the number of failures in a given number of trials. An odds ratio is the ratio of one odds divided by another. Odds ratios can be adjusted to reflect associations with the outcome independently of the influence of associations with other variables. These are adjusted odds ratios. There are several well known methods for comparing odds ratios and testing for statistically significant differences between them. Analogous methods for adjusted odds ratios are not well known or well documented. One method for comparing adjusted odds ratios is explained by Hosmer and Lemeshow (Applied logistic regression, 2000). This method is used for the odds ratios for two variables from the same data set. The purpose of this analysis was to apply this method to a different situation: comparing odds ratios for the same variable from two different data sets. Monte Carlo trials were used to assess the performance of the method and these indicated the method performed well.     

Experience,Learning, and Returns to Scale

The experience curve is a tool for forecasting future decreases in average cost as a function of cumulative output/volume. The extent of an experience effect has profound implications for both pricing strategy and the focus on market share as a managerial objective. At the same time, the underlying sources of the experience effect are not well understood. This article demonstrates that, as commonly measured, experience effects are aggregated with the effects of increasing returns to scale. This implies that standard experience curve estimates are misspecified because they suffer from an omitted variable bias. Strategic implications of the experience‐scale link are discussed.     

Macroeconomic adjustment programmes in the euro area: an overall assessment

Since the start of EMU (Economic and Monetary Union), the euro area, and more broadly the global economy, experienced an unprecedented credit boom. The expansion of credit was particularly strong in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus and all of them subsequently needed official financial support. In each of the four programmes, financial assistance has been provided and promised against the commitment of each country to fulfil certain economic policy conditions contained in the macroeconomic adjustment programme. In general, a macroeconomic adjustment is a process driven by policies but also by changes in private spending behaviour (consumption, imports, investment) and improvement in competitiveness that countries are required to undertake after a large shock. In the case of the four countries, the shock emerged as a consequence of an excessive accumulation of imbalances in different parts of the economy: in the public sector in Greece, in the housing and banking sectors in Ireland, external imbalances in Portugal and in the banking sector in Cyprus. The paper looks at the feasibility of the fiscal adjustment comparing the macroeconomic conditions in the four countries and emphasising the role of the fiscal multipliers in the process. It also assesses the fall in the output in a comparative framework, stressing the role played by the different components of demand either in amplifying the effect of the fiscal consolidation or in offsetting it. In addition, it considers formulation of the programmes as well as their implementation with most attention devoted to reforms aiming at improving competitiveness, growth and employment in the framework of a cross-country approach.     

THE ROLE OF INVENTORIES AND SPECULATIVE TRADING IN THE GLOBAL MARKET FOR CRUDE OIL

We develop a structural model of the global market for crude oil that for the first time explicitly allows for shocks to the speculative demand for oil as well as shocks to flow demand and flow supply. The speculative component of the real price of oil is identified with the help of data on oil inventories. Our estimates rule out explanations of the 2003–2008 oil price surge based on unexpectedly diminishing oil supplies and based on speculative trading. Instead, this surge was caused by unexpected increases in world oil consumption driven by the global business cycle. There is evidence, however, that speculative demand shifts played an important role during earlier oil price shock episodes including 1979, 1986 and 1990. Our analysis implies that additional regulation of oil markets would not have prevented the 2003–2008 oil price surge. We also show that, even after accounting for the role of inventories in smoothing oil consumption, our estimate of the short‐run price elasticity of oil demand is much higher than traditional estimates from dynamic models that do not account for for the endogeneity of the price of oil. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The intellectual ecology of mainstream marketing research: an inquiry into the place of marketing in the family of business disciplines

Many inside mainstream academic marketing judge the discipline’s influence within the family of business disciplines (as well as in practice) to be in decline. Despite great research productivity, methodologies as sophisticated as any in the social sciences, and a large and rich literature, opinion and evidence suggest that academic marketing is the least influential of the mainstream academic business disciplines. Nevertheless, marketing’s decline is not inexorable. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this perplexing situation by: (1) assembling and evaluating a number of expert opinions from within marketing; (2) exploring relations and patterns of influence among the leading academic journals in accounting, finance, management, and marketing and evaluating the position and influence of each field; (3) attempting to understand marketing’s problems; and (4) exploring avenues to move marketing back to its once prominent position among the business disciplines.