Vertical disintegration and training: evidence from a matched employer–employee survey

The mechanism through which outsourcing favourably impacts on workplace performance, particularly productivity, is still unclear. I explore the hypothesis that it does so by impacting workers?? training. I use AWIRS-1995, a matched employer?Cemployee survey that reports ample information on the extent of technology and organizational change in Australian workplaces. I find that there is a positive and significant impact of outsourcing on training when I do not control for the correlation between ununobservable factors in these two binary outcomes. However, once I control for this correlation using a bivariate probit estimator, the training impact of outsourcing becomes negative. I then assess the sensitivity of the outsourcing effect to endogeneity by using the method advocated by Altonji et?al. (J Polit Econ 113(1):151?C184, 2005) to find that this latter result persists even in the presence of a low correlation between unobservables.     

Dressed for success? The effect of school uniforms on student achievement and behavior

Uniform use in public schools is rising, but we know little about how they affect students. Using a unique dataset from a large urban school district in the southwest United States, we assess how uniforms affect behavior, achievement and other outcomes. Each school in the district determines adoption independently, providing variation over schools and time. By including student and school fixed-effects we find evidence that uniform adoption improves attendance in secondary grades, while in elementary schools they generate large increases in teacher retention.     

The Contribution of Longitudinal Research to the Study of Women's Poverty

Quality &; Quantity - The aim of this article is to discuss some of the central conceptual and methodological issues which must be tackled if we wish to investigate poverty in a gender-sensitive...     

Mandatory IFRS adoption: the trade-off between accrual-based and real earnings management

This paper examines whether firms substituted real earnings management for accrual-based earnings management after the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) became mandatory. Using a sample of 101,331 firm-year observations from 33 countries between 2000 and 2010, we show that IFRS adoption came with the unintended consequence of certain firms substituting real earnings management for accrual-based earnings management, especially among firms in countries with strict enforcement regimes. Furthermore, we document that the trade-off is confined to EU countries in which strong firm-level characteristics (i.e. the firm-level mechanism of control, the market’s level of scrutiny, and firm-specific incentives to provide transparency) are coupled with strong enforcement. We also show that IFRS had an effect in countries outside the EU, albeit at a different time. Overall, the results suggest that accounting regulators’ efforts to increase earnings quality might have had the unintended consequence of increasing real earnings management activities.     

New ESG rating drivers in the cross-section of European stock returns

We assess the performance of two quantitative signals based on ESG scores across a large, multi-national cross-section of European stock returns. We test whether the cost of equity capital is more influenced by the upward momentum (measured over time) of the ESG scores of the firms issuing stocks or by their stability (identified as the volatility of the scores over time), measured around a changing mean level. We find that short-term ESG momentum over 1 month has a significant impact on the cross-section of stock returns, lowering the anticipated cost of capital and leading to positive average abnormal returns. This suggests that short-term ESG momentum may represent a novel, priced systematic risk factor. Furthermore, we find strong evidence that an ESG volatility spread strategy which buys low ESG score volatility stocks and sells high volatility ones, generates a substantial alpha and affects the ex-ante cost of capital. Both quantitative ESG signals result in portfolio sorting and long-short strategies that enhance the overall sustainability profile of the issuing firms without compromising the raw average of their ESG scores.     

Restructuring financial systems in transition and developing economies: an approach based on the French financial system

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the redesigning of financial systems in Central and Eastern European and developing countries by focusing attention on specific financial institutions appropriate to easing the transition and fostering the creation of markets. The paper argues that the immediate emulation of the better-known institutions of the most developed, market-based financial systems, i.e. the US and the UK, should not be taken for granted. It underlines, instead, the importance of drawing inspiration from the experiences of a variety of institutions and financial systems. Particularly relevant are those systems that have experienced forms of transition and a mix, over time, of market and state intervention.
The approach of this paper is one of institutional financial economics (Neave, 1991 and Williamson, 1986), in which structural details of financial institutions and contracts, in our case French financial institutions, are analysed. We argue that the principles on which some French financial institutions are based and aspects of their functioning are of value to reformers. We discuss the lessons that can be learnt from the Crédit National, the Commissariat Général du Plan, the CODEVI and the SOFARIS.     

An Exploration of the Conceptual and Empirical Basis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve

We examine the conceptual and empirical basis of the environmental Kuznets curve. From both perspectives, the relationship lacks firm foundations. In particular, the empirical relationship is shown to be highly sensitive to the choice of pollutant, sample of countries and time period. This strongly suggests that there is an omitted variables problem. We find that two important omitted variables are education and inequality. Also, we show that the observed relationship is sensitive to the measure of income/welfare used. The paper concludes with a discussion of some policy implications of our findings. ( JEL O13, Q21, Q28, Q32)     

Community conversations as a strategy to change harmful traditional practices against women

This article conducts a series of list experiments to detect whether community conversations contribute to a change in thinking about harmful traditional practices in Ethiopia. While our findings are mixed, we provide evidence that community conversations are indeed a valuable instrument to induce a change in social values in order to empower women.     

Gender Gaps in Social Capital: A Theoretical Interpretation of Evidence from Italy

This study uses the Italian data from the Multiscopo surveys of 1997 and 2011 to assess differences in life-cycle accumulation of social capital by sex and age. First, the study identifies some crucial aspects regarding the definition and measurement of social capital: individual versus collective dimension, different typologies of social capital, and the fact that the literature often deals with women in social capital but seldom with gender. Second, using a regression analysis with cross-sectional data, it shows that social capital accumulation along the life cycle is different for men and women, with men accumulating more social capital at all ages, with a different peak and overall profile. The study also shows that, over fifteen years, the gap in social capital by sex narrowed. Finally, it introduces a model of social capital structure compatible with the empirical evidence and with notions of gender as defined in feminist literature.     

Poverty trap,boom and bust periods and growth. A nonlinear model for non-developed and developing countries

This work investigates the qualitative and quantitative dynamics of a Solow–Swan growth model with differential savings as proposed by Böhm and Kaas (J Econ Dyn Control 24:965–980, 2000) assuming the shifted Cobb–Douglas (SCD) production function (see Capasso et al. in Nonlinear Anal. 11:3858–3876, 2010) which makes it possible to consider the long-run dynamics of non-developed and developing countries as well as that of developed economies. The resulting model is described by a nonlinear discontinuous map generating both a poverty trap and complex dynamics. Furthermore, multistability phenomena may emerge: besides the “vicious circle of poverty”, long-run behaviours may include boom and bust periods. Complex basins can emerge, hence, economic policies trying to raise the capital per capita may fail and economies may be captured by the poverty trap.