Family Transfers Involving Three Generations

Most models of family transfers consider only two generations and focus on two motives: altruism and exchange. They also assume perfect substitution between inter-vivos downward transfers and bequests. Based on French evidence, we show that parent-to-child transfers belong to three distinct categories (investment in child's education, financial assistance, wealth transmission), and advocate a three -generation framework. Thus, transfer behavior of parents toward their children is strongly influenced by the behavior of their own parents. There is also some evidence of the Cox and Stark demonstration effect: parents help their own parents, expecting to receive comparable support from their children. Such behavior can be regarded as indirect reciprocity : the beneficiary does not give back to the initial giver but to a third person of another generation.
JEL classification : D 10; D 31; D 63; D 64     

Decomposing the contribution of migration to poverty reduction: methodology and application to Tanzania

In an economy with migration, poverty changes are composed of a number of forces, including the income gains and losses realized by the various migration streams. We present a simple but powerful decomposition methodology that uses panel data to measure the contributions of different migration streams to overall poverty change. An application to Tanzania shows the new insights that are provided – in particular on the role of migration to secondary towns in poverty reduction.     

Free trade or protection? belgian textile and clothing firms’ trade preferences

Free Trade or Protection? Belgian Textile and Clothing Firms' Trade Preferences. -This paper examines the positions of Belgian textile and clothing firms on trade policies. Observations on positions are generated by a survey. Along the lines of the political economy of protection and anti-protection we test whether firm-specific characteristics influence textile and clothing firms' trade policy preferences. The results show that international competition and having foreign establishments significantly determine firms' positions, but that product differentiation does not. A Chow test indicates no significant difference between firms' sensitivities in the textile and clothing industries. This suggests that the two professional organizations should co-operate on trade issues.     

Exchange rate volatility and the mixture of distribution hypothesis

This study sheds new light on the mixture of distribution hypothesis by means of a study of the weekly exchange rate volatility of the Norwegian krone. In line with other studies we find that the impact of information arrival on exchange rate volatility is positive and statistically significant, and that the hypothesis that an increase in the number of traders reduces exchange rate volatility is not supported. The novelties of our study consist in documenting that the positive impact of information arrival on volatility is relatively stable across three different exchange rate regimes, and in that the impact is relatively similar for both weekly volatility and weekly realised volatility. It is not given that the former should be the case since exchange rate stabilisation was actively pursued by the central bank in parts of the study period. We also report a case in which undesirable residual properties attained within traditional frameworks are easily removed by applying the log-transformation on volatilities.

The flight home effect: Evidence from the syndicated loan market during financial crises

This paper shows that the collapse of the global market for syndicated loans during financial crises can in part be explained by a flight home effect whereby lenders rebalance their loan portfolios in favor of domestic borrowers. The home bias of lenders' loan origination increases by approximately 20% if the bank's home country experiences a banking crisis. This flight home effect is distinct from flight to quality because borrowers of different quality are equally affected. The results indicate that the home bias in capital allocation tends to increase when adverse economic shocks reduce the wealth of international investors.     

Us knows us in the UK: On director networks and CEO compensation

We analyze the relation between CEO compensation and networks of executive and non-executive directors for all listed UK companies over the period 1996-2007. We examine whether networks are built for reasons of information gathering or for the accumulation of managerial influence. Both indirect networks (enabling directors to collect information) and direct networks (leading to more managerial influence) enable the CEO to obtain higher compensation. Direct networks can harm the efficiency of the remuneration contracting in the sense that the performance sensitivity of compensation is then lower. We find that in companies with strong networks and hence busy boards the directors' monitoring effectiveness is reduced which leads to higher and less performance-sensitive CEO compensation. Our results suggest that it is important to have the ‘right’ type of network: some networks enable a firm to access valuable information whereas others can lead to strong managerial influence that may come at the detriment of the firm and its shareholders. We confirm that there are marked conflicts of interest when a CEO increases his influence by being a member of board committees (such as the remuneration committee) as we observe that his or her compensation is then significantly higher. We also find that hiring remuneration consultants with sizeable client networks also leads to higher CEO compensation especially for larger firms.