Costos empresariales y reglamentación del trabajo en Sudáfrica

Los indicadores de las normas laborales publicados en el estudio del Banco Mundial Doing Business 2007 son ambiguos sobre la naturaleza e intensidad de la reglamentación del trabajo en Sudáfrica. Estos indicadores, al centrarse exclusivamente en la legislación, dan una imagen parcial, por lo que los autores exploran tres posibles elementos para ampliarlos con miras a trazar un panorama más realista de la situación normativa del mundo del trabajo: la «microlegislación>>, las instituciones la-borales y la interpretación judicial. Abogan por que se tengan muy presentes estos elementos al valorar el ordenamiento laboral.     

Market Structure and Transaction Costs of Index CDSs

Despite regulatory efforts to promote all-to-all trading, the post–Dodd-Frank index credit default swap market remains two-tiered. Transaction costs are higher for dealer-to-client than interdealer trades, but the difference is explained by the higher, largely permanent, price impact of client trades. Most interdealer trades are liquidity motivated and executed via low-cost, low-immediacy trading protocols. Dealer-to-client trades are nonanonymous; they almost always improve upon contemporaneous executable interdealer quotes, and dealers appear to price discriminate based on the perceived price impact of trades. Our results suggest that the market structure is a consequence of the characteristics of client trades: relatively infrequent, large, and differentially informed.     

FROM BUDGETARY FORECASTS TO EX POST FISCAL DATA: EXPLORING THE EVOLUTION OF FISCAL FORECAST ERRORS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

This paper splits the ex post error in the budget balance, defined as the final budget figure minus the planned figure, into implementation and revision errors, and investigates the determinants of these errors. The implementation error is the difference between the nowcast, published toward the end of the year of budget implementation, and the planned budget, while the revision error is the difference between the final figure and the nowcast. The split takes account of differences in reporting incentives at the different budgeting stages. The predictive content of fiscal plans is important, because it determines the reliability of the budget, while that of the nowcasts is important also because these figures are an input for the next budget and may contain important signals about the fiscal stance. Implementation and revision errors may arise for political and strategic reasons. Our results suggest that an improvement in the quality of institutions, whether measured by the tightness of national fiscal rules, the medium‐term budgetary framework or budgetary transparency, increases the quality of budgetary reporting at both the planning and the nowcast stage. This supports the recently adopted requirements on national fiscal frameworks. It also strengthens the case for a close monitoring by the European Commission of national budgeting. (JEL E6, H6)     

FEDERAL ACQUISITION OF WATER THROUGH VOLUNTARY TRANSACTIONS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PURPOSES

Throughout U.S. history public land management agencies have attempted to achieve environmental objectives by relying on a broad range of policy tools, including both regulatory and voluntary mechanisms. An important component of these policies has been oriented toward the acquisition of land or partial interests in land from voluntary sellers. However, it has become clear that preserving or restoring damaged ecosystems increasingly requires more than land and easement acquisitions. The procurement of water for environmental purposes is becoming increasingly common. In some regions such acquisitions also represent a significant share of the local water market activity. Given the increasingly important role these transactions play in achieving federal environmental objectives, it makes sense to consider the alternative mechanisms available that could be used for such acquisitions. This paper examines the situations where the federal government has acquired water for environmental purposes and the extent to which competitive mechanisms—such as auctions—could be used in future acquisition efforts.     

Nutritional Improvements and Student Food Choices in a School Lunch Program

This study analyzed data on students’ food purchases linked to their school records to examine factors affecting the healthiness of their food choices and the impacts of reforms to promote healthier eating in a high school lunch program. U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Healthy Eating Index was used to evaluate the nutritional quality of the foods purchased, as well as an alterative ranking developed by the school dietitian. The new lunch program was associated with an improvement in the nutritional quality of students’ food choices. Girls tended to purchase relatively healthier food than boys, but male students had a greater improvement in the healthiness of their food choices.     

An Experimental Investigation of Explanations for Outcome Effects on Appraisals of Capital-Budgeting Decisions*

Abstract. Studies investigating effects of outcomes on judgments and decisions have been increasing within the business/accounting research literatures. No study, however, has addressed the presence or absence of such effects in terms of potential explanations and the conditions affecting their viability. Three such explanations are the foci of the present study: cognitive reconstruction, self-enhancing motive, and an escalation-of-commitment analogue. The viability of these explanations was investigated experimentally in an accounting context in which subjects evaluated a capital-budgeting committee's funding priority decisions with or without project outcome information (five-year operating results). Experimental results fully support the cognitive reconstruction explanation for outcome effects on decision appraisals but provide only limited support for the self-enhancing motive and escalation-of-commitment explanations. Results of additional experimentation are presented, further supporting logic inherent in the hypothesis derived from the cognitive reconstruction explanation. The relationship of the present study to prior research and implications for future research and practice are discussed. Résumé. Les études portant sur l'analyse de l'incidence de l'issue d'une situation sur les jugements posés et les décisions prises par la suite se sont multipliées dans la recherche en gestion et en comptabilité. Aucun chercheur ne s'est pourtant penché sur la présence ou l'absence d'une telle incidence en s'interrogeant sur son explication potentielle et sur les facteurs qui influent sur sa viabilité. La présente étude s'articule autour de trois de ces explications: la reconstruction cognitive, la promotion personnelle et un équivalent de l'escalade de l'engagement. La viabilité de ces explications a été soumise à une étude expérimentale dans un contexte comptable dans lequel les sujets évaluaient les décisions d'un comité chargé du choix des investissements dans le cadre de l'établissement des priorités en matière d'affectation des fonds, avec ou sans information sur l'issue des projets (résultats d'exploitation de cinq ans). Les résultats de l'expérience confirment sans équivoque l'explication de la reconstruction cognitive relativement à l'incidence de l'issue des projets sur les évaluations décisionnelles, mais ils n'appuient que de façon mitigée les explications de la promotion personnelle et de l'escalade des engagements. Les auteurs exposent les résultats d'autres expériences, qui viennent étayer la logique sous-jacente à l'hypothèse fondée sur l'explication de la reconstruction cognitive. Ils analysent enfin la relation entre la présente étude et les travaux de recherche antérieurs de même que ses conséquences éventuelles sur la recherche et la profession.     

Selective Publicity and Stock Prices

I examine how media coverage of good and bad corporate news affects stock prices, by studying the effect of investor relations (IR) firms. I find that IR firms “spin” their clients' news, generating more media coverage of positive press releases than negative press releases. This spin increases announcement returns. Around earnings announcements, however, IR firms cannot spin the news and their clients' returns are significantly lower. This pattern is consistent with positive media coverage increasing investor expectations, creating disappointment around hard information. Using reporter connections and geographical links, I argue that IR firms causally affect both media coverage and returns.     

Firms’ Management of Infrequent Shocks

We examine businesses’ financial management of a rare, severe event using detailed firm-level data collected following Hurricane Sandy in the New York area. Credit played a prominent role in financing recovery; more negatively affected firms took on debt because of Sandy (39%) than received insurance payments (15%) in our data. Negatively affected firms were frequently credit constrained after the shock. We also find that the most credit-constrained firms after the event, younger firms, and smaller firms, were the least likely to insure before it. Our findings align with the predictions of dynamic risk management theory (Rampini and Viswanathan 2010, 2013).     

Credit Traps and Macroprudential Leverage

We construct a macroeconomic model with overlapping generations to study credit traps—prolonged periods of stagnant real activity accompanied by low productivity, financial sector undercapitalization, and credit misallocation. Shocks to bank capital tighten banks' borrowing constraints causing them to allocate credit to easily collateralizable but low productivity projects. Low productivity weakens bank capital generation, reinforcing tight borrowing constraints, sustaining the credit trap steady state. Macroprudential policy to limit bank leverage can be welfare enhancing. In the presence of a credit trap, optimal leverage policy is countercyclical.