Lexicographic choice under variable capacity constraints

In several matching markets, to achieve diversity, agents' priorities are allowed to vary across an institution's available seats, and the institution is let to choose agents in a lexicographic fashion based on a predetermined ordering of the seats, called a (capacity-constrained) lexicographic choice rule. We provide a characterization of lexicographic choice rules and a characterization of deferred acceptance mechanisms that operate based on a lexicographic choice structure under variable capacity constraints. We discuss some implications for the Boston school choice system and show that our analysis can be helpful in applications to select among plausible choice rules.     

Risk Analysis of Pension Fund Investment Choices

We provide a comprehensive and more consistent approach to analyse and compare the risk-return relationships of Australian superannuation investment options for the period January 1990 to December 2016. In estimating the risk profiles of the investment options, we allow for the movement of the asset classes over time by employing a varying coefficient panel estimation technique. We find that while risk increases across different investment options from moderate to aggressive options, using different percentages of identifying a balanced fund does not impact the long-term risk measurement. We equally find that the risk-return relationships of investment options are not sensitive to the modelling framework, except for the crisis analysis, in which the Fama-French five-factor model provides greater sensitivity.     

Peer Effects among Financial Analysts

We hypothesize that the arrival of star analysts improves the performance of incumbent financial analysts, while the departure of star analysts has the opposite effect. Our results consistent with this hypothesis are concentrated primarily in the tests related to star arrivals. Our findings are robust to an instrumental variable approach and a falsification test. In addition, we hypothesize that the impact of the arrival/departure of star analysts is more pronounced when the star analyst covers the same industry as the incumbents (especially for industries with high uncertainty), when the star analyst is more established, when the incumbent analysts are less experienced, and when the brokerage house has fewer existing star analysts. Overall, our paper offers evidence of peer effects among financial analysts, mainly through the arrival of star analysts.     

When are dividend increases bad for corporate bonds?

Employing an event study approach, we examine 5,574 bond return reactions to unexpected quarterly dividend change announcements in the U.S. corporate bond market over the period 2002–2014. On average, bond price reaction is in the same direction as dividend changes, which supports the hypothesis that dividend changes signal future firm performance. However, the price reaction varies significantly in the spectrum of bond's risk. Importantly, we document that some bondholders react negatively to unexpected dividend increases, indicating a wealth transfer effect. Such wealth transfer effect is most likely to occur in very high risk bond approaching maturity issued by firms with a low level of cash and incorporated outside Delaware.     

Macroeconomic effects of aggregate accounting conservatism: A cross‐country analysis

This paper examines whether aggregate conditional and unconditional conservatism are associated with economic growth. Prior studies find that conditional conservatism improves contracting efficiency, but that unconditional conservatism has either a neutral or detrimental impact on contracting. We therefore conjecture that country‐level conditional conservatism increases the efficiency of resource allocation in an economy, whereas country‐level unconditional conservatism is not similarly beneficial. Using a cross‐country sample, we construct country‐level estimates of conditional and unconditional conservatism. We find that conditional conservatism is associated with higher level of growth in Gross Domestic Product and Gross Domestic Product per Capita. By contrast, unconditional conservatism shows no or negative association. Our study contributes to the ongoing debate on the desirability of accounting conservatism and also extends the literature on the macroeconomic effects of aggregate financial reporting attributes.     

Penalized h-likelihood approach for variable selection in AFT random-effect models

Survival models allowing for random effects (e.g., frailty models) have been widely used for analyzing clustered time-to-event data. Accelerated failure time (AFT) models with random effects are useful alternatives to frailty models. Because survival times are directly modeled, interpretation of the fixed and random effects is straightforward. Moreover, the fixed effect estimates are robust against various violations of the assumed model. In this paper, we propose a penalized h-likelihood (HL) procedure for variable selection of fixed effects in the AFT random-effect models. For the purpose of variable selection, we consider three penalty functions, namely, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), smoothly clipped absolute deviation (SCAD), and HL. We demonstrate via simulation studies that the proposed variable selection procedure is robust against the misspecification of the assumed model. The proposed method is illustrated using data from a bladder cancer clinical trial.     

Thorstein Veblen's Darwinian framework and gene-culture coevolution theory

At the turn of the previous century, Thorstein Veblen used Darwinian evolutionary principles to explain the macro-historical evolution of human societies, as well as the institutional structure of the modern pecuniary culture. Even if Veblen had a strong intuitive grasp of the evolutionary forces operating in society, he was not always clear and explicit in developing his ideas towards a full-fledged, consistent evolutionary social theory. This paper argues that a relatively recent theoretical approach, gene-culture coevolution theory, has the conceptual apparatus to remedy this problem and thus make Veblen's ideas an important part of contemporary evolutionary thinking in social theory.     

It Is Much Bigger Than What We Thought: New Estimate of Trade Diversion

Estimates of the trade diversion (TD) effect of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) tend to be much smaller than that of the trade creation (TC) effect. This paper examines two sources of estimation bias of the TD effect. The first bias arises from the failure to recognise that the concept of TD is inapplicable for a substantial proportion of PTAs, and thus, previous studies wrongly count cases where trade cannot be diverted as cases where trade is not diverted. The second bias arises from the difficulty in controlling for multilateral resistance and other unobserved time‐varying country heterogeneity when estimating both TC and TD effects simultaneously due to perfect multicollinearity. This paper corrects these two biases using a new measure of TD which provides a better mapping between the concept and data characteristics. Removing the two sources of bias leads to a multifold increase in the estimate of the TD effect. It is found that the total TD effect is comparable to the TC effect in dollar terms.     

Is Family Control Relevant for Corporate Cash Holding Policy?

This empirical research examines the effect of family control on firms’ cash holding policy. Using a sample of Western European firms, we confirm the precautionary motive for holding cash as family‐controlled firms’ desire to perpetuate the family legacy for future generations motivates them to accumulate more cash than their non‐family counterparts. We also show that, given family‐controlled firms’ long‐term perspective, they focus on cash flow volatility rather than cash flow level. Finally, the relation between financing constraints and cash holdings is not homogeneous: financially constrained family‐controlled firms hold higher levels of cash than financially constrained non‐family firms. Overall, these results suggest that family firms’ cash holding policy is the result not of a specific financial outcome but rather on the strategic objectives of the firm.