Does it pay to have friends? Social ties and executive appointments in banking

We exploit a unique sample to analyze how homophily (affinity for similar others) and social ties affect career outcomes in banking. We test if these factors increase the probability that the appointee to an executive board is an outsider without previous employment at the bank compared to being an insider. Homophily based on age and gender increase the chances of the outsider appointments. Similar educational backgrounds, in contrast, reduce the chance that the appointee is an outsider. Greater social ties also increase the probability of an outside appointment. Results from a duration model show that larger age differences shorten tenure significantly, whereas gender similarities barely affect tenure. Differences in educational backgrounds affect tenure differently across the banking sectors. Maintaining more contacts to the executive board reduces tenure. We also find weak evidence that social ties are associated with reduced profitability, consistent with cronyism in banking.     

Analyst coverage,earnings management and financial development: An international study

Using data from 21 countries, this paper analyzes the relation among analyst coverage, earnings management and financial development in an international context. We document that the effectiveness of financial analysts as monitors increases with a country’s financial development (FD). We find that in high-FD countries, increased within-firm analyst coverage results in less earnings management. Such is not the case in low-FD countries. Our results are economically significant and robust to reverse causality checks. Our findings illustrate one mechanism through which financial development mitigates the cost of monitoring firms and curbs earnings management.     

Individual investor perceptions and behavior during the financial crisis

Combining monthly survey data with matching trading records, we examine how individual investor perceptions change and drive trading and risk-taking behavior during the 2008–2009 financial crisis. We find that investor perceptions fluctuate significantly during the crisis, with risk tolerance and risk perceptions being less volatile than return expectations. During the worst months of the crisis, investors’ return expectations and risk tolerance decrease, while their risk perceptions increase. Towards the end of the crisis, investor perceptions recover. We document substantial swings in trading and risk-taking behavior that are driven by changes in investor perceptions. Overall, individual investors continue to trade actively and do not de-risk their investment portfolios during the crisis.     

Fourier-analytic measures for heavy-tailed insurance losses

We propose a family of three ‘Fourier-analytic’ measures to extend the conventional concepts of standard deviation, variance, and coefficient of variation to insurance losses with arbitrarily heavy tails. After motivating and computing their mathematical forms, we apply the proposed measures to the case of Lévy-stable loss portfolios. Finally, the new measures are used to study the diversification properties of heavy-tailed losses.     

Impacts of meat product recalls on consumer demand in the USA

The impact of meat product recall events on consumer demand (beef, pork, poultry, and other consumption goods) in the USA is tested empirically. Beef, pork, and poultry recall indices are constructed from both the Food Safety Inspection Service's meat recall events and from newspaper reports over the period 1982–1998. Following previous product recall studies, recall indices are incorporated as shift variables in consumers’ demand functions. Estimating an absolute price version of the Rotterdam demand model, findings indicate that Food Safety Inspection Service's meat recall events significantly impact demand, and newspaper reports do not. Moreover, although elasticities related to recall events are significant they are small in magnitude relative to price and income effects. Any favourable effects on the demands of meat substitutes for a recall are offset by a more general negative effect on meat demand. The general negative effect indicates a shift out of meat to non-meat consumption goods.     

Central city crime and suburban economic growth

This paper explores the relationship between inner-city crime patterns and suburban income growth, analysing data on 318 US counties for selected metropolitan statistical areas of 32 states within the United States from 1982 to 1997. The findings suggest that violent crime does seem to have a negative impact on close-in suburbs, with a less negative impact farther away from the central city (becoming positive at some point). While results are not as robust as we had hoped they are consistent with flight to further-out suburbs rather than migration to different metropolitan areas in response to urban crime.     

Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for Tobit models

In this article, a decomposition method for Tobit models is derived, which allows the differences in observed outcome variables between two groups to be decomposed into a part that is explained by differences in observed characteristics and a part attributable to differences in the estimated coefficients. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that in the case of censored dependent variables this decomposition method produces more reliable results than the conventional Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models. Finally, our method is applied to a decomposition of the gender wage gap using German data.     

Directional heterogeneity of environmental disamenities: the impact of crematory operations on adjacent residential values

A hedonic study of residential house sales in Rawlins, Wyoming, was conducted to estimate the impact of an environmental shock from a new point source upon adjacent residential property values. We use a unique data base of house sale prices and associated house attributes, including structural and neighbourhood characteristics and geographic distances and directions from the source of the shock, atmospheric emissions from a new crematory. Our data spans 27 months of house sales: 7 months before, and 20 months after the startup of crematory operations. Results indicate that proximity, measured both in terms of direction and distance from the crematory, imparts a statistically significant negative impact on average house sale prices–an increase of 0.3 to 3.6% of average sale price for every one-tenth mile increase up to one-half mile in distance away from the crematory, but depending on direction from the crematory. This distance benefit increases somewhat with calendar time only for houses located west of the crematory.     

Measurement of labour quality growth caused by unobservable characteristics

The standard economy-wide indices of labour quality (or human capital) largely ignore the role of unobservable worker characteristics. In this article, we develop a methodology for identifying the contributions of both observable and unobservable worker characteristics in the presence of the incidental parameter problem. Based on data for Switzerland over the period 1991 to 2006, we find that a large part of growth in labour quality is caused by shifts in the distribution of unobservable worker characteristics. The overall index differs little from the standard indices, but contributions to growth attributed to education and age are corrected downwards.