Intangibles and credit decisions: results from an experiment

The question in this paper is whether the inclusion of intangibles is meaningful in a credit decision context. To examine this issue we conducted an experiment with forty loan officers. The loan officers were presented with a situation of a company that required a credit of 5 million Swedish kronor. Half of the loan officers were given a traditional annual statement in which intangibles were treated as costs while the other half received a balance sheet in which brand, R&D and education were capitalized. The loan officers were asked to give their opinion regarding the credit decision and the importance of extra information. They were also confronted with four short cases where extra information about the company appeared. Statistical analysis revealed that none of three hypotheses relating to the statement that ‘accounting for intangibles does not matter’ could be falsified. Still, the acquired qualitative data that emerged from the study makes it possible to suggest another finding. The study shows that accounting for intangibles is accepted if the accounts were seen as reliable. The conclusion is that if it is possible to create reliable data about intangibles, accounting for intangibles is meaningful for credit decisions.     

Active ageing in developing countries? – trip generation and tour complexity of older people in Metro Manila

There is by now quite a substantial body of literature discussing the impact of an ageing population in developed countries on travel needs and required changes to transport policy. As many newly developed and developing countries are following demographic trends of “first world” countries, but offset by some decades, the problem is, however, not limited to the industrialised nations. The focus of this paper is on Metro Manila and analyses travel patterns by those aged 60 or over. Trip frequency and tour complexity are analysed with ordered probit regression, separating the effects of socio-demographic characteristics as well as land-use patterns. The results are compared to observations made for cities in developed countries, in particular London as an example for a city in a first world country. We show that there is a more pronounced decrease in total trips made with increasing age in Manila. However, analysing for specific trip purposes we find, similarly to trends in developed countries, that the number of recreational trips is fairly constant in all age groups. Recreational activities also seem to take more time per day than average for younger old, possibly indicating the advent of similar active ageing trends as in industrialised nations. The paper concludes by discussing some implications given future economic trends and advocates that better datasets from developing and newly developed countries are required for urban planning in developing countries.     

The Effect of Employment while in High School on Educational Attainment: A Conditional Difference‐in‐Differences Approach*

Using American panel data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, this article investigates the effect of working during grade 12 on attainment. We employ, for the first time in the related literature, a semiparametric propensity score matching approach combined with difference‐in‐differences. We address selection on both observables and unobservables associated with part‐time work decisions, without the need for instrumental variable. Once such factors are controlled for, little to no effects on reading and math scores are found. Overall, our results therefore suggest a negligible academic cost from part‐time working by the end of high school.