Employer Penalties for Failure to Provide Individual Employee Notification Under the Family and Medical Leave Act: “Clarifications” Following Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc.

This article examines the Supreme Court's ruling in Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc. (2002) and considers its implications for employer and employee rights and responsibilities relative to implementing the FMLA policies. We provide an overview of the pre-decision regulatory environment including the general leave provisions of the FMLA and DOL's regulations requiring employer notification of leave designated as FMLA leave. We also identify those provisions that the decision did not alter and provide a broader consideration of the issues and implication of this decision for employers and employees.     

The Kornai effect with partial bailouts and taxes

The model examines Kornai's observation that in the presence of bailouts, firms' demand for inputs will be greater than would otherwise be the case. This conjecture is examined in a model in which both revenue and cost uncertainty are present and in which firms making losses are partially subsidized and firms making positive profits are partially taxed. The Kornai effect is more prevalent the greater the subsidy rate, the smaller the tax rate and the greater the variance of the random variables through which uncertainty manifests itself. In the case of strongly positively correlated cost and revenue uncertainty, the absolute incidence of the Kornai effect is small.     

Do the Merits Matter More? The Impact of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

This article examines the effect of the Private Securities LitigationReform Act of 1995 (PSLRA) on stockholder lawsuits. We explorethe role of restatements, earnings forecasts, and insider tradingin the filing and resolution of lawsuits for a sample of hightechnology firms. Consistent with our predictions, there isa post-PSLRA shift away from litigation based on forward-lookingearnings disclosures. Conversely, there is a significantly greatercorrelation between litigation and both earnings restatementsand abnormal insider selling after the PSLRA. Finally, we finda post-PSLRA increase in the likelihood of settlement for casesinvolving earnings restatements.     

The Lifetime Distributional Impact of Government Health Outlays

This article examines the lifetime redistributive impact of government health outlays and finds that such outlays redistribute income from the lifetime rich to the lifetime poor and from men to women.     

Minority banks and minority communities: Are minority banks good neighbors?

The lagging development of many minority communities has had an adverse effect on economic growth in the United States. One factor historically associated with creating or exacerbating this minority problem is the unwillingness of banks to service minority communities adequately. The federal government used two initiatives to address banks' reluctance to aid minorities: the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that ended the practice of redlining and required all federally regulated banks to demonstrate that they served the convenience and credit needs of their local communities, particularly minorities, women, and other underserved groups, and the establishment and preservation of minority owned banks that were expected to be more sympathetic to the needs of their communities. This paper evaluates the extent to which minority banks have met the needs of minority communities. The assessment is conducted in the context of the ratings received by minority banks on their Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) audits. Through the use of CRA audits, the performance of minority banks is also compared to the performance of the general banking community to determine the validity and success of the government's minority banking initiative. Analysis of CRA audit ratings also compares the performance of minority banks among different ethnicities.     

The Distributional Impact of Selected Commonwealth Outlays and Taxes and Alternative Commonwealth Grant Allocation Mechanisms

This article examines the redistributive impact of Commonwealth outlays and taxes (including outlays directed through and to the States)and two possible alternative systems of distributing Commonwealth funding amongst the States.     

Credible assignments in coordination games

This paper uses the experimental method to examine an arbiter's ability to determine the outcome of two-person coordination games. All of the arbiter's assignments in the experiments were strict equilibrium points, but some assignments violated payoff-dominance or symmetry. An assignment that corresponds to the game's outcome is a credible assignment. The experiments test the hypothesis that an assignment to a strict equilibrium is a credible assignment. Our subjects did not find the individual rationality and mutual consistency of an equilibrium assignment to be sufficient reason for implementing the assignment when doing so conflicts with payoff-dominance or symmetry.     

Economic Reform and Labor Unions: A General-Equilibrium Analysis Applied to Bangladesh and Indonesia

Noting the trend toward more independent trade unions in developingcountries, this article examines whether the presence of unionsstrengthens or weakens the benefits to be gained from economicpolicy reform. We show that the presence of "passive" unions—onesthat choose their wage-employment contract given the firm'scost-minimizing strategy—increases the welfare gains fromtrade liberalization, because trade reform lowers the wage premiumenjoyed by the unionized sector, reducing a distortion in thelabor market. These gains are amplified when the unions are"active", namely, when they negotiate a contract with the firmthat is off its labor demand curve. Such a contract resultsin featherbedding—paying workers more than their marginalproduct—and trade reform reduces the amount of featherbedding.The policy implication for Bangladesh—a country with strongtrade unions and a protected unionized sector—is thatthe benefits of further trade liberalization may be greaterthan otherwise predicted. In Indonesia, where both unionizationand import tariffs are low, allowing greater independence tounions may preserve flexibility and reward workers better thanthe current minimum-wage policy.     

An outcome-based assessment of international transfer pricing policy

Instead of concentrating on the selection of the optimal transfer pricing method, this paper focuses on the consequences of international transfer pricing for multinational entities. A sample of U.S.-based multinational firms is employed to determine if transfer pricing results in measurable financial outcomes. Results of the study indicate that firms employ international transfer pricing to meet a variety of objectives. The dollar value of international transfers and the foreign sales percentage are both significant explanatory variables for the financial outcomes of these objectives.