Job and worker flows in high adjustment cost settings

This paper analyses the relationship between the size of adjustment costs and the intensity of labor market flows. I argue that high adjustment costs inhibit adjustment to temporary shocks, leaving adjustment to long-lived shocks unchanged. Worker turnover is also reduced because of the negative impact that adjustment costs have on churning.Received: January 2002, Accepted: November 2002, JEL Classification: J23, J63I am grateful to the FCT for funding this research (research grant Praxis/PCSH/C/CEG/13/96), and to Pedro Portugal, Daniel Hamermesh and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. I thank the Department of Statistics at the Ministry of Labor for providing the data. CETE is supported by the FCT.     

On the performance of the Chow-Lin procedure for quarterly interpolation of annual data: Some Monte-Carlo analysis

Most of the countries of the OECD offer quarterly estimates of their national growth or of their Gross National Product. Official Statistical Agencies in western countries have to deal with the problem of estimating Quarterly National Accounts series congruently with Annual National Accounts. In Spain, the Instituto Nacional de Estadística uses the Chow-Lin disaggregation method, which is based on information provided by a group of high-frequency related variables, to estimate the quarterly components of National Accounts from annual components. In this paper, we analyse the relative quality of the estimates obtained through the Chow-Lin procedure, under different sets of hypotheses.JEL Classification: C15, C43, M40We are grateful to Maria Amparo Ripoll for her assistance. The authors also wish to thank three anonymous referees and an editor for their constructive suggestions and comments. This research was partially made during the stay of the first author at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. It has been partially supported by the research project DGCYT PB98-1460.     

Demand for the truth in principal–agent relationships

Consider the following puzzle: If earnings management is harmful to shareholders, why don’t they design contracts that induce managers to reveal the truth? To answer this question, we model the shareholders–manager relationship as a principal–agent game in which the agent (the manager) alone observes the economic outcome. We show that the limited liability (LL) of the agent, defined as the agent’s feasible minimum payment, might explain the demand for earnings management by the principal. Specifically, when the LL level is high (low), a contract that induces earnings management may be less (more) costly than a truth-revealing contract. This finding offers a new explanation of the demand for earnings management.     

Subprime Lenders and Mortgage Market Completion

Without a subprime market, some borrowers by virtue of poor credit history, unstable income, and other characteristics are unable to qualify for a mortgage. With a subprime market, there is a more complete credit supply schedule with the market pricing for poorer credit quality in the mortgage rate. By completing the capital market, subprime lenders reduce borrowing constraints. The result is a social welfare gain. Low-credit applicants otherwise denied funding are able to qualify by paying higher interest rates in exchange for offering more equity or lower loan-to-value ratios. This prediction is consistent with the subprime applicants financing or refinancing their mortgages at relatively low loan-to-value ratios.     

Incentives of Stock Option Based Compensation

We introduce explicitly the effort as a choice variable in a continuous time utility maximisation framework of an executive who is partly compensated with stock options. We solve the model in the case where the executive is not allowed to trade in the company’s stock but is able to achieve a partial insurance through trading in a correlated market portfolio. We define the executive’s value of the options through a certainty equivalence approach both in the case of European call options and non-standard capped stock options and study the behaviour of the reservation price as relevant parameters change.JEL Classification: G13, G30, G32, J33, M12     

Money,Velocity, and the Stock Market

This paper provides a study of the relationship between money growth variability, velocity, and the stock market, using recent advances in financial econometrics. We estimate a trivariate VARMA, GARCH-in-Mean, BEKK model to quantify the effects of financial market and money supply instability. We investigate the robustness of the results to different definitions of money using monthly Divisia indices for the United States from the Center for Financial Stability (CFS). Empirical evidence supports significance of financial market and money supply volatility, and we conclude that Friedman’s money supply volatility hypothesis is alive and well.     

How Can Behavioural Insights Be Used to Improve EU Policy?

The introduction of behavioural insights into policy-making is welcome, because they challenge traditional assumptions in policy-making which are largely inspired by neoclassical economic thinking. In line with good evidence-based policy-making, they make us question and test how people behave instead of assuming we already know the answer.     

人工智能对会计人员未来职业发展的影响研究

人工智能时代下,会计人员未来职业发展将会发生巨大变化,研究会计人员未来职业发展问题,对提升会计人员工作水平有着十分重要的意义.文章基于人工智能时代财务转型的视角,结合管理会计,根据人工智能在会计领域的应用,首先分析人工智能时代与会计人员未来职业发展的关系,找出人工智能下会计人员未来职业发展的便利条件,提出人工智能时代会计人员未来职业发展仍存在的相关问题,最后从职业道德、职业知识、职业技能、职业能力、职业特质这五个方面分析会计人员未来职业发展前景,以期为人工智能时代会计人员未来良好发展提供借鉴.     

Frühreha nach Apoplex: Je früher desto besser

Herausforderung an ein multidisziplin?res Team – Um m?glichst gro?e Erfolge zu erzielen, muss die Frührehabilitation nach einem Schlaganfall bereits auf der Stroke Unit beginnen. Sabine Kemmler schildert die gro?e Herausforderung an die Versorgung von Schlaganfall-Patienten für Pflegekr?fte.     

Why should Austrian economists be pluralists?

Peter Boettke (2007) argues that economists need not act pluralistically in order for pluralism to thrive in the marketplace of economic ideas. From a market process perspective, Boettke sees intellectual diversity and openness as catallactic outputs, not inputs—emergent by-products of academic specialization and trade. To expect individual scholars to behave in a pluralistic manner is unnecessary and “completely inappropriate” since it detracts from their central task: “to commit themselves to an approach and pursue it doggedly, even in the face of great doubt and resistance by one’s peers” (Boettke 2007). This paper proposes a Smithian revision of Boettke’s position. The author argues that scholarly pluralism is best understood as a constitutional rule of academic life—a virtue ethic that promotes learning and intellectual freedom by mitigating tyranny and autarky in the republic of science. Drawing from the writings of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Deirdre McCloskey, Bruce Caldwell, James Buchanan, Don Lavoie, and Boettke himself, the author argues that scholarly pluralism has been, and continues to be, a necessary condition for the flourishing of Austrian economists as free, responsible, efficacious thinkers.