Tax‐Time Savings among Low‐Income Households in the $aveNYC Program

This article explores savings outcomes for participants in the $aveNYC tax‐time matched savings program compared with a group of New York City tax filers who were not offered the program. $aveNYC was administered at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance sites during the 2008–2010 tax seasons. The program offered taxpayers the opportunity to open a savings account with their tax refund and receive a 50% match on their initial deposit. The study's primary outcome is savings held by respondents 6–11 months after receipt of matching funds. We compare participants in the 2009 program cohort to a comparison group on the following outcomes: level of savings, having nonzero savings, and having enough savings to cover one or two months of expenses at current consumption levels. We find significant differences on savings levels, the presence of any savings, and the likelihood of having savings to meet one month's expenses.     

Infrastructure endowment,financial constraints and willingness to engage in PPPs: The case of Poland

Public-private partnership (PPP) is widely considered to be a solution to overcoming a public infrastructure gap while providing value for money. A growing body of empirical research papers suggests that value for money is not the only reason for a government setting up PPPs. This paper presents a detailed analysis of why local municipalities in Poland have chosen the PPP route to develop public infrastructure.

IMPACT

Government’s investment opportunities are often restricted by debt limits. That is why a PPP can be an attractive solution. Municipalities in Poland seem to opt for PPPs to keep their debt figures low. There is a risk that they are choosing the PPP route for the wrong reasons. Therefore we suggest that legislation is needed that requires greater financial transparency of PPP projects. This could help verify whether PPPs are being compiled according to EUROSTAT rules and to assess if PPP really is the best available option in terms of value for money.     

Three very simple games and what it takes to solve them

We study experimentally the nature of dominance violations in three minimalist dominance-solvable guessing games. Only about a third of our subjects report reasoning consistent with dominance; they all make dominant choices and almost all expect others to do so. Nearly two-third of our subjects report reasoning inconsistent with dominance, yet a quarter of them actually make dominant choices and half of those expect others to do so. Reasoning errors are more likely for subjects with lower working memory, intrinsic motivation and premeditation attitude. Dominance-incompatible reasoning arises mainly from subjects misrepresenting the strategic nature (payoff structure) of the guessing games.     

Mispriced index option portfolios

In model-free out-of-sample tests, we find that the optimal portfolio of a utility maximizing investor trading in the S&P500 Index, cash, and index options bought at ask and written at bid prices stochastically dominates the optimal portfolio without options and yields returns with higher mean and lower volatility in most months from 1990 to 2013. Unlike earlier claims of overpriced puts, our portfolios include mostly short calls and are particularly profitable when maturity is short and volatility is high. Similar results are obtained with the CAC and DAX indices. Neither priced factors nor a nonmonotonic stochastic discount factor explains the excess returns.     

The role of credit ratings on capital structure and its speed of adjustment: an international study

Using an international dataset, we examine the role of issuers’ credit ratings in explaining corporate leverage and the speed with which firms adjust toward their optimal level of leverage. We find that, in countries with a more market-oriented financial system, the impact of credit ratings on firms’ capital structure is more significant and that firms with a poorer credit rating adjust more rapidly. Furthermore, our results show some striking differences in the speed of adjusting capital structure between firms rated as speculative and investment grade, with the former adjusting much more rapidly. As hypothesized, those differences are statistically significant only for firms based in a more market-oriented economy.     

The role of employee participation in generating and commercialising innovations: insights from Chinese high-tech firms

To date, employee participation finds very little recognition in China in research as well as in management practice. It seems to fundamentally contradict traditional values in Chinese culture. The effect of employee participation on innovation is completely unknown, not only for China, but also for many other emerging economies. In contrast, employee participation finds a lot of recognition in the western world for quite some while. Research suggests that employee participation is particularly relevant for innovations in skilled labour contexts, which are becoming increasingly important also for China. Based on a survey of 620 medium-sized and large companies we are investigating the effect of employee participation on innovation generation and commercialisation in China. In the formulation of our hypotheses we take the moderating effects of incentives into account. The contribution of this article is to give evidence on the explanation power of the western concept of employee participation outside the western world. This allows for a better understanding of the robustness of the concept towards cultural context factors.