Skyscrapers' influence on cities' roles as tourist destinations

Skyscrapers are, literally, prominent features of many cities. They are increasingly dominating urban skylines around the world. Skyscrapers are advantageous for certain constituents, architects and builders who design and construct them and the politicians and corporate tenants who believe that large, upwardly thrusting symbols have promotional and competitive benefits. However, in the context of tourism, except for the very few that are distinctively tall, skyscrapers are not merely ineffective as attractions, they create unpleasant contexts for urban tourism, eroding the quality of leisure, the foundation of recreational and cultural experiences at the core of tourism. Thus, attempts to promote tourism with images of skylines dominated by tall buildings might be counter-productive in the end analysis. This implies that Asian cities where most of the world's skyscrapers are being constructed should re-examine the role of skyscrapers in promoting tourism, especially, considering that many European cities that have sustained popularity as tourist destinations lack skyscrapers.     

How do auditors perceive CEO's risk‐taking incentives?

Prior literature documents that executive compensation influences managerial risk preferences through executives’ portfolio sensitivities to changes in stock prices (delta) and stock‐return volatility (vega). Large deltas discourage managerial risk‐taking, while large vegas encourage risk‐taking. Theory suggests that auditors charge higher audit fees when standard audit procedures do not allow auditors to reduce audit risk including the risk arising from higher business risk. We posit and find evidence of a negative (positive) relation between CEO portfolio deltas (vegas) and audit fees. We also find a negative relation between CEO portfolio deltas and the issuance of going‐concern audit opinions (GCO).     

The returns to formality and informality in urban Africa

This paper addresses the questions as to the size and causes of earnings differentials in two urban African labor markets, those of Ghana and Tanzania. We have panel data so we can ask how far time invariant unobservables, market ability for short, matters in the determination of earnings. We also have information on whether the individual is own self-employed, self-employed with employees, a private or public sector wage employee and the size of the enterprise in which wage employees work or which the self-employed owns. We find, mirroring work on developed economies, that unobserved individual market ability is by far the most important factor explaining the variance of earnings. With controls for such ability the gap between private wage employment and civil servants is about 50%. With controls for enterprise size we find that wage employees earn the same as the self-employed in both Ghana and Tanzania. Enterprise size matters. At most half of the OLS effect of size on earnings can be explained by unobservable ability. Workers in the largest firms are the high earners with wage rates which exceed those of civil servants. These results all assume exogenous movement. We find evidence that endogeneity bias may be serious and may be understating the extent of both the size effect and the private sector wage (negative) premium. The implications of our results for understanding the nature of formal and informal employment in Africa are discussed.     

Developing A Reputation for Incorruptibility in A Corrupt Environment

We construct a simple two‐stage model of reputation building in a corrupt environment. The existence of incorruptible firms helps corruptible firms establish a reputation for not paying bribes.     

Discontinuities in the coal market

Coal has been an important source of energy in the USA for centuries. Coal prices can be quite uncertain and highly volatile, often experiencing large changes. Understanding the data-generating process of coal prices would seem critical, both from a market perspective and from a policy perspective. This study investigates the appropriate stochastic process underlying coal prices. Commonly assumed processes, such as geometric Brownian motion fail to properly account for the arrival of unanticipated information which inflicts rapid changes – or jumps – in energy markets. Such discontinuities can manifest ‘fat tails’ in the distribution of returns. To investigate the possibility of time-varying volatility, generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic models are also incorporated into the analysis. We find compelling empirical evidence that discontinuities must not be ignored, with US coal prices experiencing jumps every few days. The result has implications for the potential closure of coal-fired plants in response to cheaper alternatives or climate-based regulations.     

“CONVENTIONAL” MONETARY POLICY IN OLG MODELS: REVISITING THE ASSET-SUBSTITUTION CHANNEL

Conventional monetary policy involves actions by the monetary and fiscal authorities: the former sets a nominal interest rate and the latter sets lump-sum taxes to finance the implied flow of interest payments on government debt. We model such policy within an overlapping generations framework and show that absent any other frictions the magnitude of the nominal interest rate gives rise to asset substitution between government debt and either private debt or capital—substitution that has both real and nominal effects. Such substitution is not in standard New Keynesian models because their dynastic specification implies that government debt is not net wealth.     

Work-from-home and the risk of securities misconduct

In the wake of the global pandemic, a challenge for CEOs and boards is to set a stakeholder-acceptable organizational balance between remote and traditional office working. However, the risks of work-from-home are not yet fully understood. We describe competing theories that predict the effect on misconduct of a corporate shift to work-from-home. Using internal bank data on securities traders we exploit lockdown variation induced by emergency regulation of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our difference-in-differences analysis reveals that working from home lowers the likelihood of securities misconduct; ultimately those working from home exhibit fewer misconduct alerts. The economic significance of these changes is large. Our study makes an important step toward understanding the link between the balance of work locations and the risk that comes with this tradeoff.     

The breadth of preferential trade agreements and the margins of exports

Review of World Economics - The paper uses recently available data on the core economic provisions of PTAs to identify which (types of) provisions seem to promote bilateral exports and the...