Consumer Bankruptcy in the United States: A Study of Alleged Abuse and of Local Legal Culture

This paper describes certain central aspects of the operation of the consumer bankruptcy system in the United States. It combines government data with the investigators' empirical data from two large studies done over a decade to explore two types of questions. The first area of investigation relates specifically to bankruptcy policy. The object is to identify the categories of persons principally served by the consumer bankruptcy system and to determine if suggestions of widespread abuse of that system by debtors are well-founded. The paper reports that the system is used primarily by the middle-class. It also reports that there is no evidence of widespread abuse. The second area of investigation is explanation of differences in the operation of the system in different regions of the country, differences that have persisted over twenty years despite major changes in legal rules and economic conditions. The paper argues that these differences are not explicable in terms of formal legal rules or a simple economic model and that a better explanation of the data is that the differences are the product of a "local legal culture" in each region.     

Reacting to the demands of service work: emotional resistance in the Coaching Inn Company

This paper discusses employee resistance to the emotional labour of face-to-face service work. It identifies a difficulty with the extension of the concept of resistance from the more traditional manufacturing industries to service work, asking how far apparently resistant behaviours can sensibly be conceptualised as a challenge to management control of the labour process. This difficulty is explored through a discussion of data drawn from ethnographic research into a chain of public houses. Various forms of resistant behaviour are identified, although the precise nature of this resistance is often blurred by the complex relations between employee, management and customer.     

Australian Manufacturing Business: entrepreneurship or missed opportunities?

In the light of criticism of the performance of Australian business, this article surveys the mounting array of firm and industry evidence to assess the performance of Australian mass production manufacturers. The focus is on lower technology sectors of food and drink, packaging, rural and consumer chemicals, and building materials because these are sectors where Australian firms faced fewer constraints. The article evaluates whether the large firms that emerged in these industries demonstrated entrepreneurship by responding to opportunities, developing their technical capabilities and learning how to manage their growing businesses effectively.     

Gender and Inequality: Austerity and Alternatives

Gender equality policies aim to increase women’s participation in the market economy, but they do not always recognise that market societies reproduce inequalities at micro and macro levels. At the micro level, labour markets are gendered institutions, and at the macro level, austerity policies have inherent biases and negative impacts that fall disproportionately on women.     

Cost-Sharing Incentive Programs for Source Water Protection: The Grand River's Rural Water Quality Program

Over the last few years, Canadian provinces have come to see watershed-based source protection as a means of improving water quality that has been subject to upstream agricultural contamination. Cost-sharing incentive programs—whereby farmers are reimbursed for some portion of out-of-pocket expenses when they voluntarily adopt Best Management Practices—have been identified as possible means of achieving the goal. This paper uses data from the first seven years of operation of Ontario's Rural Water Quality Program for the Grand River to examine the role of financial incentives in encouraging participation. Program data supplemented with Statistics Canada's Census of Agriculture data are used to estimate a Heckman two-stage model of participation rates. Program-specific cost-sharing incentive factors, along with farm income and computer usage, are important determinants in the first-stage discrete participation decision. The most significant factor in the second-stage degree of participation decision is the maximum dollar value of grant that can be obtained by the farm; however, participation response elasticities are inelastic, ranging between 0.02 and 0.25. Au cours des dernières années, les provinces canadiennes en sont venues à considérer la protection des sources d’eau à l’échelle des bassins versants comme un moyen d’améliorer la qualité de l’eau susceptible d’être contaminée par les activités agricoles en amont. Les programmes d’incitatifs à frais partagés – dans le cadre desquels une partie des dépenses que les producteurs engagent leur sont remboursées lorsqu’ils adoptent volontairement de meilleures pratiques de gestion – sont perçus comme des moyens qui pourraient permettre d’atteindre l’objectif. Dans le présent article, nous avons utilisé les données des sept premières années d’application du Rural Water Quality Program, mis en place par l’Ontario pour la protection de la rivière Grand, afin d’examiner le rôle des incitatifs financiers dans l’encouragement à la participation. Nous avons utilisé les données de ce programme ainsi que des données tirées du Recensement de l’agriculture de Statistique Canada pour analyser les taux de participation à l’aide du modèle en deux étapes de Heckman. À la première étape, les incitatifs à frais partagés spécifiques à un programme, de même que le revenu agricole et l’utilisation d’un ordinateur, sont des facteurs importants dans le choix de participer ou non. À la deuxième étape, la valeur maximale de la subvention que peut obtenir une exploitation agricole représente le facteur le plus important. Toutefois, l’élasticité des réponses de participation est inélastique, et varie de 0,02 à 0,25.     

Determinants of Schooling in Egypt: The Role of Gender and Rural/Urban Residence

In this paper, we examine if there are gender differences in schooling attainment and the extent to which these differences are exacerbated for rural children in Egypt. Using a nationally representative cross-sectional survey, our estimation results find strong support for the hypothesis that being male and living in urban areas significantly improves child schooling. We show that relative to a female child who is “never enrolled” in school, a male child is over twice as likely to be currently attending school, and over two-and-a-half times more likely to have some schooling. These positive effects are particularly strong for rural male children. There are also regional variations, with a child (male or female) living in Upper Rural Egypt having a significantly lower likelihood of being currently enrolled. Finally, our estimation results point to large positive effects of father's education on the probability of current enrolment for all children. Mother's education, however, improves only the likelihood of current enrolment for female children, with no significant effect on male children.     

A Study of Major Impact: Assortative Mating and Earnings Inequality Among U.S. College Graduates

This research has two goals: to measure the extent of assortative (non-random) mating by college major in the United States, and to assess the extent to which assortative mating by college major increases earnings inequality among college-educated couples. Assortative mating of college graduates with other college graduates has been extensively studied, but research on assortative mating by field of study is rare. The analysis uses a large sample (659,732 couples) from five years of the American Community Survey public use files to group college degrees into nine categories, compute the frequency of all marital pairings, and compare these frequencies to a random assignment of pairings. The results show that assortative mating by college major is common for all majors and both genders, and that these results are robust to division of the sample by age group. Because high-earning majors tend to be married to spouses from the same high-earning major group, and likewise for low-earning majors, assortative mating increases earnings inequality among two-earner college-educated couples. The extent of this increased earnings inequality is calculated with both dollar measures and standard aggregate measures of inequality. Thus college-educated Americans tend to marry persons with similar college majors and this tendency measurably increases earnings inequality among college-educated couples.

     

The effect of target managerial ownership on the choice of acquisition financing and CEO job retention

In this paper we report on our investigation into whether the level of target managerial ownership has an effect on acquisition financing choice and target CEO job retention. We find that cash is more likely used to finance acquisitions when target management ownership levels are high. This result is consistent with a reduced monitoring hypothesis, where bidding firm managers seek to avoid the formation of a large block holder that may become an active monitor. We also find evidence specific only to stock deals that the probability of target CEO job retention increases with the level of target managerial ownership. In these cases, it appears the potential benefits associated with retaining certain target managers outweighs any negative consequence associated with creating a new monitoring block.