Retrospective questions: data quality,task difficulty,and the use of a checklist

Data from a national panel study with waves in 1987 and 1991 (N=1257), present evidence of the low accuracy of responses to retrospective questions, concerning both attitudes and behaviour. Applying a split ballot design, it is investigated whether using a checklist improves the response accuracy for a retrospective question about one single event: how respondents (N=363) did obtain the job they had four years ago. Furthermore interaction effects of ‘task difficulty’ are examined. The response accuracy indeed increases by using a checklist; however, this increase is not statistically significant. The expected increase of the checklist effect with higher ‘task difficulty’ appears for longer recall intervals, but not for more frequent changes of jobs. It turned out that for male respondents all the predicted effects are indeed clearly present. But for female respondents the checklist appeared to have no effect, irrespective of the task difficulty. A tentative explanation for this unexpected gender effect is suggested by pointing at indications that the male and female respondents differed in the way they obtained their job.     

Vertrauen als Gegenstand der ökonomischen Theorie

Der Beitrag vermittelt einen grundlegenden überblick über die Bedeutung des Vertrauens im Rahmen der ?konomischen Theorie. Zun?chst werden ausgew?hlte Ans?tze im Rahmen der betriebswirtschaftlichen Vertrauensforschung diskutiert. Um eine strukturierte Analyse zu erm?glichen, erfolgt eine differenzierte Betrachtung hinsichtlich der neoklassisch und institutionen?konomisch fundierten Perspektive einerseits sowie der sozio?konomischen Perspektive andererseits. Die Diskussion um den Stand der Forschung wird abgerundet durch einen überblick über empirische Ergebnisse der ?konomischen Vertrauensliteratur. Um noch offene Fragen im Rahmen der Forschung zu adressieren, werden im Anschluss die unterschiedlichen Objekte des Vertrauens analysiert, differenziert nach personalen Vertrauen und Systemvertrauen. Zum Abschluss gilt es die Verhaltensrisiken herauszuarbeiten, die mit Vertrauensbeziehungen einhergehen und die Grenzen des Vertrauens in Organisationen zu beleuchten.     

Recovering Hicksian Consumer Surplus within a Collective Model: Hausman's Method for the Household

The purpose of this paper is to describe the implications of the collective model of household behavior for the methods used to estimate the economic value of non-marketed environmental resources. After demonstrating how the separability restrictions inherent in the collective model allow individual preference and household income allocation choices to be distinguished, the paper demonstrates how the framework can be used to recover Hicksian consumer surplus. An algebraic example is used to illustrate how the framework can be used in valuing environmental resources.     

Banks’ non-traditional activities under regulatory changes: impact on risk,performance and capital adequacy

Using the big six Canadian chartered banks quarterly financial statements and daily stock market data from 1982 to 2018, we examine the impact of non-interest income on Canadian banks’ risk, performance and capital under the different major regulatory changes made to the Bank Act of Canada. Our results show that Canadian banks’ expansion into non-traditional activities had slightly decreased their risks and significantly improved their performance benefitting from income diversification. Moreover, while adhering to capital adequacy regulation, reshuffling banks’ portfolio towards non-traditional activities did not reduce Canadian banks’ capital ratio. In spite of the re-regulation towards universal banking against ring-fencing, this feature buttresses the effectiveness of capital adequacy regulation in Canada in linking banks capital allocation with their risk taking.     

Wage inflation and labour conflicts in the Netherlands : An empirical investigation using the co-integration approach

The ‘wage space’, which is defined as the sum of price inflation and labour productivity growth, has played a major role as an indicator of allowable wage increases in the post-war wage negotiations in the Netherlands. This paper shows that: (a) wages and the wage space are co-integrated; (b) the deviation between wages and the wage space may act as an error correction term in the wage equation when both variables are identified as I(2); and (c) political consensus and the threat of labour conflicts (rather than actual strike activity) may be identified as the ‘mechanism’ behind this error correction in the wage equation.     

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.     

Spreads, Depths, and Quote Clustering on the NYSE and Nasdaq: Evidence after the 1997 Securities and Exchange Commission Rule Changes

This paper examines liquidity and quote clustering on the NYSE and Nasdaq using data after the two market reforms—the 1997 order–handling rule and minimum tick size changes. We find that Nasdaq–listed stocks exhibit wider spreads and smaller depths than NYSE–listed stocks and stocks with higher proportions of even–eighth and even–sixteenth quotes have wider quoted, effective, and realized spreads on both the NYSE and Nasdaq. This result differs from the findings by Bessembinder (1999, p. 404) that "trade execution costs on Nasdaq in late 1997 are no longer significantly explained by a tendency for liquidity providers to avoid odd–eighth quotations," and "odd–sixteenth avoidance has little relevance for explaining post–reform Nasdaq trading costs."     

Versicherungsvertragliche Anzeigepflicht und Garantiehaftung für culpa in contrahendo

To sanction the insurant’s obligation to disclose the risk-relevant circumstances by the insurer’s exemption from performance does not comply with the ordinary pattern of pre-contractual liability. Instead of making the insurant responsible for the consequences of his breach of duty, the German Insurance Act subjects him to a guarantee which is comparable to the one imposed by the German Civil Code in the case of initial impossibility. The insurant has to guarantee that the facts which he did not, or at least not entirely, disclose do not cause any obligation of the insurer. The structure of this sanction is equivalent to the insurer’s so-called liability of performance. But contrary to the latter it can be justified by the specific importance of the insurant’s pre-contractual obligation of disclosure.     

Management earnings forecasts and other forward-looking statements

We identify forward-looking statements (FLS) in firms’ disclosures to distinguish between “forecast-like” (quantitative statements about earnings) and “other”, or non-forecast-like, FLS.  We show that, like earnings forecasts, other FLS generate significant investor and analyst responses. Unlike earnings forecasts, other FLS are issued more frequently when uncertainty is higher. We then show that earnings-related FLS are more sensitive to uncertainty than quantitative statements, suggesting that managers are more likely to alter the content than the form of FLS when uncertainty is higher.  Our study indicates that incorporating other FLS into empirical measures provides a more comprehensive proxy for firms’ voluntary disclosures.