Returns to IT excellence: Evidence from financial performance around information technology excellence awards

The resource-based view has been used in IT business value research to theorize and investigate the impact of unique IT capabilities on sustainable competitive advantages. Prior research has empirically documented a positive association between superior IT capabilities and firm performance. However, such analyses have focused on IT capabilities of firms in the early 1990s. In this study, we examine the impact of superior IT capabilities on firm performance over the 1988–2007 period, which allows us to consider the structural shifts in the return of IT capability over time. Our results suggest that firms with superior IT capabilities are able to attain higher firm performance levels until 1999. However, such performance advantage disappears in the post-1999 time period. We also find that a subset of firms that sustain high levels of IT capabilities during the period 1988 to 2007 continue to perform better than their peers. We conclude that managers are able to achieve superior firm performance if they are able to maintain high levels of IT capability over time.     

Price uncertainty, saving, and welfare

We analyze how commodity price uncertainty affects saving behavior and welfare in a dynamic model with multiple commodities, portfolio hedging, and a preference structure that disentangles ordinal preferences, attitudes towards risk, and attitudes towards intertemporal substitution. We show that the effect of price uncertainty on savings boils down to knowing (1) hf degree of resistance to intertemporal substitution and (2) the effect that uncertainty has on the certainty-equivalent real interest rate. We also show that, if the certainty-equivalent real interest rate is lower with uncertainty, consumers' welfare is also lower.     

Firm level return-volatility analysis using dynamic panels

This paper examines “leverage” and volatility feedback effects at the firm level by considering both market and firm level effects, using 242 individual firm stock data in the US market. We adopt a panel vector autoregressive framework which allows us to control simultaneously for common business cycle effects, unobserved cross correlation effects in return and volatility via industry effects, and heterogeneity across firms. Our results suggest that volatility feedback effects at the firm level are present due to both market and firm effects, though the market volatility feedback effect is stronger than the corresponding firm level effect. We also find that the leverage effect at the firm level is persistent, significant and negative, while the effect of market return on firm volatility is persistent, significant and positive. The presence of these effects is further explored through the responses of the model's variables to market-wide return and volatility shocks.     

Recidivism among Welfare Recipients: The Role of Neighborhood and Access to Employment

Work requirements and time limitations on benefits have forced welfare administrators to be more aggressive in moving welfare recipients into the workplace. This paper tracks a cohort of Georgia welfare leavers from 1992 to 2001, estimating the timing of recidivism using duration models. Of the case heads that leave the program within a two-year period, 15.3 percent remain out of welfare for less than three months and 35 percent returned within one year. There is also a relatively high risk of welfare recidivism for a much longer period than estimated in previous studies. Furthermore, successful employment may be affected not only by the presence of job growth but also by the industrial mix in which jobs are growing and by the residential location of welfare leavers.     

Global human development: accounting for its regional disparities

This study’s multilevel statistical models quantify the effects of civilization zones and instrumental factors on the capacities for human agency that a country provides its citizens. These capacities are measured by the UN’s human development index, which synthesizes measures of literacy, longevity, and income. Indicators of political democracy, slavery, national debt, corruption, and internal conflict gauge the instrumental factors. Political freedom and emancipative employment coupled with civil order account for the regional differences in human development scores; civilization zones, heavily indebted poor countries, and corruption influence the variability among countries within the regions.