Unions and Gender Pay Equity in Academe: A Study of U.S. Institutions

This paper uses 1994-95 faculty salary data from over 1,100 four-year U.S. academic institutions, about one-fourth of them with collective bargaining agreements, to ask if faculty unions make a difference to gender pay equity. Average gender salary differences are negative at every rank and at every category of U.S. institution with or without collective bargaining agreement. Unions may improve gender salary differentials somewhat, particularly at the assistant professor level. There is no evidence that this gain will be lost at higher levels, and mixed evidence that further gains occur for women at the full professor level. The most pervasive and robust consequence of unions is to increase the positive impact that higher proportions of women at senior faculty ranks make on relative salaries at the assistant professor level. However, the influence of these higher-ranked women on gender salary inequalities at the associate and full levels is lower in union schools than nonunion schools. By reducing the flexibility of existing salary structures, collective bargaining apparently reduces the influence of senior women faculty on the salaries of current women faculty members while increasing their attention and influence at entry levels.     

Evolution of Corporate Law and the Transplant Effect: Lessons from Six Countries

The pattern of legal change in countries that have their legalsystems transplanted from abroad differs markedly from countriesthat develop their own systems, irrespective of the legal familyfrom which their laws come. In "transplant" countries, law oftenstagnates for long periods of time; when change takes place,it tends to be radical, if not erratic. External models remaindominant even years after the law was transplanted. Althoughthere is some evidence that transplant countries have engagedin comprehensive legal reforms in response to the pressuresof globalization, it is still too early to judge whether thesenew changes can be taken as a sign that the legal systems inthese countries have started a process of endogenous legal evolution.      

Conditioning manager alphas on economic information: another look at the persistence of performance

This article presents evidence on persistence in the relativeinvestment performance of large, institutional equity managers.Similar to existing evidence for mutual funds, we find persistentperformance concentrated in the managers with poor prior-periodperformance measures. A conditional approach, using time-varyingmeasures of risk and abnormal performance, is better able todetect this persistence and to predict the future performanceof the funds than are traditional methods.     

Using proxies for the short rate: when are three months like an instant?

The dynamics of the unobservable short rate are frequently estimateddirectly using a proxy. We examine the biases resulting fromthis practice (the 'proxy problem'). Analytic results show thatthe proxy problem is not economically significant for single-factoraffine models. In the two-factor affine model of Longstaff andSchwartz (1992), the proxy problem is only economically significantfor pricing discount bonds with maturities of more than fiveyears. We also describe two different numerical procedures forassessing the magnitude of the proxy problem in a general interestrate model. When applied to a nonlinear single-factor model,they suggest that the proxy problem can be economically significant.     

Fundraising communications: the role of experience in perceptions of media risk

This paper examines fundraising communications for charities in respect to their use of media. The questions posed were the extent to which knowledge and experience affect the perceptions of risk in media decision-making, and to what extent direct marketing reduces risk owing to its measurability. Based on a mail survey, direct mail was perceived as less risky than advertising. However, less risk was generally perceived when using familiar media. Managerially, the implications are that fundraisers may be lulled into a false sense of security by their familiarity with the media that they are using. The research emphasises the importance of perceptions in risk-taking and the need continually to re-evaluate positions on media choice. Copyright © 1999 Henry Stewart Publications     

Cash Flow, Consumption Risk, and the Cross-section of Stock Returns

I link an asset's risk premium to two characteristics of its underlying cash flow: covariance and duration. Using empirically novel estimates of both cash flow characteristics based exclusively on accounting earnings and aggregate consumption data, I examine their dynamic interaction in a two-factor cash flow model and find that they are able to explain up to 82% of the cross-sectional variation in the average returns on size, book-to-market, and long-term reversal-sorted portfolios for the period 1964 to 2002. This finding highlights the importance of fundamental cash flow characteristics in determining the risk exposure of an asset.     

The limits to IPR standardization policies as evidenced by strategic patenting in UMTS

The impact of patents and patent royalties are a major concern of standards setting organizations. This study examines the patents filed in the standardization of UMTS, the third-generation mobile phone technology developed under sponsorship of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and others, using a patent policy developed in response to issues faced in the earlier GSM (née Group Special Mobile) standardization. After contrasting firm strategies and policy effectiveness between the GSM and UMTS efforts, the paper reviews the potential impact of potential changes to the ETSI IPR (intellectual property rights) policy.     

企业技术能力结构化研究

从企业技术能力构成角度,给出了企业技术能力六个构成要素,并分别探讨了企业识别技术能力、选择技术能力、获取技术能力、利用技术能力、保护技术能力及技术库.     

The Economics of Charities: Revised Theory and New Evidence

Can economic principles be applied to the behaviour of charities? Professor Edwin West of the Universities of Carleton and Emory, claims that charities are susceptible to the same type of analysis as companies - but with important differences.