Impact of State Exemption Laws on Small Business Bankruptcy Decision

To provide further insights into the current debate on consumer bankruptcy, this article empirically assesses the impact of state bankruptcy exemption levels on the likelihood of small business owners filing for bankruptcy. We estimate a proportional hazard model of small business bankruptcy using a unique panel data set of over 43,000 small business credit card holders over a two-year period from May 2000 to May 2002. Overall, our results indicate that for every $10,000 increase in a state's homestead exemptions, the risk of small business bankruptcy increases by 8%. Moreover, we also find that the likelihood of small business owners filing for bankruptcy will rise by 4% with a $1000 increase in personal property exemption levels.     

III. Weltwirtschaft und Wirtschaft einzlner Länderund und Gebiete

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Why do foreign investors underperform domestic investors in trading activities? Evidence from Indonesia

Foreign investors generally underperform domestic investors in trading activities. This study shows that their inferior performance is attributable to non-initiated orders. Foreign investors actually perform better than domestic investors in initiated orders. In addition, their performance is also mixed when trades are classified depending on who the counterparties are. These mixed performances can be explained by neither the information disadvantage hypothesis proposed by [Dvo?ák, T., 2005. Do domestic investors have an information advantage? Evidence from Indonesia. Journal of Finance 60, 817–839.] nor the poor timing of trade hypothesis suggested by [Choe, H., Kho, B.C., Stulz, R., 2005. Do domestic investors have an edge? The trading experience of foreign investors in Korea. Review of Financial Studies 18, 795–829.]. We propose and confirm that their inferior performance is explained by their aggressive trading behavior. Three metrics we utilize to measure the aggressiveness of foreign investors’ trading provide overwhelmingly strong evidence that foreign investors are more aggressive than their domestic counterparts.     

Who leaves,where to,and why worry? employee mobility,entrepreneurship and effects on source firm performance

We theorize that the value provided by the firm's complementary assets has important implications for the exit decisions of employees and their subsequent effects on the firm's performance. Using linked employee‐employer data from the U.S. Census Bureau on legal services, we find that employees with higher earnings are less likely to leave relative to employees with lower earnings, but if they do, are more likely to create a new venture than join another firm. Employee entrepreneurship has a larger adverse impact on source firm performance than moves to established firms, even controlling for observable employee quality. Our findings suggest that in knowledge intensive settings, managers should focus on tailoring compensation packages to help minimize the adverse impact of employee entrepreneurship, particularly among high performing individuals. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of Mortgage Rate Buydowns on Housing Prices:

The model developed in this paper analyzes the effect of builder-financed FHA-VA mortgage subsidies or buydowns on the price of housing. Hedonic pricing equations are estimated for a locationally and qualitatively uniform sample of new tract development homes. The explanatory variables are vectors of physical and financial characteristics. The latter include a continuous variable for discount points paid by builders which is indicative of the magnitude of prepaid finance charges. The results indicate that a substantial portion of mortgage subsidy costs are shifted to buyers in the form of inflated housing prices.     

Migration of professional manpower to the United States

The results of an investigation of the immigration of professionals to the United States are presented. The data concern a sample of professionals from 17 developing and developed countries who were immigrants in 1969. Both direct and indirect immigration are considered, and special attention is paid to the constraints on professional immigration and the adjustment of status imposed by immigration policies. The results suggest that the relative wage rate is more strongly related to the brain drain than is relative income and that more restrictive policies concerning labor certification would probably prove effective in reducing the student brain drain in the short term.