Evaluating the participation of an ethnic minority group in informal employment: a product of exit or exclusion?

This paper critically evaluates competing explanations for the participation of ethnic minority groups in informal employment. These interpret their participation either through a structuralist lens arising out of ‘exclusion’ from formal employment or through a neo-liberal and/or post-structuralist lens driven by voluntary ‘exit’ from formal institutions. To evaluate critically these competing explanations, this paper reports a survey of the experiences of Pakistani immigrants in informal employment in Sheffield, including fifty face-to-face interviews and two focus groups. The findings highlight informal employment amongst this Pakistani ethnic minority group is neither universally driven by exclusion nor exit. Instead, some participate mostly due to exclusion, others mostly for exit rationales and some for a combination of the two, with different mixtures across different groups and types of informal employment. The outcome is a call for greater appreciation of the multifarious character of undeclared work and a move beyond simplistic explanations and policy responses.     

Stock market signals and consequences of securities class actions lawsuits: a microstructure perspective

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We perform a microstructure analysis of trading activities pre- and post-class period end-dates of securities class action lawsuits. We posit that...     

Testing conditional asset pricing models: An emerging market perspective

The CAPM as the benchmark asset pricing model generally performs poorly in both developed and emerging markets. We investigate whether allowing the model parameters to vary improves the performance of the CAPM and the Fama–French model. Conditional asset pricing models scaled by conditioning variables such as Trading Volume and Dividend Yield generally result in small pricing errors. However, a graphical analysis reveals that the predictions of conditional models are generally upward biased. We demonstrate that the bias in prediction may be the consequence of ignoring frequent large variation in asset returns caused by volatile institutional, political and macroeconomic conditions. This is characterised by excess kurtosis. An unconditional Fama–French model augmented with a cubic market factor performs the best among some competing models when local risk factors are employed. Moreover, the conditional models with global risk factors scaled by global conditioning variables perform better than the unconditional models with global risk factors.     

Participating mortgages and the efficiency of financial intermediation

This paper establishes a basic framework to study three different variants of Participating Mortgages (PMs). We obtain results for Shared Appreciation Mortgages (SAMs), Shared Income Mortgages (SIMs) and Shared Equity Mortgages (SEMs) in closed-form. We illustrate our findings with examples that show PMs are also attractive in an environment where prepayment can occur. Finally we conclude with the public policy implications of employing PMs as workout loans, especially post sub-prime crisis. We argue that by facilitating better risk sharing, PMs offer a means to enhance the efficiency and resiliency of the financial system.     

Poverty, political freedom, and the roots of terrorism in developing countries: An empirical assessment

We find that political freedom has a significant and non-linear effect on domestic terrorism, but has no statistically significant effect on transnational terrorism. Geography and fractionalization limit a country’s ability to curb terrorism, while strong legal institutions deter terrorism.     

Commodity trade between Pakistan and the US: is there evidence of the J-curve?

A few studies that have attempted to estimate the short-run (J-curve) and long-run impact of exchange rate depreciation on Pakistan’s trade balance are either based on aggregate trade data between Pakistan and the rest of the world or between Pakistan and her bilateral trading partners. The findings are mixed at best. Considering the trade balance between Pakistan and the US, as one of its major partners, no significant effects have been discovered. Suspecting that the trade flows between the two countries could suffer from another aggregation bias, we disaggregate their trade flows by commodity and consider the trade balance of 45 industries that trade between the two countries. We find significant short-run effects of currency depreciation on the trade balance of 17 industries. The short-run effects last into the long run in 15 cases. The largest industry that account for more than 10% of the trade seems to benefit from real depreciation in the long run.     

Are there racial differences in faculty salaries?

Many studies have used micro-level data in estimating earnings differentials by gender for college professors. None has studied racial earnings differences for faculty except by employing a dummy variable for race in its regression models. The availability of the 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty has made such a study possible. We use a variant of the Oaxaca decomposition technique suggested by Cotton (1988) and Neumark (1988). Although the salaries of black faculty trail those of their white counterparts at the Associate and Full Professor levels, the reverse is true at the Assistant Professor level. The increased emphasis in recent years on increasing diversification in the racial composition of college faculty are possible explanations. The authors are indebted to various colleagues for comments on earlier drafts. They also wish to thank an anonymous referee who suggested significant changes to this article. The authors remain responsible for any remaining errors or omissions.     

Towards an open systems approach to budgeting

The theory of open systems has been increasingly applied to the study of organizational planning and control systems. This is also true for the area of budgetary control. At present, however, there is a tendency for writers to treat the design problems as an either/or choice between an open or a closed system. This paper argues that the critical decision problem is where in a system closure can be most beneficially applied. It will show that the open systems view, with its emphasis upon the horizontal dimension in an organization, is better suited for designing effective budgetary control systems. The computation of budget variances is chosen as the key step at which the usefulness of this view can be fully appreciated. An alternative budget variances measurement scheme, based upon similar perspectives in the area of job design, is proposed. It is shown that variances computed under the proposed system more fully reflect the interacting nature of most organizations and provide better control information.     

Antecedents and consequences of psychological contracts: Does organizational culture really matter?

Exploring the role of psychological contracts, this study proposes that different organizational cultures are associated with relational psychological contracts compared to transactional contracts while both types of contracts serve as mediators. While clan cultures positively impact relational contracts and are negatively associated with transactional contracts, hierarchical cultures have the reverse effect. In addition, psychological contract types mediate the two culture types' relationship to both organizational commitment and employee yearly earnings. In sum, clan cultures relate to more positive organizational outcomes than hierarchical cultures, a finding which as implications for future research and practice.