Does increased access increase equality? Gender and child health investments in India

Increases in access to social services are often thought to decrease inequality in the level of these services between advantaged and disadvantaged groups. This is an issue in the developing world, where policy-makers often argue that increasing the level of health care, for example, will decrease gender inequality. However, increases in access to services often have empirically ambiguous effects on inequality, increasing it in some cases and decreasing it in others. This paper argues that this is not surprising, and simple economic theory suggests that we should expect a non-monotonic relationship between access and inequality. At low levels of access to investments, there is no investment for either the advantaged or disadvantaged group, producing equality. Increases in access increase investment for the advantaged group first, generating inequality. Further increases in access increase investment in the disadvantaged group, decreasing inequality. I test the predictions of this theory using data on the availability of health camps (or distance to health centers) and gender differences in vaccinations in India. I find strong support for a non-monotonic relationship between access and gender equality.     

The effects of informative and non‐informative price patterns on consumer price judgments

Converging evidence from laboratory experiments and empirical models of scanner data suggests that product price evaluations are often based on a comparison to an internal reference price. Research indicates that the reference price may reflect various characteristics of previously encountered prices including the mean, the range, and the last price encountered. In this research, the authors test whether, for prices purportedly sampled over time, the reference price reflects temporal patterns of the price sequence (ascending and descending prices). In four studies, participants viewed prices purportedly sampled at one time point or at multiple time points and then evaluated a target price. Price distributions differed only in their temporal pattern, whereas the mean, the range, and in some conditions, the last price, were held constant. The results reveal that the price pattern does not affect price judgments when prices are purportedly sampled at one time point. However, for ascending and descending price sequences purportedly sampled over time, the price pattern affects price judgments. Based on these findings the authors propose that consumers flexibly select the internal reference price used for price evaluations. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Genetic adverse selection: Evidence from long-term care insurance and Huntington disease

Individual, personalized genetic information is increasingly available, leading to the possibility of greater adverse selection over time, particularly in individual-payer insurance markets. We use data on individuals at risk for Huntington disease (HD), a degenerative neurological disorder with significant effects on morbidity, to estimate adverse selection in long-term care insurance. We find strong evidence of adverse selection: individuals who carry the HD genetic mutation are up to 5 times as likely as the general population to own long-term care insurance. This finding is supported both by comparing individuals at risk for HD to those in the general population and by comparing across tested individuals in the HD-risk population with and without the HD mutation.     

Managerial incentives,options, and cost-structure choices

This study explores the relationship between changes in managerial risk-taking incentives and adjustments of firms’ cost structures, particularly the operating leverage (fixed-to-variable cost ratio). We find managers reduce operating leverage by substituting fixed costs with variable costs, mainly in the selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) and research and development (R&D) cost components, in response to reductions in option-based compensation following the issuance of FAS 123R. Managers facing a decrease in risk-taking incentives adjust operating leverage downward because high operating leverage intensifies the downside potential of earnings. Overall, we present compelling evidence that managers adjust the cost structure of their firms in response to a reduction in risk-taking incentives.     

The Impact of Debt-Equity Reporting Classifications on the Firm's Decision to Issue Hybrid Securities

Abstract

We test the influence of classification of securities into liabilities and equity on firms' financing choices, using as our setting the change in reporting classification of hybrid securities following SFAS 150. We find that this change affected the decision of firms to issue mandatorily redeemable preferred shares (MRPS). Following the requirement that firms classify the debt-like hybrid security MRPS as a liability, the share of MRPS issuances in firms' new financing declined. Characteristics of firms issuing MRPS also changed. While prior to SFAS 150 firms with higher levels of debt and lower coverage ratios chose to issue MRPS and not debt, after its adoption, the decision to issue MRPS is no longer related to firms' pre-existing debt and coverage levels. Furthermore, our results indicate that before SFAS 150 managers were willing to bear the higher issuance fees of MRPS and chose to issue these debt-like hybrid securities over cheaper debt. The requirement to classify debt-like hybrids as a liability took away the reporting incentives for issuance and made these securities a less popular financing vehicle.     

The effects of optimal time of day on persuasion processes in older adults

Past research demonstrates that the majority of older adults (60 years and older) perform resource‐demanding tasks better in the morning than in the afternoon or evening. The authors ask whether this time‐of‐day effect also impacts persuasion processes performed under relatively high involvement. The data show that the attitudes of older adults are more strongly affected by an easy‐to‐process criterion, picturerelatedness, at their non‐optimal time of day (afternoon) and by a more‐difficult‐to‐process criterion, argument strength, at their optimal time of day (morning). In contrast, the attitudes of younger adults are affected primarily by argument strength at both their optimal (afternoon) and non‐optimal (morning) times of day. Process‐level evidence that accords with these results is provided. The results accentuate the need for matching marketing communications to the processing styles and abilities of older adults. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Voluntary disclosure of accruals in earnings press releases and the pricing of accruals

This study investigates firms’ decisions to disclose accruals information in earnings press releases versus to provide it only in 10-Q filings and the impact of this disclosure on the pricing of accruals. I find that firms disclose accruals in their press releases when earnings alone are a weak indication of cash flow performance and that following these disclosures the accruals information is fully impounded into stock prices. The evidence suggests that when investor demand for accruals is likely to exist and firms disclose the information in earnings press releases, the mispricing typically associated with accruals is mitigated.

The development of strategic management: Journal quality and article impact

Quality ratings of strategic management journals by experts correlate closely with objective quality measures of current article impact and cumulative journal influence. In part, journal quality seems determined by editors' research stature. Over 12 years, scholarly influence of strategic management periodicals has grown nearly three-fold, as two new journals directed to conceptual development of management as a whole have risen to prominence. Expansion of strategic management research and growth of its influence may be in response to challenges posed by the continuing crisis of managerial and business performance.