Evolution of the gender earnings gap among Canadian university graduates

This paper reports the results of an empirical analysis of the gender earnings gap among recent Canadian Bachelor's level university graduates. The overall gap as of two years leaving university narrowed significantly across successive cohorts of graduates, but widened significantly from two to five years out for all groups. Differences in the explanatory variables ‘explain’ account for between 40% and essentially the entire gap across the different periods, this portion rising from two to five years out and across cohorts. By the final group, all of the gap is thus ‘explained’ at the two-year point in time, and most of it is explained at the five-year mark, meaning that labour market returns (measured in this manner) are largely gender-neutral for the last group of graduates. Hours of work is the single most important influence, while past work experience, job characteristics, family status, and province of residence and language have smaller and more mixed effects.     

The Menace of Competition and Gambling Deregulation

The present article proposes a typology of the main varieties of uncertainty considered by economists and refines existing concepts. This typology combines three distinctions, between: substantive and procedural uncertainty; weak and strong uncertainty; and ambiguity and fundamental uncertainty. These concepts refer, or fail to refer, to factors such as: a lack of information; complexity; the (im)possibility of building probability distributions that are unique, additive and reliable; structural change; etc. When refining these concepts, the article pays special attention to the conception of social reality underlying each concept. It refers to what each concept may imply about the complexity and changeability of social reality and the limitations and creative potential of the individuals that inhabit this reality, in addition to, in some cases, the roles of institutions and the features of the process of technological change.     

Creating mutual value: Lessons learned from ventures serving base of the pyramid producers

The base of the pyramid (BoP) literature is grounded in the proposition of mutual value creation, an important but not yet well-tested relationship between business development and poverty alleviation. This paper begins to address this gap by assessing how business ventures serving BoP producers address local constraints and create mutual value. Using a case study methodology, sixty-four ventures are analyzed to identify the constraints faced by BoP producers. These are classified into productivity and transactional constraints. While the former set of constraints inhibits local value creation, the latter severely diminish the value capture potential of BoP producers. An in-depth analysis of eleven agricultural ventures provides insight into the strategies that ventures use to address constraints and enhance value creation and capture by BoP producers. The findings also indicate that alleviating constraints creates value not only for local producers, but also for the ventures themselves.     

Pricing target NOLs in mergers and acquisitions from the participating firms' perspective

While prior research has extensively examined the market response to target net operating loss carryforwards (NOLs) in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) announcements, the question of whether target NOLs are priced by the participating firms during the price negotiation process has not been explicitly addressed. Answers to this question could provide direct measures to assist firms in pricing target NOLs in M&As. Our results show that the participating firms price target NOLs based on how long it will take the acquirer to use the acquired NOL in both nontaxable and taxable acquisitions under the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Also, we find a significant difference in the market pricing and the participant pricing of target short-lived NOLs before, and continuing well after, the announcement date. Our findings suggest that the importance of the differences between the market and the participating firms perspectives should be considered when conducting future research in this area.     

Risk,standard deviation,and expected value: when should an individual start social security?

In choosing when to start collecting Social Security, the differences in expected net present values (NPVs) are small—but the corresponding standard deviations are not. Starting earlier is less risky. The case analyzed is single individuals in the U.S. system, but the methodology can be applied to couples and to the systems of other nations. Considering risk and return together places Social Security in the same risk/return framework as other capital investments. Behavioral, situational, and qualitative factors that often dominate decisions on when to start are linked with quantitative approaches to longevity risk and mortality risk.     

Technical Note: Formulas for Perpetual Gradients

Virtually all engineering economy texts include the formula to find the present worth of a perpetual annuity, but only two seem to include the similar formula for a perpetual arithmetic gradient. This note adds a new formula for the present worth of a perpetual geometric gradient. Though no cash flow stream really lasts forever, there are many infrastructure projects whose lives are long enough to be economically “forever.” In addition, many endowment problems would be more realistic if they assumed a perpetual geometric gradient. Moreover, the simplicity of the formula may help practitioners and students develop a feel for the economics of long-lived gradients.