Gender and climate change: Do female parliamentarians make difference?

This paper investigates whether female political representation in national parliaments influences climate change policy outcomes. Based on data from a large sample of countries, we demonstrate that female representation leads countries to adopt more stringent climate change policies. We exploit a combination of full and partial identification approaches to suggest that this relationship is likely to be causal. Moreover, we show that through its effect on the stringency of climate change policies, the representation of females in parliament results in lower carbon dioxide emissions. Female political representation may be an underutilized tool for addressing climate change.     

Heading for the Hills? Effects of Community Flood Management on Local Adaptation to Flood Risks

The Community Rating System (CRS) program was implemented by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1990 as an optional program to encourage communities to voluntarily engage in flood mitigation initiatives. This article uses national census tract‐level data from 1980 to 2010 to estimate whether CRS participation and flood risk affect a community's local patterns of population change. We employ an instrumental‐variables strategy to address the potential endogeneity of CRS participation, based on community‐scale demographic factors that predict when a tract's host community joins the CRS. The results find significant effects of the CRS program and flood risk on population change. Taken together, the findings point to greater propensity for community‐scale flood management in areas with more newcomers and programs such as CRS stabilizing population, though not especially in flood‐prone areas. We observe the CRS neither displacing population toward lower‐risk areas nor attracting more people to flood‐prone areas.     

Flood Risk and Salience: New Evidence from the Sunshine State

A growing literature finds evidence that flood risk salience varies over time, spiking directly following a flood and then falling off individuals' cognitive radar in the following years. In this article, we provide new evidence of salience exploiting a hurricane cluster impacting Florida that was preceded and followed by periods of unusual calm. Utilizing residential property sales across the state from 2002 through 2012, our main estimate finds a salience impact of ?8%, on average. The salience effect persists when we base estimation only on spatial variation in prices to limit confounding from other simultaneous changes due to shifting hedonic equilibria over time. These effects range from housing prices decreases of 5.4–12.3% depending on the year of sale. Understanding flood risk salience has important implications for flood insurance and disaster policy, the benefits transfer literature, and, more broadly, our understanding of natural disaster resilience. JEL Classification: Q51, Q54, R21     

How Does Using a Mobile Device Change Investors’ Reactions to Firm Disclosures?

I examine how characteristics of investors’ information access tools change investors’ reactions to firm disclosures. I examine my research question in the context of information choice (i.e., allowing investors to choose the order of information and sections to read within a disclosure) and spatial layout (i.e., how information is displayed when viewing the disclosure). Results of an experiment are consistent with information choice improving investors’ judgments if the disclosure is viewed on a computer screen. Conversely, and consistent with cognitive overload, information choice harms investors’ judgments if the disclosure is viewed on a smaller screen, such as that of a mobile device. Follow-up experiments show that changing the disclosure presentation to reduce the need to scroll is one way to improve investors’ judgments on a smaller (or mobile) screen. My findings caution firms and regulators about expanding information choice within disclosures without considering the screen size used to access the disclosure.     

上市公司收购境内企业外资股权的财务绩效研究

以我国上市公司收购海外资本持有内地企业股权的案例为研究对象,采用因子分析法对并购的财务绩效进行分析,结果显示:从样本总体来看,上市公司收购海外资本所持内地企业的股权后财务绩效得到了明显的改善;企业性质、规模和行业类别不同的上市公司样本并购后的财务绩效表现差别很大。     

Econometric analysis of copyrights

This paper explores the impact of copyrights on firm value and on the demand for firm output. Using panel data on franchise value and ticket sales from the National Football League over the 1991–2000 period, we analyze the effect of copyrights (in this case, team logos) using several parametric estimators, the Arellano and Bond [1991. Some tests of specification for panel data: Monte Carlo evidence and an application to employment equations. Review of Economic Studies 58, 277–297] dynamic panel data estimator, and a semi-non-parametric method based on difference-in-differences propensity score matching. We find a negative effect of logo changes on franchise value that is robust across multiple specifications. In addition, logo changes also appear to have a moderate positive, albeit not particularly robust, impact on ticket sales.     

Divestitures,privatization and corporate performance in emerging markets

We use new firm‐level data to examine the effects of firm divestitures and privatization on corporate performance in a rapidly emerging market economy. Unlike the existing literature, we control for accompanying ownership changes and the fact that divestitures and ownership are potentially endogenous variables. We find that divestitures increase the firm's profitability but do not alter its scale of operations, while the effect of privatization depends on the resulting ownership structure – sometimes improving performance and sometimes bringing about decline. The effects of privatization are thus more nuanced than suggested in earlier studies. Methodologically, our study provides evidence that it is important to control for changes in ownership when analyzing divestitures and to control for endogeneity, selection and data attrition when analyzing the effects of divestitures and privatization.     

Fair Value Accounting and Debt Contracting: Evidence from Adoption of SFAS 159

We examine how fair value accounting affects debt contract design, specifically the use and definition of financial covenants in private loan contracts. Using SFAS 159 adoption as our setting, we find that a small but significant proportion of loans (14.5%) modify covenant definitions to exclude the effects of SFAS 159 fair values. Only a limited number of these modifications exclude assets elected at fair value (less than 7%), while all exclude liabilities elected at fair value. Notably, we document that covenant definition modification is unassociated with ex ante fair value elections. We find that covenant definition modification positively varies with common incentive problems attributed to fair value accounting and negatively varies with benefits attributed to fair value accounting. Our results suggest that fair value accounting is not uniformly detrimental for debt contracting and fair value adjustments are included when they are most likely to improve performance measurement.     

Corporate Governance,Social Responsibility,and Data Breaches

We study whether corporate governance and social responsibility are related to data breaches. We find that socially responsible companies with smaller boards and greater financial expertise are less likely to be breached. The financial impact of a breach is visible in the long term. Specifically, data‐breach firms have –3.5% one‐year buy‐and‐hold abnormal returns. Additionally, banks with breaches have significant declines in deposits and nonbanks have significant declines in sales in the long run. Finally, we find that following a data breach, companies are more likely to replace their chief executive officer and chief technology officer as well as improve their governance and social responsibility.     

Ironing out the kinks in executive compensation: Linking incentive pay to average stock prices

Traditional stock option grant is the most common form of incentive pay in executive compensation. Applying a principal-agent analysis, we find this common practice suboptimal and firms are better off linking incentive pay to average stock prices. Among other benefits, averaging reduces volatility by about 42%, making the incentive pay more attractive to risk-averse executives. Holding the cost of the option grant to the firm constant, Asian stock options are more cost effective than traditional stock options and provide stronger incentives to increase stock price. More importantly, the improvement is achieved with little impact on the option grant’s risk incentives (after adjusting for option cost). Finally, averaging also improves the value and incentive effects of indexed stock options.