Trading Volume, Information Asymmetry, and Timing Information

This paper investigates trading volume before scheduled and unscheduled corporate announcements to explore how traders respond to private information. I show that cumulative trading volume decreases inversely to information asymmetry prior to scheduled announcements, while the opposite relation holds for volume after the announcement. In contrast, trading volume before unscheduled announcements increases dramatically and shows little relation to proxies for information asymmetry. I investigate the behavior of market makers and find that they act appropriately by increasing price sensitivity before all announcements, implying that they extract timing information from their order books.     

WHY REWARDS ARE BETTER THAN SANCTIONS

Sanctions are said to fail because of the “rally‐round‐the‐flag effect”. This is the main reason why many advocate the use of positive incentives as a viable alternative. Not only do rewards provoke no defensive reaction, but they may elicit a rally in support of compliance – a “fifth‐column effect.” Yet, positive incentives are vulnerable to extortion – doing wrong in the hope of obtaining larger rewards. As a result, many conjecture that sanction threats and promises of reward are most efficient when used simultaneously. We put this conjecture to a test, staging a formal confrontation of the two forms of incentives. Our model pits a sanctioner and a target in a game allowing for the possibility of rally‐round‐the‐flag, fifth‐column, and extortion effects. The game yields unambiguous results: under no circumstances should a sanctioner prefer sanction threats to reward promises. This result holds despite the risk of extortion, a risk that proves to be less of a drawback than the rally round the flag.     

Creditor Rights, Enforcement, and Bank Loans

We examine whether differences in legal protection affect the size, maturity, and interest rate spread on loans to borrowers in 48 countries. Results show that banks respond to poor enforceability of contracts by reducing loan amounts, shortening loan maturities, and increasing loan spreads. These effects are both statistically significant and economically large. While stronger creditor rights reduce spreads, they do not seem to matter for loan size and maturity. Overall, we show that variation in enforceability of contracts matters a great deal more to how loans are structured and how they are priced.     

The Best of Both Worlds: Accessing Emerging Economies via Developed Markets

A growing body of evidence suggests that the benefits of international diversification via developed markets have declined dramatically. While emerging markets still offer diversification opportunities, their public equity indices capture only a fraction of emerging countries' economic activity. We propose a diversification approach that exploits the global connectedness of developed countries to gain exposure to emerging countries' overall economies rather than their shallow equity markets. In doing so, we demonstrate that developed markets still offer substantial diversification benefits beyond those available through equity indices. Our results suggest that relying on equity indices to assess diversification benefits understates diversification gains.     

PUBLIC VERSUS PRIVATE DELIVERY OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE SERVICES: THE CASE OF NORTH CAROLINA

This paper examines the effects of different institutional arrangements and characteristics on cost savings, efficiency gains, and productivity of delivering municipal solid waste services. A cost function approach is employed, and North Carolina municipal data for three years (1997, 2001, and 2003) are used for the analysis. Empirical findings indicate that there is no significant difference in cost savings between public delivery and private contractor delivery of solid waste services, a finding similar to those of other recent studies. There are three possible reasons for this. First, the threat of competition and contracting out might have led to cost savings in the cases of public delivery. Second, there might be a lack of competition because a few large private contractors have been able to win follow‐on contracts over the years. Third, there might be substantial transaction costs arising as the result of private contracting. (JEL H40, H83, Q53)     

ORDER PROCESSING COST REDUCTION IN A JOINT VENDOR-BUYER INVENTORY SYSTEM VIA THE APPLICATION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Modem information technologies have become important means for manufacturing and retailing firms to gain such competitive advantages as lower logistics costs and securer customers' loyalty. In this paper, we investigate a joint inventory system where the vendor produces a single item for its sole buyer and the buyer sells the item to consumers with backorders allowed. Each production lot is delivered to the buyer in a number of shipments and consecutive shipments will be increased by a fixed factor. Both vendor and buyer are willing to participate in order processing time reduction by applying information technologies in order to decrease their joint total cost. The order processing time can be reduced by certain expenditures and will affect the lot-size decisions. An analytical model is developed for determining the optimal expenditure in order processing time reduction and lot sizes for both vendor and buyer. The numerical experiment along with sensitivity analysis is also performed to obtain some insights of our model.     

Social Inefficiency of Free Entry with Status Effects

Free markets may support too many or too few firms. Traditional analysis does not provide unambiguous conclusion in this respect. This paper introduces status effects of consumption into the model. It shows that a sufficiently significant status effect tends to support too many firms. Two conditions are required for this result. First, complementary effect between status and consumption is not significant. Second, a higher average status consumption level makes everyone more difficult to get the same degree of gain in status. Both conditions appear to be realistic.     

High Performance Work Practices and Employee Voice: A Comparison of Japanese and Korean Workers

Using a unique new cross‐national survey of Japanese and Korean workers, we report the first systematic evidence on the effects on employee voice of High Performance Work Practices (HPWPs) from the two economies that are noted for the wide use of HPWPs. We find for both nations that: (i) workers in firms with HPWPs aimed at creating opportunities for employees to get involved (such as shopfloor committees and small group activities) are indeed more likely to have stronger senses of influence and voice on shopfloor decision making than other workers; (ii) workers whose pay is tied to firm performance are more likely to have a stake in firm performance and hence demand such influence and voice; and (iii) consequently workers in firms with HPWPs are more likely to make frequent suggestions for productivity increase and quality improvement. As such, this paper contributes to a small yet growing new empirical literature that tries to understand the actual process and mechanism through which HPWPs lead to better enterprise performance.