The treatment of racial and sexual discrimination in economics journals and economics textbooks: 1972 to 1987

This article examines two decades of scholarly literature on discrimination and two decades of discussion of discrimination in economics textbooks. At first discrimination was taken seriously and policy responses adequate to the problem were advocated. Today this is a minority position. The article first traces the way thatJEL policies concerning indexing and abstracting have contributed to this change. Next textbooks are analyzed to show how this change is manifested in commonly used curricular materials. Finally, political preferences are shown to undergird crucial arguments like those concerning minimum wages. Conclusions linking ideology to research agendas are put forward.     

The impact of capacity expansion on the market value of the firm

This paper empirically investigates the impact of capacity expansion decisions on the market value of the firm. Event study methodology is used to estimate the abnormal change in stock prices around capacity expansion decision announcements. On the day of the announcement, the magnitude of the price change is abnormally high, evidenced by a significantly positive mean standardized square of the abnormal change (Beaver's U-statistic). We also analyze factors that we could affect the direction and magnitude of the abnormal change in the stock prices. We find that the change in price on the day of the announcement is positively and significantly related to the real growth rate of the industry, and negatively and significantly related to the variability of demand. A negative relationship between the price change and industry capacity utilization is also found which can have important implications for companies which follow the wait-and-see approach to capacity expansion decisions. We also find management ownership to be a significant predictor in explaining stock price changes around these announcements.     

On the Geometry of Constant Returns

Imports are modeled as a fixed proportion of spending rather than as a function of total or disposable income. With this formulation, the import component of spending shifts must be netted out in order to predict the initial autonomous change in domestic spending. In addition, the formulation should provide a clearer understanding than current formulations of how leakages influence the multiplier process.     

Corporate Control and the Decapitalization of Subsidiary Corporations: The Looting of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad

John Rawls's A Theory of Justice is examined from the perspective of experimental methods in economics and complex adaptive systems simulations. This paper first discusses the justice principle selection process in Rawls's representation of it as a hypothetical experiment. This hypothetical experiment fails to satisfy reasonable experimental controls, particularly as reflects the conception of the individual it employs. The second section of the paper discusses the differences between Rawls's two conceptions of rational persons associated with his distinction between thin and full theories of the good. The third section uses his fuller conception of rational persons, life plans, and psychological laws in the third part of the book to offer an alternative view of the selection process understood as a complex adaptive system. The fourth section turns to a topic raised by this complex system approach, the status of normative reasoning in political-economic systems. The fifth section summarizes.     

Developing Dividend and Financing Policies with a Computer Terminal

This study examines the value relevance of mandated disclosures by UK firms of the investor‐firm share of liabilities of equity‐accounted associate and joint venture investees. It does so for the six years following the introduction of FRS 9: Associates and Joint Ventures, which forced a substantial increase in such disclosures by UK firms. Since the increased disclosure requirements were partly motivated by concern that single‐line equity accounting concealed the level of group gearing, and in light of previous US results, it is predicted that the mandated investee‐liability disclosures have a negative coefficient in a value‐relevance regression. The study also examines whether value‐relevance regression coefficients on investee‐liability disclosures are more negative for joint ventures than for associates and whether they are more negative in the presence of investor‐firm guarantees of investee‐firm obligations than in the absence of such guarantees. The study reports that the coefficient on all investee‐liability disclosures taken together has the predicted negative sign, and is significantly different from zero. It finds little evidence that the negative valuation impact of liability disclosures is stronger for joint venture investees overall than for associate investees overall, or stronger for guarantee cases overall than for non‐guarantee cases overall. There is, however, some evidence that the impact for joint venture guarantee cases is stronger than that for joint venture non‐guarantee cases and stronger than that for associate guarantee cases.     

Bankruptcy risk,costs and corporate diversification

This paper studies the impact of diversification on firms that file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Prior research suggests that diversification affects both the probability and costs of distress. Treating bankruptcy as a special case of distress, we find that diversification reduces the likelihood of bankruptcy and liquidation in Chapter 11, which is consistent with the coinsurance hypothesis. However, we observe higher bankruptcy costs as measured by time spent in Chapter 11 and inefficient segment investment for diversified firms. Our evidence is consistent with the idea that diversification provides benefits to managers in terms of job security rather than to firms. Our findings may help firms to make diversification decisions and creditors determine lending policies toward different forms of organizations.     

Self-interest, sympathy and the origin of endowments

We explore whether the recent laboratory findings that suggest the origin of endowment matters in simple bargaining games are actually due to contextual shifts of relative effort and deservingness. Results support previous findings of endowment origin yielding more self-interested behavior.