CHILD SUPPORT IN THE U.S.: CAN FATHERS AFFORD TO PAY MORE?

This paper presents up-to-date estimates of the ability of non-resident fathers to pay child support. While no nationally representative data exist on the incomes of fathers, this issue has become more pertinent in recent years, as child support has become an important national issue. We find that fathers on average are able to pay nearly five times more in child support than they currently pay, and also that low income fathers can afford to pay substantially more than they actually pay. We also find that changes in nonmarital childbearing and the returns to education have had only minimal effects on trends in fathers' incomes.     

The determinants of aggregate-merger activity—Before and after Celler-Kefauver

Regression analysis was used to determine the significant determinants of aggregate merger activity before and after 1950. This study found that stock prices were positively related to merger activity both before and after 1950. However, interest rates were positively related to merger activity prior to 1950, and negatively related to merger activity after 1950. This may have been the result of the Treasury Accord of 1951, which stopped pegging of interest rates. The unemployment rate was negatively related to mergers before 1950, but insignificantly related to mergers after 1950. The decreased significance of the unemployment rate could be the result of the passage of the Celler-Kefauver amendment to the Clayton Act. Tightened regulation may have caused businesses to take a longer run view of merger activity and decreased the business cycle effect. In conclusion, changes in both the regulatory environment and monetary policy have influenced the level of merger activity since 1950.     

Have Employment Relationships in the United States Become Less Stable?

There has been considerable debate as to whether job stability has declined in the United States. This paper uses data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine the incidence of labor market turnover between 1986 and 1993. Specifically, we calculate one- and two-year separation rates and then analyze turnover by the source of separation. We find that the incidence of job separations did not increase over the period under investigation, but appears to have declined somewhat. When analyzing separations by reason, conditional on separating from an employer, we find little evidence of temporal changes in the composition of turnover that would indicate greater employment instability. Therefore, we do not find conclusive evidence that employment relationships have become more unstable in the recent past.      

Measuring abnormal daily trading volume for samples of NYSE/ASE and NASDAQ securities using parametric and nonparametric test statistics

We extend prior research on the empirical properties of daily trading volume and methods to detect abnormal trading volume in two ways. We compare the performance of a nonparametric test statistic with the parametric test statistic used in prior research and we study samples of NASDAQ securities as well as samples of NYSE/ASE securities. Prior research has focused exclusively on NYSE securities. We find the nonparametric test statistic is more powerful in detecting abnormal trading volume than the parametric test statistic in both samples of NYSE/ASE and NASDAQ securities. We also document that abnormal trading volume will be detected more often in samples of NYSE/ASE securities compared to NASDAQ securities.     

Odd lot trading and earnings announcements

This study investigates odd lot trading, both trades and orders, around quarterly earnings announcements to determine whether odd lot traders are informed regarding the information contained in earnings announcements. We find pre-announcement odd lot order imbalances are not positively correlated with post-announcement returns and odd lot traders do not earn excess returns. Portfolios long stocks highly bought by odd lot traders in the pre-announcement period and short stocks highly sold by odd lot traders do not outperform the market. We conclude that odd lot traders are not in possession of earnings announcement information prior to its release to the public.     

‘Communities of resistance’ and the use of newspaper discussion boards: Polish workers in Japanese foreign investments

This article examines the content of 200 posts on newspaper discussion boards by workers in a cluster of Japanese foreign investments in Poland. The conclusions are first, that the material experiences of workers generate a set of themes in relation to the labour process with regard to wages and working conditions, bullying and monitoring that exhibit similarities across countries. Second, we argue that an analysis of the discourse used is shaped by political and institutional conditions, which reveal national differences in how workers perceive and locate their exploitation. Finally, in relation to debates about workers’ resistance and the use of the Internet we argue that the interaction of themes related to the material experience of work are intertwined with institutionally embedded understandings of exploitation, which not only enable a shared framework for venting, but also provide the basis for a community of resistance.     

Can corporate social responsibility resolve the sanitation question in developing Asian countries?

The existing state of sanitation in developing Asian countries fails to deliver a level of service that is adequate for meeting the human right to a standard of living consistent with dignity and health, or for sustaining the capacity for future generations to have access to clean water resources and healthy ecosystems. We argue that translating the current neo-centralised technologies and institutional arrangements mainstreamed by industrialised countries would not resolve the problem in the context of developing countries. Instead it is necessary to ‘leap frog’ to the emerging technological and institutional arrangements that are responsive to current needs and contexts and to potential risks. The sustainability focus and often decentralised technologies of this emergent stage in sanitation present many opportunities for new actors to enter the urban sanitation industry. At the same time, there are many barriers to entry, particularly from the perspective of conventional business management focused on increasing shareholder value.We propose that perspectives from the corporate social responsibility discourse have the potential to provide both the ‘pull’ for seizing the business opportunity for profit while serving social needs, and the ‘push’ to overcome the barriers in order to serve a wider social purpose for corporations. The wealth of nations, at least as reported in ubiquitous GDP terms, has greatly increased through the activities of corporations driven by a profit motive; but the increased poverty, injustice and ecosystem degradation that have resulted from economic activity suggest that corporations perhaps ought to have regard for broader concerns beyond shareholder value. We explore how the alternative relational view of a corporation, as a metaphorical person within society who adopts a moral code consistent with both Buddhist economics and Adam Smith's philosophy, may facilitate profitable corporations that provide better economic, ecological and social outcomes in serving the need for sustainable sanitation services in developing Asian countries.     

Antecedents and consequences of idiosyncratic deals: A frame of resource exchange

This study examines the antecedents and consequences of both timing and content of idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) for attracting and retaining valuable employees. A resource exchange frame theorizes the influence pattern of personal individualism value, social skill, and perceived insider status on i-deals timing. Individualism and social skill are expected to relate to both ex ante and ex post i-deals; perceived insider status is anticipated to relate only to ex post i-deals. The frame also suggests that i-deals’ content and personal development relate primarily to relational and balanced psychological contracts; the other ex post i-deals, flexibility and workload reduction relate to transactional psychological contracts. The frame was tested with data collected from 289 Chinese employees in the telecommunication industry.     

The Board's missing link

If a dam springs several leaks, there are various ways to respond. One could assiduously plug the holes, for instance. Or one could correct the underlying weaknesses, a more sensible approach. When it comes to corporate governance, for too long we have relied on the first approach. But the causes of many governance problems lie well below the surface--specifically, in critical relationships that are not structured to support the players involved. In other words, the very foundation of the system is flawed. And unless we correct the structural problems, surface changes are unlikely to have a lasting impact. When shareholders, management, and the board of directors work together as a system, they provide a powerful set of checks and balances. But the relationship between shareholders and directors is fraught with weaknesses, undermining the entire system's equilibrium. As the authors explain, the exchange of information between these two players is poor. Directors, though elected by shareholders to serve as their agents, aren't individually accountable to the investors. And shareholders--for a variety of reasons--have failed to exert much influence over boards. In the end, directors are left with the Herculean task of faithfully representing shareholders whose preferences are unclear, and shareholders have little say about who represents them and few mechanisms through which to create change. The authors suggest several ways to improve the relationship between shareholders and directors: Increase board accountability by recording individual directors' votes on key corporate resolutions; separate the positions of chairman and CEO; reinvigorate shareholders; and give boards funding to pay for outside experts who can provide perspective on crucial issues.     

File sharing as conditional cooperation: evidence from a framed field experiment

In this project, we investigate downloading and sharing behaviour in a novel ‘piracy game’ modelled after standard public good games. We find that willingness to share correlates positively with the sharing by others. By contrast, actual behaviour in the ‘piracy game’ is not correlated with self-reported behaviour.