Financial Stress Regimes and the Macroeconomy

Some financial stress events lead to macroeconomic downturns, while others appear to be isolated to financial markets. We identify financial stress regimes using a model that explicitly links financial variables to macro‐economic outcomes. The stress regimes are identified using an unbalanced panel of financial variables with an embedded method for variable selection. Our identified stress regimes are associated with corporate credit tightening and with NBER recessions. An exogenous deterioration in our financial conditions index has strong negative effects in economic activity, and negative amplification effects on inflation in the stress regime. These results are obtained with a novel factor‐augmented vector autoregressive model with smooth‐transition regimes (FASTVAR).     

The Optimal Provision of Curative Goods

We analyze the optimal contract between a risk neutral regulator providing a curative goods and a risk averse patient who learns the realized value of his/her health status after the contracting stage. Consumption of a curative good (healthcare) reduces the disutility associated with a disease. We show that the consumption of curative goods is larger than in the complete information case, that this overprovision increases with the degree of patients’ risk‐aversion and the marginal cost of treatment. Ceilings on the amount of healthcare are part of the optimal contract when risk aversion is important.     

What Types of Diversity Benefit Workers? Empirical Evidence on the Effects of Co‐worker Dissimilarity on the Performance of Employees

This study explores the consequences of grouping workers into diverse divisions on the performance of employees using a dataset containing the detailed personnel records of a large U.S. firm from 1989 to 1994. In particular, I examine the effects of demographic dissimilarity among co‐workers, namely differences in age, gender, and race among employees who work together within divisions, and non‐demographic dissimilarity, namely differences in education, work function, firm tenure, division tenure, performance, and wages among employees within divisions. I find evidence that age dissimilarity, dissimilarity in firm tenure, and performance dissimilarity are associated with lower worker performance, while wage differences are associated with higher worker performance. My analysis also reveals that the effects of certain types of dissimilarities get smaller in magnitude the longer a worker is a part of a division. Finally, the paper provides evidence that the relationships between performance and the various measures of dissimilarity vary by occupational area and division size.     

Affirmative Action and the Occupational Advancement of Minorities and Women During 1973–2003

The share of minorities and women comprising high‐paying skilled occupations such as management, professional, and technical occupations has been increasing since the 1960s, while the proportion of white men in such occupations has been declining. What has been the contribution of affirmative action to the occupational advancement of minorities and women from low‐wage unskilled occupations into high‐wage skilled ones in U.S. firms? I examine this by comparing the occupational position of minorities and women at firms holding federal contracts, and thereby mandated to implement affirmative action, and noncontracting firms, over the course of 31 years during 1973–2003. I use a new longitudinal dataset of over 100,000 large private‐sector firms across all industries and regions uniquely suited for the exploration of this question obtained from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. My key findings show that the share of minorities and women in high‐paying skilled occupations grew more at federal contractors subject to affirmative action obligation than at noncontracting firms during the three decades under study, but these advances took place primarily during the pre‐ and early Reagan years and during the decade following the Glass Ceiling Act of 1991.     

内容与联系

克里奥作为广告大赛组织者的使命是认可和奖励全球广告界的精品,让创意界了解对业界产生重要影响的全球最新的趋势和变化。尽管还没有哪种特定形式的广告从我们眼前消失,但许多新的广告形式也不断涌现,出现不同的特     

Laboratory Federalism: The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) as an Evolutionary Learning Process

In view of the concept of laboratory federalism, the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), adopted by the EU as a mode of governance, can be interpreted as an imitative learning dynamics of the type considered in evolutionary game theory. Its iterative design and focus on good practice are captured by the behavioral rule “imitate the best.” In a redistribution game with utilitarian governments and mobile welfare recipients, we compare the outcomes of imitative behavior (long‐run evolutionary equilibria) and decentralized best‐response behavior (Nash equilibria). The learning dynamics leads to coordination on a strict subset of Nash equilibria, favoring policy choices that can be sustained by a simple majority of Member States.     

Communicating Data Uncertainty: Multiwave Experimental Evidence for UK GDP

Economic statistics are commonly published without estimates of their uncertainty. We conduct two waves of a randomized controlled online experiment to assess if and how the UK public understands data uncertainty. A control group observes only the point estimate of GDP. Treatment groups are presented with alternative qualitative and quantitative communications of GDP data uncertainty. We find that most of the public understands that GDP numbers are uncertain. Quantitative communications of data uncertainty help align the public's subjective probabilistic expectations of data uncertainty with objective estimates, but do not decrease trust in the statistical office.     

Analysts’ Use of Nonfinancial Information Disclosures*

In this study I examine how analysts process nonfinancial information and how this is affected by the patterns of firms’ nonfinancial information disclosures. More specifically, I examine the association between analyst earnings forecast errors and the persistence of nonfinancial disclosures, both across information content and over time. The study focuses on firms in the wireless industry for the period 1997–2007. The results show that analysts tend to underreact to the information contained in customer acquisition cost, average revenue per user, and the number of subscribers. These are the performance measures that have significant predictive ability for future earnings of wireless firms. Distinguishing between firms on the basis of their nonfinancial disclosure patterns reveals that the above findings are driven primarily by firms with irregular disclosures. There is no evidence of analysts’ inefficiency in evaluating the content of nonfinancial metrics provided by persistently disclosing firms. This implies that the lack of systematic disclosures of performance measures restricts financial analysts’ ability to fully analyze the contributions of these metrics for future earnings.