A model of wage and employment effects of service offshoring

This paper develops a two‐sector model of trade in goods and intermediate tasks that differ in tradability and skill intensity. A skill‐abundant country with high productivity is shown to offshore more unskilled tasks than skilled tasks, without relying on a particular correlation structure between tradability and skill intensity. With putty‐clay technology that allows retraining in the long run, transition from the non‐offshoring to the offshoring equilibrium generates wage and employment effects that switch from negative to positive as tradability declines, with the switches occurring at a higher degree of tradability for skilled tasks. This is consistent with the empirical literature.     

How capital markets assess the credibility and accuracy of CSR reporting: Exploring the effects of assurance quality and CSR restatement issuance

This research examines how the credibility and accuracy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures enhance market confidence by exploring their effect on the cost of capital. How do capital markets react to higher-quality assurance of CSR reporting? Can the hypothetical reduction in the cost of capital that assurance quality produces be explained by restatements of previous information given in these CSR reports? We explore the relationship between assurance quality, as a proxy for credibility and market confidence, and the mediating effect of CSR restatements as indicators of accuracy. We propose regression models with a sample of CSR reports issued by European companies. Building upon the signalling and legitimacy theories, the results support the positive effect of higher assurance quality statements on market confidence by confirming a decrease in the cost of capital; assurance quality gives an indication of credibility to the capital market and restatements related to methodological updates signal accuracy. The reduction in the cost of capital brought on by higher assurance quality appears to be determined by the issuance of CSR restatements, which create legitimacy for both client companies and assurance providers. CSR reporting and assurance have reached a greater level of maturity as demonstrated by the evolution of these practices and financial market perceptions.     

Real Exchange Rate Misalignments in the Euro Area

Open Economies Review - Building upon a Behavioural Equilibrium Exchange Rate model, estimated at a quarterly frequency since 1999 on a broad sample of 57 countries, this paper assesses both the...     

Family income and child outcomes in Canada

Abstract.  A positive relationship between income and child outcomes has been observed in data from numerous countries. A key question concerns the extent to which this association represents a causal relationship as opposed to unobserved heterogeneity. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth to implement a series of empirical strategies for estimating the existence and size of the effect of income on three measures of cognition. Our results indicate that the effect of income on these outcomes may well be positive, but that it is likely to be smaller than conventional estimates. JEL Classification: I10     

The Role of Holding Company Financial Information in the Insurer-Rating Process: Evidence From the Property-Liability Industry

We examine data for the year ended December 31, 1997 for 80 publicly traded property‐liability insurers that have Best financial strength ratings of their consolidated insurance‐operating subsidiaries. These firms employ a holding company structure, in which a parent owns the stock of multiple insurance‐operating subsidiaries. The operating subsidiaries prepare a consolidated annual report using the Statutory Accounting Principles (SAP), and an analogous set of financial statements based on the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) is released by the parent. We find that the financial characteristics important in determining ratings at the individual firm level—capitalization, liquidity, profitability, and size—are also important at the group level. Further, financial ratios from holding company statements are incrementally useful in the ratings' process, after group‐level ratios have been taken into account. Robustness tests based on a subsample of holding companies with minimal investment outside of the property‐liability industry reinforce our conclusion that parent company statements influence consolidated group ratings. However, our data do not allow us to separate the relative contribution of the GAAP model and underlying transactions to the ratings decision.     

Overcompensation as a Partial Solution to Commitment and Renegotiation Problems: The Case of Ex Post Moral Hazard

In a Costly State Verification world, an agent who has private information regarding the state of the world must report what state occurred to a principal, who can verify the state at a cost. An agent then has what is called ex post moral hazard: he has an incentive to misreport the true state to extract rents from the principal. Assuming the principal cannot commit to an auditing strategy, the optimal contract is such that: (1) the agent's expected marginal utility when there is an accident (high‐ and low‐loss states) is equal to his marginal utility when there is no accident; (2) the lower loss is undercompensated, while the higher loss is overcompensated; and (3) the welfare of the agent is greater under commitment than under no‐commitment. Result 2 is contrary to the results obtained if the principal can commit to an auditing strategy (higher losses underpaid and lower losses overpaid). The reason is that by increasing the difference between the high and the low indemnity payments, the probability of fraud is reduced.     

EFFECT OF FED POLICY ACTIONS ON THE DEFAULT LIKELIHOOD OF COMMERCIAL BANKS

Using a measure of default likelihood based on an option pricing method, we provide evidence that Fed policy actions affect the financial distress of commercial banks. When the Fed increases (decreases) interest rates, the measure of default likelihood increases (decreases). We show that when the Fed uses a tight money policy, the increase in default likelihood is more pronounced for banks that have less capital, have greater financial leverage, are smaller, have fewer growth opportunities, and have lower asset quality. Additionally, the effects on bank default likelihood are more pronounced when the Fed's policy signals less concern about economic growth, as indicated by its bias toward further tightening, and when there is a market expectation of higher short‐term market rates in the future.