Stock Market Reactions to SFAS No. 96: Evidence from Early Bank Adopters

Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 96, “Accounting for Income Taxes,” issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in December 1987 changed accounting for income tax recognition and accrual. The original deadline for implementation of SFAS No. 96 was December 15, 1988, and earlier adoption was encouraged. This study examines empirically the stock price impact of four pertinent announcement dates regarding SFAS No. 96 for 19 banks that adopted the statement in late 1987 and early 1988. Our results suggest that these early bank adopters have different characteristics from other banks that cause them to benefit from the changes in accounting for deferred taxes and explain their voluntary adoption of the standard.     

The New Comparative Political Economy

With the collapse of communism in the late 1980s the field of comparative political economy has undergone major revision. Socialism is no longer considered the viable alternative to capitalism it once was. We now recognize that the choice is between alternative institutional arrangements of capitalism. Progress in the field of comparative political economy is achieved by examining how different legal, political and social institutions shape economic behavior and impact economic performance. In this paper we survey the new learning in comparative political economy and suggest how this learning should redirect our attention in economic development.JEL classification: B53, O10, O20, P0     

Growth effects of environmental policy when pollution affects health

In this paper, we develop a R&D-based growth model with a pollution externality and a health production sector. We study how health-impairing pollution affects long term growth, and the effect of an emissions' reduction policy (tax). We show that a tighter environmental tax has positive effects on growth via two channels. On the one hand, it improves workers' health and, thereby, productivity; on the other hand, it induces a reallocation of resources towards R&D and, thereby, higher research intensity. The size of the growth effect of a tighter environmental tax, and the level of the optimal environmental tax, are both positively correlated with the weight individuals place on health relative to consumption. As for welfare, a tighter environmental tax brings about utility gains in the long run and, potentially, also in the short run.     

On the Opportunity Cost of Crop Diversification

Distance functions are increasingly being augmented, with environmental goods treated as conventional outputs. A common approach to evaluate the opportunity cost of providing an environmental good is the exploitation of the distance function's dual relationship to the value function. This implies that the opportunity cost is assumed to be non‐negative. This approach also requires a convex technology set. Focusing on crop diversification for a balanced sample of 44 cereal farms in the East of England for the years 2007–2013, this paper develops a novel opportunity cost measure that does not depend on these strong assumptions. We find that the opportunity cost of crop diversification is negative for most farms.     

应对金融危机：货币政策无能为力吗

贷币政策应对金融危机无效的观点不仅荒谬,更严重的是会延误治理经济衰退的时机.由于激进的扩张性货币政策具有抑制负反馈循环形成的效果,危机时期的货币政策效果反而会比正常时期更为显著.货币政策能够在金融危机中发挥更大作用,为我们提供了治理因危机而引发的经济衰退风险的基本思路.应对金融危机,货币政策不应无所作为,而应担当重要角色.货币政策的作用不仅在于可以通过常规和非常规的政策工具来防止危机时期经济过度下滑,还在于当金融市场开始恢复或出现通胀风险时,货币政策可及时给予快速反应,改变货币政策方向,必要时进行反向操作.