the logic of institutional preferences german electoral law as a social choice outcome institutions determine the results of social decision processes yet institutions are themselves endogenous products of earlier social choices this paper explores the hypothesis that participants in the choice of institutions seek alternatives that favor their desired policies the choice of institutions can be analyzed in terms of bargaining between individuals or parties where preferences derive from preferences over policy and bargaining is structured by existing institutions this approach is used to study the choice of an electoral system in germany after world war ii the hypothesis that parties choose electoral institutions to maximize their future policy influence explains both the adoption of proportional representation in 1949 and the switch to a two vote ballot in 1953

persistence of initial debt in the long term employment dynamics of new firms this paper investigates whether a firm s future growth is independent of its initial debt structure the non parametric test consists of determining whether the conditional size distribution for firms surviving through early years of life depends upon debt to asset ratio at birth initially i test for initial size dependence in the growth process by applying pakes and ericson 1998 procedure i then test the hypothesis that initial debt to asset ratios are irrelevant to growth of ten year old manufacturing firms i reject the null of independence and find evidence of a non monotonic relationship between age ten conditional size and the initial debt to asset ratio ce texte examine la question a savoir si la croissance future d une firme depend de la structure initiale de sa dette le test non parametrique consiste a determine si la distribution conditionnelle de la taille des firmes qui survivent au cours des premieres annees depend du ratio dette actif a la naissance l auteur teste d abord l independance de la taille initiale et du processus de croissance a l aide de la procedure de pakes et ericson 1998 et ensuite l hypothese que le ratio initial dette actif n est pas pertinent pour expliquer la croissance de firmes manufacturieres qui ont survecu dix ans l hypothese nulle d independance est rejetee et on trouve trace d une relation non monotone entre la taille conditionnelle a dix ans et le ratio initial de la dette sur l actif

moral hazard in lending and labor market volatility when the economy experiences a sharp economic downturn credit spreads widen and project financing costs for firms rise as funding sources begin to dry up the economy experiences a lengthy recovery with unemployment rates slow to return to full employment levels we develop a model that displays these features it relies on an interaction between labor search frictions and firm level moral hazard that is accentuated during recessions the model is capable of addressing the shimer puzzle with labor market variables exhibiting significantly more volatility on average as a result of the heightened moral hazard concerns during these episodes that significantly deepen and prolong periods of high unemployment as vacancy postings fall dramatically and the job finding rate declines our mechanism is also found to induce internal shock propagation causing the peak response of output unemployment and wages to occur with a several quarter delay relative to a model without such frictions many other labor market variables also show slower recovery their return to preshock level occurs at a slower pace for a number of periods after the peak response

the growth potential of startups over the business cycle this paper shows that employment in cohorts of us firms is strongly influenced by aggregate conditions at the time of their entry employment fluctuations of startups are procyclical they persist into later years and cohort level employment variations are largely driven by differences in firm size rather than the number of firms an estimated general equilibrium firm dynamics model reveals that aggregate conditions at birth rather than post entry choices drive the majority of cohort level employment variation by affecting the share of startups with high growth potential in the aggregate changes in startup conditions result in large slow moving fluctuations in employment

net job creation in the us economy lessons from monthly data 1950 2011 this article studies the monthly net job creation njc at the aggregate and the sectoral levels in the united states over the period 1950 to 2011 the article has few important findings first njc did not show a significant trend over the last six decades which led to a fall in the njc rate second njc was very volatile and it could change course even in the span of 1 month third there was no clear pattern about the co movement between njc and the change in the unemployment rate fourth the averages of total njc and private njc since late 2010 were significantly higher than their respective historical averages and the volatility in njc since the end of the great recession was not unusual by historical standards fifth while the evidence about the effects of the 2009 american recovery and reinvestment act on employment is inconclusive some sectors appeared to benefit from it finally the most frequent drop in the unemployment rate was by 0 1 and drops of more than 0 2 should not be highly expe

is there agreement between beneficiaries on who should bear the costs of conserving farm landscapes abstract in recent years market based incentives have been regarded as a potential solution for addressing market failure related to environmental externalities determining the optimal payment schedule to facilitate such market mechanism typically involves a valuation exercise to capture the static benefits received by beneficiary groups from the public good in this study we augment the valuation estimates with a notion of fair share by assessing opinions of two beneficiary groups tourists and bed and breakfast owners regarding an acceptable division of the burden of financing the public good we find a significant difference in views tourists believe that their accommodation providers should contribute almost twice the amount that they themselves are willing to pay on the contrary a majority of bed and breakfast owners surveyed were against burdening tourists with any additional payments

who creates jobs econometric modeling and evidence for austrian firm level data abstract this paper provides evidence on the role of firm size and firm age for firm level net job creation in the austrian economy between 1993 and 2013 and during the great recession we propose a new estimation strategy based on a two part model to decompose behavioral differences between exiting and surviving firms young firms contribute most to net job creation despite high relative exit rates due to high growth rates among young surviving firms small firms have similar job creation rates conditional on survival as large firms small firms contribution to job creation is however smaller due to higher exit rates the up or out dynamics characterizing less regulated economies such as the us also apply to the more regulated austrian economy during the great recession both the relative net job creation rate conditional on survival and the relative survival probability of young firms decreased the relative contribution of small firms to net job creation by contrast increased due to increased relative job creation rates of small firms conditional on survival

the causes of order effects in contingent valuation surveys an experimental investigation contingent valuation researchers have found that the hypothetical values respondents place on a nested sequence of environmental goods are sensitive to the order in which the goods are presented typically the smallest bundle of goods is valued more highly if presented first than if following more comprehensive bundles such effects appear even when each bundle is valued from an exclusive list or as an alternative to any other so that income and substitution effects are controlled we conduct lab experiments where participants are asked to value sequences of nested goods for purchase from an exclusive list using an incentive compatible becker degroot marschak mechanism we test whether order effects occur in valuation for a induced value goods b actual private goods and c identical private goods that are to be donated to charities we find significant order effects when the goods are valued for own use but not when they are valued for donation

separations sorting and cyclical unemployment abstract this paper establishes a new fact about the compositional changes in the pool of unemployed over the us business cycle using microdata from the current population survey for the years 1962 2012 it documents that in recessions the pool of unemployed shifts toward workers with high wages in their previous job and that these shifts are driven by the high cyclicality of separations for high wage workers the paper finds that standard theories of wage setting and unemployment have difficulty in explaining these patterns and evaluates a number of alternative theories that do better in accounting for the new fact jel e24 e32 j31 j63 j64

revisiting the behavior of small and large firms during the 2008 financial crisis abstract gertler and gilchrist 1994 provide seminal evidence for the prevailing view that adverse shocks are propagated via credit constraints small firms are affected more during tight credit periods than large firms under this view the deep recession that followed the 2008 financial crisis is often interpreted as the propagation of the initial credit shock following gertler and gilchrist 1994 s methodology we study the behavior of small and large firms during episodes of credit disruption and extend the analysis to the 2008 financial crisis and nber dated recessions we find that large firms short term debt and sales contracted relatively more than those of small firms during the 2008 financial crisis and during most recessions since 1969 the results are robust to changes in the business cycle dating procedure using compustat we also find that during 2007 09 low financially dependent firms suffered more than high financially dependent firms these results favor the view that a tightening of a financial or collateral constraint might not be a good representation of the 2007 09 crisis

employment effects of financial constraints during the great recession abstract employment declined substantially during the 2007 2009 recession especially in small and young firms using confidential firm level data of the universe of firms and a difference in differences methodology this paper estimates that financial constraints reduced employment growth by 4 to 8 percentage points in small firms relative to large firms and by 7 to 9 percentage points in young relative to old firms i find that the effect of financial constraints on small firms is driven to a large extent by young firms i then document that financial constraints affected employment growth in small and young firms strongly through the entry and exit of firms

are citizens willing to pay for agricultural multifunctionality agricultural multifunctionality is the recognition of the joint exercise of economic environmental and social functions by the agricultural sector in order to make the concept operative for the design of public policies it is necessary to estimate the social demand for such functions the main objective of this article is to present an empirical application in this sense for this purpose we have adopted the agricultural system of cereal steppes in tierra de campos in spain as a case study the economic valuation technique used is the choice experiment the results suggest the existence of a significant demand for the different functions although the demand is heterogeneous depending on the socioeconomic characteristics of the individuals surveyed

did the job ladder fail after the great recession we study employment reallocation across employers through the lens ofa dynamic job ladder model workers always agree on a ranking ofemployers at all points in time and search for better jobs both offand on the job a parsimonious version of the model fits well the timeseries of gross worker flows by employer size from newly available usdata from the job openings and labor turnover survey focusing on the us experience in and around the great recession our evidence indicates that the job ladder stopped working then and has not fully resumed yet

large firm dynamics and the business cycle do large firm dynamics drive the business cycle we answer this question by developing a quantitative theory of aggregate fluctuations caused by firm level disturbances alone we show that a standard heterogeneous firm dynamics setup already contains in it a theory of the business cycle without appealing to aggregate shocks we offer an analytical characterization of the law of motion of the aggregate state in this class of models the firm size distribution and show that aggregate output and productivity dynamics display i persistence ii volatility and iii time varying second moments we explore the key role of moments of the firm size distribution and in particular the role of large firm dynamics in shaping aggregate fluctuations theoretically quantitatively and in the data

riskiness endogenous productivity dispersion and business cycles abstract in the data cross sectional productivity dispersion is countercyclical at both the plant level and the firm level see e g bloom 2009 i incorporate a firm s choice of risk level into a model of firm dynamics with real business cycle features to explain this empirical finding both qualitatively and quantitatively in the model in every period each firm chooses the investment amount and the risk level associated with a production project every period all projects available to each firm have the same expected flow return determined by the aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks to the firm s productivity and differ from one another only in their risk the endogenous option of exiting the market and the limited funding for new investment jointly play an important role in motivating firms risk taking behavior the model predicts that in each period relatively small firms are more likely to take risk and hence exhibit a higher exit rate and that the cross sectional productivity dispersion measured as the standard deviation of the realized individual component of productivity is larger in recessions

incentives to cultivate a party vote in candidate centric electoral systems evidence from brazil a prominent question in comparative electoral studies concerns the so called personal vote typically scholars approach this question at a cross national as opposed to a cross party level in this

unemployment and small cap returns the nexus in other work moscarini and postel vinay 2008 2009a we find a distinct cyclical pattern of the relative performance of large and small businesses in terms of net job creation large employers destroy proportionally more jobs during and right after recessions and create proportionally more jobs late in expansions relative to small employers differential size growth between small and large firms is strongly positively correlated with the unemployment rate this pattern is observer both in a 1978 2005 census of u s employers the business dynamics statistics and among listed companies in compustat in this paper we show that this cyclical pattern of relative performance is also reflected in stock returns specifically we show that the difference in returns between benchmark portfolios of small cap stocks and portfolios of large cap stocks is also positively correlated with the unemployment rate financial consultants and fund managers commonly recommend investing in small cap stocks during business cycle recoveries our findings while consistent with that advice pertain to all phases of the business cycle we propose an explanation of both facts based on dynamic competition between employers of different sizes and different productivities the model is a stochastic dynamic version of the job search and wage posting model of kenneth burdett and dale t mortensen 1998 which we analyze in detail in moscarini and postel vinay 2009b it is a job ladder model where smaller firms are smaller because they are less productive offer lower wages therefore are less attractive to workers and less successful in poaching workers out of competing firms this lack of competitiveness on the labor market is more of a drawback

supplying trade reform political institutions and liberalization in middle income presidential democracies correcting the relative lack of attention to the supply side of trade policy this article addresses how political institutions channel societal demands for protection i hypothesize that strong presidents with significant legislative powers and strong party leaders empowered through electoral rules that rein in the personal vote can help overcome protectionist biases these arguments compare with two institutional alternatives first that protectionism should decrease as electoral district size grows because elections become more proportional and second that the collective action problems in fragmented party systems thwart trade reform i evaluate these hypotheses empirically using pooled time series cross sectional data involving 18 developing countries from 1971 to 1997 i find that delegation to presidents and party leaders is significantly related to trade liberalization and some evidence suggests that the effective number of parties and the size of electoral districts may also influence levels of protectionism

earmarking conservation further inquiry on scope effects in stated preference methods applied to nature based tourism abstract the way people assign value to nature conservation policies has important implications for management choices economic valuation surveys are affected by individual behavioural patterns that are not exhaustively explained by traditional sources of bias such as embedding flagship species fixed budget commodity misspecification and warm glows through a contingent valuation study of alpine wildlife we use an external scope test to evaluate the difference in willingness to pay among tourists for conservation policies targeted either to the ibex alone or to the four ungulates populating the gran paradiso national park in northwest italy ibex red deer roe deer chamois we find that park users are willing to contribute significantly more to policies protecting one of the four ungulates than all four of them a result that we argue should be ascribed to pure aversion to less specific policy objectives i e to a preference for punctual earmarking of resources devoted to conservation

optimal pricing strategies for a cluster of goods own and cross price effects with correlated tastes contingent valuation methods are used to identify observed and unobserved preferences of goods and services we apply these methods in the context of multivariate probit analysis to compute willi

the noaa panel report a new beginning or the end of an era an account of the prospective contribution of some proposed project or policy to the satisfaction of human preferences the central focus on preference satisfaction led bc analysts to be concerned with economic surpluses and the values of nonmarketed goods and amenities matters that took the inquiry well beyond the prices and quantity changes that first attracted the analysts attention cv was specifically designed for enlisting survey research methods with their broad scope of potential applications to obtain benefit estimates consistent with a rigorous welfare change measurement framework samuelson s model for valuing public goods in which individual valuations were rigorously defined and aggregated to obtain the social value was applied directly in early cv applications i e through the 1970s the objective was to define a baseline or default situation and a proposed project and to ask respondents to report a valuation that would leave them indifferent between implementing the proposal or defaulting to the baseline situation for proposed projects that would improve things but at a cost respondents were asked to announce their maximum willingness to pay wtp alternatively to make sure that the full consumer s surplus was identified iterative bidding was used to drive the respondent all the way to the point of indifference the market analogy with only minimal concessions to the public goods context dominated the language of cv survey format and of communication among cv researchers these early excursions into cv encountered skepticism from economists who have traditionally argued despite the isolation paradox that undermines markets in public goods that real transactions are much more reliable indicators of value than self reported behavioral intentions many social scientists were skeptical or even hostile to cv for reasons quite different from those that worried economists they recognized that there are many different philosophical systems of valuing and many different institutions beyond the market for providing public amenities to these social scientists it seemed perverse to force the richness and diversity of human ways of valuing and providing public amenities into the rigid molds of bca and cv 1

grown up business cycles the entry rate of u s employer businesses has declined for more than 30 years we use a novel dynamic decomposition framework to show that regardless of its causes the direct effects of the continued decline in the entry rate and its delayed effects on the firm age distribution together play a major role in the slowing of trend employment growth and the emergence of jobless recoveries we identify changing demographic structure of the population and increased import competition as leading factors behind the decline in startup activity received september 1 2015 editorial decision april 5 2018 by editor francesca cornelli authors have furnished an internet appendix which is available on the oxford university press web site next to the link to the final published paper online

are politics local an analysis of voting patterns in 23 democracies this article measures compares and analyzes the degree to which local factors be they candidate qualities or district characteristics affect electoral politics it applies morgenstern and potthoff s components of variance model to 56 parties or coalitions to measure the local vote and shows that only in some cases do local factors manifest themselves in voting patterns to explain this finding the authors argue that the type of executive system ideological cohesion and a country s ethnic heterogeneity combined with federalism are all strongly tied to the local vote patterns statistical tests also show that in spite of the large literature on the incentives that electoral systems can offer to candidates to pursue a personal vote the electoral system does not have a clear impact on the local vote

diagnosing insensitivity to scope in contingent valuation sensitivity to scope is considered a desirable property of contingent valuation studies and often treated as a necessary condition for validity we first provide an overview of scope insensitivity explanations put forth in the environmental valuation literature then we analyze data from a contingent valuation survey eliciting willingness to pay to prevent oil spills of four different magnitudes in arctic norway in the baseline analysis the scope inference is ambiguous there is only statistical difference in willingness to pay to avoid a very large versus small oil spill nok 1869 and nok 1086 respectively however further explorations show that several confounding factors suggested in the literature influence the scope inference the scope sensitivity improves when we control for subjective probabilities of amenity provision exclude respondents based on the debriefing questions take into consideration the sample sizes and impose diminishing marginal utility overall the analysis supports an emerging view in the contingent valuation literature suggesting that statistical scope insensitivity is not a sufficient reason for deeming a study invalid

the effectiveness of hiring credits this article analyses the effectiveness of hiring credits using comprehensive administrative data we show that the french hiring credit implemented during the great recession had significant positive employment effects and no effects on wages relying on the quasi experimental variation in labour cost triggered by the hiring credit we estimate a structural search and matching model simulations of counterfactual policies show that the effectiveness of the hiring credit relied to a large extent on three features it was non anticipated temporary and targeted at jobs with rigid wages we estimate that the cost per job created by permanent hiring credits either countercyclical or time invariant in an environment with flexible wages would have been much higher

recreational value user heterogeneity and site characteristics in contingent valuation abstract we propose an adaptation of the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method applied to the recreational quality of a site and to heterogeneity between visitors tourists and residents this method is based on a set of repeated valuation questions and is used to study relations between the components of environmental goods we propose its application to public coastal sites in south western france we show that programmes regarding the ocean beaches and forests are generally independent of one another in order to stress the heterogeneity of users two separate models are assessed the way time is taken into account then appears to be one of the most interesting sources of divergence between tourists and residents individual wtp per day also varies this confirms that beaches used by residents provide high economic benefits although they generate little indirect revenue finally contingent valuation appears to be a useful alternative for analyzing the multiple dimensions of a public policy

reconsidering heterogeneity and aggregation issues in environmental valuation a multi attribute approach the economic valuation of complex environmental goods composed of multiple attributes is an expanding field of research in ecological and environmental economics however several issues are still subjects of debate this paper focuses on three of them the linearity of the valuation function in the attributes aggregation criteria for obtaining social values and the heterogeneity of individuals utility functions a methodological approach based on multi attribute utility theory which enables us to contrast the impact of these concerns on the valuation of environmental goods is proposed we employ the methodology to value a protected natural area and from the results obtained we can conclude that the non linearity and the heterogeneity of the individual utility function are relevant aspects of environmental valuation that need to be taken into account when valuing environmental goods

the growth of multinational firms in the great recession abstract using a large firm level dataset this paper studies multinational firms performance during the great recession foreign multinationals grew faster than local firms outside of the crisis but slower during the crisis industry and size differences between domestic and foreign owned firms account for much of this slowdown however multinationals from different countries performed differently during the crisis the paper then assesses the role of multinationals in the global recession using a quantitative model had multinationals relative performance remained unchanged during the crisis the median country s aggregate growth would have been 0 12 higher with a range of 0 13 to 0 5 across countries

part whole bias in contingent valuation will scope effects be detected with inexpensive survey methods the purpose of this paper is to test for scope effects with the contingent valuation method we use data from a telephone survey focusing on water quality improvements in the albemarle and pamlico sounds in north carolina we find that the willingness to pay estimates are sensitive to the scope of the policy these results suggest that the use of inexpensive survey methods may not be the cause of the failure to detect scope effects in some recent contingent valuation studies

threshold effects of financial status on the cost frontiers of financial institutions in nondynamic panels this article applies hansen s 1999 2000 threshold regression model to estimate translog cost frontiers in the hope of shedding light on the banking industry s production processes and the extent of its technical efficiency te the threshold technique allows for the existence of multiple technologies of production distinguished by an exogenous threshold variable strong evidence of multiple technologies is found in the industry irrespective of which financial indicator as constructed by factor analysis defines the threshold variable cost savings and scale economies among the various underlying technologies are compared herein we also highlight the differences between the threshold results and the conventional cost frontier

limiting environmental program contradictions a demand systems application to fishery management economically efficient natural resource policy requires the comprehensive management of environmental improvements over a system of sites use of multisite demand and benefit models can reduce the number and cost of environmental program contradictions in this paper we present a multisite demand model that incorporates several quality dimensions for a system of new mexico fishing sites use of the model permits managers to improve total welfare at lower cost by simultaneously distributing opportunity across all elements in resource users choice sets model results show that errors that result from independently adding values of interdependent program elements approach 50

financial frictions and employment during the great depression abstract we provide new evidence that a disruption in credit supply played a quantitatively significant role in the unprecedented contraction of employment during the great depression using a novel hand collected dataset of large industrial firms our identification strategy exploits preexisting variation in the need to raise external funds at a time when public bond markets essentially froze local bank failures inhibited firms ability to substitute public debt for private debt which exacerbated financial constraints we estimate a large and negative causal effect of financing frictions on firm employment we find that the lack of access to credit likely accounted for a substantial fraction of the aggregate decline in employment of large firms between 1928 and 1933

sequencing and valuing public goods abstract this paper establishes several propositions concerning the importance of context in valuing public goods it first provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the value of a public good to be independent of context utility constant valuation sequences are considered where public goods are systematically made available or taken away for the case of strict hicksian substitutes willingness to pay for an increase in one of the public goods is strictly decreasing the farther out in a sequence it is valued for the destruction of public goods the reverse is true for willingness to accept compensation sequencing has opposite implications for the assessment of the benefits of providing public goods than for the assessment of the damage from destroying them

inter industry mobility and the cyclical upgrading of labor we investigate whether a market clearing model is consistent with industry employment and wage patterns related to the cyclical upgrading of labor we demonstrate that roy s 1951 market clearing

financial distress and the business cycle in this paper we argue that firms financial distress should play a greater role in the macroeconomic analysis of the business cycle we provide a non technical account of a general equilibrium model that exhibits financially driven equilibrium cycles we show that the empirical evidence is widely supportive of the key hypothesis and implications of our approach we use the model in order to evaluate the effects of several policy measures it turns out that deepening the market for second hand capital goods subsidizing the interest payments of companies which start up when financial conditions are tight and bailing out some companies in default can indeed stabilize the economy by way of generalization we may say that the policy reaction to a financially driven bust should be accommodating

disequilibrium in the uk corporate loan market in the last decade a debate has resurfaced about whether financial constraints stemming from asymmetric information and incentive problems play an important role in propagating monetary policy shocks this paper investigates the monetary transmission mechanism in the uk and its impact on the availability of bank credit to small and medium size firms the empirical specification is based on a disequilibrium model that allows for the possibility of transitory credit rationing sample firms are classified endogenously into borrowing constrained and borrowing unconstrained the analysis of credit rationing takes into account not only firm specific variables but also important macroeconomic factors such as the prevailing monetary conditions and the stage of the business cycle we find that i firms assets play an important role as collateral in mitigating borrowing constraints ii during periods of tight monetary conditions corporate demand for bank credit increases whereas the supply of bank loans is reduced iii to avoid bank credit rationing smaller companies increase their reliance on interfirm credit iv the proportion of borrowing constrained firms is significantly higher during the recession years of the early 1990s than at other times

contingent valuation controversies and evidence contingent valuation cv has become one of the most widely used non market valuation techniques cv s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value including passive use value its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit cost analyses and environ mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate this paper discusses key areas of the debate over cv and the validity of passive use value we conclude that many of the alleged problems with cv can be resolved by careful study design and implementation we further conclude that claims that empirical cv findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature the debate over cv however has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to cv practitioners and the users of cv results

valuation of tropical rainforests philosophical and practical issues in the use of contingent valuation abstract this paper explores the possibility of using a large scale multi country contingent valuation study for making decisions concerning global resources in the specific context of valuing a large set of tropical rainforests before considering the practical issues involved in implementing such a study the paper addresses philosophical issues related to the use of contingent valuation including the role of passive use motives such as altruism and the role of information the implications of empirically based criticisms which argue that contingent valuation results are unreliable are also considered the main portion of the paper sketches the practical difficulties likely to be encountered in actually implementing a large contingent valuation study in multiple countries which seeks to value a common set of tropical rainforests some key study design choices are discussed

founded in adversity operations based survival strategies of ventures founded during a recession abstract we examine the survival of 404 new ventures founded during the 2008 recession we find that industry explains a significant but small percentage of variance in survival 2 81 percent and therefore focus on which operations related actions could enhance ventures odds of survival we find marginally significant support for our hypotheses that a venture founded during a recession is more likely to survive if it increases its production efficiency increases both its production efficiency and variable costs or increases both its production efficiency and fixed costs in property plant and equipment our findings demonstrate that operational decisions are key determinants of survival for ventures founded during a recession

economies of scope in endangered species protection evidence from interest group behavior abstract this paper looks for positive spillovers from the legal protection of one species to the welfare of others and for evidence of economies of scope in the costs associated with protecting species under the endangered species act the analysis uses data on the intensity of interest group comment activity in response to proposals to protect new species the results suggest that these phenomena are significant strengthening arguments that wildlife protection policy should be shifted toward species groups or ecosystems however the findings are also consistent with diminishing public willingness to pay for protected species in a given area a pattern which also has public policy implications

lost generations of firms and aggregate labor market dynamics abstract can the unprecedented lack of startups during the u s great recession have persistently negative effects while fewer firms hiring workers can mechanically reduce employment for many years this may be offset by feedback effects on lower wages slacker labor markets and higher profits an estimated model of firm dynamics and frictional labor markets suggests that such feedback effects are too weak to offset the direct impact of fewer startups had firm entry remained constant during the great recession output would have recovered 4 6 years earlier and unemployment would have been 0 5 percentage points lower even 10 years after the crisis

directional heterogeneity in wtp models for environmental valuation many studies in the stated preference literature on environmental valuation do not include the effects of substitutes and distance in willingness to pay wtp models in spite of the relevance of these effects in aggregation and benefit transfer heterogeneity in the availability of substitutes over space may cause multidirectional distance effects in wtp as a result disregarding this spatial heterogeneity may lead to biased estimators of the distance effect and associated wtp values cameron 2006 in this paper we demonstrate that distance decay is subject to significant directional effects which tend to be related to differences in the availability of substitutes across the study area we apply a straightforward methodology to account for such spatial heterogeneity in choice experiments and assess the effect on wtp for improvements in ecosystem services in a lake district we model distance decay effects whilst controlling for heterogeneity between users and non users and non use related wtp reasons the directional effects result in significantly different wtp estimates different market sizes reflecting the population with positive wtp and differences in total wtp up to 32

ordering effects in nested top down and bottom up contingent valuation designs abstract within a contingent valuation cv survey ordering effects are defined where responses to a given question vary in a theoretically unanticipated manner according to the positioning of that question relative to others in the survey instrument this paper employs a split sample cv design to investigate the potential for such ordering effects upon stated willingness to pay for nested goods in one top down design values are first elicited for protecting the whole of an endangered area after which values for a part sub area are elicited a second bottom up treatment reverses the order of valuation tasks with the part scheme valued prior to the whole results show that whole and part valuation responses are logically ordered and determined by a consistent set of factors irrespective of question order however variance to question order was observed in both the part and whole valuations the correspondence of these results to standard and non standard preference theories is explored and the difficulties and practical issues concerning valuing nested goods are highlighted

equilibrium labor turnover firm growth and unemployment this paper considers equilibrium quit turnover in a frictional labor market with costly hiring by firms where large firms employ many workers and face both aggregate and firm specific productivity shocks there is exogenous firm turnover as new small startups enter the market over time while some existing firms fail and exit individual firm growth rates are disperse and evolve stochastically the paper highlights how dynamic monopsony where firms trade off lower wages against higher endogenous employee quit rates yields excessive job to job quits such quits directly crowd out the reemployment prospects of the unemployed with finite firm productivity states stochastic equilibrium is fully tractable and can be computed using standard numerical techniques

sequencing and the adding up property in contingent valuation of endangered species are contingent non use values economic values this paper presents tests of the theoretical validity of the contingent valuation cv method the validity of cv is especially a concern when involving environmental goods with a predominant non use value one test of theoretical validity is the adding up property that implies that a specific good should be equally valued irrespectively of it is being valued directly or built up sequentially in this cv study four independent sub samples stated willingness to pay for the same composite good or package using different sequences one sub sample valued the composite good directly while two sub samples faced built up sequences valuing first subsets of this composite good a fourth sub sample valued the composite good from a dividing out approach facing first the valuation of a larger multi package theoretically expected sequencing effects were observed the subset goods obtained higher values earlier in a sequence and the dividing out approach decreased the stated value for the composite good most importantly these cv data did pass the tests of the adding up property

valuation of small and multiple health risks a critical analysis of sp data applied to food and water safety this study elicits individual risk preferences in the context of an infectious disease using choice experiments a main objective is to examine scope sensitivity using a novel approach our results suggest that the value of a mortality risk reduction vsl is highly sensitive to the survey design our results cast doubt on the standard scope sensitivity tests in choice experiments but also on the validity and reliability of vsl estimates based on stated preference studies in general this is important due to the large empirical literature on non market evaluation and the elicited values central role in policy making

transition and enterprise restructuring the role of budget constraints and bankruptcy costs the focus of analysis is on the impact of financial leverage as a measure of bankruptcy costs on enterprise restructuring based on budget constraints in the economy data of bulgarian manufacturing firms allow comparison of firm behavior under soft and hard budget constraints as distinguished by the inception of a currency board in 1997 controlling for change in sales firm size and type of ownership statistically significant relationship between financial leverage and firm restructuring through labor adjustments is found to exist under hard budget constraints only

financial pressure monetary policy effects and inventories firm level evidence from a market based and a bank based financial system this paper examines the adjustment of inventories by firms in the united kingdom and spain which have two quite different financial systems a widely held view is that a key channel for monetary policy is through the influencing of inventory accumulation using a large company level panel data set for both countries significant effects associated with borrowing costs on inventories are estimated financial effects associated with liquidity and the borrowing ratio are estimated to be stronger in the uk than in spain since the spanish financial system is bank based while that of the uk is market based this is interpreted as contrary to the bank dependence hypothesis

movers and shakers most projects in most walks of life require the participation of multiple parties while it is difficult to unite individuals in a common endeavor some people who we call movers and shakers seem able to do it the paper specifically examines moving and shaking of an investment project whose return depends both on its quality and the total capital invested in it we analyze a model with two types of agents managers and investors managers and investors initially form social connections managers then bid to buy control of the project and the winning bidder puts effort into making investors aware of it finally a subset of aware investors are given the chance to invest and they decide whether to do so after receiving private signals of the project s quality we first show that connections are valuable since they make it easier for a manager to move and shake the project i e obtain capital from investors when we endogenize the network we find that while managers are identical ex ante a single manager emerges as most connected he consequently earns a rent in extensions we move away from the assumption of ex ante identical managers to highlight forces that lead one manager or another to become a mover and shaker our theory sheds light on a range of topics including entrepreneurship venture capital and anchor investments

revisions to us labor market data and the public s perception of the economy using the monthly employment situation reports for 1994 2013 this paper studies the revisions to us employment data the paper shows that the first press release underestimates net job creation in expansions and overestimates it in downturns the errors in reporting the data on the labor market can distort the public s perception about the stance of the labor market and have some political consequences this is well reflected by the finding that the job approval rating of president obama the index of consumer confidence and the economic conditions index of gallup have all been responding to the initial news on the us labor market as they were published in the employment situation reports

the contribution of large and small employers to job creation in times of high and low unemployment we document a negative correlation at business cycle frequencies between the net job creation rate of large employers and the level of aggregate unemployment that is much stronger than for small employers the differential growth rate of employment between initially large and small employers has an unconditional correlation of 0 5 with the unemployment rate and varies by about 5 percent over the business cycle we exploit several datasets from the united states denmark and france both repeated cross sections and job flows with employer longitudinal information spanning the last four decades and several business cycles we discuss implications for theories of factor demand jel d22 e23 e32 j23 l25

firm level entry and exit dynamics over the business cycles abstract this paper presents a set of facts on the cyclicality of firm births and deaths in the u s during the period 1979 2013 asymmetry in the cyclicality between firm birth and firm death is observed aggregate firm birth is generally significantly procyclical while the counter cyclicality in firm death is ambiguous and sensitive to the choice of cyclical indicator such a pattern exists within the majority of sectors as well and is mainly driven by small firms young firms are the main contributors to the findings on firm death activity further examination along the time dimension discovers a reason for the contemporaneous cyclicality or lack thereof which can be documented as a new fact firm births positively lead the usual business cycle measures and firm deaths positively lag them moreover cyclicality in business openings and closings differs from establishment level to firm level due to the internal adjustment of continuing firms

factor demands effective discount rates and liquidity constraints in the retail trade firm eunkyung kwon this is a firm level empirical study of the impact of credit market frictions on firm factor demands it extends previous work in two ways it studies the impact of liquidity constraints on both fixed investment and employment and examines data on retail firms using the euler equation approach it finds strong evidence for the impact of financial constraints on factor demands estimated relationships in turn induce striking countercyclical movements in effective discount rates of firms with limited access to credit the article concludes that the results found in previous work regarding excess sensitivities of investment to liquidity are indeed due to liquidity constraints jel e32 e44 e22 i introduction financing and investment decisions are not in general independent of one another when a firm has limited access to credit markets a number of empirical studies have provided evidence in support of this hypothesis 1 using the euler equation approach and firm level data these studies provide evidence for the role of imperfect financial markets in firms economic decisions they have two common features one is that they study the impact of liquidity constraints on only a single input typically investment the other is that they focus exclusively on the manufacturing sector this article extends the earlier work in two important ways first it examines the impact of liquidity constraints on multiple input choices in particular physical investment and employment second it incorporates data from nonmanufacturing sectors specifically retail trade studying the impact of liquidity constraints on multiple inputs is important for several reasons first it provides an additional testable restriction on the data by holding the impact of financial constraints constant over factor demands it is possible to identify the effects of financial constraints more strictly the idea is that if borrowing constraints truly affect firm factor demands then the impact of such constraints on a firm s discount rate should be the same across different input choices since previous studies considered investment only we cannot exclude the possibility that other factors e g fixed costs of adjustment capital irreversibility in capital etc may be responsible for data not conforming to the model s prediction hence finding the neoclassical model with the perfect capital market to have been misspecified second the analysis in this article considers a general model that allows for the possibility that demands for capital and labor are dynamically interrelated and so jointly determined as opposed to the previous model where optimal investment was determined solely by future investment and prices this generalization is important because the misspecification of the standard euler equation might be due to an assumption of no interactions between input demands rather than to capital market imperfections adding employment to the euler equation for investment is insightful regarding tests for the presence of financial constraints for several other reasons first it is quite straightforward to derive and analyze the euler equation for labor relative to other inputs such as inventories second firm employment decisions are more likely to be closely connected to a firm s physical investment decisions third it is commonly thought that firm labor decisions are rarely affected by liquidity constraints thus examining liquidity jointly on investment and employment is of particular interest for examining the empirical relevance of financial constraints 2 retail trade is an important cyclical sector that has received relatively little attention in the literature it is of particular interest to this study because one can make the case on a priori grounds that firms with imperfect access to credit have a substantial influence within this sector for example as described in a following section in retail trade firms that either do not issue publicly traded equity or do not have a rating to issue publicly traded bonds account for nearly 80 of economic activities in the retail sector

financing of firms labor reallocation and the distributional role of monetary policy we analyze monetary policy in a heterogenous firms environment where cash con strained firms finance operations through external financing and cash unconstrained firms operate by using internal funds we show that firms respond differently to shocks expansionary monetary policy sharply increases the relative employment of the cash constrained firms while positive productivity shocks induce a rise in the relative employment of the cash unconstrained firms our analysis points to a clear role of monetary policy in reallocating resources across sectors that differ in their financing capabilities furthermore the predictions of our model match the empirical evidence implying that financially constrained firms react sharply to monetary policy shocks but are less cyclical than unconstrained firms following productivity shocks

firm leverage consumer demand and employment losses during the great recession this article argues that firms balance sheets were instrumental in the transmission of consumer demand shocks during the great recession using micro level data from the u s census bureau we find that establishments of more highly levered firms experienced significantly larger employment losses in response to declines in local consumer demand these results are not driven by firms being less productive having expanded too much prior to the great recession or being generally more sensitive to fluctuations in either aggregate employment or house prices likewise at the county level we find that counties with more highly levered firms experienced significantly larger declines in employment in response to local consumer demand shocks accordingly firms balance sheets also matter for aggregate employment our results suggest a possible role for employment policies that target firms directly besides conventional stimulus