an economic theory of self control the concept of self control is incorporated in a theory of individual intertemporal choice by modeling the individual as an organization the individual at a point in time is assumed to be both a farsighted planner and a myopic doer the resulting conflict is seen to be fundamentally similar to the agency conflict between the owners and managers of a firm both individuals and firms use the same techniques to mitigate the problems which the conflicts create this paper stresses the implications of this agency model and discusses as applications the effect of pensions on saving saving and the timing of income flows and individual discount rates

mutual funds ownership and firm performance evidence from china mutual funds have emerged and rapidly developed since 2000 in china this study tests empirically the impact of mutual funds ownership on firm performance in china using a large sample for the period of 2001 2005 we find that equity ownership by mutual funds has a positive effect on firm performance the result is robust to several measures of firm performance and various estimations our finding supports recent regulatory efforts in china to promote mutual funds as a corporate governance mechanism and suggests that pooling diffuse minority interests of individual shareholders who are prone to free rider problems via mutual funds is beneficial

a major in science initial beliefs and final outcomes for college major and dropout taking advantage of unique longitudinal data we provide the first characterization of what college students believe at the time of entrance about their final major relate these beliefs to actual major outcomes and provide an understanding of why students hold the initial beliefs about majors that they do the data collection and analysis are based directly on a conceptual model in which a student s final major is best viewed as the end result of a learning process we find that students enter school quite optimistic about obtaining a science degree but that relatively few students end up graduating with a science degree the substantial overoptimism about completing a degree in science can be attributed largely to students beginning school with misperceptions about their ability to perform well academically in science copyright 2014 oxford university press

how much does country matter an analysis of firms growth options recent international strategy research emphasizes the importance of understanding the effects of geographic location on firms strategies and performance outcomes we contribute to this research by providing empirical evidence that the interplay of country and industry effects matters substantially in explaining the variation in the value of growth options of firms based in different countries our results show that country industry effects are the second largest source of variation following firm effects while industry and country effects are relatively small when considered in their own right that valuable growth options are tied to country and industry interactions has important implications for international strategy research and practice

management ownership and market valuation an empirical analysis we investigate the relationship between management ownership and market valuation of the firm as measured by tobin s q in a 1980 cross section of 371 fortune 500 firms we find evidence of a significant nonmonotonic relationship tobin s q first increases then declines and finally rises slightly as ownership by the board of directors rises for older firms there is evidence that q is lower when the firm is run by a member of the founding family than when it is run by an officer unrelated to the founder

corporate governance under proportional electoral systems this paper provides a political explanation for the form of corporate governance captured by the degree of minority shareholder protection msp using a multi stage game model of three party competition under proportional electoral systems i demonstrate that the electoral threshold the minimum percentage of votes a party must receive to get at least one seat in parliamentary pr systems is inversely related to the degree of msp this finding represents an important modification to formal models in the political economic literature that tends to omit the political process

testing for forward looking behaviour evidence from the enactment of smoking restrictions abstractthis paper develops a new test for forward looking behaviour based on the establishment of public smoking restrictions given that the announcement of these restrictions effectively increases the future cost of smoking we should expect forward looking smokers to curb their consumption before the restriction is effective due to complementarity between present and future consumption i perform the estimation using detailed high frequency household level purchase data the results provide evidence against the forward looking behaviour of smokers households do not reduce their cigarette purchases before announced public smoking restrictions are established they only do so once the restriction is in effect

determinants of college major choice identification using an information experiment this article studies the determinants of college major choice using an experimentally generated panel of beliefs obtained by providing students with information on the true population distribution of various major specific characteristics students logically revise their beliefs in response to the information and their subjective beliefs about future major choice are associated with beliefs about their own earnings and ability we estimate a rich model of college major choice using the panel of beliefs data while expected earnings and perceived ability are a significant determinant of major choice heterogeneous tastes are the dominant factor in the choice of major analyses that ignore the correlation in tastes with earnings expectations inflate the role of earnings in college major choices we conclude by computing the welfare gains from the information experiment and find positive average welfare gains

exchange controls and european stock market integration this paper examines the impact on stock price predictability that the removal of exchange controls had on major european countries during the late 1970s and 1980s it is found that for germany switzerland and france the removal of exchange controls led to an increase in the interdependence between these and other markets in contrast there is little evidence of an increase in interdependence for the uk and italy

tax avoidance cost of debt and shareholder activism evidence from korea abstract this paper examines the impact of tax avoidance on the cost of debt and its interaction effect with shareholder activism using korean firms i find a negative relationship between tax avoidance and the cost of debt supporting the trade off theory further tests reveal that the negative relationship becomes stronger when the level of institutional ownership is high it becomes even stronger after 1998 when the shareholder rights of institutional investors were strengthened it suggests that the managerial opportunism theory has an additional explanation for tax avoidance activities my findings indicate that tax avoidance reduces the cost of debt through trade offs and creates a managerial rent diversion which is mitigated in firms with larger institutional holdings

on the performance of differently regulated financial institutions some empirical evidence abstract the paper raises two questions about the industrial economics of banking first why are financial market configurations so different across nations we discuss the theoretical arguments by following the sequence regulation structure performance section 2 second do the differences in regulation and structure matter section 3 provides empirical evidence pertaining to that question throughout the paper we refer to two polar cases of financial systems market m and bank b based systems as for banks we distinguish between specialised and universal banks universal banking is a particular institutional representation of b systems a first empirical test relating macroeconomic growth to financial variables suggests that these variables matter we then test with a set of 88 banks the effects of regulatory and structural variables on the level and variability of bank performance we conclude that universal banks achieve a better risk return trade off due to superior monitoring and information collection capacity

corporate control in germany the article presents the german system of corporate control compared with the uk the number of listed joint stock companies in germany is relatively low the most important shareholders are companies whereas institutional investors play a minor role an essential feature of german corporate culture is the concept of the interest of the company as a whole and the long term approach in pursuing company goals joint stock companies operate under a two tier structure with a managing board controlled by the supervisory board the body which plays the central role in corporate governance in germany in contrast to what is widely believed german banks do not dominate companies even though they exert considerable influence through industrial holdings supervisory board mandates and proxy voting rights in addition to their regular banking business control via the market is less pronounced here than in the uk but is growing in importance copyright 1992 by oxford university press

consumption self control by rationing purchase quantities of virtue and vice consumers attempts to control their unwanted consumption impulses influence many everyday purchases with broad implications for marketers pricing policies addressing theoreticians and practitioners alike this paper uses multiple empirical methods to show that consumers voluntarily and strategically ration their purchase quantities of goods that are likely to be consumed on impulse and that therefore may pose self control problems for example many regular smokers buy their cigarettes by the pack although they could easily afford to buy 10 pack cartons these smokers knowingly forgo sizable per unit savings from quantity discounts which they could realize if they bought cartons by rationing their purchase quantities they also self impose additional transactions costs on marginal consumption which makes excessive smoking overly difficult and costly such strategic self imposition of constraints is intuitively appealing yet theoretically problematic the marketing literature lacks operationalizations and empirical tests of such consumption self control strategies and of their managerial implications this paper provides experimental evidence of the operation of consumer self control and empirically illustrates its direct implications for the pricing of consumer goods moreover the paper develops a conceptual framework for the design of empirical tests of such self imposed constraints on consumption in consumer goods markets within matched pairs of products we distinguish relative virtue and vice goods whose preference ordering changes with whet her consumers evaluate immediate or delayed consumption consequences for example ignoring long term health effects many smokers prefer regular relative vice to light relative virtue cigarettes because they prefer the taste of the former however ignoring these short term taste differences the same smokers prefer light to regular cigarettes when they consider the long term health effects of smoking these preference orders can lead to dynamically inconsistent consumption choices by consumers whose tradeoffs between the immediate and delayed consequences of consumption depend on the time lag between purchase and consumption this creates a potential self control problem because these consumers will be tempted to over consume the vices they have in stock at home purchase quantity rationing helps them solve the self control problem by limiting their stock and hence their consumption opportunities such rationing implies that per purchase occasion vice consumers will be less likely than virtue consumers to buy larger quantities in response to unit price reductions such as quantity discounts we first test this prediction in two laboratory experiments we then examine the external validity of the results at the retail level with a field survey of quantity discounts and with a scanner data analysis of chain wide store level demand across a variety of different pairs of matched vice regular and virtue reduced fat calorie or caffeine etc product categories the analyses of these experimental field and scanner data provide strong convergent evidence of a characteristic crossover in demand schedules for relative vices and virtues for categories as diverse as among others potato chips chocolate chip cookies cream cheese beer soft drinks ice cream and frozen yogurt chewing gum coffee and beef andturkey bologna vice consumers demand increases less in response to price reductions than virtue consumers demand although their preferences are not generally weaker for vices than for virtues constraints on vice purchases are self imposed and strategic rather than driven by simple preferences we suggest that rationing their vice inventories at the point of purchase allows consumers to limit subsequent consumption as a result of purchase quantity rationing however vice buyers forgo savings from price reductions through quantity discounts effectively paying price premiums for the opportunity to engage in self control thus purchase quantity rationing vice consumers are relatively price in sensitive from a managerial and public policy perspective our findings should offer marketing practitioners in many consumer goods industries new opportunities to increase profits through segmentation and price discrimination based on consumer self control they can charge premium prices for small sizes of vices relative to the corresponding quantity discounts for virtues virtue consumers on the other hand will buy larger amounts even when quantity discounts are relatively shallow a key conceptual contribution of this paper lies in showing how marketing researchers can investigate a whole class of strategic self constraining consumer behaviors empirically moreover this research is the first to extend previous theoretical work on impulse control by empirically demonstrating its broader implications for marketing decision making

institutional ownership stability and bhc performance abstract in this study the association between performance of bhcs and institutional ownership stability is investigated and contrasted to those found for the less regulated utility and industrial firms in order to determine whether regulation displaces owner monitoring we employ a simultaneous equations model treating firm performance and institutional ownership stability as endogenous variables several results are obtained first bhc performance is positively associated with institutional ownership stability second this association is weaker for bhcs than for comparable utility and industrial firms possibly because of the substitution of regulation for owner monitoring in banking third this association is stronger in the recent deregulated years and for bhcs with lower likelihood of regulatory intervention

culture and ceo compensation the theory and research on chief executive officer ceo compensation tends to be dominated by assumptions and values reflective of those dominant in the national culture of the united states where most of this work is done this suggests that an underlying theme focuses on how ceo compensation is related to instrumental choices made in a competitive capitalist culture this study seeks to expand the understanding of ceo compensation by examining it in the context of other cultures based on the premise that national culture plays a significant part in the nature of compensation strategies we relate cultural dimensions uncertainty avoidance power distance individualism and masculinity femininity developed by hofstede hofstede 1980a 2001 to several dimensions of ceo compensation these dimensions are total ceo pay the proportion of variable pay to total compensation and the ratio of ceo pay to the lowest level employees the main findings of our paper are 1 all of the different dimensions of ceo pay were related to power distance leading us to infer that ceo pay in a culture is most reflective of the strength of the power structure in a society and 2 total compensation and the ratio of variable pay to total pay are related to individualism we conclude that cultural dimensions can contribute to understanding cross national ceo compensation the implication of this conclusion is that there are different ways that ceo compensation fits into the cognitive schema of various cultures and furthermore that these cognitive schema vary across societies that affect the nature of the cultural matrix into which money is incorporated bloch and parry 1989 p 1 moreover our results imply that particular forms of ceo compensation do not mean the same thing in different cultures but rather carry different symbolic connotations depending on the values dominant in a society thus not only does the compensation structure of a firm within a culture have a symbolic meaning within organizations e g trice and beyer 1993 but it can also be seen as an expression of deeper social values hofstede et al 1990 that may differ across countries

financial deregulation and household saving the last decade has seen widespread domestic financial deregulation in the industrial world particularly in the united states united kingdom and the nordic countries resulting in an increase in competition both between banks and saving institutions thrifts or building societies as they moved into each others services and within each sector this opened up new financial options particularly for households the sector that was probably most affected by government regulation for example there was a significant increase in equity withdrawals from personal housing wealth in both the united kingdom and united states over the ig8os 2 this period also saw a significant change in household consumption behaviour the most dramatic illustration being the fall in the household saving ratio in those countries where the process of deregulation has gone furthest this paper reports the results from estimating a model of household saving using regional data for the united kingdom with a particular emphasis on the interaction between household saving and financial deregulation the estimates are used to calculate the relative importance of different factors in the fall in personal saving over the i98os i conclude that deregulation lowered the equilibrium level of saving over the i98os probably 2 percentage points per annum as well as making saving significantly more dependent on changes in wealth income and real interest rates there have been a number of earlier empirical studies looking at the interaction between financial deregulation and household behaviour manchester and poterba i 989 miles i 992 and koskela et al i 992 present empirical evidence on the interaction between deregulation the housing market and saving in the united states united kingdom and finland respectively others have estimated saving functions which include variables representing the effects of financial deregulation or have considered the impact of financial deregulation on liquidity constraints in consumption 3 the

circumventing formal structure through commitment presidential influence and agenda control although the formal institutional structure that defines the temporal order of play in a policy game between the congress and president ought to provide congress with agenda power the president is traditionally treated as the dominant player in this relationship we show that if the president can make clear cut commitments presidential commitment can counter the dominance hierarchy and the complexion of equilibrium outcomes thus the details of political interactions in particular the possibilities for commitment may be as important as the formal specification of institutional structure

output trends in ec countries and the implications for transition to monetary union abstract motivated by the current plan for european monetary unification we explore the degree of shared real per capita output trends among ec countries using johansen s 1988 maximum likelihood approach for estimating long run relations in multivariate vector autoregressive models the evidence is interpreted in favor of the current plan for european economic and monetary union

the impact of stakeholder power on corporate reputation a cross country corporate governance perspective corporate reputation has roots in national beliefs about the role of the business corporation in society these beliefs are constructed in accordance with the preferences of powerful stakeholders building on a stakeholder power approach to corporate governance we investigate whether differences in the legal rights and protections of shareholders creditors and workers across countries affect the general public s reputation assessments of business corporations using a sample of 593 of the largest publicly traded companies in the world from 32 countries during 2007 to 2011 we find that in societies where shareholders enjoy a high degree of legal rights the impact of stock market returns on corporate reputation becomes more positive likewise the negative relationship between earnings volatility and reputation becomes greater when creditor rights are stronger contrary to expectations we found no evidence of an interaction effect between labor rights and corporate social performance on corporate repu

does ownership always matter abstract the objective of this paper is to explain and illustrate the complex relationship between ownership arrangements and enterprise performance it is commonly argued that efficiency will be lower in the public sector than the private because enterprise objectives deviate from maximisation of profits and because monitoring arrangements are inadequate due to the absence of capital market discipline we argue that public ownership does make the owner manager relationship more complicated because the chain of principals and agents is expanded objectives are politically determined and these are conveyed by a policy making administrative structure to management but the relative efficiency of public as against private ownership actually depends on the efficacy of capital market monitoring on the political and constitutional system on the information and sanctions available to policy makers and on the nature of the management market variation in these factors can help to explain the different natures and roles of the public sector between countries

government ownership and corporate governance evidence from the eu the ongoing global financial crisis has led to the largest increase in state intervention since the great depression direct government ownership in publicly traded corporations has increased dramatically since 2008 how will this increase in public ownership affect the governance of these erstwhile private companies we examine the impact of government ownership on corporate governance using a sample of firms from the european union a region that is relatively familiar with active government participation our main finding is that government ownership is associated with lower governance quality we further show that while government intervention is negatively related to governance quality in civil law countries it is positively related to governance quality in common law countries finally we find that the preferential voting rights of golden shares are especially damaging to governance quality

five steps to planning success experimental evidence from us households while financial knowledge has been linked to improved financial behaviour there is lit tle consensus on the value of financial education in part because rigorous evaluation of various programmes has yielded mixed results however given the heterogeneity of financial education pro grammes in the literature focusing on generic financial education can be inappropriate and even mis leading lusardi 2009 and others argue that pedagogy and delivery matter significantly in this paper we design and field a low cost easily replicable financial education programme called five steps covering five basic financial planning concepts that relate to retirement we conduct a field experiment to evaluate the overall impact of five steps on a probability sample of the american population in different treatment arms we quantify the relative impact of delivering the programme through video and narrative formats our results show that short videos and narratives each takes about 3 minutes have sizeable short run effects on objective measures of respondent knowledge moreover keeping informational content relatively constant format has significant effects on other psychological levers of behavioural change effects on self efficacy are significantly higher when videos are used which ultimately influences knowledge acquisition follow up tests of respondents knowledge approximately 8 months after the interventions suggest that between one quarter and one third of the knowledge gain and about one fifth of the self efficacy gain persist thus this simple programme has effects both in the short run and medium run

the fewer the better number of goals and savings behavior abstract this article examines the effect of the number of goals on consumers savings behavior drawing from research on implementation intention the authors show that under certain conditions presenting a single savings goal leads to greater savings intention and actual savings than presenting multiple savings goals multiple goals typically evoke trade offs among competing goals and thus increase the likelihood that people will remain in a deliberative mind set and defer actions in contrast the authors propose and demonstrate that a single goal evokes a stronger implementation intention which in turn has a greater effect on behavior change they also show that the advantage of a single goal over multiple goals on saving is attenuated when saving is easier to implement or when the multiple savings goals are integrated rather than competing among themselves theoretical and practical implications are discussed

the stock market and exchange rate dynamics abstract this paper articulates a model of the open economy in which as in tobin 1978 the price of shares in the stock market subtitutes for the real interest rate in the determination of aggregate demand the stock market reduces the impact of monetary policy on the real exchange rate indeed if the link between stock prices and aggregate demand is important enough the impact of monetary policy on the real exchange rate can be reversed in contrast with standard dynamic mundell flemming models anticipated fiscal policy can be expansionary rather than contradictionary as in for example burgstaller 1983 blanchard 1984 and branson et al 1985

ceo duality as a double edged sword how boards of directors balance entrenchment avoidance and unity of command when a firm s chief executive officer is also the chairperson of its board directors have opposing objectives according to organization theory such ceo duality establishes strong unambiguous le

the efficiency implications of earnings retentions an extension this paper reports on another attempt to statistically uncover evidence of embodied technological change as an explanation of changes in labor productivity in the united states in this version of the test an interregional cross section time series sample of data was used while the hypothesis has a lot of appeal it has proven difficult to find manifestations of embodiment in econometric tests this study has proven to be no exception despite the unique data set results were again not supportive of the hypothesis a possible limitation of this test is that the time period studied may have been too short references

running against the status quo institutions for direct democracy referenda and allocations over time stylized institutions for direct democracy referenda are examined in a dynamic full information environment with myopic voters competitive agenda median voter processes are contrasted with monopolistic controlled agenda processes by extending existing static analyses to a class of dynamic institutions not previously characterized the status quo reversion rule this highlights the dependence of the progression of real equilibrium allocations over time on institutional structure by delineating the restrictions implied by each institutional form the model explains some persistent empirical regularities in particular a strict ceteris paribus ordering of the magnitudes of budgets by institutional form is derived for a wide portion of the parameter space

the importance of tax adjustments when evaluating wage expectations using elicited expectations of future gross salaries we evaluate characteristics causing german students to make larger or smaller estimation errors while students seem to underestimate actual salaries by 18 percent we show that these errors are highly attributable to misconceptions of the progressive income tax developing a suitable adjustment procedure we correct students estimates and find that errors decline by 12 percentage points conducting regression analyses we reveal strong connections with students age gender work experience secondary school track and knowledge about student loans these results change notably if not controlling for students misconceptions of the tax system

managing foreign subsidiaries agents of headquarters or an interdependent network in this study two different theoretical perspectives are used to develop sets of hypotheses regarding the mechanisms used to manage foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations first agency theory serves as the basis for a model that predicts the use of monitoring mechanisms and incentive compensation then it is argued that these mechanisms are insufficient for managing subsidiaries characterized by high levels of intra firm international interdependence the management of which is critical to many of today s complex global firms a second set of hypotheses is argued linking international interdependence to several social control mechanisms primary and secondary data from u s based multinational corporations were used to test both sets of hypotheses the results indicate that agency theory although a useful foundation for studies of control within mncs is limited in its ability to explain fully the phenomenon of foreign subsidiary control however the model based on intra firm interdependence had much greater predictive ability copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

capital market information and industrial performance the role of west german banks in orthodox theory external capital markets play a dual role supplying various forms of investment finance and disciplining firms which are inefficient or fail to pursue profit goals an extensive literature speaks of the efficiency of external capital markets meaning that firms can make production investment decisions and investors can choose among the securities that represent ownership of firms activities under the assumption that security prices at any time fully reflect all available information fama i970 1 however this concept of efficiency is purely technical it depends critically on what information is available and we know there are problems of appropriability and failure in information markets deriving ultimately from certain peculiarities of information as a commodity arrow i962 thus another growing literature focusses on problems of achieving equilibrium in markets where agents are imperfectly or asymmetrically informed amongst other things this literature shows that informational failures of the kind in question can lead to capital rationing in loan and credit markets and the use of strict collateral requirements as screening devices jaffee and russell i976 stiglitz and weiss i98i cable and turner i983 these may then be expected to affect the efficiency of individual firms and the system as a whole capital shortage implies that some profitable investment opportunities are foregone and production choices may also be distorted by the need to satisfy additional financial constraints contrived to elicit signals of creditworthiness of the firms undertaking them similarly the disciplining role of external capital markets can be impaired by information impactedness williamson i975 and the costs of mobilising and giving effect to shareholders preferences thus in the principal agent framework developed by jensen and meckling i976 and fama i980 the degree of constraint on managerial pursuit of non profit goals as posited by managerial theorists depends on the transactions costs of stock owner intervention the result is an optimal degree of departure from cost minimising profit maximising behaviour determined by the level of transactions costs institutional factors which affect the way information is distributed amongst agents can therefore have an important bearing on allocative and technical efficiency and the west german system of industrial finance provides an in

the economic importance of financial literacy theory and evidence this paper undertakes an assessment of a rapidly growing body of economic research on financial literacy we start with an overview of theoretical research which casts financial knowledge as a form of investment in human capital endogenizing financial knowledge has important implications for welfare as well as policies intended to enhance levels of financial knowledge in the larger population next we draw on recent surveys to establish how much or how little people know and identify the least financially savvy population subgroups this is followed by an examination of the impact of financial literacy on economic decision making in the united states and elsewhere while the literature is still young conclusions may be drawn about the effects and consequences of financial illiteracy and what works to remedy these gaps a final section offers thoughts on what remains to be learned if researchers are to better inform theoretical and empirical models as well as public policy jel a20 d14 g11 i20 j26

disentangling the incentive and entrenchment effects of large shareholdings this article disentangles the incentive and entrenchment effects of large ownership using data for 1 301 publicly traded corporations in eight east asian economies we find that firm value increases with the cash flow ownership of the largest shareholder consistent with a positive incentive effect but firm value falls when the control rights of the largest shareholder exceed its cash flow ownership consistent with an entrenchment effect given that concentrated corporate ownership is predominant in most countries these findings have relevance for corporate governance across the world

management and ownership effects evidence from five countries despite the growing recognition in the corporate governance literature that the relationship between ownership concentration and profitability is context dependent this issue has not yet been subjected to direct empirical investigation using a single cross national sample this study empirically examines the ownership concentration performance relationship across the nations of canada france germany the united kingdom and the united states essentially we argue that the correlation if any between ownership concentration and firm profitability differs across countries in a systematic way determined by the national system of corporate governance results indicate that important and statistically significant differences do in fact exist across the countries studied 1998 john wiley sons ltd

ownership versus competition efficiency in public enterprise certainly the introduction of product market competition into potentially competitive or at least contestable markets can improve performance to take just one example morrison and whinston 1986 1986 estimate that even in the imperfectly contestable u s airline industry the annual u s welfare gains from deregulation have been around 6 billion

dominant institutional owners and firm value abstract this research analyzes the impact of control by dominant institutional owners banking institutions and investment funds on firm value the analysis considers the level of voting rights in the hands of the dominant institutional owner and other large shareholders the results reveal a different effect on value depending on whether the dominant institutional investor is a banking institution or an investment fund moreover the results show that the presence of other large shareholders affects firm value when a dominant institutional owner controls the firm

self command in practice in policy and in a theory of rational choice an increasingly familiar occurrence for obstetricians is being asked by patients to withhold anesthesia during delivery the physician often proposes that a facemask be put beside the patient who may inhale nitrous oxide as she needs it but some determined patients ask that no such opportunity be provided if gas is available they will use it and they want not to be able to the request is interesting for decision theory and raises questions of ethics policy and physician responsibility even if the woman is merely making a mistake if she simply does not know how painful labor will be and how glad she will be even in retrospect if the pain is relieved but some women who make this request have had earlier deliveries during which they demanded anesthesia and received it they are acquainted with the pain they anticipate asking for relief and they want it withheld when they do they expect to regret afterwards any recourse to anesthesia this particular instance of attempted selfdenial has features that are special but many that are common the woman is so far as we know in good health physically and mentally she anticipates a transient period when her usual values and preferences will be suspended or inaccessible she has reasons for wanting to frustrate her own wishes at the critical time she needs cooperation she may ratify her choice afterward by expressing herself grateful that no anesthesia was offered even when requested there are ethical dilemmas and legal issues and there is conflict if say the husband disagrees with the physician in the delivery room about what his wife really wants

investor protection and corporate governance recent research has documented large differences among countries in ownership concentration in publicly traded firms in the breadth and depth of capital markets in dividend policies and in the access of firms to external finance a common element to the explanations of these differences is how well investors both shareholders and creditors are protected by law from expropriation by the managers and controlling shareholders of firms we describe the differences in laws and the effectiveness of their enforcement across countries discuss the possible origins of these differences summarize their consequences and assess potential strategies of corporate governance reform we argue that the legal approach is a more fruitful way to understand corporate governance and its reform than the conventional distinction between bank centered and market centered financial systems

moral choice and the declining influence of traditional value orientations within the financial sector of a rapidly developing region of the people s republic of china this paper describes the results of a field experiment involving 400 employees from ten financial institutions operating within the shenzhen special economic zone of the people s republic of china it was found that when faced with an agency based problem employees indicated they would be less inclined to advise management of the existence of unethical work practices younger employees without supervisory experience displayed significant risk aversion traditional chinese values associated with confucian work dynamism were shown to be poor predictors of moral choice response a parsimonious regression model was developed that provides evidence that the universal trait masculinity femininity human heartedness acted to offset the negative influence of the agency problem on the other hand an operative s level of education attainment exerted a negative influence on moral response scores

does market oriented institutional change in an emerging economy make business group affiliated multinationals perform better an institution based view viewing market oriented institutional change as a two staged process we propose that the effects of market oriented institutional change on two organizational forms business group affiliated and independent firms are different depending on the stage of institutional change specifically we examine how the two distinct periods of market oriented institutional change that is institutional friction and institutional convergence affect business group affiliated firms and independent firms in their abilities to profit from international diversification using data on 140 korean manufacturing multinational firms from 1993 to 2003 we find that emerging economy firms face an international diversification discount a negative relationship between international diversification and firm performance we also find that business group affiliation affects the international diversification discount differently during the two periods of market oriented institutional change particularly when firm performance is measured by the market to book value mbv the moderating effect of business group affiliation on the relationship between international diversification and mbv is negative during the institutional frictions period but becomes positive during the institutional convergence period in the later stage of institutional change our findings warn against viewing market oriented institutional change as a discrete event highlighting the importance of recognizing the qualitatively distinctive nature of different periods of market oriented institutional change in future research

output the stock market and interest rates this paper develops a simple model of the determination of output the stock market and the term structure of interest rates the model is an extension of the is lm model and borrows from it the assumption that output is determined by aggregate demand and that the price level can only adjust over time to its equilibrium value however whereas the is lm emphasizes the interaction between the interest rate and output this model emphasizes the interaction between asset values and output asset values rather than the interest rate are the main determinants of aggregate demand and output current and anticipated output and income are in turn the main determinants of asset values it is this interaction that the model intends to capture its goal is to characterize the joint response of asset values and output to changes in the environment such as changes or announcement of changes in monetary and fiscal policy as the above brief description makes clear anticipations are central to the story the assumption made in this paper will be one of rational expectations the paper is organized as follows section i describes the model and sections ii iv characterize the behavior of the economy under the extreme but convenient assumption that prices are fixed forever sections v and vi extend the analysis to the case where prices adjust over time to their equilibrium value

the balance of power in closely held corporations abstract we analyze a closely held corporation characterized by the absence of a resale market for its shares we show that the founder of the firm can optimally choose an ownership structure with several large shareholders to force them to form coalitions to obtain control by grouping member cash flows a coalition internalizes to a larger extent the consequences of its actions and hence takes more efficient actions than would any of its individual members the model has implications for the optimal bundling of cash flow and voting rights and for the optimal number and size of shareholders

corporate performance and managerial remuneration an empirical analysis abstract economic theories of efficient compensation predict a positive relationship between executive pay and corporate performance and yet efforts to document this relationship have been largely unsuccessful in this paper we argue that previous cross sectional studies have omitted important variables which seriously bias their results using data that focus on individual executives over time we find that executive compensation is strongly positively related to corporate performance as measured by shareholder return and growth in firm sales the results are robust to the stock market performance measure utilized

founding family leadership and industry profitability in this article we argue that firms in high margin industries can benefit from founding family influence specifically in more profitable markets the influence of the founding family provides an additional corporate governance monitoring function the sample consists of 294 firm year observations from 98 publicly traded companies headquartered in sweden representing approximately half of all non financial traded firms our support that the effect of family leadership in publicly held firms should be assessed in relation to the intensity of industry competition

the duration of the smoking habit i introduction most smokers smoke out of habit once the habit is ended many of smoking s most harmful effects decline rather quickly preventing and ending cigarette addiction is therefore the straightest path toward preventing the health damage done by cigarette smoking consequently the related questions of why people start smoking and why they quit are central to formulating and evaluating effective antismoking policies duration or hazard models are designed to measure the probability of transition between states and are thus ideal for investigating the structural determinants of the transition between addiction and non addiction nevertheless most previous work in the economics literature uses the aggregate smoking participation rate defined as the percentage of people who currently smoke or an individual s probability of participation rather than a hazard rate to measure the attractiveness of habitual smoking this paper models the hazard rates of both starting and quitting the cigarette smoking habit the starting hazard rate is the probability that an individual will start smoking in a given time period conditional on being a nonsmoker until then the quitting hazard rate is the probability of quitting smoking in a given time period conditional on being a smoker since the starting date both of these rates should rise and fall in response to changes in the attractiveness of smoking the two rates will respond differently to different stimuli since the starting hazard reflects the point of view of nonsmokers and the quitting hazard reflects the point of view of smokers hazard or duration models possess several advantages over smoking participation models most obviously smoking participation rates cannot directly distinguish between increased starting rates and decreased quitting rates but the hazard models can also in a participation rate model it is difficult to control for the effect of the duration of the habit whereas duration models are designed specifically to allow for and measure the dependence of the hazard rate on duration another advantage is that the participation rate at any one time will oversample the number of long term smokers relative to those who had a short term habit whereas a duration model is designed to avoid this source of bias one drawback however is that because of their inherent panel nature the data requirements of duration models are somewhat more difficult to satisfy as shall be seen the only previous work in the economics literature that estimates the hazard rate of starting smoking is douglas and hariharan 1994 my paper improves upon douglas and hariharan in at least three important ways first it estimates the hazard rate of quitting smoking as well as that of starting second it takes into account variation in state level regulation third its time varying covariate model allows hazard rates to respond dynamically to changes in cigarette price regulation and information variables the use of time varying covariates is important because it brings the empirical model into much closer accord with theory the decision whether or not to start or quit smoking is an ongoing decision made one day at a time on the basis of current information the hazard of starting is greatest when the cost of the habit appears lowest and its benefit appears highest this comparison of cost and benefit changes through time as price information income and life cycle variables change while douglas and hariharan 1994 used price information from the potential smoker s most vulnerable age on the theory that its marginal effect is greatest at that time the model used in this paper allows each individual s hazard rate to respond to changes in price and public information as they occur the leading theoretical model of the decision to smoke is the rational addiction model of becker and murphy 1988 which assumes that consumers of addictive goods begin smoking only after fully weighing the costs and benefits of the habit

on the costs of a bank centered financial system evidence from the changing main bank relations in japan we examine the effects of bank firm relationships on firm performance in japan when access to capital markets is limited close bank firm ties increase the availability of capital to borrowing firms but do not lead to higher profitability or growth the cost of capital of firms with close bank ties is higher than that of their peers this indicates that most of the benefits from these relationships are appropriated by the banks finally the slow growth rates of bank clients suggest that banks discourage firms from investing in risky profitable projects however liberalization of financial markets reduces the banks market power the close relationship between manufacturing firms and financial institutions in japan has recently been at the center of the debate on the appropriate financial system for the reforming economies of eastern europe as opposed to the anglo saxon separation of finance and industry long term ties between main banks and their client firms involving bank loans bank equity holding and some bank appointed personnel which are common in japan and germany have often been described as a growth oriented financial system that could serve the needs of developing and reformed economiies better than anonymous capital markets modeled after the arnerican and british financial systems the claim that close ties between investmentoriented banks and industrial firms could help overcome the difficulties of relative backwardness dates back to gerschenkron 1962 who investigates european development rosovsky 1961 applies gerschenkron s framework to the analysis of japanese growth more recently aoki patrick and sheard 1994 hoshi kashyap and loveman 1994 and teranishi 1993 among others portray the close ties between finance and industry in japan as an important factor in the international competitiveness of modern japanese

ownership structure investment and the corporate value an empirical analysis this paper examines the relation among ownership structure investment and corporate value focusing on whether ownership structure affects investment ordinary least squares regression results suggest that ownership structure affects investment and therefore corporate value however simultaneous regression results indicate that the endogeneity of ownership may affect these inferences suggesting that investment affects corporate value which in turn affects ownership structure the evidence shows that corporate value affects ownership structure but not vice versa these findings raise questions regarding the assumption that ownership structure is exogenously determined and bring into question the results in studies that treat ownership structure as exogenous

on intertemporal selfishness how the perceived instability of identity underlies impatient consumption how does the anticipated connectedness between one s current and future identity help explain impatience in intertemporal preferences the less consumers are closely connected psychologically to their future selves the less willing they will be to forgo immediate benefits in order to ensure larger deferred benefits to be received by that future self when consumers measured or manipulated sense of continuity with their future selves is lower they accept smaller sooner rewards wait less in order to save money on a purchase require a larger premium to delay receiving a gift card and have lower long term discount rates

do markets differ much this essay reports the results of a crosssection study of differences in accounting profitability that sheds light on some basic controversies in industrial economics most previous cross section studies in this field have been concerned with testing hypotheses about structural coefficients in models meant to apply to essentially all markets as we have learned more about the difficulties of constructing such general models and of performing tests on their structural parameters properly structural cross section analysis has fallen out of fashion in contrast to most of the cross section literature the analysis reported here is fundamentally descriptive it does not attempt directly to estimate or to test hypotheses about structural parameters i hope to show by example that one can perform illuminating analysis of cross section data without a host of controversial maintained hypotheses cross section data can yield interesting stylized facts to guide both general theorizing and empirical analysis of specific industries even if they cannot easily support full blown structural estimation one can view the sort of search for stylized facts conducted here as either a replacement for or an input to interindustry structural estimation depending on one s feeling about the long run potential of that research approach this study also departs from much of the cross section literature by being fundamentally concerned with the importance of various effects not just with coefficient signs and t statistics in particular this essay provides estimates of the relative importance of firm market and market share differences in the determination of business unit divisional profitability in u s manufacturing using 1975 data from the line of business program of the u s federal trade commission ftc i find support neither for the existence of firm effects nor for the importance of market share effects moreover while industry effects apparently exist and are important they appear to be negatively correlated with seller concentration in these data section i relates firm market and share effects to current issues and controversies in industrial economics and thus supplies the motivation for our empirical analysis the remainder of the essay treats the data and

output consumption and the stock market implications for european convergence this paper investigates the nature of the relationship between output and stock prices and consumption and stock prices with respect to the different financial structures that exist primarily in the european union eu evidence is found of a long run relationship for both relationships with the exception of germany and to an extent france which is argued is due to their bank dominated financial systems kalman filter estimates reveal that both relationships have increased in strength although little evidence is found of any convergence in the strength of the relationship across the eu

sterling s relationship with the dollar and the deutschemark 1976 89 this paper evaluates the linkages between bilateral exchange rates using a time varying parameter model which can be estimated using the kalman filter the technique solves many of the statistical problems which arise when ordinary least squares is used to estimate currency correlation applying the technique to the dollar sterling dm sterling and dm dollar bilateral exchange rates the results suggest a market weakening strengthening of sterling s relationship with the dollar dm since the mid 1970s additionally these currency linkages are shown to have undergone a number of regime shifts suggesting that the timing of the weakening of the dollar sterling relationship is different to that proposed by previous studies copyright 1991 by royal economic society

diversification ricardian rents and tobin s q according to prevailing theory firms diversify in response to excess capacity of factors that are subject to market failure by probing into the heterogeneity of these factors we develop the corollary that firms that elect to diversify most widely should expect the lowest average rents an empirical test with tobin s q as the measure of rents is consistent with this theory

multinationality and performance among british manufacturing companies over the period 1972 84 profitability among 304 large british manufacturing companies was positively related to their degree of multinationality moreover increases in overseas production were strongly associated with increases in sales and profitability the profitability of multinational growth over the whole period was independent of its destination supporting the view that the primary source of the superior performance of multinationals was competitive advantage rather than the higher rate of profit in the industries of other countries

market culture and authority a comparative analysis of management and organization in the far east three frameworks purport to explain industrial arrangements and practices a market approach that emphasizes economic characteristics a cultural approach that sees organization as the expression of patterned values and an authority approach that explains organization as a historically developed structure of domination the efficacy of each approach is tested in explaining the organizational structures of three rapidly growing east asian economies japan south korea and taiwan the paper argues through comparative analysis that organizational growth is best explained by market and cultural factors but that authority patterns and legitimation strategies best explain organizational structure