economic deregulation days of reckoning for microeconomists economic deregulation of american industry is one of the most important experiments in economic policy of our time 1 in 1977 17 percent of u s gnp was produced by fully regulated industries 2 by 1988 following ten years of partial and complete economic deregulation of large parts of the transportation communications energy and financial industries that total had been cut significantly to 6 6 percent of gnp 3 the political forces behind the decision to change the market conditions under which roughly 600 billion of u s output is produced were strong and varied but according to political scientists martha derthick and paul quirk 1985 p 36 deregulation would never have occurred if economists especially microeconomists had not generally supported it through their research 4 in retrospect it is fair to ask were microeconomists able to develop a theoretical and empirical framework to explain regulation and its effects and to form predictions of deregulation s effects were they able to predict the actual effects of deregulation this paper surveys the evidence to address these questions and of

strikes scabs and tread separations labor strife and the production of defective bridgestone firestone tires this paper provides a case study of the effect of labor relations on product quality we consider whether a long contentious strike and the hiring of permanent replacement workers by bridgestone firestone in the mid 1990s contributed to the production of an excess number of defective tires using several independent data sources we find that labor strife in the decatur plant closely coincided with lower product quality count data regression models based on two data sets of tire failures by plant year and age show significantly higher failure rates for tires produced in decatur during the labor dispute than before or after the dispute or than at other plants also an analysis of internal firestone engineering tests indicates that p235 tires from decatur performed less well if they were manufactured during the labor dispute compared with those produced after the dispute or compared with those from other non striking plants monthly data suggest that the production of defective tires was particularly high around the time wage concessions were demanded by firestone in early 1994 and when large numbers of replacement workers and permanent workers worked side by side in late 1995 and early 1996

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

accounting for retail land sales analysis of a mandated change abstract this study assesses the stock market s reaction to a series of events leading up to a mandated change in accounting for retail land sales evidence is found to support the conclusion that the market reacted to some of these events in a manner consistent with the effects of the accounting change on debt annagement contracts a distinctive aspect of the analysis is the efficient use of security returns data to detect market reactions and to derive empirical distributions of test statistics employed the analysis is extended by a model for grouping regression equations known as seemingly unrelated regressions however the gains from this extension are modest

financial liberalization financial regulation and bank efficiency a multi country analysis this article investigates the impact of financial reforms on bank efficiency more specifically we distinguish between two different types of financial reforms i e financial liberalization measures and measures of the quality of bank regulation and supervision i e financial regulation and study their relationship to bank efficiency separately moreover we analyse whether the impact of financial liberalization on bank efficiency is conditional on the quality of regulation and supervision of the banking system we apply stochastic frontier analysis to calculate bank efficiency at the individual bank level and use a new and detailed database that measures different aspects of financial reforms the data set consists of 87 312 bank year observations covering 61 countries for the period 1996 2005 overall we show that the impact of financial liberalization policies on bank efficiency is conditional on the extent to which bank regulation and supervision has been adopted and developed

consistent estimation of cross sectional models in event studies event studies often include cross sectional regressions of announcement effects on exogenous variables if the event is voluntary and investors are rational then standard ols and gls estimators are inconsistent consistent ml estimators are constructed for a cross sectional model of horizontal mergers relating announcement effects to exgeneous characteristics of firms and industries the ols and ml estimates differ dramatically for bidders but not for targets the evidence suggests that managers of bidders but not targets have valuable private information about the potential synergies from proposed mergers article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

a positive theory of environmental quality regulation this paper demonstrates that environmental quality regulation may enhance producer wealth while simultaneously reducing an externality problem by restricting access to common property regulation not only corrects a resource misallocation but it creates a scarcity rent as well in the recent history of environmental quality the common access problem has been addressed by federal and state agencies through a standards based approach rather than through the enforcement of tradable property rights as a consequence rents from the right to use these assets have accrued to producers the data are convincing that there is a strong interplay between producers consumers and the victims of pollution each party has some influence on the outcome and one sided analysis neglects many important aspects of regulation environmental quality regulation is complicated but many of the observed perplexities are consistent with a rent seeking self interest theory of government 46 references 1 figure 7 tables

oil shocks and oil stocks evidence from the 1970s the present paper examines the returns to 29 oil companies listed on the new york stock exchange during the period surrounding the oil shock of 1973 the returns are decomposed into production refining foreign and domestic operations the hypothesis that domestic price controls benefitted refiners is tested finally the hypothesis that oil price risk was priced in the sense of the arbitrage pricing theory is tested

parametric efficiency tests economies of scale and input demand in u s electric power generation duality theory has been applied increasingly in recent years to study the structure of production a major advantage of using duality theory is that systems of input demand equations can be derived by simple differentiation facilitating the use of flexible functional forms also use of duality theory makes it possible to choose a representation of the technology which has desirable properties for estimation such as exogeneity of the regressors however the use of a dual representation of production structure is appropriate only if the corresponding maintained hypothesis concerning economic behavior e g cost minimization or profit maximization is valid the perceived advantages of the dual approach to studying production structure have led to some applications in which the maintained hypothesis concerning economic behavior is unlikely to be appropriate for example neoclassical cost functions have been used to study the characteristics of production in regulated industries despite an extensive theoretical literature indicating that a profit maximizing regulated firm would not minimize costs subject to market prices 2 in this paper we propose a generalized cost function that retains the principal advantages of the neoclassical cost function but does not require that cost minimization subject to market prices be imposed as a maintained hypothesis in our model firms are assumed to base their production decisions on unobservable shadow prices which reflect the effects of regulation on the effective prices of inputs parametric tests for cost minimization are obtained by expressing shadow prices as functions of market prices the generalized cost function is estimated with data for regulated electric utilities the parametric restrictions corresponding to cost minimizing behavior subject to market prices are rejected implying that the use of a neoclassical cost function is not appropriate in this application 3

are workers paid their marginal products status is like coase s social costs a reciprocal phenomenon given that one person s gain in status can occur only at the expense of a loss in status for others and that workers are free to choose their coworkers it follows that the competitive wage structure within a firm must be one in which individual wage differences understate individual differences in marginal products the purpose of this paper is to examine a variety of empirical evidence that relates to this proposition about the firm s internal wage structure the paper is organized as follows section i briefly summarizes the theoretical considerations that govern competitive wage determination when status matters to people and firms are viewed as voluntary associations of workers section ii then confronts the predictions of section i by examining pay and productivity schedules for a group of sales occupations for which these schedules are relatively easily observed section ii also examines the relationship between wages and productivity for a sample of university professors an occupation in which individual productivity differences are for a variety of obvious reasons relatively more difficult to measure all of the evidence examined is consistent with the hypothesis that within firms wage rates vary substantially less than do individual productivity values section iii discusses additional observations and evidence that bear on this same hypothesis it suggests that the implicit market for status may strongly influence the ways in which firms are organized to carry out the tasks they perform section iv concludes by considering the claim that egalitarian internal wage structures arise because of equity considerations it argues that the concept of equity appears very closely linked to the concept of status and suggests a strategy for assigning monetaty value to the equity considerations that so often dominate public policy decisions

capital gains tax and equity values empirical test of stock price reaction to the introduction and reduction of capital gains tax exemption abstract this paper evaluates the differential effect on stock prices of the introduction in canada of 500 000 capital gains tax exemption and the reduction of this limit to 100 000 two years later using the seemingly unrelated regression methodology and controlling for thin trading and heteroscedasticity the empirical evidence indicates that the changes in capital gains tax laws had a differential effect on low dividend yield and high dividend yield stocks on both occasions while the evidence indicates that the stock market anticipated the 1985 capital gains tax law changes the significant market reaction to the 1987 reduction of the exemption occurred a day before and after the reading of the tax reform proposals in parliament thus it can be inferred from the results that despite the presence of tax sheltering opportunities in canada changes in capital gains tax laws affect equity values

biased perceptions of income distribution and preferences for redistribution evidence from a survey experiment abstract individual perceptions of income distribution play a vital role in political economy and public finance models yet there is little evidence regarding their origins or accuracy this study examines how individuals form these perceptions and explores their potential impact on preferences for redistribution a tailored household survey provides original evidence on systematic biases in individuals evaluations of their own relative position in the income distribution the study discusses one of the mechanisms that may generate such biases based on the extrapolation of information from endogenous reference groups and presents some suggestive evidence that this mechanism has significant explanatory power the impact of these biased perceptions on attitudes toward redistributive policies is studied by means of an experimental design that was incorporated into the survey which provided consistent information on the own ranking within the income distribution to a randomly selected group of respondents the evidence suggests that those who had overestimated their relative position and thought that they were relatively richer than they were tend to demand higher levels of redistribution when informed of their true ranking

labour unrest and the quality of production evidence from the construction equipment resale market this paper examines the construction equipment resale market to assess whether equipment produced by the world s largest manufacturer of construction machinery caterpillar experienced lower product quality in facilities that underwent contract disputes during the 1990 s analysis of auction data reveals that resale market participants significantly discounted machines produced in these dispute affected facilities additionally pieces of equipment produced in facilities undergoing unrest were resold more often received worse appraisal reports and had lower list prices taken together the evidence supports the hypothesis that workmanship at dispute affected facilities declined and that the resulting impact on the economic quality of the equipment produced was significant the dispute was associated with at least 400 million in lost service flows due to inferior quality equipment alone

the effects of income transparency on well being evidence from a natural experiment author s perez truglia ricardo abstract in 2001 norwegian tax records became easily accessible online allowing everyone in the country to observe the incomes of everyone else according to the income comparisons model this change in transparency can widen the gap in well being between richer and poorer individuals we test this hypothesis using survey data from 1985 2013 using multiple identification strategies we show that the higher transparency increased the gap in happiness between richer and poorer individuals by 29 and it increased the life satisfaction gap by 21 we provide suggestive evidence that some although probably not all of this effect relates to changes in self perceptions of relative income we provide back of the envelope estimates of the importance of income comparisons and discuss implications for the ongoing debate on transparency policies

the effect of standardized information on firm survival and marketing strategies we argue that standardized information disclosure information using a common format and uniform metrics creates asymmetric opportunities for firms which affects their strategies and survival we test our predictions using a longitudinal quasi experimental field study involving the nutrition labeling and education act of 1990 nlea and we focus on firm market share within a category as a key asymmetry findings indicate that in general the nlea had no effect on firm responses however when accounting for firm differences we observe that the nlea led to 1 an increase in small share firm exits and 2 a greater increase in distribution for large share firms no concurrent increase in price by large share firms following the nlea was observed we conclude by discussing the implications of these effects for firm strategy the design of public policy and theories regarding the impact of information on markets

the dominance of inefficiencies over scale and product mix economies in banking abstract this study measures and analyzes inefficiencies for all u s banks in 1984 inefficiencies are measured relative to a thick frontier cost function and are found to dominate measured scale and product mix economies most inefficiencies are operational in nature involving the overuse of physical inputs rather than financial involving overpayment of interest also technical inefficiencies proportionate overuse of all inputs dominate allocative inefficiencies improper mix of inputs these results suggest that competitive pressures in banking from deregulation will be focused primarily on banks that do not control costs rather than on those of a particular size or product mix

pay reference points and police performance several theories suggest that pay raises below a reference point will reduce job performance final offer arbitration for police unions provides a unique opportunity to examine these theories as the police officers either receive their requested wage or receive a lower one in the months after new jersey police officers lose in arbitration arrest rates and average sentence length decline and crime reports rise relative to when they win these declines in performance are larger when the awarded wage is further from the police union s demand the findings support the idea that considerations of fairness disappointment and more generally reference points affect workplace behavior

george stigler s contribution to the economic analysis of regulation george stigler changed the way economists analyze government regulation this enormous legacy is essentially embodied in two articles his 1962 analysis of electricity rates with claire friedland and his 1971 theoretical piece there were to be sure precursors and successors in his own work but none of them so profoundly affected the course of intellectual inquiry as these two the importance of both articles rests more i believe with the questions each posed than with the answers even by the standards of the day neither piece evinced the sort of technical sophistication that the profession has come to admire neither produced conclusions that were impervious to all serious subsequent challenges but both produced insights that have altered the course of research in the area to this day to understand stigler s contribution it is best to proceed chronologically and to begin with the state of the field around 1962 there is room here only for caricature rather than extensive survey however i think it is fair to say that the field derived its main energy from the normative economics of marginal cost pricing the proper role of government was to correct the private market failures that prevented attainment of marginal cost pricing applied economic analysis of regulation was then largely descriptive and its main tendency was to show how the regulatory institutions constrained departures from marginal cost pricing monopoly was viewed as the main barrier to marginal cost pricing and the natural monopoly occupied center stage in the economics of regulation the prime examples of natural monopoly were sup1 man made monopolies were the main subject matter of industrial organization stigler s profound influence on this field is summarized by harold demsetz s article in this issue

social comparison and effort provision evidence from a field experiment social comparison has potentially far reaching consequences in many economic domains we conducted a field experiment to examine how social comparison affects workers effort provision if their own wage or that of a co worker is cut workers were assigned to groups of two performed identical individual tasks and received the same performance independent hourly wage cutting both group members wages caused a decrease in performance but when only one group member s wage was cut the affected workers decreased their performance more than twice as much as when both workers wages were cut this finding indicates that social comparison among workers affects effort provision because the only difference between the two wage cut treatments is the other group member s wage level in contrast workers whose wage was not cut but who witnessed their group member s pay being cut displayed no change in performance relative to the baseline treatment in which both workers wages remained unchanged this indicates that social comparison exerts asymmetric effects on effort jel c93 j33 m53

the evolution of u s airline competition studies by academic economists were a significant force in the movement towards deregulation of the domestic airline industry in the early 1970s levine 1965 jordan 1970 keeler 1972 douglas and miller 1974 during the critical 1977 78 period in which deregulation was imposed first de facto by the civil aeronautics board cab and then de jure by congress the chairman and vice chairman of the cab were economists for the 14 years since deregulation economists have continued intensive study of the industry in part because of the unusual availability of reliable firm and transaction level data and in part because of the rare opportunity to observe an industry as it evolves from strict economic regulation to fairly unimpeded competition and strategic behavior the simplest prediction of economists about airline deregulation and one of the few on which nearly all economists agreed was that deregulation would improve consumer welfare in comparison to continued price and entry regulation fourteen years later nearly all economists still agree on this though the degree of enthusiasm for the deregulation outcome varies considerably there was substantial disagreement among economists about the market structure that would result because studies of scale economies in the airline industry had concluded that none existed beyond the scale of the smaller major airlines of the 1970s caves 1962 eads et al 1969 many economists argued that deregulation would result in more than the 11 major airlines that existed at the time of deregulation others predicted that only a few or possibly only one airline would survive at a large scale two noted university of chicago economists sam peltzman and lester telser made a bet in 1979 on whether

the digital provide information technology market performance and welfare in the south indian fisheries sector when information is limited or costly agents are unable to engage in optimal arbitrage excess price dispersion across markets can arise and goods may not be allocated efficiently in this setting information technologies may improve market performance and increase welfare between 1997 and 2001 mobile phone service was introduced throughout kerala a state in india with a large fishing industry using microlevel survey data we show that the adoption of mobile phones by fishermen and wholesalers was associated with a dramatic reduction in price dispersion the complete elimination of waste and near perfect adherence to the law of one price both consumer and producer welfare increased

financial control in the transition from classical socialism to a market economy the transition from socialism to capitalism poses severe problems of financial management that have yet to be resolved in principle let alone in practice one unfortunate consequence is continual financial turmoil as socialist economies of the soviet union and eastern europe attempt reform inflation either open or repressed first accompanies and then undermines attempts to decentralize decision making to dampen inflation and prevent economic chaos even reform governments may be provoked to reintervene by seizing the financial assets of enterprises reinstituting price controls or commandeering outputs through state orders and similar devices but why should the transition from central planning to a market economy be inflationary understanding the system of financial control in the preexisting regime of classical socialism is the key to understanding what might go wrong in the transition under classical socialism all the means of production industrial and agricultural are state owned output targets input levels wages and prices are all set by a stalinist system of central planning accordingly i shall first identify 1 how domestic fiscal and monetary processes interact with and complement central planning in the classical socialist economy and then discuss 2 why this mechanism for securing domestic financial control and avoiding inflation under classical socialism tends to break down when decentralization begins and central planning is weakened the discussion will then turn to 3 how in a more deliberate transition domestic tax and monetary arrangements might be managed to keep the average price level stable as the market prices of individual goods and services become free to fluctuate after sufficient domestic financial control is secured

the effect of newspaper entry and exit on electoral politics we use new data on entries and exits of us daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation party vote shares and electoral competitiveness our identification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding trends we find that newspapers have a robust positive effect on political participation with one additional newspaper increasing both presidential and congressional turnout by approximately 0 3 percentage points newspaper competition is not a key driver of turnout our effect is driven mainly by the first newspaper in a market and the effect of a second or third paper is significantly smaller the effect on presidential turnout diminishes after the introduction of radio and television while the estimated effect on congressional turnout remains similar up to recent years we find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate sized effects we find no clear evidence that newspapers systematically help or hurt incumbents

the impact of liberalization and foreign investment in colombia s financial sector abstract this study analyzes financial liberalization measures undertaken in 1990 of which an opening to foreign investment was a major component after a brief description of the major changes in legislation on foreign investment we compare performance of foreign owned vs domestic banks first using a descriptive approach then in a more systematic manner using econometric analysis panel data estimations reveal that financial liberalization in general had a beneficial impact on bank behavior in colombia by increasing competition lowering intermediation costs and improving loan quality although the positive contribution of foreign entry may be overstated in recent studies by not controlling for other liberalization factors foreign and domestic entry beginning in 1990 did improve bank behavior by enhancing operative efficiency and competition however the greater competition may have resulted in increased risk and a subsequent deterioration in loan quality particularly among domestic banks

state regulation of takeovers and shareholder wealth the case of new york s 1985 takeover statutes past studies of takeover regulations have found that such rules increase the premiums paid to the shareholders of successfully acquired targets jarrell and bradley argue that these higher premiums harm shareholders by discouraging takeover activity and protecting inefficient managers bebchuk argues that the higher premiums do not significantly reduce the number of takeovers so that shareholders benefit on average from the higher premiums paid in successful acquisitions this article uses the event study method to measure the net effect of two takeover statutes passed by the new york state legislature in 1985 the results support the conclusion of jarrell and bradley that despite the higher premiums paid to successfully acquired target shareholders ex post these laws on average harm shareholders ex ante

dormancy as a strategic response to detrimental public policy organizations in democratic societies often encounter detrimental public policies that are later reversed through rather predictable political cycles the standard organizational responses to detrimental public policies examined in the literature include exiting the market altogether attempting to change the public policy through various political strategies or passively complying with the policy however these responses might not be suitable when a detrimental policy is likely to be reversed in this paper i consider organizational dormancy which entails a temporary reduction in an organization s level of activity as a viable alternative response i propose that some organizations might be able to undergo a period of strategic inactivity in response to the onset of a detrimental public policy and maintain this inactivity until a favorable public policy returns i also propose that such dormancy is rewarded when the favorable policy returns an investigation of a panel of private commercial banks in the indian banking industry from 1981 to 2004 lends support to this proposal

fairness and frictions the impact of unequal raises on quit behavior we analyze how separations responded to arbitrary differences in own and peer wages at a large us retailer regression discontinuity estimates imply large causal effects of own wages on separations and on quits in particular however this own wage response could reflect comparisons either to market wages or to peer wages estimates using peer wage discontinuities show large peer wage effects and imply the own wage separation response mostly reflects peer comparisons the peer effect is driven by comparisons with higher paid peers suggesting concerns about fairness separations appear fairly insensitive when raises are similar across peers suggesting search frictions and monopsony are relevant in this low wage sector

how elastic are preferences for redistribution evidence from randomized survey experiments we analyze randomized online survey experiments providing interactive customized information on us income inequality the link between top income tax rates and economic growth and the estate tax the treatment has large effects on views about inequality but only slightly moves tax and transfer policy preferences an exception is the estate tax informing respondents of the small share of decedents who pay it doubles support for it the small effects for all other policies can be partially explained by respondents low trust in government and a disconnect between concerns about social issues and the public policies meant to address them jel d31 d72 h23 h24

productivity and efficiency dynamics in indian banking an input distance function approach incorporating quality of inputs and outputs summary banking technology is typically characterized by multiple inputs and multiple outputs that are associated with various attributes such as different types of deposits loans number of accounts classes of employees and location of branches these quality differentials in inputs and outputs are mostly ignored in empirical studies these omissions make the practical value of productivity studies in organizations like banks questionable because quality is a key component of performance this paper proposes using hedonic aggregator functions as a tool of aggregating inputs and outputs with quality attributes within an input distance function framework and analyzes the impact of banking deregulation on efficiency and total factor productivity tfp change in the indian banking industry using panel data for the period 1996 2005 empirical results indicate that banks have improved their efficiency from 61 in 1996 to 72 in 2005 during the post deregulation period and the gain in efficiency of state owned banks has surpassed that of private banks improvement in capital base as indicated by increased capital adequacy ratio played an important role in ushering efficiency gain the return to scale estimate suggests that state owned banks are operating far above their efficient scale and cost savings can be obtained by reducing their size of operations overall tfp growth was above 3 5 annually both technical progress and technical efficiency change consistently played an important role in shaping tfp growth copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

a time to make laws and a time to fundraise on the relation between salaries and time use for state politicians we study the relationship between the level of compensation and time use for us state legislators using survey data on time use we show that higher salary is robustly associated with legislators spending more time on fundraising in contrast higher salary is also robustly associated with less time spent on legislative activities and has no clear relation to time spent on constituent services the fundraising results are particularly strong for legislators who do not intend to run for higher office our results are consistent with an interpretation that higher salary raises the value of office and politicians respond with more fundraising because increased fundraising raises the chance of getting re elected more than does increased legislative activity back of the envelope calculations suggest that a 30 000 increase in salary is associated with politicians annually devoting 13 more hours to fundraising and 18 fewer hours to legislative activity resume un temps pour faire les lois et un autre pour lever des fonds etude du rapport entre le salaire et l emploi du temps des legislateurs d etat dans cet article nous examinons le lien entre le niveau de remuneration et l emploi du temps des legislateurs d etat aux etats unis en nous appuyant sur plusieurs donnees d enquetes relatives a la gestion du temps nous montrons que plus leur salaire est eleve plus les legislateurs ont tendance a consacrer du temps a lever des fonds le temps devolu aux activites legislatives ayant quant a lui tendance a diminuer sans lien evident avec le temps passe en circonscription au service des citoyens les resultats relatifs aux levees de fonds sont particulierement forts des lors que les legislateurs ne briguent pas de plus hautes fonctions et sont conformes a l interpretation selon laquelle un salaire eleve accroit l interet pour une fonction et puisque l augmentation des activites de financement ne se traduit pas par davantage d activites legislatives mais par des chances de reelection accrues les politiciens multiplient les levees de fonds des calculs rapides et approximatifs suggerent qu une hausse du salaire des politiciens de 30 000 par an representerait 13 heures de collecte de fonds en plus mais 18 heures d activites legislatives en moins annuellement

social information and selfishness abstract when decision makers are informed about the decisions of their peers does this make them more selfish or more generous we study the effect of social information on selfishness as measured by dictator game giving in a twice repeated setting we vary whether or not dictators receive information about the allocation decisions of other dictators independently we vary whether being the dictator is determined randomly or earned we find that dictators act more generously in the first round with than without social information in case dictator positions are randomly assigned no such effect is found in case dictators positions are earned allocations in the second round are generally more selfish than those in the first round this effect is significantly stronger with than without social information indicating that being informed about the decisions of their peers makes dictators more selfish these results indicate that transparency about allocation decisions is unlikely to make such decisions more generous

the impact of regulatory reforms on cost structure ownership and competition in indian banking this paper evaluates the impact of financial sector reforms on the cost structure characteristics and on the ownership cost efficiency relationship in indian banking it also examines the impact of reforms on the dynamics of competition in the lending market we find evidence that deregulation improves banks performance and fosters competition in the lending market results suggest technological progress once indian commercial banks have adjusted to the new regulatory environment this however does not translate in efficiency gains there is also evidence of an ownership effect on the level and pattern of efficiency change finally competition keeps building pace even in the re regulation period and technological improvements are not hampered by the tightening of prudential norms

exposing corrupt politicians the effects of brazil s publicly released audits on electoral outcomes author s finan frederico ferraz claudio abstract this paper examines the extent to which access to information enhances political accountability based upon the results of brazil s recent anti corruption program that randomly audits municipal expenditures of federally transferred funds it estimates the effect of the disclosure of local government corruption practices upon the re election success of incumbent mayors in municipal elections comparing municipalities which were randomly audited before the elections with those audited after the analysis shows that the disclosure of audit results had a significant impact on the re election rates of mayors found to be corrupt for a one standard deviation increase in reported corruption the audit policy reduced the incumbent s likelihood of re election by 25 percent this effect is more pronounced in municipalities where radio stations are present and higher levels of corruption are identified these findings highlight the value of information and the role of the media in reducing informational asymmetries in the political process thus enabling voters to not only hold corrupt politicians accountable but also to reward non corrupt politicians

an examination of the impact of the garn st germain depository institutions act of 1982 on commercial banks and savings and loans this paper evaluates the effects of events leading to the passage of the garn st germain depository institutions act of 1982 the evidence suggests that the call for reform by president reagan s housing commission and the senate passage of the bill produced positive abnormal returns to stockholders of large savings and loans and commercial banks stockholders of small s ls and banks on the other hand generally experienced negative abnormal returns furthermore when hopes of passage of the act faded significant negative positive abnormal returns were experienced by stockholders of large small s ls and banks this study examines the impact of the passage of the garn st germain depository institutions gsgdi act of 1982 on commercial bank and savings and loan stockholder returns the gsgdi act represents one of two major revisions of the financial system over the last twenty years the other being the depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act of 19801 the proposal for such a change reflected the growing inadequacy of the regulatory structure of financial institutions to adapt to rapid changes in technology shifting consumer demands for financial services and extremely volatile interest rates efforts to reform the financial system resulted in passage of the gsgdi act of 1982 which included provisions seeking to improve both the implementation of monetary policy and the degree of equity in the regulation of financial institutions such improvements were intended to reduce the operational and financial risk of financial institutions a central issue in the economics of regulation is whether regulatory actions benefit the economic agents they are intended to benefit a large body of literature exists which examines the economic effects of regulation much of this literature has utilized the concepts and methods of welfare economics to assess the extent

implications of bank ownership for the credit channel of monetary policy transmission evidence from india using bank level data from india we examine the impact of ownership on the reaction of banks to monetary policy and also test whether the reaction of different types of banks to monetary policy changes is different in easy and tight policy regimes our results suggest that there are considerable differences in the reactions of different types of banks to monetary policy initiatives of the central bank and that the bank lending channel of monetary policy is likely to be much more effective in a tight money period than in an easy money period we also find differences in impact of monetary policy changes on less risky short term and more risky medium term lending we discuss the policy implications of the findings

indian bank efficiency and productivity changes with undesirable outputs a disaggregated approach the objective of this study is to examine technical efficiency and productivity growth in the indian banking sector over the period from 2004 to 2011 we apply an innovative methodological approach introduced by chen et al 2011 and barros et al 2012 who use a weighted russell directional distance model to measure technical inefficiency we further modify and extend that model to measure tfp change with npls we find that the inefficiency levels are significantly different among the three ownership structure of banks in india foreign banks have strong market position in india and they pull the production frontier in a more efficient direction spbs and domestic private banks show considerably higher inefficiency we conclude that the restructuring policy applied in the late 1990s and early 2000s by the indian government has not had a long lasting effect

an analysis of the impact of deposit rate ceilings on the market values of thrift institutions this paper examines the impact of changes in deposit interest rate regulations on the common stock values of savings and loan institutions the analysis indicates that stockholder owned savings and loans s l s have experienced statistically significant declines in equity market values at the announcement of the removal of ceilings on certain consumer small saver certificate accounts and the introduction of short term variable rate money market certificates we find the evidence to be consistent with the hypothesis that s l s have earned economic rents from restrictions on interest rates paid to small saver accounts and that relaxation of interest rate ceilings has reduced these rents a central issue in the economics of regulation is whether regulators behave in a way that primarily benefits the economic agents whose actions they are supposed to regulate the proposition that regulation is demanded and acquired by the regulated and that regulations are designed and administered primarily for their benefit was originally put forth by stigler 19 and has come to be known as the capture theory of regulation an alternative view is that regulators adopt policies which serve some other perhaps public or possibly the regulators own interest and that administration of these policies does not benefit the regulated entities this paper examines the regulation of savings and loan associations deposit interest rates and reports evidence pertaining to the impact of the administration of regulation regulation of interest rates paid to depositors in federally insured savings and loan associations began in 1966 since that time several changes in the maximum allowed interest rates deposit rate ceilings have been made these changes present an opportunity to observe the impact of one form of regulatory action on savings and loan institutions deposit rate regulation has been the subject of extensive previous research the empirical investigations have focused primarily on two issues 1 the allocational efficiency and wealth redistribution effects of rate ceilings and 2 the impact of deposit rate ceilings on the flow of funds into the residential

japan s shift from process to product patents in the pharmaceutical industry an event study of the impact on japanese firms in 1975 japan expanded the scope of its patent law by introducing product patents for newly developed chemical and pharmaceutical products we use rate of return data from the tokyo stock exchange for japanese pharmaceutical companies to examine the impact of the change in the patent law our empirical findings indicate that the passage of the new patent law induced an excess return of approximately 26 percent to a portfolio of large pharmaceutical companies companies with r d programs specializing in new product development experienced large gains while companies with r d programs specializing in imitative process patents experienced no gains

banks responses to deregulation profits technology and efficiency the deregulation of interest rates in the early 1980s raised bank funding costs and lowered profits in response banks raised fees for deposit services reduced branch operating costs and shifted to higher earning assets rates of return did not regain their prederegulation levels until the early 1990s our goal is to decompose the change in bank profits following deregulation into i intemal bank initiated adjustments to the new regulatory structure and ii external contemporaneous changes in banks business environment this decomposition will depend in part on the assumed competitive structure of the banking industry with perfect competition output and input prices are part of the external environment and banks responses are limited to changes in output and input quantities an alternative approach assumes imperfect competition where banks have some control over output prices deposit fees minimum balance requirements and interest rates on certain loans and output quantities and input prices comprise the external environment the altemative model is supported by the data using this model large banks but not smaller banks are found to have relied primarily on changing output prices and input use to mitigate and reverse the negative effects of deregulation on profits the adjustment to deregulation was essentially complete after four years following this additional changes in bank profitability during the late 1980s were primarily due to changes in banks business environment

financial liberalization and bank efficiency a comparative analysis of india and pakistan this paper provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of the technical efficiency of commercial banks in india and pakistan during 1988 1998 a period characterized by far reaching changes in the banking industry brought about by financial liberalization data envelopment analysis is applied to two alternative input output specifications to measure technical efficiency and to decompose technical efficiency into its two components pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency the consistency of the estimated efficiency scores are checked by examining their relationship with three traditional non frontier measures of bank performance in addition the relationship between bank size and technical efficiency is examined it is found that the overall technical efficiency of the banking industry of both countries improved gradually over the years especially after 1995 unlike public sector banks in india public sector banks in pakistan witnessed improvement in scale efficiency only it is also found that banks are relatively more efficient in generating earning assets than in generating income this is attributed to the presence of high non performing loans in addition it is found that the gap between the pure technical efficiency of different size groups has declined over the years

the economic incidence of the interstate commerce act of 1887 a theoretical and empirical analysis of the short haul pricing constraint the public and private interest hypotheses permeate contemporary regulatory analyses both theories are used to explain the inception of the first major federal regulatory agency the interstate commerce commission icc according to the public and private interest hypotheses the regulations promulgated by the icc benefited either railroads or shippers this paper presents an alternative view consistent with the multiple interest theory of regulation it is demonstrated that the major regulatory instrument of the icc the short haul pricing constraint shpc altered the equilibria of railroad markets in a way which benefitted the class of shippers short haul shippers facing monopolistic railroad markets the shpc also benefitted some railroads by increasing the correspondence between unregulated cooperative and regulated noncooperative levels of long haul shipments the proposition that the icc benefited short haul shippers and railroads is supported by an empirical analysis of the effects of the inception of federal regulation and implementation of the shpc on stock prices the results of the paper indicate that the public and private interest interpretations of the icc are neither contradictory nor complete but instead are complementary a theoretical and empirical analysis of the chief regulatory mechanism of the icc provides this synthesis

stock price reaction and value relevance of recognition versus disclosure the case of stock based compensation this study examines the equity price reaction to the pronouncements related to accounting for stock based compensation and assesses the value relevance of recognition versus disclosure in financial reporting we document that firms exhibit significant abnormal returns around the issuance of the exposure drafts proposing to require recognition of stock based compensation costs and also around the event reversing that decision to require disclosure only while encouraging recognition we also document that the abnormal returns are most pronounced for high tech high growth and start up firms our results are consistent with the contracting theory and show that disclosure is not a substitute for recognition r 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the impact of liberalization on the productive efficiency of indian commercial banks abstract we examine the productive efficiency of 70 indian commercial banks during the early stages 1986 1991 of the ongoing period of liberalization we use data envelopment analysis to calculate radial technical efficiency scores we then use stochastic frontier analysis to attribute variation in the calculated efficiency scores to three sources a temporal component an ownership component and a random noise component we find publicly owned indian banks to have been the most efficient followed by foreign owned banks and privately owned indian banks we also find a temporal improvement in the performance of foreign owned banks virtually no trend in the performance of privately owned indian banks and a temporal decline in the performance of publicly owned indian banks we attempt to explain these patterns in terms of the government s evolving regulatory policies

financial structure and reforms in central and eastern europe in the 1980s abstract the paper analyzes the evolution of the financial structure of the countries of central and eastern europe during the 1980s in these countries the financial system is assigned a limited and mostly passive function this needs to be seen in the context of the allocative system of centrally planned economies where the transfer of financial resources between sectors is largely performed directly by the state through the price system taxes and subsidies the analysis focuses specifically on hungary poland and czechoslovakia the development of their financial structure is assessed through a number of quantitative indicators we find that the partial economic and financial reforms introduced in hungary and poland before 1989 did not substantially modify the role and performance of the financial system whose size in relation to the real economy remained modest at the same time however the reforms exacerbated some of the distortions of the planned system and generated larger macroeconomic imbalances the effects of which tend to cloud the interpretation of financial indicators at the end of 1980 the banking systems of hungary and poland although formally decentralized continued to allocate credit mostly according to automatic criteria and had virtually no experience in assessing and monitoring borrowers and investment projects in this respect they differed little from that of czechoslovakia which remained based on the classic model of a single state bank

determinants of bank cost efficiency in transition economies evidence for latin america central and eastern europe and south east asia in this study we adopt wang s 2002 heteroscedastic stochastic frontier model which allows us to investigate bank cost efficiency and to measure the marginal effects of some variables on both the level and the variability of inefficiency in recent years the financial crisis has significantly affected the banking systems of the transition countries hence the efficiency is of major importance for the stability of the banks regarding the determinants of efficiency we find evidence that banks that follow a more cautious strategy characterized by lower risk appetite and average expectations on profitability have higher cost efficiency we also find that traditional deposit taking and loan making still remain the most efficient activity of the banks additionally the results showed that a higher gross domestic product growth rate implies an increase in the inefficiency level indicating an unsustainable bank management behaviour which in periods of economic growth adopts policies that can generate

technical scale and allocative efficiencies in u s banking an empirical investigation a nonparametric frontier approach is used to calculate the overall technical pure technical allocative and scale efficiencies for a sample of 322 independent banks the sample was drawn from the federal deposit insurance corporation tapes on the reports of condition and reports of income call reports for the year 1986 the results indicated a low level of overall efficiency the main source of inefficiency was technical in nature rather than allocative separate efficiency frontiers were constructed to test the effect of branching however the distributions of efficiency measures for branching and non branching banks were not found to be different

the limits of equality insights from the israeli kibbutz what limits the capacity of society to redistribute what determines the structure of compensation in organizations striving for income equality this paper addresses these questions by investigating the economic and sociological forces underlying the persistence of the israeli kibbutzim communities based on the principle of income equality to do this i exploit newly assembled data on kibbutzim and a financial crisis in the late 1980s that affected them differentially the main findings are that 1 productive individuals are the most likely to exit and a kibbutz s wealth serves as a lock in device that increases the value of staying 2 higher wealth reduces exit and supports a high degree of income equality and 3 ideology facilitates income equality using a simple model i show that these findings are consistent with a view of the kibbutz as providing optimal insurance when members have the option of leaving more generally these findings contribute to an understanding of how mobility limits redistribution and to an understanding of the determinants of the sharing rule in other types of organizations such as professional partnerships cooperatives and labor managed firms

television and voter turnout i use variation across markets in the timing of television s introduction to identify its impact on voter turnout the estimated effect is significantly negative accounting for between a quarter and a half of the total decline in turnout since the 1950s i argue that substitution away from other media with more political coverage provides a plausible mechanism linking television to voting as evidence for this i show that the entry of television in a market coincided with sharp drops in consumption of newspapers and radio and in political knowledge as measured by election surveys i also show that both the information and turnout effects were largest in off year congressional elections which receive extensive coverage in newspapers but little or no coverage on television

in search of the just u s oil policy a review of arrow and kalt and more in december 1979 the carter administration and the congress were embroiled in debate about the administration s new energy policy to reduce u s imports of foreign oil president carter was invoking his statutory authority to remove gradually existing price control regulations on u s crude oil to lessen the perceived equity problems of decontrol the administration submitted to congress legislation that politically tied the gradual elimination of price controls to the levying of a windfall profits tax within this political environment the american enterprise institute released a pamphlet by kenneth arrow and joseph kalt december 1979 entitled petroleum price regulation should we decontrol p 47 given the political issues at that time the authors mysteriously addressed only the economic wisdom of either reversing the presidential intention of decontrolling the industry or pursuing immediate decontrol comparing the cases for immediate instead of gradual decontrol was not explicitly undertaken most ironic was the authors complete silence on what their economic analysis implied for the wisdom of levying the then contemplated and nowimplemented windfall profits tax

allocative distortions technical progress and input demand in u s airlines 1970 1984 this paper generalizes a globally concave and flexible cost function to accommodate allocative distortions these distortions are introduced through shadow prices and are specified as functions of regressors that make distortion factors firm input and time specific the estimated model based on a panel of nineteen u s airlines observed during 1970 84 rejects the hypothesis of no allocative distortions increase in costs due to allocative distortions are calculated for each airline over the entire period the rate of technical progress and economies of scale are also estimated based on models with and without allocative distortions copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

banking efficiency in the nordic countries abstract evidence of the relative competitiveness of the banking industries in three nordic countries is provided by applying data envelopment analysis of productivity on the national and the pooled data sets the analysis produces a detailed account of how well banks from different countries and different sizes may be prepared to meet the more intense competition of a common european banking market

eastern europe s experience with banking reform is there a role for banks in the transition are there lessons to be learned about how eastern european countries have dealt with problems in their banking systems what role have these countries assigned to banks during the transition how have they used banks in dealing with the enterprise problem the author addresses these questions by analyzing experience in bulgaria hungary poland romania and the former czech and slovak federal republic most of these countries have made substantial progress in restructuring their banking systems but few have used their banking systems to improve the allocation of credit and hence stimulate the supply response the author finds the following the problem is not whether banks hold nonperforming loans but how banks can avoid accumulating more nonperforming loans the underlying problem is how to close loss making and nonviable enterprises the countries that have encouraged the establishment of new private banks that have introduced regulation and supervision and that have tried to make banks more competitive have been more successful at improving the allocation of credit and achieving more control over loss making enterprises banks must focus on assessing risk and for this capital private ownership and adequate regulation are crucial how quickly banks achieve independence in credit decisions depends on how fast new governance structures can be introduced in this the five countries have been less successful the objectives of bank recapitulation should be to prevent banks from accumulating more nonperforming loans that is dealing with the enterprise problem and to give them the governance structure that would prevent them from incurring new nonperforming loans this requires introducing a system of risk and reward by making banks comply with capital adequacy requirements by privatizing a critical number of banks and by introducing strong regulation and supervision government should see that banks provide efficient payment systems the basis for trust in banking systems introducing adequate regulation and supervision has been difficult as it requires knowing what the banks role should be evidence strongly supports the need to recapitalize and privatize a critical number of banks authorities cannot rely on banks to exert control on enterprises early in the transition in the early stages control over state owned enterprises should be exercised by a semipublic institution

strengthening state capabilities the role of financial incentives in the call to public service we study a recent recruitment drive for public sector positions in mexico different salaries were announced randomly across recruitment sites and job offers were subsequently randomized screening relied on exams designed to measure applicants intellectual ability personality and motivation this allows the first experimental estimates of i the role of financial incentives in attracting a larger and more qualified pool of applicants ii the elasticity of the labor supply facing the employer and iii the role of job attributes distance attractiveness of the municipal environment in helping fill vacancies as well as the role of wages in helping fill positions in less attractive municipalities a theoretical model guides each stage of the empirical inquiry we find that higher wages attract more able applicants as measured by their iq personality and proclivity towards public sector work i e we find no evidence of adverse selection effects on motivation higher wage offers also increased acceptance rates implying a labor supply elasticity of around 2 and some degree of monopsony power distance and worse municipal characteristics strongly decrease acceptance rates but higher wages help bridge the recruitment gap in worse municipalities

using information diffusion models to estimate the impacts of regulatory events on publicly traded firms abstract analysis and evaluation of regulatory actions require inexpensive and timely information about resultant costs and benefits this paper extends the traditional event study methodology for assessing the impact of regulatory actions on the value of publicly traded firms we use diffusion theory to construct several models of how markets adjust to regulatory events ex ante preference for a particular model is based on prior knowledge about the characteristics of the regulatory event and information diffusion patterns we demonstrate the use of the methodology by applying it to an analysis of the impacts of a regulatory action taken to protect the northern spotted owl

financial sector liberalization bank privatization and efficiency evidence from pakistan abstract the pakistani banking system has been transformed over the past 15 years through liberalization the entry of private banks the privatization of public sector banks and the tightening of prudential regulations the effects of these changes on bank productivity and relative efficiency are investigated using various techniques bank productivity in terms of profits has increased and new entrants have been efficient but the dispersion of efficiency remains wide the privatized banks improved their profit efficiency in the period immediately following their privatization but in the subsequent years only one significantly improved its efficiency whereas the other did not differentiate itself in terms of efficiency from the remaining state owned banks the new private domestic banks generally proved to be among the most efficient and sometimes out performed the foreign banks

standard errors in event studies even if true abnormal returns are uncorrelated estimated abnormal returns are not this paper presents a simple formula for the variance of estimated cumulative abnormal re turns both returns and dummy variable procedures for estimating the standard error correctly taking account of both intertemporal and contemporaneous correlation of esti mated residuals are discussed they are then applied to an event study of post merger performance it is shown that ignoring either the intertemporal or contemporaneous correlation of residuals can result in significant underestimates of standard errors

the effects of deregulation on the performance of financial institutions the case of spanish savings banks this paper examines the impact of regulatory reform on the performance of spanish savings banks the focus is whether increased competition brought on by deregulation affected performance of banks over time output technical efficiency which is defined in terms of the production possibility frontier is also examined empirical results show declining levels of output technical efficiency along with a significantly high rate of technical progress in spite of declining technical efficiency during this period evidence of an increasing trend in productivity growth is found

deregulation ownership and productivity growth in the banking industry evidence from india this paper analyzes the relationship between deregulation and total factor productivity tfp growth in the indian banking industry using a generalized shadow cost function approach tfp growth is decomposed into a technological change a scale and a miscellaneous component a disaggregated panel data analysis using the population of public and private banks over 1985 96 that covers both pre and post deregulation periods indicates that a significant decline in regulatory distortions and the anticipated increase in tfp growth have not yet materialized following deregulation while private sector banks have improved their performance mainly due to the freedom to expand output public sector banks have not responded well to the deregulation measures

deregulation and productivity decline the case of spanish savings banks abstract during the 1980s many regulatory constraints limiting competition in spanish banking were relaxed or removed although deregulation came later to savings banks than to the rest of the banking sector two consequences of partial deregulation of savings banks have been a rapid growth in branching activity much of it geographically dispersed and a burst of merger activity in this paper we investigate productive efficiency and total factor productivity change in spanish savings banks over the 1986 1991 post deregulation period neither branching nor mergers provide an adequate explanation for the magnitude or the nature of the productivity decline we observe over the period

core deposits and physical capital a reexamination of bank scale economies and efficiency with quasi fixed inputs this paper compares measures of bank production efficiency assuming all bank inputs are completely variable with measures obtained from specifications which take account of the quasi fixed nature of core deposits and bank physical capital and the treatment of certain deposits as outputs the empirical results imply that scale economy measures vary substantially for small to medium sized banks whereas those for the largest banks are fairly robust to the different specifications estimates of economies of scope were found to be invariant to different input output specifications whereas efficiency measures varied significantly with changes in the specification of the cost function and with the definition of outputs and inputs copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

the impact of the 1980 depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act on market value and risk evidence from the capital markets the depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act of 1980 brought about major changes in the banking industry this study employs capital market data to examine the act s impact on the relative competitive positions of distinct classes of firms within the industry the evidence supports the hypothesis that federal reserve system banks profited from the regulatory change at the expense of nonmember banks and savings and loans copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

the tylenol incident ensuing regulation and stock prices the much publicized tylenol incident in 1982 led to stringent packaging regulations for over the counter pharmaceutical drugs the sudden incident and the swift progression of associated events offer a unique opportunity to assess the wealth effects of the resultant regulations the market value of common stock of johnson johnson makers of tylenol declined by approximately 29 percent amounting to 2 31 billion although other firms in the industry also suffered significantly their share price decline did not occur around the tylenol incident but occurred around the subsequent packaging reg ulation proceedings on average 28 other pharmaceutical firms analyzed in this study experienced a decline of 310 million per firm or a total of about 8 68 billion the results suggest that the regulation had a significant negative effect on the common stock prices of firms in the pharmaceutical industry

does the japanese stock market price bank risk evidence from financial firm failures the ability of the japanese stock market to appropriately price the riskiness of japanese financial firms has been frequently questioned particularly in light of japan s widespread financial distress in recent years and poor disclosure requirements this paper examines the response in equity returns of japanese banks to the failure of four commercial banks and two securities firms between 1995 and 1998 using event study methodology the analysis finds that share prices of surviving banks on the whole responded unfavorably to the failures and that financially weaker survivors were more adversely affected this suggests that despite the distress and alleged opaqueness bank shareholders were able to use available indicators of financial condition both to incorporate new information quickly into stock prices and to differentiate among banks

the impact of financial liberalization on bank efficiency evidence from latin america and asia this article investigates the impact of financial liberalization on bank efficiency using data for a sample of over 4000 bank year observations from ten emerging economies for the period 1991 2000 we use data envelopment analysis dea to calculate bank efficiency at the individual bank level bank efficiency measures are then aggregated at the country level to investigate the relationship between financial liberalization and bank efficiency using a panel least square fixed effects model overall we find strong support for the positive impact of financial liberalization programmes on bank efficiency

the incidence of regulatory rents in the motor carrier industry this article focuses on two questions in the debate over motor carrier regulation first did regulation create eliminate or have no effect on monopoly rents in the trucking industry second ifthere were rents what was their incidence were they received by owners oftrucking firms dissipated through higher costs or captured by the teamsters union data on share price responses to deregulation announcements reveal declines in expected profits of 8 19 of totalfirm value this suggests that regulation created monopoly profits and indicates that at least some of these rents accrued to owners of trucking firms firms responses to regulatory change are modelled as functions of company s operating characteristics and measures of unionization operating efficiency and service characteristics are shown to affect the impact of deregulation on share values

economic consequences of increasing the conformity in accounting for uncertain tax benefits abstract commentary during the development of fasb interpretation no 48 suggests the interpretation could be costly for firms because new disclosure requirements could be used by the irs to more effectively challenge uncertain tax positions stock returns around fin 48 pronouncements suggest investors were not concerned about an increase in tax costs and investors responded favorably to initial disclosures required under fin 48 however we document a significant negative market reaction to subsequent news of a senate inquiry into these disclosures consistent with investors revising their beliefs over the potential for additional tax costs

studying firm specific effects of regulation with stock market data an application to oil price regulation regulations are often introduced and reformed in response to unanticipated changes in market forces in late 1973 for example opec quadrupled the world price of oil and u s policy makers responded by imposing oil price regulation such events pose a fundamental problem of interpretation for studies that use stock prices to identify the economic effects of regulation what portion of the capital gains or losses experienced by investors in regulated firms is due to regulation and what portion is due to unanticipated economic events to answer these questions we use microeconomic theory to derive hypotheses about how the capital gains and losses created by opec pricing and u s regulatory policies are related to the underlying characteristics of petroleum firms we test the hypotheses by including a model of firm specific abnormal returns in the standard market models of common stock returns earned by investors in petroleum firms the results indicate the u s oil production and refiner access to price controlled crude oil were sources of capital gains and that u s and foreign refining were sources of capital losses

a free press is bad news for corruption abstract this paper tests the proposition that a free press may be a powerful control on corruption we find evidence of a significant relationship between more press freedom and less corruption in a large cross section of countries this result is robust to specification and sample and the relationship is not sensitive to the choice of a particular measure of corruption or of press freedom furthermore we present evidence which suggests that the direction of causation runs from higher press freedom to lower corruption

does transparency lead to pay compression this paper asks whether pay disclosure in the public sector changes wage setting at the top of the distribution i examine a 2010 california mandate that required municipal salaries to be posted online among top managers disclosure led to approximately 7 percent average compensation declines and a 75 percent increase in their quit rate relative to managers in cities that had already disclosed salaries the wage cuts were largely nominal wage cuts were larger in cities with higher initial compensation but not in cities where compensation was initially out of line with measured fundamentals the response is more consistent with public aversion to high compensation than the effects of increased accountability

a test of the hotelling valuation principle time series tests of the hotelling r percent rule for natural resource prices have not been strongly supportive but the tests and the data are subject to serious difficulties we propose here an alternative testing strategy based on another but less widely known implication of the hotelling model we test this implication which we call the hotelling valuation principle by regressing the market values of the reserves of a sample of u s domestic oiland gas producing companies on their estimated hotelling values we find that the estimated hotelling values account for a significant portion of the observed variations in market values and that the hotelling measures are better indicators of the market values of petroleum properties than two widely cited publicly available alternative appraisals

financial deregulation and total factor productivity change an empirical study of turkish commercial banks abstract in january 1980 a new liberal economic policy was adopted in turkey to promote financial market development and increase the efficiency and productivity of the financial sector by fostering competition among banks as a result of this policy the turkish banking system witnessed a series of legal structural and institutional changes throughout the 1980s to enhance their competitive viability turkish banks responded by streamlining their operations and investing in new technology utilizing a dea type malmquist total factor productivity change index we examine productivity growth efficiency change and technical progress in turkish commercial banks during the deregulation of financial markets in turkey we found that all forms of turkish banks although in different magnitudes have recorded significant productivity gains driven mostly by efficiency increases rather than technical progress efficiency increases however were mostly owing to improved resource management practices rather than improved scales our results also indicate that private banks began to close their performance gap with public banks in the new environment

trade liberalization comparative advantage and scale economies stock market evidence from canada abstract the canada united states free trade agreement fta provides an excellent opportunity to analyze the impact of a comprehensive trade liberalization in this paper a stock market event study is employed to capture investors expectations about the consequences of this agreement for manufacturing firms in canada the primary question addressed is whether abnormal stock market returns corresponding to news about the fta are consistent with hypotheses based on comparative advantage and economies of scale the results indicate that both comparative advantage and scale economies played a role in determining investors perceptions of the impact of the fta

impact on equity prices of pronouncements related to nonpension postretirement benefits abstract this study examines the impact on equity prices of nine pronouncements related to the proposed accounting for nonpension postretirement benefits compared to a control group the experiment firms exhibit significant negative abnormal returns around the issuance of the exposure draft on nonpension postretirement benefits the negative abnormal returns are most pronounced for firms with few retirees relative to current employees firms with high debt ratios small firms and firms currently reporting these benefits on the pay as you go basis these results are consistent with the contracting cost hypotheses

are politicians really paid like bureaucrats abstract we provide the first empirical analysis of gubernatorial pay using u s data for 1950 90 we document substantial variation in the wages of politicians both across states and over time gubernatorial wages respond to changes in state income per capita and taxes we estimate that governors receive a 1 percent pay cut for each 10 percent increase in per capita tax payments and a 4 5 percent increase in pay for each 10 percent increase in income per capita in their states there is evidence that the tax elasticity reflects a form of reward for performance the evidence for the income elasticity of pay is less conclusive but is suggestive of rent extraction motives finally we find that democratic institutions play an important role in shaping pay for example voter initiatives and the presence of political opposition significantly reduce the income elasticity of pay and increase tax elasticities of pay

technical efficiency and scale efficiency in the italian banking sector a non parametric approach measures of technical and scale efficiencies are derived in the italian banking industries by implementing non parametric data envelopment analysis on a cross section of 174 italian banks taken in 1991 the methodology of the parametric and non parametric approaches to measure efficiency are discussed the existence of both technical and allocative efficiency is established this result is robust to modifications in the specification of inputs and outputs suggested by the intermediation approach and by the asset approach in implementing both the intermediation and the asset approach the traditional specification of inputs is modified to allow an explicit role for financial capital in addition regression analysis is used on a bank specific measure of inefficiency to investigate determinants of banks efficiency efficiency is best explained by productive specialization size and to a lesser extent by location