workfare wellbeing and consumption evidence from a field experiment with kenya s urban poor abstract restrictions like work requirements and constraints on voucher transfers are often used in social welfare systems but little empirical evidence exists on their impact on wellbeing we conducted a 10 day randomized experiment with 432 individuals living below the poverty line in the kawangware settlement of nairobi kenya testing two elements of social welfare design workfare versus welfare and restricted versus unrestricted vouchers participants were randomly assigned to a work condition involving daily work for unrestricted vouchers or one of two wait conditions involving daily waiting for vouchers that were either unrestricted or partially restricted to staple foods we find that working improved psychological wellbeing relative to waiting suggesting that the means of implementing welfare programs may have important effects on individuals beyond the impact of monetary benefit alone furthermore although the restrictions were inframarginal partially restricted vouchers crowded in spending on staple foods suggesting the existence of a flypaper effect in spending from restricted vouchers

new evidence of the impact of dividend taxation and on the identity of the marginal investor this paper examines the impact of a major change in dividend taxation introduced in the united kingdom in july 1997 the reform was structured in such a way that the immediate impact fell almost entirely on the largest investor class in the united kingdom namely pension funds we find significant changes in the valuation of dividend income after the reform in particular for high yielding companies these results provide strong support for the hypothesis that taxation affects the valua tion of companies and that pension funds were the effective marginal investors for high yielding companies

the realization effect risk taking after realized versus paper losses abstract understanding how prior outcomes affect risk attitudes is critical for the study of choice under uncertainty a large literature documents the significant influence of prior losses on risk attitudes the findings appear contradictory some studies find greater risk taking after a loss whereas others show the opposite that people take on less risk i reconcile these seemingly inconsistent findings by distinguishing between realized versus paper losses using new and existing data i replicate prior findings and demonstrate that following a realized loss individuals avoid risk if the same loss is not realized a paper loss individuals take on greater risk jel d11 d14 d81 g11

ex day behavior tax or short term trading effects this study examines the behavior of share prices around the ex dividend dates before and after the introduction of the 1988 income and corporation taxes act that reduced substantially the tax differential between dividends and capital gains in the united kingdom we find that in the pre 1988 period when the differential taxation of dividends and capital gains is high ex day returns are positive and significant in contrast in the post 1988 period ex day returns are in most cases negative and insignificant further analysis reveals that while ex day returns are significantly related to dividend yield and to the length of the settlement period they are not affected by the commonly used measures of transaction costs such as the bid ask spread and trading volume or by the day of week month of the year type of dividend distribution or number of days to the actual receipt of the cash dividend we conclude that taxation affects significantly ex day share prices in the previous studies have documented that the risk adjusted abnormal returns on the ex dividend dates are positive and significantly related to the dividend yield the interpretation of these findings is however controversial the question relates to what category of investors sets ex day prices elton and

dividend stripping risk exposure and the effect of the 1984 tax reform act on the ex dividend day behavior this article investigates the importance of risk exposure and the effects of the 1984 tax reform act on the ex dividend day behavior the tax reform appears to have inhibited short term trading activities by increasing the risk exposure of incorporated traders moreover stocks for which existing listed options permitted the reduction of risk through hedged dividend stripping strategies were affected much less from the new tax code than their nonoptionable counterparts this implies that risk affects investors dividend yield choice and that the ex dividend day behavior may be caused in part by the existence of risk premia copyright 1989 by the university of chicago

employer stock and 401 k plans the sharp decline in the stock prices of several firms at which employees held a large fraction of their 401 k plan assets in company stock including enron global crossing lucent and polaroid has sparked a public policy debate about investment options in 401 k plans at many large firms particularly those with retirement saving plans that combine elements of an employee stock ownership plan esop with a traditional 401 k a substantial fraction of defined contribution retirement plan assets are held in company stock such undiversified holdings are a source of concern because they raise the volatility of the retirement wealth for employees and expose some workers to the prospect of very small retirement values holding an undiversified position in employer stock may be particularly costly because of the potential correlation between company stock returns and the value of the worker s human capital which may depend on the company s prospects this paper reviews the extent of undiversified company stock investments in 401 k plans evaluates the cost of such investments from an employee s perspective and discusses a range of policy actions that could address the excessive concentration of retirement plan assets

the ex dividend day behavior of canadian stock prices tax changes and clientele effects with some simple assumptions the ex dividend day price drop and the associated dividend can be used to measure the market s marginal tax rate previous research has estimated the implied tax rate for the u s this paper extends the analysis to canada where the tax treatment of dividends and capital gains is completely different from that in the u s the paper also presents estimates from 1970 80 to include four distinct periods when the tax treatment was different hence we include an implied test of market efficiency as well as those for the relevance of taxes and the existence of tax based dividend clienteles

risk neutral parameter shifts and derivatives pricing in discrete time we obtain a large class of discrete time risk neutral valuation relationships or preference free derivatives pricing models by imposing a simple restriction on the state price density process the risk neutral stock return and forward rate dynamics are obtained by changing only a location parameter which can be determined independent of the preference and true location parameters the gaussian models of rubinstein 1976 brennan 1979 and c mera 2003 and the gamma model of heston 1993 are all special cases the model provides simple relationships between expected returns and state price density parameters analogous to the diffusion case

the marginal cost of public funds and tax reform in africa abstract in this paper we propose estimates of the marginal cost of public funds mcf in 38 african countries we develop a simple general equilibrium model that can handle taxes on five major tax classes and can be calibrated with little more than national accounts data a key feature of our model is the explicit recognition of the informal economy our base case estimate of the average mcf from marginal increases in all five tax instruments is 1 2 focusing on the lowest cost tax instruments in each country commonly the vat but not always the average mcf is 1 1 finally extending the tax base to include sections of the informal economy by removing some tax exemptions offers the potential for a low mcf source of public funds and a lowering of mcfs on other tax instruments

tests of the foreign exchange risk premium using the expected second moments implied by option pricing abstract this paper utilizes the second moment expectations implied by currency option pricing to demonstrate that these expectations are systematically related to expected return differentials across assets denominated in different currencies because the measured deviations from uncovered interest rate parity are tied to variables which theory links to the risk premium the results provide substantial evidence that a risk premium does indeed exist as opposed to the alternative of a violation of rational expectations however like previous attempts the data do not support an explicit mean variance formulation of the risk premium

birth order and human capital development evidence from ecuador in this paper we examine the effect of birth order on human capital development in ecuador using family fixed effects models we find positive and persistent birth order effects earlier born children stay behind in their human capital development from infancy to adolescence turning to potential mechanisms we find that earlier born children receive less quality time from their mothers additionally they are breastfed shorter poverty plays a key role in explaining these birth order patterns we observe the largest birth order effects in poor and low educated families accompanied with reversed birth order effects in rich and high educated families

the cost of poverty alleviation transfer programs a comparative analysis of three programs in latin america summary a common criticism of antipoverty programs is that the high share of administrative nontransfer costs substantially reduces their effectiveness yet there is surprisingly little rigorous empirical evidence on program costs improved information and a better understanding of the costs of such programs are crucial for effective policymaking this study proposes and implements a replicable methodology for a comparative cost analysis of three similar poverty alleviation programs in latin america and assesses their cost efficiency the findings underscore that any credible assessment of cost efficiency requires a detailed analysis of program cost structures that goes well beyond simply providing aggregate cost information

the ex dividend day behavior of option prices a security purchased at the opening of trade on the ex dividend day does not include a claim to the dividend announced earlier yet if purchased on the previous day the last cum dividend day it does thus the price of a security that goes exdividend is expected to drop in this time interval the expected price drop around the ex dividend day has been compared to the dividend per share in various past studies campbell and beranek 1955 durand and may 1960 elton and gruber 1970 kalay 1982 the documented behavior of stock prices around the ex dividend day seems to be consistent with market efficiency that is it provides no profit opportunities an interesting question that arises is whether the discontinuity in the stock price carries over to call options on the stock with similar implications for market efficiency because call options are unprotected against payment of dividends their pricing has to take into account the change in the value of the underlying asset around the ex dividend day this point has been recognized in the literature since it is well known that the price of a share of common stock is expected to drop around the ex dividend day since call options written on such underlying shares are not protected against dividend payment a question arises as to the behavior of the prices of call options around the exdividend day assuming a rational exercise policy on the part of investors it can be demonstrated that the price behavior of american call options around the ex dividend day should not be different from that on any other arbitrarily chosen day however our empirical analysis using both parametric and nonparametric methods indicates that perhaps because of a wrong exercise policy on the part of investors abnormal returns are observed in certain cases this finding casts some doubt on the presumption of efficiency of the american call option market around the exdividend day we wish to thank john long stanley kon clifford smith jeremy bulow and harry friedman for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper we are also indebted to david cho and elli kraizberg for their assistance finally the financial support of the salomon brothers center for the study of financial institutions new york university is gratefully acknowledge

option prices as predictors of equilibrium stock prices the black scholes option pricing model modified for dividend payments is used to calculate jointly implied stock prices and implied standard deviations a comparison of the implied stock prices with observed stock prices reveals that the implied prices contain information regarding equilibrium stock prices that is not fully reflected in observed stock prices the implications of this finding are discussed this study investigates the role of call option prices as predictors of the equilibrium prices of their underlying stocks using the black scholes 3 bs model previous tests of the bs model have shown that the formula is highly successful in explaining the observed market prices of options see black and scholes 2 galai 8 chiras and manaster 6 and macbeth and merville 12 according to the model the option price is a function of the current value of the underlying stock the instantaneous variance of the stock s rate of return the time to maturity of the option the risk free rate of interest and the exercise price of the option 1 given an observed option price and known values of all input parameters to the bs model except the stock price one can determine the price of the underlying stock that equates the observed option price to its calculated value it follows from the underlying logic of the model that the implied price is the value of the underlying stock for which a continuously revised option bond portfolio would be a perfect substitute for the stock hence if options are actually priced according to the model implied stock prices will be the option market s assessment of equilibrium stock values previous empirical studies have assumed that observed stock prices are the relevant stock prices for option valuation however just as stock prices may differ in the short run from one exchange to another i e nyse midwest

portfolio selection with mental accounts and delegation das et al 2010 develop an elegant framework where an investor selects portfolios within mental accounts but ends up holding an aggregate portfolio on the mean variance frontier this investor directly allocates the wealth in each account among available assets in practice however investors often delegate the task of allocating wealth among assets to portfolio managers who seek to beat certain benchmarks accordingly we extend their framework to the case where the investor allocates the wealth in each account among portfolio managers our contribution is threefold first we provide an analytical characterization of the existence and composition of the optimal portfolios within accounts and the aggregate portfolio second we present conditions under which such portfolios are not on the mean variance frontier and conditions under which they are third we show that the aforementioned analytical characterization is also applicable within the framework of das et al and thus improves upon their numerical approach

taxes and dividends the uk evidence abstract this paper provides empirical evidence on the simultaneous effects of both corporation and personal income taxes on dividend payment adjustments and on the behaviour of share prices on the ex dividend dates the results show that companies set their dividend policies to minimise their tax liability and to maximise the after tax return of their shareholders in particular firms that are unable to deduct the advanced corporation tax from their tax liability are found to pay low dividends in addition consistent with the tax hypothesis we find that the differential taxation of dividends and capital gains results in a decrease in ex day share prices by significantly less than the amount of the dividend there is no evidence of a tax induced dividend clientele

canada s dual class shares further evidence on the market value of cash dividends the canada income tax act of 1971 permitted canadian corporations to create two classes of equity one paying ordinary cash income and the other paying capital gains income cash paying shares have often sold at a premium empirical results indicate that the premium is largely explained by the relative value of the dividends paid and by costs imposed on investors by stock dividend payment and share conversion procedures premiums for a few firms also reflect the relative liquidity of the two classes of shares no evidence exists that investors prefer cash income to equal amounts of capital gains within the last fifteen years over twenty corporations listed on canadian stock exchanges have issued two classes of equity one paying cash dividend income and the other paying capital gains each share is convertible one for one into shares of the other class has equal claim to the issuing firm s profits and receives distributions on the same date as the other class thus each is equally subject to the uncertainty of the firm s operating cash flows these unusual securities are uniquely suited to a study of an important unresolved issue in finance the effect of dividend policy on firm value long 6 and shefrin and statman 11 indicate that claims to cash income may sell for a premium in contrast elton and gruber 3 poterba 9 and other authors present evidence that suggests that capital gains are preferred if markets were frictionless and information were without cost the price history as opposed to the conversion history of canada s dual class shares would be of no use to the study of this issue the actions of traders using the conversion option would ensure that the class a and class b shares of a particular company sell for the same price however positive transactions costs permit differences between prices of the two classes the relative expected value of distributions the relative market value of equal amounts of the two types of distributions and relative

the flypaper effect what happens to a state s spending when it receives an unconditional grant from the federal government the standard theoretical analysis predicts that the increase in spending will be the same as that generated by an equivalent increase in local incomes or roughly 5 10 percent for most states in contrast numerous empirical analyses have found that spending increases by much more with some estimates near 100 percent this result is known as the flypaper effect since the money appears to stick where it hits the authors review this evidence as well as other studies that find similar behavior in firms

microenterprise growth and the flypaper effect evidence from a randomized experiment in ghana standard models of investment predict that credit constrained firms should grow rapidly when given additional capital and that how this capital is provided should not affect decisions to invest in the business or consume the capital we randomly gave cash and in kind grants to male and female owned microenterprises in urban ghana for women running subsistence enterprises we find no gain in profits from either treatment for women with larger businesses we strongly reject equality of the cash and in kind grants only in kind grants cause growth in profits suggesting a flypaper effect whereby capital coming directly into the business sticks there but cash does not the results for men also suggest a lower impact of cash but differences between cash and in kind grants are less robust there is suggestive evidence that the difference in the effects of cash and in kind grants is associated more with lack of self control than with external pressure

does front loading taxation increase savings evidence from roth 401 k introductions can governments increase private savings by taxing savings up front instead of in retirement roth 401 k contributions are not tax deductible in the contribution year but withdrawals in retirement are untaxed the more common before tax 401 k contribution is tax deductible in the contribution year but both principal and investment earnings are taxed upon withdrawal using administrative data from eleven companies that added a roth contribution option to their existing 401 k plan between 2006 and 2010 we find no evidence that total 401 k contribution rates differ between employees hired before versus after the roth introduction which means that the amount of retirement consumption being purchased by 401 k contributions increases after the roth introduction a survey experiment suggests two behavioral factors play a role in the unresponsiveness of contribution rates to their tax treatment 1 employee confusion about or neglect of the tax properties of roth balances and 2 partition dependence

valuing flexibility as a complex option this paper develops an approach for valuing flexible production systems using contingent claims pricing demand curves for our model s underlying assets output products may be downward sloping in contrast with the standard option pricing assumption also our marginal production exercise costs may be increasing in addition we allow for multiple products and a production capacity constraint these elements of the model result in complex exercise decisions for the contingent claims which comprise the production system s value we illustrate our approach by valuing a flexible system that produces two products which have profit margin functions with stochastic parameters

time variation of ex dividend day stock returns and corporate dividend capture a reexamination this paper documents some empirical facts about ex day abnormal returns to high dividend yield stocks that are potentially subject to corporate dividend capture we find that average abnormal ex dividend day returns are uniformly negative in each year after the introduction of negotiated commission rates and that time variation in ex day returns during the negotiated commission rates era is consistent with corporate tax based dividend capture ex day returns are more negative when the tax advantage to corporate dividend capture is greatest and more positive when increases in transaction costs and risk reduce incentives to engage in corporate tax based dividend capture copyright the american finance association 2000

ex dividend day stock price behavior the case of the 1986 tax reform act this paper analyzes the behavior of stock prices around ex dividend days after the implementation of the 1986 tax reform act that dramatically reduced the difference between the tax treatment of realized long term capital gains and dividend income in 1987 and completely eliminated the differential in 1988 we show that this tax change had no effect on the ex dividend stock price behavior which is consistent with the hypothesis that long term individual investors have no significant effect on ex day stock prices during this time period the results indicate that the activity of short term traders and corporate traders dominates the price determination on the ex day

new evidence that taxes affect the valuation of dividends this paper uses british data to examine the effects of dividend taxes on investors relative valuation of dividends and capital gains british data offer great potential to illuminate the dividends and taxes question since there have been two radical changes and several minor reforms in british dividend tax policy during the last 30 years studying the relationship between dividends and stock price movements during different tax regimes offers an ideal controlled experiment for assessing the effects of taxes on investors valuation of dividends using daily data on a small sample of firms and monthly data on a much broader sample we find clear evidence that taxes affect the equilibrium relationship between dividend yields and market returns these findings suggest that taxes are important determinants of security market equilibrium and deepen the puzzle of why firms pay dividends financial economists have long been puzzled by corporate dividend behavior many individual investors should value a dollar of corporate dividends less than a dollar of corporate retentions because the former gives rise to greater tax liabilities corporations however face equal costs of paying out dividends and retaining earnings miller and modigliani 31 demonstrated that in the absence of taxes dividend policy should have no effect on share valuation if dividends are tax penalized however a value maximizing firm should pay no dividends widespread dividend payments to taxable investors are therefore surprising in 1981 dividend tax revenues in the united states were estimated to exceed 20 billion dollars indeed some have interpreted the large volume of dividends paid as evidence against the rational behavior postulates typically used by economists the dividend question has stimulated a large theoretical and empirical literature concerned with the qluestion of investors valuation of dividends in particular the question of how taxes affect the market valuation of dividends has generated considerable controversy numerous studies including auerbach 2 litzenberger and ramaswamy 24 26 morgan 34 and rosenberg and marathe

the relevance of irrelevant alternatives abstract in an experimental setting subjects face a standard elicitation task for certainty equivalents we show that when a third objectively irrelevant option is added to the standard task the willingness to take risks increases

options on the minimum or the maximum of two risky assets analysis and applications this paper provides analytical formulas for european put and call options on the minimum or the maximum of two risky assets the properties of these formulas are discussed in detail options on the minimum or the maximum of two risky assets are useful to price a wide variety of contingent claims of interest to financial economists applications discussed in this paper include the valuation of foreign currency debt option bonds compensation plans risk sharing contracts secured debt and growth opportunities involving mutually exclusive investments

portfolio rebalancing and the effective taxation of dividends and capital gains following the tax reform act of 1986 abstract the tax reform act tra of 1986 among other things equalized the nominal taxation of dividend and capital gains income the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that ordinary investors rebalanced their portfolio holdings in response to the new taxes such rebalancing appears to have concentrated on liquid stocks indicating that transaction costs are an important consideration for ordinary investors involved in restructuring their portfolio holdings the tax clientele relationships that existed prior to the new act were distorted temporarily but have reappeared by 1988 interestingly investors post reform effective tax rates still give a preference to capital gains as they did prior to the tax reform

the heterogeneous impact of conditional cash transfers the honduran praf experiment randomly assigned conditional cash transfers to 40 of 70 poor municipalities within five strata defined by a poverty proxy using census data we show that eligible children were 8 percentage points more likely to enroll in school and 3 percentage points less likely to work the effects were much larger in the two poorest strata and statistically insignificant in the other three the latter finding is robust to the use of a separate regression discontinuity design heterogeneity confirms the importance of judicious targeting to maximize the impact and cost effectiveness of ccts there is no consistent evidence of effects on ineligible children or on adult labor supply

the ex dividend day behavior of stock prices the case of japan we provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of stock price behavior around the ex dividend day in japan we find that prices rise on the ex day and that dividend related tax effects appear to be secondary returns around ex dividend days are dominated by the proximity of many ex days to the fiscal year end excess returns of 1 percent which are independent of any dividend related considerations are higher than round trip transaction costs on medium sized transactions prices seem to imply selling pressure before and buying pressure at the start of the new fiscal year these trading patterns appear to be motivated by intercorporate manipulative trading around the end of the firms fiscal year which are unrelated to dividends article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

does more cash in conditional cash transfer programs always lead to larger impacts on school attendance abstract there is considerable evidence that conditional cash transfer cct programs can have large impacts on school enrollment including in very poor countries however little is known about what features of program design account for the observed outcomes in this paper we analyze the impact of a program in cambodia that made payments of varying magnitude to otherwise comparable households the identification is based on a sharp regression discontinuity design we find that a modest cash transfer equivalent to approximately 2 of the consumption of the median recipient household had a substantial impact on school attendance approximately 25 percentage points a somewhat larger transfer did not raise attendance rates above this level

price regulation in property liability insurance a contingent claims approach a discrete time option pricing model is used to derive the fair rate of return for the property liability insurance firm the rationale for the use of this model is that the financial claims of shareholders policyholders and tax authorities can be modeled as european options written on the income generated by the insurer s asset portfolio this portfolio consists mostly of traded financial assets and is therefore relatively easy to value by setting the value of the shareholders option equal to the initial surplus an implicit solution for the fair insurance price may be derived unlike previous insurance regulatory models this approach addresses the ruin probability of the insurer as well as nonlinear tax effects

the calculation of implied variances from the black scholes model a note black and scholes 2 have derived a model for the equilibrium price of a european stock purchase option according to the black and scholes model equilibrium option prices are a function of the time to maturity of the option the exercise price the current price of the underlying stock the risk free rate of interest and the instantaneous variance of the stock s rate of return of these five variables only the first four can be directly observed the instantaneous variance of the stock s return can only be estimated recently severdl authors 3 4 5 6 10 11 rather than estimating a variance from past data have attempted to employ the black scholes option pricing formula to derive an implied variance an implied variance is the value of the instantaneous variance of the stock s return which when employed in the blackscholes formula results in a model price equal to the market price u nfortunately the implied variance cannot be calculated explicitly and previous researchers have used numerical methods such as the newton raphson method and its variants 8 however for many options no values of implied variance could be found to justify the observed option prices in this note necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a positive implied variance are given an algorithm is presented which converges monotonically and quadratically to the unique implied variance when it exists the most valuable feature of this algorithm is that it provides a starting value for the first iteration of the newton raphson procedure if one applies the newton raphson procedure without the correct starting value solutions that do exist can be overlooked the option pricing formula of black and scholes is

the stability of uk risk measures and the problem of thin trading this paper examines the problems of estimating risk measures and their stability in thin markets it shows analytically that conventional approaches used in previous studies can lead to serious overestimates of the stability of risk measures when shares are subject to thin trading it then demonstrates using uk data that this is in fact a serious practical problem and that the resultant biases are of precisely the form predicted finally the paper presents reliable evidence on the stability of uk risk measures by using an estimation method designed to avoid thin trading bias using this approach risk measures are found to be as stable in the uk as they are in the usa this paper examines the stability of risk measures in the uk the focus is on providing reliable evidence in a market where many of the shares suffer from thin trading this is important because thin trading can seriously distort stability measures leading to incorrect conclusions indeed this is a problem which has almost certainly afflicted many previous studies of stability the paper makes four main contributions first it shows analytically that thin trading can lead to serious overstatements about stability second it uses uk data to illustrate that this is in fact a serious practical problem and that the biases are of precisely the form predicted this is important for anyone who wishes to interpret previous claims on beta stability in thin markets third the paper presents reliable evidence on the stability of uk betas by using an estimation method designed to avoid thin trading bias besides avoiding bias our

the valuation of multivariate contingent claims in discrete time models there are several examples in the literature of contingent claims whose payoffs depend on the outcomes of two or more stochastic variables familiar cases of such claims include options on a portfolio of options options whose exercise price is stochastic and options to exchange one asset for another this paper derives risk neutral valuation relationships rnvrs in a discrete time setting that facilitate the pricing of such complex contingent claims in two specific cases joint lognormally distributed underlying variables and constant proportional risk aversion on the part of investors and joint normally distributed underlying variables and constant absolute risk aversion preferences respectively this methodology is then applied to the valuation of several interesting complex contingent claims such as multiperiod bonds multicurrency option bonds and investment options

foreign and domestic investors and tax induced ex dividend day trading abstract this paper reports evidence on the consequences of differential tax treatment for domestic and foreign owners in a market with a high degree of foreign ownership for certain stocks the helsinki stock exchange hse we find that ex dividend day ratios vary with the degree of foreign ownership and detect significantly abnormal ex dividend day trading volumes the average ex dividend price drops for high yield high foreign ownership stocks are likely to lie outside no arbitrage boundaries for domestic taxable investors an investigation of short selling through a derivatives instrument also reveals significant excess trading volumes in ex dividend months the tax heterogeneity of the company s ownership structure seems to play a role in explaining deviations from dividend neutrality more deviations are observed for companies with a more homogeneous ownership structure in terms of taxation

mental accounting of public funds the flypaper effect in the lab abstract we report evidence from a series of laboratory experiments that focus on mental accounting of public funds groups of three players decide upon how much to redistribute within the group we measure the preference to redistribute when transfers are made either out of individual accounts the players own money or out of a common account the group s money since the common account is dissolved after each round and paid out to individuals its size should not affect the decision to redistribute the experiment is designed to control for anchoring as a potential confounding effect we find that the size of the common account significantly affects redistribution behavior specifically the transfer increases in the size of the common account this effect is significantly more pronounced when the transfer is paid out of the common account instead of the individual account we interpret these findings as evidence for a flypaper effect due to mental accounting

portfolio choice and trading in a large 401 k plan we study nearly 7 000 retirement accounts during the april 1994 august 1998 period several interesting patterns emerge most asset allocations are extreme either 100 percent or zero percent in equities and there is inertia in asset allocations equity allocations are higher for males married investors and for investors with higher earnings and more seniority on the job equity allocations are lower for older investors there is very limited portfolio reshuffling in sharp contrast to discount brokerage accounts daily changes in equity allocations correlate only weakly with same day equity returns and do not correlate with future equity returns

uncertain inflation exchange rates and bond yields abstract the yields on international bonds are affected by exchange rate risk and country risk in addition to factors such as default and duration that are relevant in the pricing of domestic bonds this paper constructs a theory of bond yields in a single period framework with the risk of nominal bonds being endogenous to the model the behaviour of the monetary authority is modelled explicitly and is shown to be a crucial determinant of the risk of nominal bonds a distinction is made between the risk of default in the usual sense and the risk of being paid in currency which is worth less in real terms with the type of risk that is relevant in a particular case depending on the monetary policy followed the implications of results for exchange rate risk are also explored in a world where purchasing power parity holds

ex dividend stock price behavior and arbitrage opportunities this paper investigates the relation between ex dividend stock price behavior and arbitrage oppor tunities in a continuous trading frictionless economy the authors demonstrate that it is possible for the ex dividend stock price drop to differ from the dividend and still short term traders cannot gene rate arbitrage profits the argument is independent of transactions c osts the relevance of this insight to estimating the marginal tax br acket based on ex dividend stock price drops is explored furthermore this insight is also applied to the area of option pricing in which the special class of escrowed dividend stock price processes is stud ied the authors show that most elements from this class of stock pri ce processes generate invalid option pricing formulas copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

marginal stockholder tax effects and ex dividend day price behavior evidence from taxable versus nontaxable closed end funds almost all research on the movement of stock prices on ex dividend days has found that prices decline by less than the dividend though this is consistent with tax effects several papers have argued that this phenomenon could be caused by market microstructure effects in this paper we make use of a natural experiment that provides support for the tax explanations of ex dividend behavior some closed end funds have taxable and some have nontaxable dividend distributions both types are subject to taxes on capital gains the implication of this for ex dividendday price behavior is very different between these two types of funds if taxes matter this paper demonstrates that the direction of ex dividendday price behavior is consistent with a tax explanation and that ex dividend day price behavior changes as theory would suggest with changes in the tax law

the effect of personal taxes on common stock prices the case of a belgian tax reform abstract this paper analyses how a belgian tax reform affected the relative pricing of securities with differential tax treatment of dividends the results show that stock prices reflect their relative personal tax advantage and the price differentials are significantly related to dividend yield

making conditional cash transfer programs more efficient designing for maximum effect of the conditionality conditional cash transfer programs are now used extensively to encourage poor parents to increase investments in their children s human capital these programs can be large and expensive motivating a quest for greater efficiency through increased impact of the programs imposed conditions on human capital formation this requires designing the programs targeting and calibration rules specifically to achieve this result using data from the progresa randomized experiment in mexico this article shows that large efficiency gains can be achieved by taking into account how much the probability of a child s enrollment is affected by a conditional transfer rules for targeting and calibration can be made easy to implement by selecting indicators that are simple observable and verifiable and that cannot be manipulated by beneficiaries the mexico case shows that these efficiency gains can be achieved without increasing inequality among poor households

crossborder dividend taxation and the preferences of taxable and nontaxable investors evidence from canada abstract we consider how fund managers respond to the conflicting preferences of their investors we focus on the conflict between the taxable and retirement accounts of international funds which face different tradeoffs between dividends and capital gains in principle managers could resolve this conflict through dividend arbitrage but a proprietary database of dividend arbitrage transactions shows that in practice they cannot thus managers must resolve it through their investment policies we find robust evidence that managers with more retirement money favor the preferences of retirement investors and further evidence for this view in the difference between u s and canadian funds portfolio weights

options taxes and ex dividend day behavior a novel way of estimating the expected as opposed to the actual share price fall off is developed using option prices this method is applied to the uk traded options market using data from 1979 to 1984 the results show that a the average expected fall off implicit in option prices is around 55 to 60 of the dividend and significantly different from it the fall off also varied inversely with the dividend yield which is consistent with the prediction of the tax clientele hypothesis b the estimates of the expected fall off were not significantly different from the actual fall off c finally the results imply that the usual assumption made in valuing options on dividend paying stocks that the fall off is equal to the dividend would lead to downward biased estimates of the option value

individual account investment options and portfolio choice behavioral lessons from 401 k plans abstract this paper examines how the menu of investment options made available to workers in defined contribution plans influences portfolio choice using unique panel data of 401 k plans in the u s we present three principle findings first we show that the share of investment options in a particular asset class i e company stock equities fixed income and balanced funds has a significant effect on aggregate participant portfolio allocations across these asset classes second we document that the vast majority of the new funds added to 401 k plans are high cost actively managed equity funds as opposed to lower cost equity index funds third because the average share of assets invested in low cost equity index funds declines with an increase in the number of options average portfolio expenses increase and average portfolio performance is thus depressed all of these findings are obtained from a panel data set enabling us to control for heterogeneity in the investment preferences of workers across firms and across time

small cues change savings choices we present evidence from randomized field experiments that 401 k savings choices are significantly affected by one to two sentence anchoring goal setting or savings threshold cues embedded in emails sent to employees about their 401 k plan even though these cues contain little to no marginal information cues that make high savings rates salient increased 401 k contribution rates by up to 2 9 of income in a pay period and cues that make low savings rates salient decreased 401 k contribution rates by up to 1 4 of income in a pay period cue effects persist between two months and a year after the email

return risk and yield evidence from ex ante data the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between return and yield in the context of ex ante data from the value line investment survey and by examining the role of dividends as a proxy for risk the use of ex ante data should substantially reduce the confounding of tax and information effects that has affected earlier studies heteroscedasticity is detected in the after tax capm and found to be negatively related to yield and positively related to beta maximum likelihood methods are used to correct for heteroscedasticity and generate efficient coefficient estimates using data for each of the years 1973 through 1983 there is an overall positive relationship between expected return and yield however coefficient estimates of yield are highly variable from year to year the relationship between dividend yields and security returns is currently a subject of extensive research in finance empirically a positive relationship is found by blume 5 gordon and bradford 12 elton gruber and rentzler

god save the queen and her dividends corporate payouts in the united kingdom we examine whether the decline in the number of dividend payers is purely a u s phenomenon or is part of a global trend focusing on the united kingdom a capital market comparable in maturity and sophistication to that of the united states we find that the number of u k firms paying dividends declines from 75 9 to 54 5 after controlling for firm size and profitability we find a declining propensity to pay dividends over the 1998 2002 subperiod we conclude that a shift in catering incentives appears most likely explain these recent changes in u k payout policies

does aggregated returns disclosure increase portfolio risk taking many experiments have found that participants take more investment risk if they see returns less frequently see portfolio level returns rather than each individual asset s returns or see long horizon rather than one year historical return distributions in contrast we find that such information aggregation treatments do not affect total equity investment when we make the investment environment more realistic than in prior experiments previously documented aggregation effects are not robust to changes in the risky asset s return distribution or the introduction of a multi day delay between portfolio choice and return realizations

tax induced trading around ex dividend days abstract this paper investigates trading volume around ex dividend days for taxable distributions cash dividends it is found that trading volume increases significantly around the ex dividend day this increase is more pronounced for high yield actively traded stocks and after brokerage commissions became negotiable the results are consistent with the hypothesis that short term traders have an impact on ex day price behavior at least for taxable distributions for non taxable distributions stock splits and stock dividends we find negative abnormal volume around ex day

portfolio selection with mental accounts and background risk abstract das et al 2010 develop a model where an investor divides his or her wealth among mental accounts with motives such as retirement and bequest nevertheless the investor ends up selecting portfolios within mental accounts and an aggregate portfolio that lie on the mean variance frontier importantly they assume that the investor only faces portfolio risk in practice however many individuals also face background risk accordingly our paper expands upon theirs by considering the case where the investor faces background risk our contribution is threefold first we provide an analytical characterization of the existence and composition of the optimal portfolios within accounts and the aggregate portfolio second we show that these portfolios lie away from the mean variance frontier under fairly general conditions third we find that the composition and location of such portfolios can differ notably from those of portfolios on the mean variance frontier

ex dividend day stock price behavior discreteness or tax induced clienteles abstract since prices are constrained to discrete tick multiples while dividends are essentially continuous ex day price changes will not equal dividends we argue that the expected price drop is strictly less than the dividend but within one tick of the dividend the price drop to dividend ratio will i be less than one ii increase with dividends generally and iii decline between tick multiples giving a sawtooth pattern in the data since dividends and dividend yields are highly correlated discreteness will give the impression of tax induced dividend clienteles even if there are none taxable cash dividends and nontaxable stock dividends exhibit similar ex day behavior

on the asset allocation of a default pension fund we characterize the optimal default fund in a dened contribution dc pension plan using detailed data on individuals and their holdings inside and outside the pension system we nd substantial heterogeneity among default investors in terms of labor income nancial wealth and stock market participation we build a life cycle consumption savings model incorporating a dc pension account and realistic investor heterogeneity we examine the optimal asset allocation for dierent realized equity returns and investors and compare it with age based investing the optimal asset allocation leads to less inequality in pensions while it moderates the risks through active rebalancing

mental accounting in portfolio choice evidence from a flypaper effect this paper documents a lack of coordination between the asset allocations of different financial accounts in a household portfolio our findings are predicted by the theory of mental accounting richard h thaler 1985 1990 1999 agents sometimes make decisions about individual accounts in their portfolio without considering their other accounts the setting for our analysis is a large u s firm when an employee at this firm makes a 401 k contribution the company makes a matching contribution proportional to the employee s contribution up to a match threshold in march 2003 the firm changed its 401 k matching rules creating a natural experiment both before and after the rule change the initial allocation of participants own contribution flows was determined by the participants 1 the change in march 2003 was to the policy determining the initial asset allocation of the employer match contributions in the first regime before march 2003 the firm directed matching contribution flows entirely into employer stock this was not a binding restriction as participants could freely reallocate their match balances after matching contributions were made although in practice participants rarely did so in march 2003 the company changed its match policy requiring new enrollees to actively choose the asset allocation for both their own and match contribution flows the change between these regimes was economically neutral any allocation of balances in one regime could be replicated in the other nevertheless allocations to employer stock differed vastly across the two regimes employees who enrolled in february 2003 just before the regime change allocated 23 of their own contribution flows to employer stock since all of their match contributions were directed into employer stock this resulted in a 56 total 401 k allocation to employer stock combining the own contribution and match contribution accounts few of these february enrollees made subsequent trades to reduce their employer stock balances in either account employees who enrolled in march 2003 right after the change allocated 23 of their total own plus match contribution flows to employer stock notice that own contribution allocations to employer stock in the first regime precisely match the combined allocation of own and match contributions in the second regime 23 in both cases even though combined allocations differ greatly across the regimes these results imply that each dollar of employer stock contributed to enrollees through the match in the first regime increased the employees total holdings of employer stock by a full dollar rather than being offset by reduced employer stock holdings elsewhere or being sold off directly in other words money sticks where it hits a phrase attributed to arthur okun generating an asset allocation flypaper effect that is akin to the flypaper effects of public finance corporate finance and intra household consumption 2 after considering several explanations for the asset allocation flypaper effect we conclude that it is due in part to mental accounting our results can be explained by the following simple model in the first regime new enrollees actively allocated only their own contribution flows effectively ignoring the fact that their matching contributions were entirely directed into employer stock in the second regime the match allocation became salient because new enrollees were required to choose both their match and own contribution allocations during the enrollment process this caused enrollees to consider their entire 401 k portfolio instead of just their own contribution accounts as a result the fraction of total contributions allocated to employer stock under the second regime equaled the fraction of own contribution flows allocated to employer stock under the first regime the average participant allocated roughly one quarter of assets to employer stock in whatever accounts were salient whether the set of salient accounts was narrow regime one or broad regime two the dependence of portfolio outcomes on account salience is inconsistent with investors having a clear target asset allocation for their entire portfolio which they efficiently implement through their investment choices in accordance with much prior research we also find that investors are quite passive rarely reallocating their portfolios 3 however our central finding concerns asset allocation decisions made at enrollment a point when people have overcome their passivity and are taking action investor passivity thus cannot account for the unresponsiveness of own contribution allocations to the match allocation at enrollment under the first regime although passivity helps explain why these initial decisions are rarely reversed subsequently

dividends taxes and common stock prices the ex dividend day behavior of common stock prices before the income tax this study examines the ex dividend day behavior of common stock prices before the enactment of the federal income tax on ex dividend days during the pre tax period stock prices fell on average by the full amount of the dividend the data are consistent with the hypothesis that i investors in the pre tax period value dividends and capital gains as perfect substitutes and ii the differential taxation of dividends and capital gains has since caused investors to discount the value of taxable cash dividends in relation to capital gains

tax reform and ex dividend day behavior this paper investigates the effect of a major canadian tax reform on the ex dividend day behavior of companies on the toronto stock exchange the results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that price changes on ex dividend days reflect the relative taxation of dividends and capital gains for the representative investor but are consistent with the hypothesis that ex dividend day price behavior reflects short term trading activities

errors in implied volatility estimation estimating implied volatility by inverting the black scholes formula is subject to considerable error when option characteristics are observed with plausible errors especially for options away from the money large changes in volatility produce small changes in option prices conversely small errors in option prices and other option characteristics produce large errors in implied volatilities in the presence of small measurement errors unobserved truncation of option prices that violate lower bounds for absence of arbitrage can also lead to systematic volatility smiles the paper proposes feasible gls estimators that reduce the noise and bias in implied volatility estimates

difference systems in financial futures markets many financial futures markets allow substitutions for the par grade of security at delivery substitutes are deliverable at premiums or discounts differences in commodities parlance to the futures price the rule that establishes these differences is called a difference system this paper characterizes financial futures market equilibrium with yield based difference systems and investigates particular systems in use the major finding is that currently used difference systems effectively limit deliverable supply in the futures markets and lead to futures prices which understate the cash market price of the par security in order to increase deliverable supply many financial futures markets allow the delivery of a variety of grades issues of securities in fulfillment of a financial futures contract the par grade of security on which the futures contract is based is deliverable at the futures price various other grades of securities are deliverable at premiums or discounts to the futures price in commodities parlance these premiums and discounts are called differences and the rule that establishes the set of premiums and discounts is called a difference system see hoffman 2 chapter xv for an excellent discussion of difference systems in commodity futures contracts there are two types of difference systems currently in use in financial futures markets both are based on security yields the first is called variable rate or yield maintenance pricing under this system nonpar securities are deliverable at the futures price times a factor which is the price of the delivered security relative to the par security where both are discounted by the yield of the par security selling at the futures price the second is called fixed rate or factor pricing under this system nonpar securities are deliverable at the futures price times a factor which is the price of the delivered security relative to the par security where both are discounted at the yield of the par security selling at par this paper first characterizes financial futures market equilibrium with yieldbased difference systems and then investigates theoretically and empirically the particular characteristics of factor pricing and yield maintenance pricing the major finding is that currently used differences systems produce financial futures prices which systematically understate the spot market price of the par security vice president chicago mercantile exchange this research was conducted while the author was economist financial studies section board of governors of the federal reserve system the opinions in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the board

do education and health conditions matter in a large cash transfer evidence from a honduran experiment the paper analyzes a new honduran conditional cash transfer experiment bono 10 000 in which 150 poor villages of 300 were treated the transfers were much larger in size than an earlier experiment galiani mcewan 2013 but yielded smaller full sample effects on school enrollment child labor participation and measures of health service use one explanation is that bono 10 000 did not apply conditions to children only one child in eligible households was subject to the education condition and young children and mothers were only subject to health conditions in the absence of older children consistent with this we find a large effect on enrollment and a nearly off setting one on child labor among only children and smaller and insignificant effects on children in larger households we only find significant effects on health service use among children and mothers in the absence of older children despite a much smaller household transfer the heterogeneity does not appear to be driven by correlated variables such as household size child age or poverty

the valuation of options when asset returns are generated by a binomial process this paper values options on assets whose returns over a finite interval of time are generated by a binomial process it shows that a simple valuation relationship between the option and the underlying stock obtains if investors have preference functions that belong to a particular class even if opportunities to hedge do not exist one particular application of the theory is in the case where the stock price over a finite interval could increase by an amount fall by the same amount or stay at the same level the results in this paper may be viewed as the foundation of the preference based approaches to obtaining a risk neutral valuation relationship in this paper we value options on assets whose returns over a single period of time are generated by a multi stage binomial process of the additive and multiplicative types the market is open only at the beginning and end of the single period and consequently the risks involved in holding options cannot be hedged the case of a single stage binomial process in such a setting has been

pricing contingent claims under interest rate and asset price risk this paper presents a general framework for pricing contingent claims under interest rate and asset price uncertainty the framework extends ho and lee s 1986 valuation framework by allowing not only future interest rates but also future asset prices to depend on the current term structure of interest rates the approach is shown to provide risk neutral valuation relationships that are consistent with the initial term structure of interest rates and can be applied to valuation of a broad class of assets including stock options convertible bonds and junk bonds

volume for winners and losers taxation and other motives for stock trading capital gains taxes create incentives to trade our major finding is that turnover is higher for winners stocks the prices of which have increased than for losers which is not consistent with the tax prediction however the turnover in december and january is evidence of tax motivated trading there is a relatively high turnover for losers in december and for winners in january we conclude that taxes influence turnover but other motives for trading are more important we were unable to find evidence that changing the length of the holding period required to qualify for long term capital gains treatment affected turnover investors responding to the tax incentives in the capital gains laws should produce predictable patterns in the volume of trading in a stock but not necessarily in its price this study uses past price patterns as a proxy to measure the incentives to sell or avoid selling a stock and observes trading volumes to estimate the extent to which investors respond to these incentives past price patterns may influence trading volumes for other non tax related reasons as well these are also considered we find that past prices influence current incentives to trade through both tax and non tax motives winners tend to have higher abnormal volumes than losers this would be expected if non tax related motives were predominant however the influence of tax related motives on trading volume is shown by seasonal variations in the relationship between past price changes and turnover as predicted by tax induced trading theories the volume of losers is higher than normal in december and the volume of winners is higher than normal in january we found no evidence that trading volume was affected by changes in the length of the holding period required to qualify for long term capital gains investors reactions to capital gains taxes are important for several reasons first a comprehensive understanding of investor behavior would include both price and volume understanding the relationship between taxes and volume is a fruitful and convenient method of contributing to this subject the resource allocation consequences of capital gains taxes are controversial in part because

an examination of ex dividend day stock price movements the case of nontaxable master limited partnership distributions this study examines the unit stock price and volume behavior of master limited partnerships mlp around the ex dividend day since the dividends of mlps are not taxable to the unitholder tax based hypotheses predict no abnormal unit movements around the ex day significant positive excess returns and volume are found before the ex dividend day and significant negative excess returns are found on the ex dividend day the findings which are not significantly impacted by the tax reform act of 1986 suggest ex day stock movements are not solely a function of investor marginal tax rates or corporate trading behavior elton and gruber s 1970 findings that in 1966 67 stock prices fell on average by less than the amount of the dividend on the ex dividend date and that the ratio of the price decrease to the dividend was correlated with the dividend yield have led to the development of a tax clientele hypothesis relating to investor behavior one puzzling result from their study was the finding that the price decreases for the highest yielding securities were significantly greater than the dividends which in their analysis implied an investor clientele with negative tax rates while michaely 1989 using 1986 87 data was unable to find support for the tax clientele hypothesis across different yield groups he also documented the large price drop for the highest yielding securities michaely 1989 suggested that his results may demonstrate a preference of corporations for dividend over capital gains because of favorable tax treatment corporations receive on dividend income corporate trader hypothesis shefrin and statman 1984 however suggest that preferences for dividends over capital gains may exist for nontax reasons such as self control or a desire to segregate gains and losses the purpose of this paper is to examine the ex dividend day stock price behavior of master limited partnership mlp units during the 1985 88 period dividends from these high yielding securities are not taxable therefore support for either the tax clientele hypothesis or the corporate trader hypothesis would be found only if the average ex day price change on mlps equalled the dividend this result would also be consistent with barclay s 1987 finding that before the enactment of an income tax in 1913 even high

cash or condition evidence from a cash transfer experiment this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled cash or condition evidence from a cash transfer experiment conducted from 2008 to the end of 2009 in malawi the study observed the impact of conditionality in cash transfer programs with two distinct interventions unconditional transfers uct arm and transfers conditional on school attendance cct arm targeted at adolescent girls in malawi on individual level dropout rates declined in both treatment arms however the uct arm is 43 percent as large as the cct arm the fraction of days attended in the cct arm is significantly higher than the uct cognitive ability math and english scores significantly improve for the cct but not for the uct probability of pregnancy and marriage were much lower in the uct arm the delays in marriage and fertility in the uct arm are found entirely among adolescent girls who dropped out of school after the start of the intervention improvements in human capital for the recipients of the cct are achieved at the cost of worse outcomes for people who drop out of school funding for the study derived from the global development network bill and melinda gates foundation national bureau of economic research nber africa project world bank research support budget grant world bank knowledge for change trust fund world development report 2007 small grants fund spanish impact evaluation fund and gender action plan trust fund

dividend capture in nasdaq stocks abstract we examine the importance of dividend capture trading in nasdaq stocks by testing for cross sectional relations between ex day abnormal returns and bid ask spreads throughout we find that ex day returns and spreads are positively related the relation increases across dividend yield quintiles and is strongest in high yield stocks the relation does not appear in a sample of non ex dividend days these findings indicate that dividend capture trading affects the ex day returns of at least some particularly high yield nasdaq stocks and that dividend capture trading is important for understanding ex dividend day returns

consumer financial protection the recent financial crisis has led many to question how well businesses deliver services and how well regulatory institutions address problems in consumer financial markets this paper discusses consumer financial regulation emphasizing the full range of arguments for regulation that derive from market failure and from limited consumer rationality in financial decision making we present three case studies of mortgage markets payday lending and financing retirement consumption to illustrate the need for and limits of regulation we argue that if regulation is to be beneficial it must be tailored to specific problems and must be accompanied by research to measure the effectiveness of regulatory interventions

borrowing on the wrong credit card evidence from mexico abstract we establish new facts about the way consumers allocate debt among their credit cards using data for a representative sample of cardholders in mexico we find that relative prices are weak predictors of the allocation of debt purchases and payments consumers allocate a large fraction of their debt to high interest cards incurring a cost of 31 percent above the minimum using an experiment we find that consumers do not substitute in the price margin although they respond to salient temporary low interest offers we conclude that limited attention and mental accounting best rationalize our results and discuss implications for the market jel d14 g21 o12 o16

option pricing and implicit volatilities abstract this paper demonstrates that black scholes implied volatilities can be used to value options in many situations where the assumptions of the black scholes model are violated including i alternative stock processes ii stochastic interest rates and iii market frictions given its computational simplicity this procedure provides an attractive alternative to the more complex models with a direct estimation procedure

a note on a simple accurate formula to compute implied standard deviations abstract we derive a simple accurate formula to compute implied standard deviations for options priced in the classic framework developed by black and scholes 1973 and merton 1973 when a stock price is equal to a discounted strike price this formula reduces to a formula provided by brenner and subrahmanyam 1988 however their formula s accuracy is sensitive to stock price deviations from a discounted strike price the formula derived here extends the range of accuracy to a wide band of option moneyness

the law and economics of company stock in 401 k plans abstract some 11 million participants in 401 k plans invest more than 20 percent of their retirement savings in their employer s stock yet investing in the stock of one s employer is risky single securities are riskier than diversified portfolios and an employee s human capital typically is positively correlated with the company s performance in the worst case scenario workers can lose their jobs and much of their retirement wealth simultaneously for workers who expect to work for a company for many years a dollar of company stock can be valued at less than 50 cents after accounting for risk however employees still invest voluntarily in their employer s stock and many employers insist on making matching contributions in stock we provide evidence that employees underestimate the risk of owning company stock while employers overestimate the benefits associated with employee stock ownership we then analyze the likely effects of current and proposed regulations in this context

optimal defaults and active decisions defaults often have a large influence on consumer decisions we identify an overlooked but practical alternative to defaults requiring individuals to make an explicit choice for themselves we study such active decisions in the context of 401 k saving we find that compelling new hires to make active decisions about 401 k enrollment raises the initial fraction that enroll by 28 percentage points relative to a standard opt in enrollment procedure producing a savings distribution three months after hire that would take 30 months to achieve under standard enrollment we also present a model of 401 k enrollment and derive conditions under which the optimal enrollment regime is automatic enrollment i e default enrollment standard enrollment i e default non enrollment or active decisions i e no default and compulsory choice active decisions are optimal when consumers have a strong propensity to procrastinate and savings preferences are highly heterogeneous financial illiteracy however favors default enrollment over active decision enrollment

training wages and sample selection estimating sharp bounds on treatment effects this paper empirically assesses the wage effects of the job corps program one of the largest federally funded job training programs in the u s even with the aid of a randomized experiment the impact of a training program on wages is difficult to study because of sample selection a pervasive problem in applied microeconometric research wage rates are only observed for those who are employed and employment status itself may be affected by the training program this paper develops an intuitive trimming procedure for bounding average treatment effects in the presence of sample selection in contrast to existing methods the procedure requires neither exclusion restrictions nor a bounded support for the outcome of interest identification results estimators and their asymptotic distribution are presented the bounds suggest that the program raised wages consistent with the notion that the job corps raises earnings by increasing human capital rather than solely through encouraging work the estimator is generally applicable to typical treatment evaluation problems in which there is nonrandom sample selection attrition copyright wiley blackwell