do religious norms influence corporate debt financing previous studies substantiate that religious social norms influence individual and organizational decisions using debt financing settings we examine whether a firm s religious environment influences outside parties perceptions in contracting with the firm we document that firms located in the more religious areas use less debt financing and receive better credit ratings bond investors require lower yields and impose fewer covenants on such firms using the 2002 revelation of sex abuse by catholic priests as an exogenous shock we verify that these findings are not driven by endogeneity issues our study highlights the role of social norms in financial transactions

do individual investors treat trading as a fun and exciting gambling activity evidence from repeated natural experiments we hypothesize that individual investors treat trading as a fun and exciting gambling activity implying substitution between this activity and alternative gambling opportunities to examine this hypothesis we study the lottery jackpots and the trading of individual investors in taiwan when the jackpots exceed 500 million taiwan dollars the trading volume decreases between 5 2 and 9 1 among stocks preferred by individual investors and between 6 8 and 8 6 among lottery like stocks the decline in individual buy volume is statistically indistinct from the decline in sell volume large jackpots are associated with less trading in options with high sensitivity to volatility

costly arbitrage evidence from closed end funds arbitrage costs lead to large deviations of prices from fundamentals using a sample of closed end funds i find that the market value of a fund is more likely to deviate from the value of its assets 1 for funds with portfolios that are difficult to replicate 2 for funds that pay out smaller dividends 3 for funds with lower market values and 4 when interest rates are high these factors are related to the magnitude of the deviation as opposed to the direction i e whether discount or premium and explain a quarter of cross sectional mispricing variation these findings are consistent with noise trader models of asset pricing

state lottery adoptions as policy innovations an event history analysis two types of explanations of state government innovation have been proposed internal determinants models which posit that the factors causing a state government to innovate are political economic and social characteristics of a state and regional diffusion models which point toward the role of policy adoptions by neighboring states in prompting a state to adopt we show that the two are conceptually compatible relying on mohr s theory of organizational innovation then we develop and test a unified explanation of state lottery adoptions reflecting both internal and regional influences the empirical results provide a great degree of support for mohr s theory for the empirical analysis we rely on event history analysis a form of pooled cross sectional time series analysis which we believe may be useful in a wide variety of subfields of political science event history analysis may be able to explain important forms of political behavior by individuals organizations or governments even if they occur only rarely

inclusive wealth with a changing but aging population we consider the effect of population age distribution in inclusive wealth accounting numerical results demonstrate that the wealth of nations with an aging demographic structure as well as those with a rapidly increasing working age generation may have been overestimated

community religion employees and the social license to operate the world bank recently noted social license to operate has traditionally referred to the conduct of firms with regard to the impact on local communities and the environment but the definition has expanded in recent years to include issues related to worker and human rights world bank 2013 http go worldbank org fz88vmom90 in this paper we examine a factor that can influence the kind of work conditions that can facilitate or obstruct a firm s attempts to achieve the social license to operate slo specifically we examine the empirical association between a company s employee practices and the religiosity of its local community by investigating their fixed and endogenous effects using a large and extensive u s sample we find a positive association between the employee friendly practices of a firm and the religiosity of the local community after controlling for several firm characteristics in addition after mitigating endogeneity with the dynamic panel system generalized method of moment and after employing several other econometric tests we still find a robust positive association between the religiosity of the local community and employee friendly practices since recent research has shown that the firm s treatment of its stakeholders is a key to achieving an slo and since employees constitute a highly significant stakeholder group we interpret our results as supporting the view that religion is an important influence on the kinds of employee practices that can increase the likelihood that a firm will acquire the slo

the effects of endowment and loss aversion in managerial stock option valuation assuming a positive influence of stock price volatility on stock option value incentive alignment proponents argue that stock option compensation encourages managerial risk seeking and thus aligns managers and shareholders risk preferences our findings show that stock option holders overvalue unexercisable options relative to options being offered and to normative e g black scholes valuations further the influence of stock price volatility on holders subjective valuations depends on stock price trend in sum results suggest that during stock option valuation managers draw on heuristics that financial options theory and models fail to capture we discuss implications for compensation design and research

religious beliefs gambling attitudes and financial market outcomes this study investigates whether geographic variation in religion induced gambling norms affects aggregate market outcomes we conjecture that gambling propensity would be stronger in regions with higher concentrations of catholics relative to protestants consistent with our conjecture we show that in regions with higher catholic protestant ratios investors exhibit a stronger propensity to hold lottery type stocks broad based employee stock option plans are more popular the initial day return following an initial public offering is higher and the magnitude of the negative lottery stock premium is larger collectively these results indicate that religion induced gambling attitudes impact investors portfolio choices corporate decisions and stock returns

do better informed investors always do better a buyback puzzle we explore the value of private investment information using data from a singular source auctions of yearling racehorses horse breeders possess superior information about their own horses and have strong financial incentives to buy the best of these back at auction however those they repurchase subsequently perform significantly worse on average earning 30 less at the racetrack than horses purchased by outsiders moreover this underperformance is concentrated in male horses despite these being purchased exclusively for racing purposes these puzzling findings cannot be explained by differences in horse risk or breeder abilities or by nonfinancial objectives or by behavioral or selection biases jel g02 g11 g14 l83 d44

people s opium religion and economic attitudes since max weber there has been an active debate on the impact of religion on people s economic attitudes much of the existing evidence however is based on cross country studies in which this impact is confounded by differences in other institutional factors we use the worldvalues surveys to id entify the relationship between intensity of religious beliefs and economic attitudes controlling for country fixed effects we study several economic attitudes towardcooperation the government working women legal rules thriftiness andthe market economy we also distinguish across religious denominations differentiating on whether a religion is dominant in a country we find that on average religious beliefs are associated with good economic attitudes where good is defined as conducive to higher per capita income andgrowth yet religious people tendto be more racist andless favorable with respect to working women these effects differ across religious denominations overall we find that christian religions are more positively associatedwith attitudes conducive to economic growth r 2003 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classification a1 e0 n4 z1

religious holidays investor distraction and earnings announcement effects abstract we examine price reactions to u s firms earnings announcements during easter week in order to analyze whether and how the religious holiday calendar impacts investors information processing we find that there is an asymmetric pattern of immediate and delayed responses to earnings surprises experienced during easter entailing similar immediate reactions to both good and bad news and a stronger delayed response to bad news moreover local religious characteristics affect investor s response to firm news the results are consistent with a religion induced distraction effect on investors information processing ability we also show that this effect can form the basis for a profitable trading strategy the findings highlight the importance of religion for firms information environment and for the local component of stock prices

of tournaments and temptations an analysis of managerial incentives in the mutual fund industry we test the hypothesis that when their compensation is linked to relative performance managers of investment portfolios likely to end up as losers will manipulate fund risk differently than those managing portfolios likely to be winners an empirical investigation of the performance of 334 growth oriented mutual funds during 1976 to 1991 demonstrates that mid year losers tend to increase fund volatility in the latter part of an annual assessment period to a greater extent than mid year winners furthermore we show that this effect became stronger as industry growth and investor awareness of fund performance increased over time

validity of sustainability framework for china s mining cities a structural equation modelling approach abstractmany studies developed their framework for sustainability through indicator systems but the interactions and relationships within these indicators have not been studied yet in this article based on indicator systems we use a sample of 78 mining cities in china and employ structural equation modelling sem method to explore the validity of sustainability framework our empirical results show that resources abundance positively affects urbanization level significantly but negatively affects cleaner production level and environmental protection level significantly economic strength positively affects urbanization level significantly cleaner production level has a significant effect on economic strength and non mineral resources conversion efficiency we also find that when economic strength is low resources abundance might weaken the positive effect of economy on urbanization

comprehensive wealth and future consumption accounting for population growth economic theory predicts that the current change in national wealth broadly defined to include natural and human capital as well as produced capital genuine savings determines whether the present value of future changes in consumption is positive or negative theoretical research has focused on the effects of population growth on this relation but no rigorous empirical investigation has been conducted panel data for 64 developing countries during 1970 82 are used to test the effects of three adjustments for population growth including one that controls for omitted wealth although the adjustments have substantial impacts on estimates of genuine savings they lead to only limited improvements in the relation between those estimates and subsequent consumption changes even without adjustments for population growth adjustments for natural resource depletion improve the relation significantly policymakers and economists can interpret published estimates of genuine savings as signals of future consumption paths if and only if the estimates include adjustments for natural resource depletion but better estimates of capital stocks are needed before it can be confidently said that adjustments for population growth significantly improve the accuracy of those signals

of religion and redemption evidence from default on islamic loans we compare default rates on conventional and islamic loans using a comprehensive monthly dataset from pakistan that follows more than 150 000 loans over the period 2006 04 to 2008 12 we find robust evidence that the default rate on islamic loans is less than half the default rate on conventional loans islamic loans are less likely to default during ramadan and in big cities if the share of votes to religious political parties increases suggesting that religion either through individual piousness or network effects may play a role in determining loan default

does religion matter in corporate decision making in america abstract we examine how corporate culture influences firm behavior prior research suggests a link between individual religiosity and risk aversion we find that this relationship also influences organizational behavior firms located in counties with higher levels of religiosity display lower degrees of risk exposure as measured by variances in equity returns or returns on assets they exhibit a lower investment rate and less growth but generate a more positive market reaction when they announce new investments finally chief executive officers are more likely to join a firm with a similar religious environment as in their previous firm when they switch employers

simultaneous price and due date settings for multiple customer classes extending the model of eur j oper res 116 2 1999 305 that under contingent capacity simultaneously optimizes the bidding price and due date for each incoming order we propose a bidding model with multiple customer segments classified based on parameters of willingness to pay sensitivity to short delivery time quality level requirement and intensity of competition the winning probability function was also modified to be of more practical and robust model in reflecting stochastic nature of customer s decision two sequencing rules namely the early due date edd for time critical orders and first come first serve fcfs for regular orders were applied to determine the sequencing position of each incoming order and a simplified pattern search algorithm was used to improve the efficiency in searching for optimal price and due date the simulation results show that in general our proposed model and method can significantly increase the marginal revenue to the firm

introduction to the economics of religion after a very long hiatus economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion this article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity the characteristics of religious groups and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets

are we consuming too much this paper articulates and applies frameworks for examining whether consumption is excessive we consider two criteria for the possible excessiveness or insufficiency of current consumption one is an intertemporal utility maximization criterion actual current consumption is deemed excessive if it is higher than the level of current consumption on the consumption path that maximizes the present discounted value of utility the other is a sustainability criterion which requires that current consumption be consistent with non declining living standards over time we extend previous theoretical approaches by offering a formula for the sustainability criterion that accounts for population growth and technological change in applying this formula we find that some poor regions of the world are failing to meet the sustainability criterion in these regions genuine wealth per capita is falling as investments in human and manufactured capital are not sufficient to offset the depletion of natural capital

culture openness and finance abstract differences in culture proxied by differences in religion and language cannot be ignored when examining why investor protection differs across countries we show that a country s principal religion predicts the cross sectional variation in creditor rights better than a country s natural openness to international trade its language its income per capita or the origin of its legal system catholic countries protect the rights of creditors less well than protestant countries a country s natural openness to international trade mitigates the influence of religion on creditor rights culture proxies are also helpful in understanding how investor rights are enforced across countries

asset float and speculative bubbles we model the relationship between asset float tradeable shares and speculative bubbles investors with heterogeneous beliefs and short sales constraints trade a stock with limited float because of insider lockups a bubble arises as price overweighs optimists beliefs and investors anticipate the option to resell to those with even higher valuations the bubble s size depends on float as investors anticipate an increase in float with lockup expirations and speculate over the degree of insider selling consistent with the internet experience the bubble turnover and volatility decrease with float and prices drop on the lockup expiration date

trading as entertainment among 1 000 german brokerage clients for whom both survey responses and actual trading records are available investors who report enjoying investing or gambling turn over their portfolio at twice the rate of their peers including entertainment attributes as additional explanatory variables in cross sectional regressions of portfolio turnover on objective investor attributes more than doubles the fraction of the total variation of portfolio turnover that can be explained the results are robust to controlling for gender and proxies for overconfidence constructed from survey responses nonpecuniary benefits of trading thus appear to offer a straightforward explanation of the excessive trading puzzle

state lotteries as duopoly transfer mechanisms government sponsored lotteries can be traced back at least as far as caesar augustus who instituted legalized gambling for the purpose of rebuilding rome mote 1984 we are also told that queen elizabeth introduced a lottery in 1549 and that lotteries were used to provide financial support for the virginia company s founding of jamestown johnson 1960 no less authority on the topic than captain john smith reported that lotteries were the reall and substantial food by which virginia has been nourished johnson 1960 161 later lotteries were used by the continental congress and several colonies to fund the revolutionary war and such venerable institutions as harvard yale princeton and dartmouth benefited from their use kaplan 1984 in more recent times lotteries provided an important source of revenues for the depressed post civil war southern states but criticism regarding their moral implications and corruption in their operation is given as the explanation for congressional action that foreclosed state lotteries in 1895 by prohibiting the use of the mail for distributing lottery tickets and information tillett 1983 in that same year congress passed a national income tax which was struck down by the court some might argue that the demise of state lotteries was related to the federal government s attempt to extend its ability to collect