Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
60
result(s) for
"1997-2004"
Sort by:
Do Fiscal Rules Matter?
Fiscal rules are laws aimed at reducing the incentive to accumulate debt, and many countries adopt them to discipline local governments. Yet, their effectiveness is disputed because of commitment and enforcement problems. We study their impact applying a quasi-experimental design in Italy. In 1999, the central government imposed fiscal rules on municipal governments, and in 2001 relaxed them below 5,000 inhabitants. We exploit the before/after and discontinuous policy variation, and show that relaxing fiscal rules increases deficits and lowers taxes. The effect is larger if the mayor can be reelected, the number of parties is higher, and voters are older.
Journal Article
With a little help from my (random) friends
How do individuals decide to become entrepreneurs and learn to make optimal entrepreneurial decisions? The concentration of entrepreneurs in regions such as Silicon Valley has stimulated research and policy interest into the influence of peers, but the causal effect is hard to identify empirically. We exploit the exogenous assignment of students into business-school sections to identify the causal effect of entrepreneurial peers. We show that, in contrast to prior findings, a higher share of entrepreneurial peers decreases, rather than increases, entrepreneurship. The decrease is driven by a reduction in unsuccessful entrepreneurial ventures; the effect on successful ventures is significantly more positive.
Journal Article
Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology Adoption
This paper investigates an empirical puzzle in technology adoption for developing countries: the low adoption rates of technologies like hybrid maize that increase average farm profits dramatically. I offer a simple explanation for this: benefits and costs of technologies are heterogeneous, so that farmers with low net returns do not adopt the technology. I examine this hypothesis by estimating a correlated random coefficient model of yields and the corresponding distribution of returns to hybrid maize. This distribution indicates that the group of farmers with the highest estimated gross returns does not use hybrid, but their returns are correlated with high costs of acquiring the technology (due to poor infrastructure). Another group of farmers has lower returns and adopts, while the marginal farmers have zero returns and switch in and out of use over the sample period. Overall, adoption decisions appear to be rational and well explained by (observed and unobserved) variation in heterogeneous net benefits to the technology.
Journal Article
Who produces for whom in the world economy?
For two decades, the share of trade in inputs, also called vertical trade, has been dramatically increasing. In reallocating trade flows to their original input-producing industries and countries, this paper suggests a new measure of international trade: 'value-added trade' and makes it possible to answer the question 'who produces for whom?' In 2004,27% of international trade was vertical trade. The industrial and geographic patterns of value-added trade are very different from those of standard trade. Value-added trade is relatively less important in regional trade but the difference is not more important for Asia than for America. La part du commerce en produits intermédiaires dans le commerce international, appelé aussi 'commerce vertical,' n'a cessé d'augmenter depuis vingt ans. Cet article propose une nouvelle mesure du commerce international 'le commerce en valeur ajoutée' qui réalloue les flux commerciaux aux pays et aux secteurs produisant les intrants. En 2004, le commerce vertical représente 27% du commerce total. Les répartitions géographique et sectorielle du commerce en valeur ajoutée sont très différentes de celles du commerce «standard». La différence entre le commerce en valeur ajoutée et le commerce standard est plus importante dans le cas du commerce régional mais ce n'est pas plus le cas en Asie qu'en Amérique.
Journal Article
Risk Shifting versus Risk Management: Investment Policy in Corporate Pension Plans
The asset allocation of defined benefit pension plans is a setting where both risk-shifting and risk-management incentives are likely be present. Empirically, firms with poorly funded pension plans and weak credit ratings allocate a greater share of pension fund assets to safer securities such as government debt and cash, whereas firms with well-funded pension plans and strong credit ratings invest more heavily in equity. These relations hold both in pooled regressions and within firms and plans over time. The incentive to limit costly financial distress plays a considerably larger role than risk shifting in explaining variation in pension fund investment policy among firms in the United States.
Journal Article
Incentives, Targeting, and Firm Performance: An Analysis of Non-executive Stock Options
We examine whether options granted to non-executive employees affect firm performance. Using new data on option programs, we explore the link between broad-based option programs, option portfolio implied incentives, and firm operating performance, utilizing an instrumental variables approach to identify causal effects. Firms whose employee option portfolios have higher implied incentives exhibit higher subsequent operating performance. Intuitively, the implied incentive-performance relation is concentrated in firms with fewer employees and in firms with higher growth opportunities. Additionally, the effect is concentrated in firms that grant options broadly to non-executive employees, consistent with theories of cooperation and mutual monitoring among co-workers.
Journal Article
Two Decades of Income Inequality in Britain: The Role of Wages, Household Earnings and Redistribution
We study earnings and income inequality in Britain over the past two decades, including the period of relatively 'inclusive' growth from 1997 to 2004, and the Great Recession. We focus on the middle 90%, where trends have contrasted strongly with the 'new inequality' at the very top. Household earnings inequality has risen, driven by male earnings—although a 'catch-up' of female earnings did hold down individual earnings inequality and reduce within-household inequality. Nevertheless, net household income inequality fell due to deliberate increases in redistribution, the tax and transfer system's insurance role during the Great Recession, falling household worklessness, and rising pensioner incomes.
Journal Article