I Find Evidence (i + find_evidence)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Caught in a Trap?

ECONOMICA, Issue 268 2000
Wage Mobility in Great Britain: 197
In this paper I study wage mobility in Great Britain using the New Earnings Surveys of 1975,94 and the British Household Panel Surveys of 1991,94. Measuring mobility in terms of decile transition matrices, I find a considerable degree of immobility within the wage distribution from one year to the next. Mobility is higher when measured over longer time periods. Those in lower deciles in the wage distribution are much more likely to exit into unemployment and non-employment. Measuring mobility by studying changes in individuals' actual percentile rankings in the wage distribution, I find evidence that short-run mobility rates have fallen since the late 1970s. This has potentially important welfare implications, given the rise in cross-section earnings inequality observed over the last two decades. [source]


The Determinants and Implications of Mutual Fund Cash Holdings: Theory and Evidence

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2006
Xuemin (Sterling) Yan
In this article, I examine the determinants and implications of equity mutual fund cash holdings. In cross-sectional tests, I find evidence generally supportive of a static trade-off model developed in the article. In particular, small-cap funds and funds with more-volatile fund flows hold more cash. However, I do not find that fund managers with better stock-picking skills hold less cash. Aggregate cash holdings by equity mutual funds are persistent and positively related to lagged aggregate fund flows. Aggregate cash holdings do not forecast future market returns, suggesting that equity funds as a whole do not have market timing skills. [source]


Debt Covenants and Accounting Conservatism

JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 1 2010
VALERI V. NIKOLAEV
ABSTRACT Using a sample of over 5,000 debt issues, I test whether firms with more extensive use of covenants in their public debt contracts exhibit timelier recognition of economic losses in accounting earnings. Covenants govern the transfer of decision-making and control rights from shareholders to bondholders when a company approaches financial distress and thereby limit managers' abilities to expropriate bondholder wealth. Covenants are expected to constrain managerial opportunism, however, only if the accounting system recognizes economic losses in earnings in a timely fashion. Thus, the demand for timely loss recognition should increase with a contract's reliance on covenants. Consistent with this conjecture, I find evidence that reliance on covenants in public debt contracts is positively associated with the degree of timely loss recognition. I also find evidence that the presence of prior private debt mitigates this relationship. [source]


Games Hospitals Play: Entry Deterrence in Hospital Procedure Markets

JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 3 2005
Leemore S. Dafny
Strategic investment models, though popular in the theoretical literature, have rarely been tested empirically. This paper develops a model of strategic investment in inpatient procedure markets, which are well-suited to empirical tests of this behavior. Potential entrants are easy to identify in such markets, enabling the researcher to accurately estimate the entry threat faced by different incumbents. I derive straightforward empirical tests of entry deterrence from a model of patient demand, procedure quality, and differentiated product competition. Using hospital data on electrophysiological studies, an invasive cardiac procedure, I find evidence of entry-deterring investment. These findings suggest that competitive motivations play a role in treatment decisions. [source]


Persistent Policy Effects on the Division of Domestic Tasks in Reunified Germany

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 4 2007
Lynn Prince Cooke
We are only beginning to unravel the mechanisms by which the division of domestic tasks varies in its sociopolitical context. Selecting couples from the German SocioEconomic Panel who married between 1990 and 1995 in the former East and West regions of Germany and following them until 2000 (N= 348 couples), I find evidence of direct, interaction, and contextual effects predicting husbands' hours in and share of household tasks but not child care. East German men perform a greater share of household tasks than West German men after controlling for individual attributes and regional factors. Child care remains more gendered, and the first child's age proves the most important predictor of fathers' involvement. These findings further our understanding of how the state shapes gender equity in the home. [source]


The Evolution of Individual Male Earnings in Great Britain: 1975,95

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 460 2000
Richard Dickens
I study the dynamic structure of male wages in Great Britain using the New Earnings Survey Panel from 1975,95. Computing auto-covariances of individual wages by cohort I find evidence of a permanent component of earnings that increases over the life cycle and a highly persistent, serially correlated transitory component. In addition, the estimated variances of both these components have risen over this period, each explaining about half the rise in inequality. Using individual's occupation at age 22, I split the sample into four skill groups. I find some differences across these groups, with the rise in the permanent variance most important for the manual groups. [source]


International Patterns of Union Membership

BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2007
David G. Blanchflower
This paper examines changes in unionization that have occurred over the last decade or so using individual level micro data on many countries, with particular emphasis on the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. I document an empirical regularity not hitherto identified, namely the probability of being unionized follows an inverted U-shaped pattern in age, maximizing in the mid- to late 40s in 34 of the 38 countries I study. I consider the question of why union membership seems to follow a similar inverted U-shape pattern in age across countries with such diverse industrial relations systems. I find evidence that this arises in part because of cohort effects, but even when cohort effects are removed a U-shape remains. [source]