Both the increased transparency and the institutionalization of the municipal bond market have led to dramatic declines in the profits of underwriters, especially so for those whose underwriting activity is national in scope. Using comprehensive data on all trades, all bonds, and all underwriting spreads available between 2005 and 2023, we show that underwriters facing increasingly informed investors in the primary market are unable to capture high markups from investors but are also unable to raise costs to issuers.
Financial intermediaries often provide guarantees resembling out-of-the-money put options, exposing them to undiversifiable tail risk. We present a model in the context of the U.S. life insurance industry in which the regulatory framework incentivizes value-maximizing insurers to hedge variable annuity (VA) guarantees, though imperfectly, and shift risks into high-risk and illiquid bonds. We calibrate the model to insurer-level data and identify the VA-induced changes in insurers' risk exposures.
We examine the effect of pay transparency on gender pay gap and firm outcomes. This paper exploits a 2006 legislation change in Denmark that requires firms to provide gender disaggregated wage statistics. Using detailed employee-employer administrative data and a difference-in-differences and difference-in-discontinuities designs, we find the law reduces the gender pay gap, primarily by slowing the wage growth for male employees.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 established a new program called “Opportunity Zones” that created tax advantages for investment locating in Census tracts with relatively low income or high poverty. Importantly, only 25% of eligible tracts in each state could be designated as an Opportunity Zone. We use detailed establishment-level data and a difference-in-difference (DiD) approach to identify the designation of a tract as an Opportunity Zone on job creation.
We examine the evolution of the gender pay gap in finance, using administrative U.K. data over two decades. We show a persistently larger gender pay gap in finance relative to other sectors, which is predominantly explained by skilled male employees sorting relatively more into finance. The gender pay gap in finance is lower for flexible occupations, in firms providing childcare benefits, and in female-friendly environments. Over time, the difference in the gender pay gap between finance and non-finance sectors has steadily narrowed from 40% in 1997 to 23% in 2019, as more skilled women sort into finance.
The rapid growth in the adoption of mobile payments has already begun to reshape bank payment practices. Utilizing a unique data set from a leading bank in Asia that records credit card transactions of its customers before and after the launch of Alipay mobile payment, the largest mobile payment platform in the world, this study aims to understand the impact of mobile payment adoption on bank customer credit card activities and the change of this impact after the mobile payment expansion.
We study the effect of government-subsidized childcare on women's career outcomes and firm performance using linked tax filing data. Exploiting a universal childcare reform in Quebec in 1997 and the variation in its timing relative to childbirth across cohorts of parents, we show that earlier access to childcare increases employment among new mothers, particularly among those previously unemployed.
We introduce a new framework that facilitates term structure modeling with both positive interest rates and flexible time-series dynamics but that is also tractable, meaning amenable to quick and robust estimation. Using both simulations and U.S. historical data, we compare our approach with benchmark Gaussian, stochastic volatility, and shadow rate models, where the latter enforces positive interest rates.
We use detailed establishment-level data to understand whether and how the composition of the US stock market differs from the composition of US firms as a whole. Although the locational composition of employment in public firms is similar to that of all US firms, we find certain industries significantly overrepresented. Further, the gap between the industrial composition of publicly traded firms and all US firms has grown over the last thirty years.
We study the impact of widespread adoption of work-at-home technology using an equilibrium model where people choose where to live, how to allocate their time between working at home and at the office, and how much space to use in production. A key parameter is the elasticity of substitution between working at home and in the office that we estimate using cross-sectional time-use data.
Sexual health campaigns are often designed “top-down” by public health experts, failing to engage key populations. Using the power of crowdsourcing to shape a “bottom-up” approach, this note describes 2 creative contributory contests to enhance sexual health campaigns. We provide guidance for designing creative contributory contests to improve HIV and other sexually transmitted disease testing.
During this panel, attendees will learn from three leading experts on how to assess their own situation, create calm and create a foundation from which to make sound decisions. Panelists with expertise in financial, personnel and legal issues will provide insights. In addition, there will be an expert who will guide businesses on assessing where they stand and developing a framework and timeline of tasks to be accomplished.
Partial least squares (PLS) path modeling is increasingly being promoted as a technique of choice for various analysis scenarios, despite the serious shortcomings of the method. The current lack of methodological justification for PLS prompted the editors of this journal to declare that research using this technique is likely to be deck-rejected (Guide and Ketokivi, 2015).
Over the past decade, a number of empirical studies and analytical models have contributed to our understanding of brand and innovation management. Although branding and innovation are both popular and fruitful areas of academic research, we suggest a more expansive discussion to consider the interrelationship between the two in greater detail.
Medicare observation status has remained controversial since its introduction as an administrative payment category dating back to at least 1983. Much of the debate revolves around beneficiary billing and the 3-day rule, which requires that beneficiaries spend 3 consecutive days as an inpatient in order to receive coverage for postacute skilled nursing facility (SNF) care.
In this special issue, we review 14 articles published in Organization Science over the past 25 years examining large-scale collaborations (LSCs) tasked with knowledge dissemination and innovation. LSCs involve sizeable pools of participants carrying out a common mission such as developing open-source software, detector technologies, complex architecture, encyclopedias, medical cures, or responses to climate change.
The nursing profession in the United States was experiencing a labor shortage and facing diversity and inclusion challenges prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Magnifying these problems was a shift in the nation’s population, both geographically and demographically. The result was changes in both where nurses are needed in the healthcare system and the nursing skill set required to address healthcare needs of a far more diverse clientele of patients—in terms of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, age, living arrangements, socioeconomic status and primary language.
On January 31 and February 1, 2019, the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (Kenan Institute) hosted its Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Conference at The Breakers Palm Beach Resort. The conference brought together more than 150 academic research scholars, policy experts and private sector professionals to discuss and debate the most challenging current issues in the field of entrepreneurship in order to set the agenda for future research and policy.
Gentrifying cities increasingly are adopting inclusive and equitable development policies, strategies, tools, and regulatory practices to minimize, if not altogether eliminate, the demographic and economic dislocations that often accompany their growing attractiveness as ideal places to live, work, and play for a creative class of young people and well-resourced retirees who are predominantly white. Creating greater opportunities for historically under-utilized businesses to grow and prosper through enhanced local government contracting and procurement is one mechanism through which gentrifying cities are trying to generate greater equity and shared prosperity.
On January 18 and 19, 2018, the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (Kenan Institute) hosted its Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research Conference at The Breakers Palm Beach Resort. The conference brought together more than 100 academic research scholars, policy experts and private sector professionals to discuss and debate the most challenging current issues in the field of entrepreneurship in order to set the agenda for future research and policy.