Across the globe, every workday people commute an average of 38 minutes each way, yet surprisingly little research has examined the implications of this daily routine for work-related outcomes. Integrating theories of boundary work, self-control, and work-family conflict, we propose that the commute to work serves as a liminal role transition between home and work roles, prompting employees to engage in boundary management strategies.
How best to structure the work day is an important operational question for organizations. A key structural consideration is the effective use of breaks from work. Breaks serve the critical purpose of allowing employees to recharge, but in the short term, translate to a loss of time that usually leads to reduced productivity. We evaluate the effects of two types of breaks (expected versus unexpected), and two distinct forms of unexpected breaks, and find that unexpected breaks can, under certain conditions, yield immediate post-break performance increases.
We study a security design problem under asymmetric information, in the spirit of Myers and Majluf (1984). We introduce a new condition on the right tail of the firm-value distribution that determines the optimality of debt versus equity-like securities.
We examine the relationship between MIDAS regressions and the estimation of state space models applied to mixed frequency data. While in some cases the binding function is known, in general it is not, and therefore indirect inference is called for. The approach is appealing when we consider state space models which feature stochastic volatility, or other non-Gaussian and nonlinear settings where maximum likelihood methods require computationally demanding approximate filters.
We examine how abnormal dark market share changes at earnings announcements and find a statistically and economically significant increase in abnormal dark market share in the weeks prior to, during, and following the earnings announcement.
Many organizations employ interpersonal feedback processes as a structured means of informing and motivating employee improvement. Ample evidence suggests that these feedback processes are largely ineffective, and despite a wealth of prescriptive literature, these processes often fail to lead to employee motivation or improvement.
In this invited note, we provide a historical context and a brief review of tax research published in the Journal of Accounting Research over the past decade. We also describe five areas within tax research that are relatively poorly understood or sparsely researched, but have potential for significant advancement in the future.
As firms use advertising to gain product market advantages and increase their valuation in financial markets, disclosures of their advertising spending are influential — whether they erode organizational competitive advantages in product markets or signal quality in financial markets.
We greatly expand the space of tractable term structure models (TTSM). We find that the early stages of a recession have distinct effects on yield volatility. Upon entering a recession when yields are far from the lower bound, (1) the volatility term structure becomes flatter, (2) the level and slope of yields are nearly uncorrelated, and (3) the second principle component of yields plays a larger role.
We propose a novel method of estimating default probabilities using equity option data. The resulting default probabilities are highly correlated with estimates of default probabilities extracted from CDS spreads, which assume constant recovery rates. Additionally, the option implied default probabilities are higher in bad economic times and for firms with poorer credit ratings and financial positions.
Combining a Monte Carlo simulation with a statistical model of player skill and random variation in scoring, we estimate the seeding and selection efficiency of the PGA TOUR's FedExCup, a very complex multi-stage golf competition, which distributes $35 million in prize money, including $10 million to the winner.
In "Quitters Never Win: The (Adverse) Incentive Effects of Competing with Superstars," Brown (2011) argues that professional golfers perform relatively poorly in tournaments in which Tiger Woods also competes. We show that Brown's conclusions are based on a problematic empirical design, which if adjusted yields no evidence of a superstar effect.
Puerto Rico’s unique characteristics as a U.S. territory allow us to examine the channels through which (sub)sovereign default risk can have real effects on the macroeconomy. Post-2012, during the period of increased default probabilities, the cointegrating relationship between real activity in Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland breaks down and Puerto Rico spirals into a significant decline. We exploit the cross-industry variation in default risk exposure to identify the impact of changes in default risk on employment. The evidence suggests that there are significantly higher employment growth declines in government demand and external finance dependent industries. An additional real effect of default anticipation is that heightened default risk Granger causes Puerto Rico’s austerity measures. An event study analysis using government bond yields and stock returns confirms that news of increased default risk increases the cost of capital for the Puerto Rican government and for publicly traded Puerto Rican firms.
We examine the implications of less powerful forward guidance for optimal policy using a sticky-price model with an effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates as well as a discounted Euler equation and Phillips curve. We find that, under a wide range of plausible degrees of discounting, it is optimal for the central bank to compensate for the reduced effect of a future rate cut by keeping the policy rate at the ELB for longer.
Using a large database of U.S. equity position-level holdings for hedge funds, we measure the degree of securitylevel crowdedness. The crowdedness factor is related to downside “tail risk" as stocks with higher exposure to crowdedness experience relatively larger drawdowns during periods of market distress. This tail risk extends to hedge fund portfolio returns as the crowdedness factor explains why some funds experience relatively large drawdowns.
In this study, we ask if it is desirable to give greater freedom to firms in their choices of class shares. Making use of the 2011 Commercial Act amendment that significantly relaxed the regulation on class shares in Korea, we study the motivation and the effect of adopting two newly emerged class shares.
This study provides evidence that nonbank institutional investors that participate in loan syndicates value inside information obtained through lending agreements with bellwether borrowers. The private information nonbank institutional investors obtain from lending relationships with bellwether firms can help identify trading opportunities in other public market securities. Thus, we predict and find that institutional investors compensate bellwether firms by charging a lower loan spread.
We conduct what is, to our knowledge, the first systematic examination of Chinese-based firms that utilize a variable interest entity (VIE) structure to evade Chinese regulation on foreign ownership to list equity in the U.S. The use of the VIE structure is not only questionable under Chinese laws but also exacerbates the agency costs within the firm. We find that Chinese VIE firms have a Tobin’s Q as much as 35% lower than Chinese non-VIE firms, and this discount is concentrated in firms with higher risks of government intervention and managerial expropriation. To remediate these risks, VIE firms are more likely to have a politically connected director on the board, hire a Big N auditor and have higher levels of institutional ownership.
In many service operations, customers have repeated interactions with service providers. This creates two important questions for service design. First, how important is it to maintain the continuity of service for individuals? Second, since maintaining continuity is costly and, at times, operationally impractical for both the organization (due to potentially lower utilization) and providers (due to high effort required), should certain customer types, such as those with complex needs, be prioritized for continuity?