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.
The panel invited women scholars to consider how feminist approaches have—and have not—made a difference in economic geography.
Why do firms offer non-wage compensation instead of the equivalent amount in financial compensation? We argue that firms use nonwage benefits, specifically female-friendly benefits, such as maternity leave, to increase gender diversity by efficiently attracting women.
Innovative data sources offer new ways of studying spatial and temporal industrial and regional development. Our approach is to study the development of an entrepreneurial regional economy through a comprehensive analysis of its constituent firms and institutions over time.
We study how an improvement in contracting institutions due to the 1999 U.S.-China bilateral agreement affects U.S. firms’ innovation. We show that U.S. firms operating in China decrease their process innovations—innovations that improve firms’ own production methods—following the agreement.
In the last few decades, many healthcare institutions converted their ownership type from nonprofit to for-profit, contributing to an increased presence of for-profit ownership in the U.S. healthcare sector. There have been opposing views on whether such ownership conversions benefit the public. Employing a large panel dataset of U.S. nursing homes from 2006 to 2015, we conduct a difference-in-differences analysis on converted facilities’ financial performance, operating policies, and quality of care. We observe that converted facilities significantly increased their post-conversion profit margins, compared to propensity-score-matched controls.
Scholars have long been interested in new industry emergence, highlighting that it could often be impeded by uncertainty across four dimensions: technology, demand, ecosystem, and institutions. Building on the insight that uncertainty stems from partial knowledge, we develop a conceptual framework that utilizes a temporal and a process perspective for knowledge generation and aggregation.
This paper evaluates the pros and cons of including private equity fund investments in defined contribution plans. Potential benefits include higher returns and improved diversification as well as a relatively safe method for accessing investments previously only available to institutions and the very wealthy. Despite these enticing benefits, they need to be weighed against potential challenges and costs that may arise from creating this broader access to private funds. The complicated structure and uncertainty around the mechanism to provide required liquidity backstops may bring increased fees or even disrupt the private fund model.
The contemporary workplace is characterized by transience: Organizational members frequently turn over and careers span multiple organizations. Consequently, workplace friendships that were once close become less close and intimate, that is they become peripheral and can deteriorate. While research has examined the benefits for employees who move on to new opportunities, less clear is how stayers, or employees who remain behind in the work setting, are affected. To understand stayers’ experiences and how they manage, we draw on theories of belongingess and to offer a three-part episodic process model, which explains how stayers’ engagement in the task and social domains are influenced.
Despite recognizing the importance of events, researchers have rarely explored the influence of broader societal events on employee experiences and behaviors at work. We integrate perspectives on events and social identities to develop a cross-level theoretical model of the spillover effects of mega-threats, which we define as negative, large-scale, diversity-related episodes that receive significant media attention.
When policymakers implement a disinflation program directed at high inflation, the real dollar value of their country’s stock market index experiences a cumulative abnormal 12-month return of 48 percent in anticipation of the event. In contrast, the average cumulative abnormal 12-month return associated with disinflations directed at moderate inflation is negative 18 percent. The 66-percentage point difference between cumulative abnormal returns, along with descriptive evidence and case studies, suggests that unlike the swift eradication of past high inflations documented by Sargent (1982), the US will not experience a quick, low-cost transition from moderate inflation to the Fed’s two-percent target.
In the sales process in business markets, customers often are assisted by two types of sales reps: customer-focused reps (CSRs) and operations-focused reps (OSRs), who work together to ensure smooth buying experiences. Because these reps work jointly, selling firms often evaluate reps’ performance according to overall output, without assessing or quantifying their respective individual contributions to customer buying decisions. The authors of this study propose using value-added metrics that pertain to three drivers of value: (1) CSRs, (2) OSRs, and (3) the interface between CSRs and OSRs. This approach leverages variations in CSR–OSR combinations and produces both individual CSR–OSR and dyadic or interface value-added metrics. To address the empirical challenges (i.e., limited variations in CSR–OSR combinations), they use empirical Bayes random effect estimation to produce best linear unbiased prediction.
This article examines the consequences of accounting policy choices for individual banks' downside tail risk, for the codependence of such risk among banks, and for regulatory forbearance, or the decision by a regulator not to intervene.
Shareholder activists remain an important force in the boardroom. More than 60 activist campaigns were initiated against S&P 1500 companies in 2016. And although activist hedge funds have under‐performed the broad market since 2013, activists’ assets under management are still nearly double their level of four years ago, and announcements of their campaigns continue to be met with increases in the target companies’ stock prices.
Corporate restructurings accomplished through spinoffs have long been a key tool for management to unlock shareholder value. In 2016, global spinoff volume reached $117 billion, and spinoff activity continues to unfold at a similar pace in 2017, with Hilton, Xerox, Alcoa, Johnson Controls, and Danaher all recently completing major transactions.
With the explosion of Internet users, growing from 360 million (5.9 % of the world’s population) in 2000 to 3.4 billion (46.4 %) in 2016, the digital space is reshaping how organizations go global with their brands. Any chapter written about digital branding strategies runs the risk of obsolescence before it hits the printer. Specific digital platforms and tools for global brand building change rapidly over time.
This study analyzes whether fair value estimates of fund net asset values (NAVs) produced by private equity managers are accurate and unbiased predictors of future discounted cash flows (DCF). We exploit the fact that private equity funds have finite lives to compare reported NAVs to DCFs based on realized cash flows for 384 venture capital (VC) funds and 195 buyout funds spanning 1988-2016.
In financial markets, forward contracts reflect market perception of future price dynamics. Nontransparent markets, like commercial real estate investments, lack such tools. We use a panel of NYC office leases between 2005 and 2016 to estimate a dynamic term structure of forward lease rates (rental revenues), which reflects changing expectations by tenants and landlords about future rental contract conditions.