A number of papers have suggested that pro-social behaviour in the workplace may be sensitive to the institutional environment, but there is little empirical research that attempts to test this ...directly using data on worker behaviour. This is the aim of this paper. We show that individuals in the non-profit sector are significantly more likely to do unpaid overtime than those in the for-profit sector. However, we find no evidence of adjustment along either the extensive or intensive margins when individuals change sectors. The results of our analysis therefore point to selection and we find supporting evidence that individuals do self-select on the basis of their propensity to donate labour.
► We compare unpaid overtime among workers in the non-profit and for-profit sectors. ► Workers in the non-profit sector are 12 ppts more likely to do unpaid overtime than comparable workers in the for-profit sector. ► There is no evidence that workers change their unpaid overtime when they switch sectors. ► We present evidence to support a selection story.
The relation between investment bank reputation and the price and quality of bond underwriting services is studied here. After controlling for endogeneity in issuer-underwriter matching, I find that ...reputable banks obtain lower yields and charge higher fees, but issuers' net proceeds are higher. These relations are pronounced in the junk-bond category, in which reputable banks' underwriting criteria are most stringent. These findings suggest that banks' underwriting decisions reflect reputation concerns, and are thus informative of issue quality. They also suggest that economic rents are earned on reputation, and thereby provide continued incentives for underwriters to maintain reputation.
Michael Urban chronicles the advent of blues music in Russia and explores the significance of the genre in the turbulent, postcommunist society. Russians, he explains, have taken a music originating ...in the low culture of the American South and transformed it into an object of high culture, fashioning a social identity that distinguishes blues adherents from both the discredited Soviet past and the vulgar consumerism associated with the country's Westernization. While adapting the idiom to their own conditions, Russia's bliuzmeny (bluesmen) have absorbed the blues ethos encoded in the music by their American forebears, using it to invert their social world, thus deriving dignity and satisfaction from those very things that give one the blues. Based on more than forty interviews with blues musicians and fans, nightclub managers, and others, Russia Gets the Blues reveals the fascinating history of blues in Russia, from the initial mimicry of British blues-rock to the recent emergence of a specifically Russian blues. The gradual mastering of the idiom in Russia has been conditioned by the culture of the country's intelligentsia, a fact explaining why, on one hand, bliuzmeny feel compelled to proselytize on behalf of the music, to share with others this treasure of world culture, while, on the other, they perform blues almost exclusively in English—which almost no one understands—and condemn any and all efforts to make the music commercially successful.
Russia poses a major puzzle for theorists of party development. Whereas virtually every classic work takes political parties to be inevitable and essential to democracy, Russia has been dominated by ...non-partisan politicians ever since communism collapsed. This 2006 book mobilizes fresh public opinion surveys, interviews with leading Russian politicians, careful tracking of multiple campaigns, and analysis of national and regional voting patterns to show why Russia stands out. Russia's historically influenced combination of federalism and super-presidentialism, coupled with a post-communist redistribution of resources to regional political machines and oligarchic financial-industrial groups, produced and sustained powerful party-substitutes that have largely squeezed Russia's real parties out, damaging Russia's democratic development.
Using cross-country panel data, we found evidence that the Internet plays a positive and significant role in economic growth after investment ratio, government consumption ratio, and inflation were ...used as control variables in the growth equation.
We study the effect of a sovereign credit rating change of one country on the sovereign credit spreads of other countries from 1991 to 2000. We find evidence of spillover effects; that is, a ratings ...change in one country has a significant effect on sovereign credit spreads of other countries. This effect is asymmetric: positive ratings events abroad have no discernable impact on sovereign spreads, whereas negative ratings events are associated with an increase in spreads. On average, a one-notch downgrade of a sovereign bond is associated with a 12 basis point increase in spreads of sovereign bonds of other countries. The magnitude of the spillover effect following a negative ratings change is amplified by recent ratings changes in other countries. We distinguish between common information and differential components of spillovers. While common information spillovers imply that sovereign spreads move in tandem, differential spillovers are expected to result in opposite effects of ratings events across countries. Despite the predominance of common information spillovers, we also find evidence of differential spillovers among countries with highly negatively correlated capital flows or trade flows vis-á-vis the United States. That is, spreads in these countries generally fall in response to a downgrade of a country with highly negatively correlated capital or trade flows. Variables proxying for cultural or institutional linkages (e.g., common language, formal trade blocs, common law legal systems), physical proximity, and rule of law traditions across countries do not seem to affect estimated spillover effects.
The key innovation of this study is to use instrumental variables to mitigate the problems caused by simultaneity bias and omitted variable bias. For example, it is entirely plausible that water ...pollution harms economic development. Likewise, an omitted variable such as a cultural or geographic factor may affect both environmental quality and income. Our study is important not only because of its methodology, but also because its results will expand the state of knowledge regarding the consequences-especially on environmental quality-of income, civil liberties and political institutions. Reprinted by permission of the American Agricultural Economics Association
This article examines the effect of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA) on stockholder lawsuits. We explore the role of restatements, earnings forecasts, and insider trading ...in the filing and resolution of lawsuits for a sample of high technology firms. Consistent with our predictions, there is a post-PSLRA shift away from litigation based on forward-looking earnings disclosures. Conversely, there is a significantly greater correlation between litigation and both earnings restatements and abnormal insider selling after the PSLRA. Finally, we find a post-PSLRA increase in the likelihood of settlement for cases involving earnings restatements.
Coined in 1992 by composer/saxophonist John Zorn, "Radical Jewish Culture," or RJC, became the banner under which many artists in Zorn's circle performed, produced, and circulated their music. New ...York's downtown music scene, part of the once-grungy Lower East Side, has long been the site of cultural innovation. It is within this environment that Zorn and his circle sought to combine, as a form of social and cultural critique, the unconventional, uncategorizable nature of downtown music with sounds that were recognizably Jewish. Out of this movement arose bands, like Hasidic New Wave and Hanukkah Bush, whose eclectic styles encompassed neo-klezmer, hardcore and acid rock, neo-Yiddish cabaret, free verse, free jazz, and electronica. Though relatively fleeting in rock history, the "RJC moment" produced a six-year burst of conversations, writing, and music-including festivals, international concerts, and nearly two hundred new recordings. During a decade of research, Tamar Barzel became a frequent visitor at clubs, post-club hangouts, musicians' dining rooms, coffee shops, and archives. Her book describes the way RJC forged a new vision of Jewish identity in the contemporary world, one that sought to restore the bond between past and present, to interrogate the limits of racial and gender categories, and to display the tensions between secularism and observance, traditional values and contemporary concerns.
This article provides an empirical decomposition of the default, liquidity, and tax factors that determine expected corporate bond returns. In particular, the risk premium associated with a default ...event is estimated. The intensity-based model is estimated using bond price data for 104 US firms and historical default rates. Significant risk premia on common intensity factors and important tax and liquidity effects are found. These components go a long way towards explaining the level of expected corporate bond returns. Adding a positive default event risk premium helps to explain the remaining error, although this premium cannot be estimated with high statistical precision.
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