Using rich data linking federal cases from arrest through to sentencing, we find that initial case and defendant characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain most of ...the large raw racial disparity in federal sentences, but significant gaps remain. Across the distribution, blacks receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than those of comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Most of this disparity can be explained by prosecutors’ initial charging decisions, particularly the filing of charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Ceteris paribus, the odds of black arrestees facing such a charge are 1.75 times higher than those of white arrestees.
Bank CEO incentives and the credit crisis Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger; Stulz, René M.
Journal of financial economics,
2011, 2011-1-00, 20110101, Letnik:
99, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We investigate whether bank performance during the recent credit crisis is related to chief executive officer (CEO) incentives before the crisis. We find some evidence that banks with CEOs whose ...incentives were better aligned with the interests of shareholders performed worse and no evidence that they performed better. Banks with higher option compensation and a larger fraction of compensation in cash bonuses for their CEOs did not perform worse during the crisis. Bank CEOs did not reduce their holdings of shares in anticipation of the crisis or during the crisis. Consequently, they suffered extremely large wealth losses in the wake of the crisis.
Genetic Endowments and Wealth Inequality Barth, Daniel; Papageorge, Nicholas W.; Thom, Kevin
The Journal of political economy,
04/2020, Letnik:
128, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We show that genetic endowments linked to educational attainment strongly and robustly predict wealth at retirement. The estimated relationship is not fully explained by flexibly controlling for ...education and labor income. We therefore investigate a host of additional mechanisms that could account for the gene-wealth gradient, including inheritances, mortality, risk preferences, portfolio decisions, beliefs about the probabilities of macroeconomic events, and planning horizons. We provide evidence that genetic endowments related to human capital accumulation are associated with wealth not only through educational attainment and labor income but also through a facility with complex financial decision-making.
How do shocks to the banking sector travel through the corporate economy? Using a novel data set of interfirm sales, I show that suppliers exposed to a large and exogenous decline in bank financing ...pass this liquidity shock to their downstream customers. The spillover effect occurs through two channels: a reduction in trade credit offered and a reduction in the total supply of goods and services. After exposure to the spillover, downstream customers show a spike in credit risk and a reduction in employment. Overall, the paper highlights the importance of financial spillovers in explaining corporate sector outcomes.
Abstract
Recent advances have led to the discovery of specific genetic variants that predict educational attainment. We study how these variants, summarized as a linear index—known as a polygenic ...score—are associated with human capital accumulation and labor market outcomes in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We present two main sets of results. First, we find evidence that the genetic factors measured by this score interact strongly with childhood socioeconomic status in determining educational outcomes. In particular, although the polygenic score predicts higher rates of college graduation on average, this relationship is substantially stronger for individuals who grew up in households with higher socioeconomic status relative to those who grew up in poorer households. Second, the polygenic score predicts labor earnings even after adjusting for completed education, with larger returns in more recent decades. These patterns suggest that the genetic traits that promote education might allow workers to better accommodate ongoing skill biased technological change. Consistent with this interpretation, we find a positive association between the polygenic score and nonroutine analytic tasks that have benefited from the introduction of new technologies. Nonetheless, the college premium remains a dominant determinant of earnings differences at all levels of the polygenic score. Given the role of childhood SES in predicting college attainment, this raises concerns about wasted potential arising from limited household resources.
We document substantial cross-individual dispersion in U.S. credit card borrowing costs, even after controlling for borrower risk and card characteristics. That remaining dispersion arises because ...cross-lender pricing heterogeneity generates dispersion in annual percentage rate (APR) offers to borrowers, and borrowers vary in shopping intensity. Our empirics match administrative data to self-reported card shopping intensity and use instruments suggested by fair lending law to account for the endogeneity between APRs and search. The results show that shoppers versus nonshoppers pay APRs as different as those paid by borrowers in the best versus worst credit score deciles. We discuss implications for policy and practice.
Does limited access to formal savings services impede business growth in poor countries? To shed light on this question, we randomized access to noninterest-bearing bank accounts among two types of ...self-employed individuals in rural Kenya: market vendors (who are mostly women) and men working as bicycle taxi drivers. Despite large withdrawal fees, a substantial share of market women used the accounts, were able to save more, and increased their productive investment and private expenditures. We see no impact for bicycletaxi drivers. These results imply significant barriers to savings and investment for market women in our study context.
Based on the institutional theory, this article attempts to examine two consecutive questions regarding the impact of various factors on corporate decision in environmental information disclosure ...(EID): (1) whether or not to disclose; and (2) the level of disclosure. The relevance of these factors is empirically tested using data collected from publicly listed manufacturing companies from 2006 to 2008 in China. Some interesting findings appear. We find that firms that are state-owned, those that operate in environmentally sensitive industries, those having more industrial peers engaged in EID, and those with better reputation are more likely to disclose environmental information. When it comes to the content of EID, variables that attempt to capture external institutional pressures exhibit either no or weak explanatory power. Only the variable of organizational image and reputation is demonstrated to have a significant impact on both the act and the content of EID. This study provides a snapshot of the dialogues between constituencies in the organizational field and EID development.
An originate-to-distribute (OTD) model of lending, where the originator of a loan sells it to various third parties, was a popular method of mortgage lending before the onset of the subprime mortgage ...crisis. We show that banks with high involvement in the OTD market during the pre-crisis period originated excessively poor-quality mortgages. This result is not explained away by differences in observable borrower quality, geographical location of the property, or the cost of capital of high- and low-OTD banks. Instead, our evidence supports the view that the originating banks did not expend resources in screening their borrowers. The effect of OTD lending on poor mortgage quality is stronger for capital-constrained banks. Overall, we provide evidence that lack of screening incentives coupled with leverage-induced risk-taking behavior significantly contributed to the current subprime mortgage crisis.
This paper examines the broader effects of the US financial crisis on global lending to retail customers. In particular we examine retail bank lending in Germany using a unique data set of German ...savings banks during the period 2006 through 2008 for which we have the universe of loan applications and loans granted. Our experimental setting allows us to distinguish between savings banks affected by the US financial crisis through their holdings in Landesbanken with substantial subprime exposure and unaffected savings banks. The data enable us to distinguish between demand and supply side effects of bank lending and find that the US financial crisis induced a contraction in the supply of retail lending in Germany. While demand for loans goes down, it is not substantially different for the affected and nonaffected banks. More important, we find evidence of a significant supply side effect in that the affected banks reject substantially more loan applications than nonaffected banks. This result is particularly strong for smaller and more liquidity-constrained banks as well as for mortgage as compared with consumer loans. We also find that bank-depositor relationships help mitigate these supply side effects.
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