This paper presents evidence on the speed of evolution (or lack thereof) of a wide range of values and beliefs of different generations of European immigrants to the US. The main result is that persistence differs greatly across cultural attitudes. Some, for instance deep personal religious...

The objective of this paper is to investigate if and how capital adjustment departs from the smooth pattern implied by standard model based on convex adjustment costs. Using Norwegian micro data, we start by documenting various aspects of the distribution of investment rates. We then present two...

This paper evaluates the effects of fiscal policy on investment using a panel of OECD countries. In particular, we investigate how different types of fiscal policy affect profits and , as a result, investment. We find a sizable negative effect of public spending -- and in particular of its...

Economic theory predicts that earnings uncertainty increases precautionary saving and causes households to include relatively liquid assets in their portfolios. Risk avoidance and the demand for liquidity cause these portfolio choices. Studies investigating United States evidence of...

A plausible explanation for cointegration among spot currency rates determined in efficient markets is the existence of a stationary, time-varying currency risk premium. Such an interpretation is contingent upon stationarity of the forward premium. However, empirical evidence on the stochastic...

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model that integrates inventory and labor decisions. We extend a model of inventory behavior to include a detailed specification of the role of labor input in the production process and of the costs associated with it. In particular, we distinguish...

This paper highlights the role of takeover defenses in the acquisition process. If managerial defensive effort is fixed, the unregulated level of takeover activity is lower than socially desirable since shareholders regard the financial incentives given to raiders to stimulate takeover activity...

Does merger and acquisition (M&A) activity occur in waves, that is, are there oscillations between low and high levels of M&A activity? The answer to this question is important in developing univariate as well as structural models of explaining and forecasting the stochastic behavior of M&A...

Under conditions of risk neutrality and rational expectations in the foreign exchange market, there should be a one-to-one relationship between the forward rate and the corresponding future spot rate. However, cointegration-based tests of the unbiasedness hypothesis of the forward rate have...

It is often argued that monetary instability reduces the informational content of market signals and thereby hinders the efficient allocation of investment. In this paper we use a signal extraction framework to give empirical content to this idea. In particular, we show why this framework...