This paper examines whether the introduction of corporate governance (CG) reforms in general and that of transparency and disclosure (T&D) rules in particular can necessarily boost firm performance. Existing literature suggests that CG reforms can boost performance because it can resolve the...

Most contracts that individuals enter into are not written from scratch; rather, they depend upon forms and terms that have been successful in the past. In this paper, we study the structure of form construction contracts published by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). We show that...

Nearly half of U.S. employers test job applicants and workers for drugs. I use variation in the timing and nature of drug testing regulation to study discrimination against blacks related to perceived drug use. Black employment in the testing sector is suppressed in the absence of testing,...

In the UK concern has been expressed over the degree of gender occupational segregation. Though there are no general provisions for affirmative action, it does apply in limited areas and pro-active measures have been suggested. In this paper we focus on gender differences in work preferences in...

Many studies show that women are more risk averse than men. In this paper, following DeLeire and Levy (2004) for the US, we use family structure as a proxy for the degree of risk aversion to test the proposition that those with strong aversion to risk will make occupational choices biased...

This paper examines micro-level channels of how financial development can affect macroeconomic outcomes like the level of income and export intensity. We investigate theoretically and empirically how financial constraints affect a firm's innovation and export activities, using unique firm survey...

A vast labor literature has found evidence of a "glass ceiling", whereby women are underrepresented among senior management. A key question remains the extent to which this reflects unobserved differences in productivity, preferences, prejudice, or systematically biased beliefs about the ability...

On theoretical grounds, monitoring of top executives by the (supervisory) board is expected to be value relevant. The empirical evidence is ambiguous and we analyze three noncompeting explanations for this ambiguity: (i) The positive effect on firm value of board monitoring is hidden in stock...

This paper studies the impact of financialization on unemployment in the U.S. We estimate a dynamic multi-equation macro labor model including labor demand, labor supply, wage-setting and capital accumulation equations. Financialization appears as a key determinant of capital accumulation which,...

Interest rates on consumer lending are lower when funds are tied to purchase of a durable good than when they are made available on an unconditional basis. Further, dealers often choose to bear the financial cost of their customers’ credit purchases. This paper interprets this phenomenon in...