This paper examines the relation between stock returns and unexpected changes in nominal and real interest rates and inflation for the US stock market. With the exception of Sweeney and Warga (1986), we are the first to examine this relation in detail by breaking the results down from the US...

In this paper, we estimate a measure of the flow-through capability of firms listed on the US stock exchange at the sector level. Flow-through capability is defined as a firm's ability to transmit inflation shocks to the prices of its products and services. Thus, we first estimate the...

“Sustainable prosperity” denotes an economy that generates stable and equitable growth for a large and growing middle class. From the 1940s into the 1970s, the United States appeared to be on a trajectory of sustainable prosperity, especially for white-male members of the U.S. labor force....

This paper formulates and tests a model that describes the asset and financing adjustments of U.S. non-financial enterprises over the twentieth century. Asset adjustments change the expected income and operating risk of firms while financing adjustments change the financial risk. To protect debt...

This paper examines the relationship between unemployment and labor market flexibility. The latter is considered in the broadest sense - as it relates to labor markets at large (external flexibility) and to practices within firms (internal flexibility). The first part of the paper addresses the...

Partnering with the Census we implement a new survey of "structured" management practices in 32,000 US manufacturing plants. We find an enormous dispersion of management practices across plants, with 40% of this variation across plants within the same firm. This management variation accounts for...

In the semantic architecture of the society of the knowledge the innovation concept is the fundamental brick. It is an adobe that allows to construct very different discourses frequently opposed between them, in what the purpose of its social use concerns. In the present communication we...

Complementarity between performance pay and other organizational design elements has been argued to be one potential explanation for stark differences in the observed productivity gains from performance pay adoption. Using detailed data on internal organization for a nationally representative...

We collect data on operations, targets and human resources management practices in over 1,800 schools educating 15-year-olds in eight countries. Overall, we show that higher management quality is strongly associated with better educational outcomes. The UK, Sweden, Canada and the US obtain the...

There is a widespread sense that over the last two decades firms have been decentralizing decisions to employees further down the managerial hierarchy. Economists have developed a range of theories to account for delegation, but there is less empirical evidence, especially across countries. This...