The empirical saddlepoint distribution provides an approximation to the sampling distributions for the GMM parameter estimates and the statistics that test the overidentifying restrictions. The empirical saddlepoint distribution permits asymmetry, non-normal tails, and multiple modes. If...

Commodities, ranging from natural gas to memory chips, can be procured both by trading on the date in spot markets and in advance in forward markets. Transaction costs, such as brokerage fees, are typically higher in spot markets than in forward markets. Moreover, the forecast of a ¯rm's...

A fundamental issue in the management of technology innovation, both in manufacturing and service industries, is the comparative evaluation of emerging and incumbent technologies. This evaluation entails the juxtaposition of multiple aspects including process configuration and operational and...

This paper uses a principal-agent model to study the interaction between hedging and earnings management. Hedging makes earnings management more difficult and they appear to be strategic substitutes in this model, which is both consistent with existing empirical evidence and provides a new...

A fundamental marketing problem faced by auctioneers is the promotion of their auction in order to recruit bidders. Merchants would like to attract as many bidders as possible to an auction, since the higher the number of bidders, the higher the expected winning price and profitability. This...

Managers in the music industry closely monitor both radio airplay of an album as well as the album's sales. Their interest in radio airplay is due to the belief that airplay can increase an album’s sales. Therefore it is natural for managers to attempt to influence radio airplay so as to...

We ask how idiosyncratic labor-market risk varies over the business cycle. A difficulty in addressing this question is the limited time-series dimension of existing panel data sets. We address this difficulty by developing a GMM estimator which conditions on the macroeconomic history experienced...

This paper investigates the welfare costs of business cycles in a heterogeneous agent, overlapping generations economy which is distinguished by idiosyncratic labor market risk. Aggregate variation arises both in terms of aggregate productivity shocks and countercyclical variation in the...

Growth opportunities and future strategies can comprise a significant proportion of a firm’s valuation. At the end of 2006, the median company in the S&P 500 and Russell 3000 had 25% and 40% of their valuation, respectively, attributed to Future Growth Value (FGV®), the capitalized value of...

This paper is the outcome of a research engagement studying questions of technology utilization and production management with managers at EQT Corp., an integrated natural gas production and distribution company. The question of how to best leverage the use of technology is fundamental to almost...