This paper provides a theory of legislative institutions that parallels the theory of the firm and the theory of contractual institutions. Like market institutions, legislative institutions reflect two key components: the goals or preferences of individuals (here, representatives seeking reelection) and the relevant transactions costs. The authors present three conclusions. First, they show how the legislative institutions enforce bargains among legislators. Second, they explain why, given the peculiar form of bargaining problems found in legislatures, specific forms of nonmarket exchange prove superior to market exchange. Third, their approach shows how the committee system limits the types of coalitions that may form on a particular issue.

The World Bank and others maintain that the major mechanism for improving nutrition in poor communities is increases in income. Aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility, implying income/expenditure elasticities close to one. However, the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored, and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated. Estimates for a rural south Indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero.

Focuses on the reproduction of predatory pricing in laboratory environment. Definition on predatory pricing; Methods used to construct experimental design; Effect of predation on price increase and efficiency. Focuses on the reproduction of predatorypricing in laboratory environment. Definition on predatorypricing; Methods used to construct experimental design; Effect of predation on price increase and efficiency.

The household production literature emphasizes that technical or biological processes condition input selection by households in their production activities, along with prices and income. Exogenous variations in health, to the extent that they are perceived by individuals (heterogeneity), lead to correlations between inputs and health outcomes that cannot be used to derive causal conclusions. Therefore, estimates of health technology must be obtained from a behavioral model in which health inputs are themselves choices. Consistent estimates are reported of the effect of endogenous inputs, such as medical care, smoking, and fertility, on birth weight and fetal growth in the presence of health heterogeneity.

An explicit solution of an equilibrium model with price-setting firms and searching customers makes possible a number of comparative-statics predictions about how cost differences among firms, search costs of customers, and taxes will affect the mean and variance of the distribution of market prices. Another implication of the model is that a firm's demand depends on the difference between its price and the average price in the market.

According to the Easterlin hypothesis, the positive relationship between income and fertility is dependent on relative income. The hypothesis presumes that aspirations are significantly determined by family background. If income is high relative to aspirations, individuals will tend to have more children. The definition of variables as sibling differences controls family background and yields a measure of relative income. Analyzing the Kalamazoo Brothers sample in this fashion produces no evidence in support of the hypothesis.

Using GPS location data from customers’ mobile devices, we develop measures of customer shopping behavior intended to capture the likelihood that customers will shop again in the future, and we examine their associations with firms’ financial decisions and outcomes. We measure customers’ propensity to return using the frequency, distance, duration, and timing of their past visits to a firm’s retail locations. We find a positive association between customers’ propensity to return and the persistence of the firm’s revenues and earnings. We also find a positive association between customers’ propensity to return and the efficiency of investing and operating decisions among firms likely to incorporate customer data into their internal information systems. Our results illustrate conditions under which revenues and earnings are sustainable and when managerial decisions are consistent with insights provided by customer information. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

This study provides evidence that private loan issuance offers opportunities for borrowers to learn new information about their own risks and subsequently disclose such information in their risk factor disclosures (RFDs) to satisfy lenders’ demand for transparency about borrowers’ risks. This loan issuance effect on risk disclosures is more pronounced when greater learning opportunities are present and when lenders have a stronger demand for borrowers’ risk information transparency. Further analyses suggest that the enhanced risk disclosures following loan issuance not only benefit lenders by reducing the costs of accessing the secondary credit markets, but also create spillover benefits for equity investors by increasing risk information about the borrower and reducing uncertainty about the borrower’s risk. Taken together, these findings suggest that borrowers’ private interactions with lenders provide new opportunities for managers to generate and reflect fresh information in corporate risk disclosures, ultimately benefiting a wide range of capital market participants. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources identified in the paper.

We examine whether investor inattention influences managers’ non-GAAP earnings disclosures. Hirshleifer and Teoh’s (2003) theoretical model predicts that managers are more likely to disclose upwardly-biased non-GAAP metrics when investors are inattentive. Employing a measure that captures exogenous variation in institutional investor inattention, we find that managers are more likely to provide non-GAAP disclosures, particularly those where non-GAAP earnings are greater than GAAP earnings, when inattention is high. Moreover, inattention is positively associated with the magnitude of non-GAAP exclusions, which suggests managers present better non-GAAP performance to inattentive investors. Consistent with managers exploiting investors’ limited attention, we find that stock prices respond more strongly to non-GAAP exclusions when investors are inattentive and that managers are more likely to respond to inattention with income increasing non-GAAP disclosures if they sell shares following the disclosure. Taken together, these findings suggest that managers respond opportunistically to inattentive institutions by disclosing aggressive non-GAAP earnings metrics.