Executive stock options and convertible securities can increase the number of common shares outstanding while adding less than the market value of the newly issued securities to a firm's assets. We model the effect of expected dilution on the earnings/return relation. Expected dilution effectively reduces the permanence of an earnings innovation. Empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that dilutive securities attenuate the relation between earnings and returns. Estimated earnings response coefficients (ERCs) are significantly lower when there are shares reserved for conversion. The effect is more pronounced for firms that have experienced price increases or positive earnings news, as these increase the expected dilutive effect of conversions.

The measurement of intelligence should identify and measure an individual’s subjective confidence that a response to a test question is correct. Existing measures do not do that, nor do they use extrinsic financial incentive for truthful responses. We rectify both issues and show that each matters for the measurement of intelligence, particularly for women. Our results on gender and confidence in the face of risk have wider applications in terms of the measurement of “competitiveness” and financial literacy. Contrary to received literature, women are more intelligent than men, compete when they should in risky settings, and are more literate.

We describe how capital accumulation and the network structure of US production interact to amplify the effects of sectoral trend growth rates in total factor productivity and labor on trend GDP (gross domestic product) growth. We derive expressions that conveniently summarize this long-run amplification effect by way of sectoral multipliers. We estimate that sector-specific factors have historically accounted for approximately three-fourths of long-run changes in GDP growth. Trend GDP growth fell by nearly 3 percentage points over the postwar period, with especially significant contributions from the Construction sector in 1950–80 and the Durable Goods sector in 2000–2018. No sector has contributed any steady significant increase to the trend growth rate of GDP in the past 70 years.

This paper evaluates the impact of three different performance incentive schemes using data from a social experiment that randomized 88 Mexican high schools with over 40,000 students into three treatment groups and a control group. Treatment 1 provides individual incentives for performance on curriculum-based mathematics tests to students only, treatment 2 to teachers only, and treatment 3 gives both individual and group incentives to students, teachers, and school administrators. Program impact estimates reveal the largest average effects for treatment 3, smaller impacts for treatment 1, and no impact for treatment 2.

ABSTRACT Why do firms choose high debt when they anticipate high valuations, and underperform subsequently? We propose a theory of financing cycles where the importance of creditors’ control rights over cash flows (“pledgeability”) varies with industry liquidity. The market allows firms take on more debt when they anticipate higher future liquidity. However, both high anticipated liquidity and the resulting high debt limit their incentives to enhance pledgeability. This has prolonged adverse effects in a downturn. Because these effects are hard to contract upon, higher anticipated liquidity can also reduce a firm's current access to finance.

ABSTRACT We analyze the likelihood of government bailouts of 450 politically connected firms from 35 countries during 1997–2002. Politically connected firms are significantly more likely to be bailed out than similar nonconnected firms. Additionally, politically connected firms are disproportionately more likely to be bailed out when the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank provides financial assistance to the firm's home government. Further, among bailed‐out firms, those that are politically connected exhibit significantly worse financial performance than their nonconnected peers at the time of and following the bailout. This evidence suggests that, at least in some countries, political connections influence the allocation of capital through the mechanism of financial assistance when connected companies confront economic distress.

Economics is characterized by well-developed predictive theories of human behavior. A wide variety of empirical tests of models based on those theories have been developed, as well as extensive and reliable data bases to test the theories. Thus, one can experiment with and simulate economic behavior. For these reasons, the conventional lecture-discussion format may be the least effective way to teach economics. Rather, the most effective teaching method may be as a laboratory science. We report here on two efforts to adapt economic instruction to a laboratory format. The purpose of adapting the lecture-laboratory format to economics is to permit a more active learning environment in which students can be meaningfully engaged by the material, with other students, and with the instructor. We report on two recent efforts to convert economics to a true, experimental, laboratory social science. The first, beginning in 1988, is a demonstration project conducted at Denison University for majors in economics. The second, beginning in 1993, is a true experiment conducted at Washington State University for all students taking introductory microand macroeconomics. I. The Demonstration Project for Economics Majors at Denison University

In a series of studies employing a variety of approaches, we have found that the potential impact of climate change on US agriculture is likely negative. Deschênes and Greenstone (2007) report dramatically different results based on regressions of agricultural profits and yields on weather variables. The divergence is explained by (1) missing and incorrect weather and climate data in their study; (2) their use of older climate change projections rather than the more recent and less optimistic projections from the Fourth Assessment Report; and (3) difficulties in their profit measure due to the confounding effects of storage.