Corporate failure, Loan officers', Debt monitoring, Probabilities of failure

This paper tests the hypothesis that the classifications "unemployed" and "out of the labor force" are behaviorally meaningless distinctions. This hypothesis is rejected. Distinct behavioral equations govern transitions from out of the labor force to employment and from unemployment to employment. The evidence reported in this paper is broadly consistent with versions of search theory in which unemployment is a state that facilitates the job search process. In an Appendix, we demonstrate that log concavity of the wage-offer distribution implies that the exit rate from unemployment is an increasing function of the rate of arrival of job offers.

Life-cycle models of training/working that allow a leisure/effort trade-off are examined. A two-stage maximization problem is proposed encompassing models previously studied. In one stage, preferences are maximized by selecting a lifetime plan of consumption, leisure, and nonleisure subject to a budget constraint involving a conditional earnings function. In the other stage, the conditional earnings function is maximized by selecting a training and working plan. A new feature is the introduction of a technology, transforming stocks of human capital into leisure/effort efficiency units. Empirical predictions and conditions disallowing a two-stage separation are discussed.

In the analysis of problems of choice under uncertainty, many results depend on the investigator's ability to determine the signs of certain integrals. A recently derived method of doing this—christened the “covariance method” by Batra [2]—demonstrates that, in certain cases, recognition of the fact that the integrals involved are composed of covariance terms can provide a simple and elegant solution to the problem. This paper uses a simple portfolio model to demonstrate that these covariance terms can be exploited to obtain other useful results as well.

This paper is concerned with the design of non-cooperative game forms for economic decision problems. A decision problem is presented which admits non-dictatorial game forms with the following properties: Nash equilibria exist and all Nash equilibrium outcomes are Pareto optimal; or dominant strategies exist and all dominant strategy equilibria are Pareto optimal; but not both. This is, any (non-dictatorial) game form whose Nash equilibria are well behaved does not have dominant strategies, and any game form with well behaved dominant strategy equilibria must have at least one non-optimal non-dominant strategy Nash equilibrium.

This article uses a dual approach to investigate the properties of an n-asset portfolio model. The indirect expected utility and expenditure functions are used to provide an extremely simple derivation of Slutsky equations by obtaining results similar to Roy's Identity and Shephard's Lemma. The substitutability/complementarity relations among assets are investigated, and a number of empirically testable implications are deduced from the properties of the expenditure function.

[An example is given of a sequence of labor managed economies with decreasing efficiency sizes for which a free entry Cournot equilibrium fails to exist.]

Financial ratios, Bond rating, Credit risk, Bankruptcy