The thesis of this symposium, organized by James Bicksler, was that while finance theory will surely inform practitioners, it seems appropriate to pay some attention to the opposite flow: practitioners can inform theory. Contributors include a distinguished group of practitioners with extensive backgrounds in economics, and economists with extensive public policy experience: Martin Feldstein, Robert Glauber, David Mullins, and Steven Wallman. Their topics range from privatizing social security, to managing market crashes, to the regulatory agency cost problem, to regulatory constraints in a technologically advanced world.

The thesis of this symposium, organized by James Bicksler, was that while finance theory will surely inform practitioners, it seems appropriate to pay some attention to the opposite flow: practitioners can inform theory. Contributors include a distinguished group of practitioners with extensive backgrounds in economics, and economists with extensive public policy experience: Martin Feldstein, Robert Glauber, David Mullins, and Steven Wallman. Their topics range from privatizing social security, to managing market crashes, to the regulatory agency cost problem, to regulatory constraints in a technologically advanced world.

We estimate the causal effects of acute fine particulate matter exposure on mortality, health care use, and medical costs among the US elderly using Medicare data. We instrument for air pollution using changes in local wind direction and develop a new approach that uses machine learning to estimate the life-years lost due to pollution exposure. Finally, we characterize treatment effect heterogeneity using both life expectancy and generic machine learning inference. Both approaches find that mortality effects are concentrated in about 25 percent of the elderly population.

In the coming year 1979, is it possible to achieve a 5 percent unemployment rate and keep annual inflation down to 4 percent? To raise this question in terms of a particular econometric model, we ask whether there exist values of the policy instruments which will give rise to solutions of 5 and 4 percent, respectively, for unemployment and inflation. What is the most favorable tradeoff relationship between inflation and unemployment implicit in an econometric model of a national economy? In this paper, we wish to point out that for many econometric models actually in use, the tradeoff relationship is not rigid, but can be shifted toward the origin (but usually not all the way to the origin!) by suitable government policies. Accordingly, we suggest that the tradeoff relationship implicit in an econometric model be defined as the set of points in the unemployment-inflation diagram which cannot be dominated. We will explain the circumstances under which there exists such a southwestern boundary for the points depicting the unemploymentinflation combinations that are achievable according to a given model. We will propose a systematic way to locate points on this boundary and demonstrate that our algorithm works. Stimulated by and based upon A. W. Phillips' original paper on the relation between unemployment and the rate of change of money wage rates, numerous studies have appeared to refine, respecify, and estimate structural equations explaining the rates of change in the wage rates, the price level, unemployment and related variables. It soon became apparent that these studies, though useful, may not be sufficient for ascertaining the tradeoff relationship between unemployment and inflation. If unemployment and inflation are viewed as two of the many endogenous variables which are jointly determined by a system of simultaneous econometric equations, their relationship has to be derived by solving a whole system using alternative values for the policy variables subject to government control. The approach of deriving the unemployment-inflation tradeoff by varying the policy variables and solving for these two endogenous variables in an econometric model has been adopted by

This paper discusses the role of process evidence in accounting research. We define process evidence broadly as data providing insight into how and why cause-effect relationships occur, and we provide a framework to guide the provision and evaluation of process evidence in accounting studies. Our definition allows for an expanded understanding of techniques for gathering process evidence. The framework highlights the importance of the study's goals and theory in choosing how to provide process evidence, as well as how much process evidence to provide. The paper also outlines the strengths and limitations of three approaches to providing process evidence: mediation, moderation, and multiple-study-based designs. We provide recommendations for best practices for each approach to minimize threats to validity and maximize the value of process evidence.

We offer the first empirical evidence on the adverse effect of credit default swap (CDS) coverage on subprime mortgage defaults. Using a large database of privately securitized mortgages, we find that higher defaults concentrate in mortgage pools with concurrent CDS coverage, and within these pools the loans originated after or shortly before the start of CDS coverage have an even higher delinquency rate. The results are robust across zip code and origination quarter cohorts. Overall, we show that CDS coverage helped drive higher mortgage defaults during the financial crisis.

Focuses on a project by the American Accounting Association's Committees on Professional Examinations which evaluated the professional examinations for accountants. Objectives of the project; Methodology of the projects; Comparison of examinations and accounting curricula; Recommendations.

We build a bridge between relationship lending and transactions lending—investigating relationship effects on contract terms for credit cards, a relatively pure transactions-lending technology. Using more than 1 million accounts, we find that during normal times, consumers with relationships obtain better terms but small businesses with relationships do not. Both groups obtain improved terms during COVID-19, consistent with intertemporal smoothing—relationship borrowers obtain more favorable terms during crises, paid for by worse terms in normal times. Among other findings, CARES Act impediments to reporting consumer delinquencies to credit bureaus, designed to protect customers, reduced informational value of credit scores, penalizing safer consumers.