We study the workup protocol, an important size discovery mechanism in the U.S. Treasury market. We find that workup order flow shocks explain 6%–8% of the variation of returns on benchmark notes and, across maturities, 10% of the variation of the yield curve level factor. Information related to proprietary client order flow is more likely to show up in workup trades, whereas information derived from public announcements tends to come through preworkup trades. Our findings highlight how the nature of information affects the trade-off between speed and execution price when informed traders choose between the lit and workup channels. Received May 3, 2017; Editorial decision August 1, 2018 by Editor Thierry Foucault. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. Internet Appendix tables are numbered with “IA” prefix.

Firms have greatly increased their cash holdings since the mid-1990s. These holdings have an opportunity cost; i.e., allocating firm financial capital into monetary deposits means that investment in real assets is reduced. Traditional measures of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) do not take into account these holdings of monetary assets. Given the recent large increases in these holdings in the U.S. and other advanced economies, it is expected that adding these monetary assets to the list of traditional sources of capital services will reduce the TFP of the business sector. We measure this effect for the U.S. corporate and non-corporate business sectors.

Using the Youth in Transition Survey, we estimate a Roy model with a three-dimensional latent factor structure to consider how parental valuation of education, cognitive skills, and noncognitive skills influence endogenous schooling decisions and subsequent labor market outcomes. We find that the effect of cognitive skills on adult incomes arises by increasing the likelihood of obtaining further education. Furthermore, we find that both noncognitive skills and parental valuation for education play a larger role in determining income at age 25 than cognitive skills. Last, our analysis uncovers striking differences between men and women in several of the estimated relationships.

Taking inspiration from studies of performance measurement systems and an understanding of the materiality of inscription devices, we examine how a loose network of funding agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) assemble a performance and management system out of accountability requirements. As part of the funding process, international development agencies provide NGOs with a series of planning and project reporting requirements such as budgets, operational plans, and strategic plans. Our study focusses on how these requirements' visual features enable users to perform the calculative properties of the performance system, as a whole. Specifically, we learn how a planning and performance measurement device such as the logical framework accumulates financial, chronological, and strategic modes of ordering through a patchwork of interventions to address perceived and unexpected shortcomings. We find that it is not just a matter of adding patches to improve, but also about fostering engagement with the changing assemblage of devices and development concerns. Our study is based on field research in Guatemala and El Salvador and contributes to our understanding of how governing bodies intervene in the constitution of a calculative workspace. By analysing an accounting system's relation with other devices and their modes of ordering and calculating, we learn how a workspace for providing accounts is assembled and engaged with for actors to perform a mode of governing.

Much evidence suggests that having more education leads to higher earnings in the labor market. However, there is little evidence about whether having more education causes employees to experience lower earnings volatility or shelters them from the adverse effects of recessions. We use a large British administrative panel data set to study the impact of the 1972 increase in compulsory schooling on earnings volatility over the life cycle. Our estimates suggest that men exposed to the law change subsequently had lower earnings variability and less procyclical earnings. However, there is little evidence that education affects earnings volatility of older men.

In Happiness for All? Unequal Hopes and Lives in the Pursuit of the American Dream, Carol Graham raises disquieting ideas about today’s United States. The challenge she puts forward is an important one. Here we review the intellectual case and offer additional evidence. We conclude broadly on the author’s side. Strikingly, Americans appear to be in greater pain than citizens of other countries, and most subgroups of citizens have downwardly trended happiness levels. There is, however, one bright side to an otherwise dark story. The happiness of black Americans has risen strongly since the 1970s. It is now almost equal to that of white Americans.

Recently a new type of institution has emerged, crowd funders. These entities: 1) channel capital to create intellectual property; 2) gather information on project and entrepreneur quality; and 3) gauge demand information directly from individuals to improve the efficiency of capital allocation. Data from crowd funder Kickstarter allows new insights on capital formation and the role of entrepreneurial reputation formation in the venture funding process. This funding method includes all cases where entrepreneurs try yet fail to raise funds, a feature heretofore unavailable to researchers. We find that both positive and negative reputation acquisition significantly change measures of capital raising success.

This field study examines the workings of multiple performance measurement systems (PMSs) used within and between a division and Headquarters (HQ) of a large European corporation. We explore how multiple PMSs arose within the multinational corporation. We first provide a first‐order analysis which explains how managers make sense of the multiplicity and show how an organization's PMSs may be subject to competing processes for control that result in varied systems, all seemingly functioning, but with different rationales and effects. We then provide a second‐order analysis based on a sense‐making perspective that highlights the importance of retrospective understandings of the organization's history and the importance of various legitimacy expectations to different parts of the multinational. Finally, we emphasize the role of social skill in sense‐making that enables the persistence of multiple systems and the absence of overt tensions and conflict within organizations.