Srinivas Nippani, Pu Liu, Craig T. Schulman, Are Treasury Securities Free of Default?, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 36, No. 2, Special Issue on International Corporate Governance (Jun., 2001), pp. 251-265

We examine the optimal design of contracts when an agent is privately informed about his wealth, his ability, and his effort supply. We find that the agent's wealth and ability act as perfect complements in determining the power of the incentive scheme under which he operates. Only if his ability and his wealth both increase can an agent be assured of operating under a more powerful scheme. Consequently, severe under-utilization of wealth and ability arise in equilibrium.

Much recent monetary policy analysis has featured stochastic simulations with small structural macroeconomic models that include: a spending vs. saving ( IS') sector; a price-adjustment sector; and an interest rate policy rule. The first two are frequently specified so as to reflect optimizing behavior; policy may or may not be specified as optimizing depending on the study's objectives. Some leading issues concern modifications to simple quantitative optimizing models that are needed to generate realistic degrees of persistence in inflation and output-gap variables. A major policy issue is whether it is desirable for monetary policy to respond strongly to the output gap. The paper argues that the latter is unobservable and considers the implications of using a trend-type measure while the true concept is of a type more in keeping with basic theory. In such circumstances, highly undesirable consequences are likely to ensue if policy responds strongly to the measured gap.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Child disability is an important phenomenon. Government figures indicate around 6.0 % of children were considered disabled in the early 1990s (John McNeil, 1993). After an era of relative stability, child disability rates have grown over the past decade. Surprisingly little is known about the economic effects of children’s health problems. Children with impaired health

This paper uses intraday data from the interdealer government bond market to investigate the effects of scheduled macroeconomic announcements on prices, trading volume, and bid-ask spreads. We find that 17 public news releases, as measured by the surprise in the announced quantity, have a significant impact on the price of at least one of the following instruments: a three-month bill, a two-year note, a 10-year note, and a 30-year bond. These effects vary significantly according to maturity. Public news can explain a substantial fraction of price volatility in the aftermath of announcements, and the adjustment to news generally occurs within one minute after the announcement. We document significant and persistent increases in volatility and trading volume after the announcements. Bid-ask spreads, on the other hand, widen at the time of the announcements, but then revert to normal values after five to 15 minutes. The effects that we document have relevant implications for yield curve modeling and for the microstructure of bond markets. I.

There has been a dramatic change in the division of responsibility between the state and the private sector for the delivery of public goods and services in recent years with an increasing trend toward contracting out to the private sector and “public-private partnerships.” This paper analyzes how ownership matters in public good provision. We show that if contracts are incomplete then the ownership of a public good should lie with a party that values the benefits generated by it relatively more. This is true regardless of whether this party is also the key investor, or other aspects of the technology.

Existing research indicates that firms with high accruals are more likely to experience future earnings problems, but that investors' expectations, as reflected in stock prices, do not appear to anticipate these problems. In this paper, we directly examine the published opinions of two types of professional investor intermediaries to see if they provide investors with information concerning the future earnings problems experienced by firms with high accruals. First, we examine the earnings forecasts of sell‐side analysts. We show that analysts' earnings forecasts do not incorporate the predictable future earnings declines associated with high accruals. Second, we examine the behavior of independent auditors. We find no evidence that auditors signal the future earnings problems associated with high accruals through either their audit opinions or through auditor changes. Overall, our evidence indicates that analysts and auditors do not alert investors to the future earnings problems associated with high accruals, thus corroborating previous findings that investors do not appear to anticipate these problems.

We study asset prices in an economy where investors derive direct utility not only from consumption but also from fluctuations in the value of their financial wealth. They are loss averse over these fluctuations, and the degree of loss aversion depends on their prior investment performance. We find that our framework can help explain the high mean, excess volatility, and predictability of stock returns, as well as their low correlation with consumption growth. The design of our model is influenced by prospect theory and by experimental evidence on how prior outcomes affect risky choice.

The fiscal theory of price determination suggests that if primary surpluses evolve independently of government debt, the equilibrium price level “jumps” to assure fiscal solvency. In this non-Ricardian regime, fiscal policy—not monetary policy—provides the nominal anchor. Alternatively, in a Ricardian regime, primary surpluses are expected to respond to debt in a way that assures fiscal solvency, and the price level is determined in conventional ways. This paper argues that Ricardian regimes are as theoretically plausible as non-Ricardian regimes, and provide a more plausible interpretation of certain aspects of the postwar U.S. data than do non-Ricardian regimes.

We examine the effect of air quality regulation on productivity in some of the most heavily regulated manufacturing plants in the United States, the oil refineries of the Los Angeles (South Coast) Air Basin. We use direct measures of local air pollution regulation to estimate their effects on abatement investment. Refineries not subject to these regulations are used as a comparison group. We study a period of sharply increased regulation between 1979 and 1992. Initial compliance with each regulation cost $3 million per plant and a further $5 million to comply with increased stringency. We construct measures of total factor productivity using Census of Manufacturers output and materials data that report physical quantities of inputs and outputs for the entire population of refineries. Despite high costs associated with the local regulations, productivity in the Los Angeles Air Basin refineries rose sharply between 1987 and 1992, which was a period of decreased refinery productivity in other regions. We conclude that abatement cost measures may grossly overstate the economic cost of environmental regulation as abatement can increase productivity.