Based on the decision to file an escape clause petition by a firm, a Poisson regression model of the macroeconomic determinants of the total number of these petitions yearly is developed and estimated. The Poisson specification conforms to the fact that the number of escape clause petitions is a non-negative integer with a skewed probability distribution. In addition, the number of potential petitioners is controlled for in the specification. The empirical results suggest that both domestic and international factors affect the decision to file an escape clause petition. The legal environment is found to be a determinant as well. Copyright 1989 by MIT Press.

Abstract ABSTRACT: We present evidence on inter-firm differences in the predictive ability of quarterly earnings data for a sample of 109 New York Stock Exchange firms. The sample consisted of large, medium, and small firms after deletion of nonseasonal and volatile growth and inconsistent strata membership firms. Although the structure of the best fitting time-series models was constant across firm-size strata, we did find significant differences in the autoregressive parameters of the Foster and Brown and Rozeff ARIMA models across firm-size strata. One-step-ahead quarterly earnings forecasts were generated by a set of best fitting time-series models. A repeated measure multivariate analysis of variance design indicated that predictive ability differed on the basis of size at the .012 level. Tests also indicated that large-and medium-size firms generated one-step-ahead forecasts that were significantly more accurate than smaller firms at the .05 level. We obtained similar predictive findings on the significance of the size-effect in a supplementary analysis of the nonseasonal and volatile growth and inconsistent strata membership firms.

education ; costs ; social policy ; trends

To what extent has the increased supply by government of certain union-like services reduced the demand for union membership and thereby contributed to the decline in trade union density? The existing empirical evidence is meager and conflicting. The puropse of our paper is to reexamine the government substitution hypothesis, specifically with respect to the relationship between government welfare spending and union density. We test the hypothesis with time-series data using three alternative models of union growth. The advantage of this approach is that it will permit an assessment of how sensitive the results are to both specification and sample period changes. In all, we find the time-series evidence of a negative welfare effect on union density to be mixed. Copyright 1989 by MIT Press.

We compare different indexation schemes in terms of their ability to facilitate forgiveness and reduce the investment disincentives associated with the large LDC debt overhang. Indexing to an endogenous variable (e.g., a country's output) has a negative moral hazard effect on investment. This problem does not arise when payments are linked to an exogenous variable such as commodity prices. Nonetheless, indexing payments to output may be useful when debtors know more about their willingness to invest than lenders. We also reach new conclusions about the desirability of default penalties under asymmetric information.

Eric L. Mais, William T. Moore, Ronald C. Rogers, A Re-Examination of Shareholder Wealth Effects of Calls of Convertible Preferred Stock, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 44, No. 5 (Dec., 1989), pp. 1401-1410