This study uses corporate tax return data to examine the evolution of firms' financial structure and performance after leveraged buyouts (LBOs) for a comprehensive sample of 317 LBOs taking place between 1995 and 2007. We find little evidence of operating improvements subsequent to an LBO, although consistent with prior studies, we do observe operating improvements in the set of LBO firms that have public financial statements. We also find that firms do not reduce leverage after LBOs, even if they generate excess cash flow. Our results suggest that effecting a sustained change in capital structure is a conscious objective of the LBO structure.

This article provides evidence that schools can influence parents' involvement in education, and this has causal effects on pupils' behaviour. Furthermore, it shows how the impact of more involved parents on their children is amplified at the class level by peer group interaction. We build on a large-scale controlled experiment run in a French deprived educational district, where parents of middle-school children were invited to participate in a simple program of parent–school meetings on how to get better involved in their children's education. At the end of the school year, we find that treated families have increased their school-and home-based involvement activities. In turn, pupils of treatment classes have developed more positive behaviour and attitudes in school, notably in terms of truancy and disciplinary sanctions (with effects-size around 15% of a standard deviation). However, test scores did not improve under the intervention. Our results suggest that parents are an input for schooling policies and it is possible to influence important aspects of the schooling process at low cost.

This paper considers the problem of testing a finite number of moment inequalities. We propose a two-step approach. In the first step, a confidence region for the moments is constructed. In the second step, this set is used to provide information about which moments are “negative.” A Bonferonni-type correction is used to account for the fact that with some probability the moments may not lie in the confidence region. It is shown that the test controls size uniformly over a large class of distributions for the observed data. An important feature of the proposal is that it remains computationally feasible, even when the number of moments is large. The finite-sample properties of the procedure are examined via a simulation study, which demonstrates, among other things, that the proposal remains competitive with existing procedures while being computationally more attractive.

Differences in firm-level productivity explain international activities of non-financial firms quite well. We test whether differences in bank productivity determine international activities of banks. Based on a dataset that allows tracking banks across countries and across different modes of foreign entry, we model the ordered probability of maintaining a commercial presence abroad and the volume of banks’ international assets empirically. Our research has three main findings. First, more productive banks are more likely to enter foreign markets in increasingly complex modes. Second, more productive banks also hold larger volumes of foreign assets. Third, higher risk aversion renders entry less likely, but it increases the volume of foreign activities conditional upon entry.

We investigate the impact of the Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) Act on the cost of debt through its effect on the reliability of financial reporting. Using Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads and a structural CDS pricing model, we calibrate a firm-level corporate opacity parameter in the pre- and post-SOX periods. Our analysis shows that corporate opacity and the cost of debt decrease significantly after SOX. The median firm in our sample experiences an 18bp reduction on its five-year CDS spread as a result of lower opacity following SOX, amounting to total annual savings of $ 844million for the 252 firms in our sample. Furthermore, the reduction in opacity tends to be larger for firms that in the pre-SOX period have lower accrual quality, less conservative earnings, lower number of independent directors, lower S& P Transparency and Disclosure ratings, and are more likely to benefit from SOX-compliance according to Chhaochharia and Grinstein’s (2007) criteria.

This paper studies pension fund design in the context of investment in the debt and equity of a firm. We employ a general equilibrium framework to demonstrate that: (i) the asset location ‘puzzle’ is purely a partial equilibrium phenomenon, conceived in a risk neutral setting, that disappears with the introduction of sufficient risk aversion; (ii) the inability of policy makers to manage an economy with multiple firms yields a mixed equilibrium, where bonds are observed in both taxable and tax-deferred accounts; and (iii) the Pareto-efficient pension plan comprises of a defined benefit plan.

We examine whether the decision to participate in the stock market and other related portfolio decisions are influenced by income hedging motives. Economic theory predicts that the market participation propensity should increase as the correlation between income growth and stock market returns decreases. Surprisingly, empirical studies find limited support for the income hedging motive. Using a rich, unique Dutch data set and the National Longitudinal Survey of the Youth (NLSY) from the United States, we show that when the income-return correlation is low, individuals exhibit a greater propensity to participate in the market and allocate a larger proportion of their wealth to risky assets. Even when the income risk is high, individuals exhibit a higher propensity to participate in the market when the hedging potential is high. These findings suggest that income hedging is an important determinant of stock market participation and asset allocation decisions.

I consider economically sustainable online postsecondary education, including massive open online courses (MOOCs). The analysis suggests that MOOCs will be financially sustainable substitutes for some non-selective postsecondary education, but there are substantial risks. The analysis suggests that MOOCs will be financially sustainable substitutes for only a small share of highly selective postsecondary education (HSPE) and are likely to collapse the economic model that allows HSPE institutions to invest in advanced education and research. I outline a non-MOOC model of online education that may allow HSPE institutions to sustain their distinctive activities and to reach a larger number of students.

This paper studies inference in models that are identified by moment restrictions. We show how instability of the moments can be used constructively to improve the identification of structural parameters that are stable over time. A leading example is macroeconomic models that are immune to the well-known (Lucas (1976)) critique in the face of policy regime shifts. This insight is used to develop novel econometric methods that extend the widely used generalized method of moments (GMM). The proposed methods yield improved inference on the parameters of the new Keynesian Phillips curve.

Using rich data linking federal cases from arrest through to sentencing, we find that initial case and defendant characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain most of the large raw racial disparity in federal sentences, but significant gaps remain. Across the distribution, blacks receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than those of comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Most of this disparity can be explained by prosecutors’ initial charging decisions, particularly the filing of charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Ceteris paribus, the odds of black arrestees facing such a charge are 1.75 times higher than those of white arrestees