The purpose of this paper is to assess the choice between adopting a monetary base or an interest rate setting instrument to maintain financial stability. Our results suggest that the interest rate instrument is preferable, since during times of a panic or financial crisis the Central Bank automatically satisfies the increased demand for money. Thus, it prevents sharp losses in asset values and enhanced asset volatility.

I survey the male and female labor supply literatures, focusing on implications for effects of wages and taxes. For males, I describe and contrast results from three basic types of model: static models (especially those that account for nonlinear taxes), life-cycle models with savings, and life-cycle models with both savings and human capital. For women, more important distinctions are whether models include fixed costs of work, and whether they treat demographics like fertility and marriage (and human capital) as exogenous or endogenous. The literature is characterized by considerable controversy over the responsiveness of labor supply to changes in wages and taxes. At least for males, it is fair to say that most economists believe labor supply elasticities are small. But a sizable minority of studies that I examine obtain large values. Hence, there is no clear consensus on this point. In fact, a simple average of Hicks elasticities across all the studies I examine is 0.31. Several simulation studies have shown that such a value is large enough to generate large efficiency costs of income taxation. For males, I conclude that two factors drive many of the differences in results across studies. One factor is use of direct versus ratio wage measures, with studies that use the former tending to find larger elasticities. Another factor is the failure of most studies to account for human capital returns to work experience. I argue that this may lead to downward bias in elasticity estimates. In a model that includes human capital, I show how even modest elasticities—as conventionally measured—can be consistent with large efficiency costs of taxation. For women, in contrast, it is fair to say that most studies find large labor supply elasticities, especially on the participation margin. In particular, I find that estimates of “long-run” labor supply elasticities—by which I mean estimates that allow for dynamic effects of wages on fertility, marriage, education and work experience—are generally quite large. (JEL D91, J13, J16, J22, J31, H24)

This paper examines how financial reporting regulations affect, and respond to, macroeconomic cycles by exploring a positive framework in which regulators subject to political pressures respond to cyclical demands by borrowers and lenders. We establish that, as economic conditions initially decline, political power shifts toward interest groups favoring less financial transparency. What follows is a counter-cyclical increase in economic activity, as more non-reporting loans are financed, possibly coincidental with more aggregate uncertainty. During a recession, reporting quality is increased, potentially causing a crisis-like adjustment of economic activity to the cycle. We also discuss implications for event studies, bank lobbying, mark-to-market and cost of capital.

ABSTRACT Investors, regulators, academics, and researchers all emphasize the importance of financial statement comparability. However, an empirical construct of comparability is typically not specified. In addition, little evidence exists on the benefits of comparability to users. This study attempts to fill these gaps by developing a measure of financial statement comparability. Empirically, this measure is positively related to analyst following and forecast accuracy, and negatively related to analysts? dispersion in earnings forecasts. These results suggest that financial statement comparability lowers the cost of acquiring information, and increases the overall quantity and quality of information available to analysts about the firm.

We examine the impact of institutional ownership on financial reporting discretion, focusing on whether the impact varies with institutions' cost of acquiring monitoring information. Using geographic distance between the firm and the institutional investor as a proxy for the cost of acquiring monitoring information, we find that corporate managers are less likely to use financial reporting discretion in the presence of local monitoring institutions than distant monitoring institutions. We also find that the impact of monitoring institutions on financial reporting discretion varies with the costs and benefits of financial reporting discretion.

The PCAOB recently expressed concern regarding the sufficiency and effectiveness of review and supervision of audit fieldwork. For the audit review process to succeed as a quality control mechanism, any issues or questions identified by a reviewer must be adequately resolved and documented in the workpapers. If audit review fails to correct for errors/biases in the work of reviewees, there can be serious detrimental effects on audit quality and, in turn, financial statement quality. Our study extends the literature by examining the phase of the review process in which reviewees respond to (or “close”) notes/comments provided by their reviewers. Utilizing an experiment, we find that certain contextual factors (review timeliness and review note frame) influence reviewee follow-through during this critical phase. Specifically, we find that a delayed review elicits significantly lower effort levels than a timely review. Review note frame (i.e., how the reviewer phrases the rationale given for the underlying directive of a review note) significantly affects reviewee effort and performance when the review is timely. Through mediation analyses, we explore the mediating effect of effort on performance. In addition, we find that reviewer delay leads to greater over-documentation.

We evaluate the effect of child care versus maternal time inputs on child cognitive development using single mothers from the NLSY79. To deal with nonrandom selection of children into child care, we exploit the exogenous variation in welfare policy rules facing single mothers. In particular, the 1996 welfare reform and earlier state-level policy changes generated substantial increases in their work/child care use. We construct a comprehensive set of welfare policy variables and use them as instruments to estimate child cognitive ability production functions. In our baseline specification, we estimate that a year of child care reduces child test scores by 2.1%.

This paper examines the effects that bank relations have on stock repurchases in Japan. Similar to US evidence, we find that stock repurchase announcements in Japan have positive announcement period returns. Announcement returns are positively related to equity ownership by main banks, but are negatively related to nonbank debt ratios. In contrast, bank debt ratios do not have such a negative relation. Announcement returns are also negatively related to future growth opportunities, suggesting that repurchase announcements are greeted more positively by investors when repurchasing firms have lower growth opportunities. We also find that firms with high leverage are less likely to repurchase stocks, whereas firms with high equity ownership by main banks are more likely to do so. Overall, these results are consistent with the views that banks, particularly main banks, are effective monitors of agency costs and financial distress risk, and that their presence as dual stakeholders are value-enhancing.