Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania最新文献
Pub Date : 2011-09-30DOI: 10.1111/J.1540-6261.2012.01768.X
Alex Edmans, X. Gabaix, Tomasz Sadzik, Yuliy Sannikov
We study optimal compensation in a fully dynamic framework where the CEO consumes in multiple periods, can undo the contract by privately saving, and can temporarily inflate earnings. We obtain a simple closed-form contract that yields clear predictions for how the level and performance-sensitivity of pay varies over time and across firms. The contract can be implemented by a "Dynamic Incentive Account": the CEO's expected pay is escrowed into an account that comprises cash and the firm's equity. The account features state-dependent rebalancing to ensure its equity proportion is always sufficient to induce effort, and time-dependent vesting to deter short-termism.
{"title":"Dynamic CEO Compensation","authors":"Alex Edmans, X. Gabaix, Tomasz Sadzik, Yuliy Sannikov","doi":"10.1111/J.1540-6261.2012.01768.X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1540-6261.2012.01768.X","url":null,"abstract":"We study optimal compensation in a fully dynamic framework where the CEO consumes in multiple periods, can undo the contract by privately saving, and can temporarily inflate earnings. We obtain a simple closed-form contract that yields clear predictions for how the level and performance-sensitivity of pay varies over time and across firms. The contract can be implemented by a \"Dynamic Incentive Account\": the CEO's expected pay is escrowed into an account that comprises cash and the firm's equity. The account features state-dependent rebalancing to ensure its equity proportion is always sufficient to induce effort, and time-dependent vesting to deter short-termism.","PeriodicalId":80976,"journal":{"name":"Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania","volume":"148 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77368954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The standard assumption that asset demand increases in income and decreases in price has its origin in Arrow's classic model with one risky and one risk free asset, where both are held long, and preferences exhibit decreasing absolute and increasing relative risk aversion. However if one allows shorting of the risk free asset or decreasing relative risk aversion, the risk free asset can not only fail to be a normal good but can be a Giffen good. This behavior can occur even for members of the popular HARA utility family. More generally, Giffen behavior can occur over multiple income ranges.
{"title":"Inferior Good and Giffen Behavior for Investing and Borrowing","authors":"Felix Kubler, Larry Selden, Xiao Wei","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1952110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1952110","url":null,"abstract":"The standard assumption that asset demand increases in income and decreases in price has its origin in Arrow's classic model with one risky and one risk free asset, where both are held long, and preferences exhibit decreasing absolute and increasing relative risk aversion. However if one allows shorting of the risk free asset or decreasing relative risk aversion, the risk free asset can not only fail to be a normal good but can be a Giffen good. This behavior can occur even for members of the popular HARA utility family. More generally, Giffen behavior can occur over multiple income ranges.","PeriodicalId":80976,"journal":{"name":"Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75778387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates a potential housing bubble in Hong Kong in the 1990s. A within-city analysis is performed using a monthly panel data set on 324 large-scale housing complexes (estates) located in 17 out of 18 districts in Hong Kong. The empirical analysis focuses on crosssectional variations in home prices each month during the bubble and controls for housing price fundamentals using district-month fixed effects. I find evidence consistent with an overconfidence-driven speculation bubble. The same analysis is performed using a placebo period prior to the price upswing and no similar patterns are found. I propose media coverage and political uncertainties as potential causes of the bubble.
{"title":"The Anatomy of a Housing Bubble: Overconfidence, Media and Politics","authors":"G. W. Bucchianeri","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1877204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1877204","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates a potential housing bubble in Hong Kong in the 1990s. A within-city analysis is performed using a monthly panel data set on 324 large-scale housing complexes (estates) located in 17 out of 18 districts in Hong Kong. The empirical analysis focuses on crosssectional variations in home prices each month during the bubble and controls for housing price fundamentals using district-month fixed effects. I find evidence consistent with an overconfidence-driven speculation bubble. The same analysis is performed using a placebo period prior to the price upswing and no similar patterns are found. I propose media coverage and political uncertainties as potential causes of the bubble.","PeriodicalId":80976,"journal":{"name":"Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89682841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2011-03-01DOI: 10.1111/J.1540-6261.2011.01693.X
P. Illeditsch
I study the effects of risk and ambiguity (Knightian uncertainty) on optimal portfolios and equilibrium asset prices when investors receive information that is difficult to link to fundamentals. I show that the desire of investors to hedge ambiguity leads to portfolio inertia and excess volatility. Specifically, when news is surprising, then investors may not react to price changes although there are no transaction costs or other market frictions. Moreover, I show that small shocks to cash flow news, asset betas, or market risk premia may lead to drastic changes in the stock price and hence to excess volatility.
{"title":"Ambiguous Information, Portfolio Inertia, and Excess Volatility","authors":"P. Illeditsch","doi":"10.1111/J.1540-6261.2011.01693.X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1540-6261.2011.01693.X","url":null,"abstract":"I study the effects of risk and ambiguity (Knightian uncertainty) on optimal portfolios and equilibrium asset prices when investors receive information that is difficult to link to fundamentals. I show that the desire of investors to hedge ambiguity leads to portfolio inertia and excess volatility. Specifically, when news is surprising, then investors may not react to price changes although there are no transaction costs or other market frictions. Moreover, I show that small shocks to cash flow news, asset betas, or market risk premia may lead to drastic changes in the stock price and hence to excess volatility.","PeriodicalId":80976,"journal":{"name":"Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania","volume":"1423 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88465148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This chapter examines patterns of financial choices by a credit union’s members using transaction-level administrative data on checking, savings, and line-of-credit (LOC) accounts. We observe substantial payday loan use when cheaper sources of liquidity are available, resulting in average interest losses of about $88 over six and a half months. In addition, we find much higher levels of transaction activity by payday borrowing members than by other members, at half the average transaction dollar magnitude. These results are consistent with previous work identifying financial stress and decision-making challenges.
{"title":"Pecuniary Mistakes? Payday Borrowing by Credit Union Members","authors":"S. Carter, P. M. Skiba, Jeremy Tobacman","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1707657","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1707657","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines patterns of financial choices by a credit union’s members using transaction-level administrative data on checking, savings, and line-of-credit (LOC) accounts. We observe substantial payday loan use when cheaper sources of liquidity are available, resulting in average interest losses of about $88 over six and a half months. In addition, we find much higher levels of transaction activity by payday borrowing members than by other members, at half the average transaction dollar magnitude. These results are consistent with previous work identifying financial stress and decision-making challenges.","PeriodicalId":80976,"journal":{"name":"Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania","volume":"240 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80450223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper explores the determinants of people’s decisions to take 401(k) loans. We argue that 401(k) plans do not simply represent retirement saving, but they also provide a means of saving for precautionary purposes. We model factors that rationally would induce people to borrow from their pension plans, and we explain why people do not often use 401(k) loans to replace their more expensive credit card debt. Next we test our hypotheses using a rich dataset and show that people who are liquidity-constrained are more likely to have plan loans, while the better-off take larger loans when they do borrow. Plan characteristics such as the number of loans allowed also influence borrowing and loan size in interesting ways, while loan interest rates have only a small impact.
{"title":"Borrowing from Yourself: The Determinants of 401(K) Loan Patterns","authors":"Timothy (Jun) Lu, Olivia S. Mitchell","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1684723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1684723","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the determinants of people’s decisions to take 401(k) loans. We argue that 401(k) plans do not simply represent retirement saving, but they also provide a means of saving for precautionary purposes. We model factors that rationally would induce people to borrow from their pension plans, and we explain why people do not often use 401(k) loans to replace their more expensive credit card debt. Next we test our hypotheses using a rich dataset and show that people who are liquidity-constrained are more likely to have plan loans, while the better-off take larger loans when they do borrow. Plan characteristics such as the number of loans allowed also influence borrowing and loan size in interesting ways, while loan interest rates have only a small impact.","PeriodicalId":80976,"journal":{"name":"Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77963647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
High and rising prices in Chinese housing markets have attracted global attention, as well as the interest of the Chinese government and its regulators. Housing markets look very risky based on the stylized facts we document. Price-to-rent ratios in Beijing and seven other large markets across the country have increased from 30% to 70% since the beginning of 2007. Current price-to-rent ratios imply very low user costs of no more than 2%-3% of house value. Very high expected capital gains appear necessary to justify such low user costs of owning. Our calculations suggest that even modest declines in expected appreciation would lead to large price declines of over 40% in markets such as Beijing, absent offsetting rent increases or other countervailing factors. Price-to-income ratios also are at their highest levels ever in Beijing and select other markets. Much of the increase in prices is occurring in land values. Using data from the local land auction market in Beijing, we are able to produce a constant quality land price index for that city. Real, constant quality land values have increased by nearly 800% since the first quarter of 2003, with half that rise occurring over the past two years. State-owned enterprises controlled by the central government have played an important role in this increase, as our analysis shows they paid 27% more than other bidders for an otherwise equivalent land parcel.
{"title":"Evaluating Conditions in Major Chinese Housing Markets","authors":"Jing Wu, Joseph Gyourko, Yongheng Deng","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1717036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1717036","url":null,"abstract":"High and rising prices in Chinese housing markets have attracted global attention, as well as the interest of the Chinese government and its regulators. Housing markets look very risky based on the stylized facts we document. Price-to-rent ratios in Beijing and seven other large markets across the country have increased from 30% to 70% since the beginning of 2007. Current price-to-rent ratios imply very low user costs of no more than 2%-3% of house value. Very high expected capital gains appear necessary to justify such low user costs of owning. Our calculations suggest that even modest declines in expected appreciation would lead to large price declines of over 40% in markets such as Beijing, absent offsetting rent increases or other countervailing factors. Price-to-income ratios also are at their highest levels ever in Beijing and select other markets. Much of the increase in prices is occurring in land values. Using data from the local land auction market in Beijing, we are able to produce a constant quality land price index for that city. Real, constant quality land values have increased by nearly 800% since the first quarter of 2003, with half that rise occurring over the past two years. State-owned enterprises controlled by the central government have played an important role in this increase, as our analysis shows they paid 27% more than other bidders for an otherwise equivalent land parcel.","PeriodicalId":80976,"journal":{"name":"Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76005106","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Several empirical studies have found that extended household units do not appear to be highly altruistically linked, thereby violating the very premise of the Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis (REH). This finding has a very strong implication for the effectiveness of fiscal policies that change the allocation of resources between generations. We build a two-sided altruistic-linkage model in which private transfers are made in the presence of two types of shocks: an “observable” shock that is public information (for example, a public redistribution like debt or pay-as-you-go social security) and an “unobservable” shock that is private information (for example, individual wage innovations). Parents and children observe each other’s total income but not each other’s effort level. In the second-best solution, unobservable shocks are only partially shared, whereas, for any utility function satisfying a condition derived herein, observable shocks are fully shared. The model, therefore, can generate the low degree of risk sharing found in previous empirical studies, but REH still holds.
{"title":"Ricardian Equivalence Under Asymmetric Information","authors":"Kent A. Smetters, Shin’ichi Nishiyama","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1706214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1706214","url":null,"abstract":"Several empirical studies have found that extended household units do not appear to be highly altruistically linked, thereby violating the very premise of the Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis (REH). This finding has a very strong implication for the effectiveness of fiscal policies that change the allocation of resources between generations. We build a two-sided altruistic-linkage model in which private transfers are made in the presence of two types of shocks: an “observable” shock that is public information (for example, a public redistribution like debt or pay-as-you-go social security) and an “unobservable” shock that is private information (for example, individual wage innovations). Parents and children observe each other’s total income but not each other’s effort level. In the second-best solution, unobservable shocks are only partially shared, whereas, for any utility function satisfying a condition derived herein, observable shocks are fully shared. The model, therefore, can generate the low degree of risk sharing found in previous empirical studies, but REH still holds.","PeriodicalId":80976,"journal":{"name":"Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania","volume":"105 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80877107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Managing retirement risk has become extraordinarily difficult in this era of financial turmoil, global inter-linkages, and global population aging. It is particularly fraught since consumers must now engage in long-term contracts with themselves, employers, financial institutions, and governments, regarding the future of retirement financing. Moreover, these agreements will need to remain in force extraordinarily long, for fifty or even one hundred years into the future. This note reviews what institutions and instruments that have a successful track record in retirement risk management over such a long time horizon.
{"title":"Implications of the Financial Crisis for Long Run Retirement Security","authors":"O. Mitchell","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1539046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1539046","url":null,"abstract":"Managing retirement risk has become extraordinarily difficult in this era of financial turmoil, global inter-linkages, and global population aging. It is particularly fraught since consumers must now engage in long-term contracts with themselves, employers, financial institutions, and governments, regarding the future of retirement financing. Moreover, these agreements will need to remain in force extraordinarily long, for fifty or even one hundred years into the future. This note reviews what institutions and instruments that have a successful track record in retirement risk management over such a long time horizon.","PeriodicalId":80976,"journal":{"name":"Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76056052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Managing shipping vessel profitability is a central problem in marine transportation. We consider two commonly used types of vessels---“liners” (ships whose routes are fixed in advance) and “trampers” (ships for which future route components are selected based on available shipping jobs)---and formulate a vessel profit maximization problem as a stochastic dynamic program. For liner vessels, the profit maximization reduces to the problem of minimizing refueling costs over a given route subject to random fuel prices and limited vessel fuel capacity. Under mild assumptions about the stochastic dynamics of fuel prices at different ports, we provide a characterization of the structural properties of the optimal liner refueling policies. For trampers, the vessel profit maximization combines refueling decisions and route selection, which adds a combinatorial aspect to the problem. We characterize the optimal policy in special cases where prices are constant through time and do not differ across ports and prices are constant through time and differ across ports. The structure of the optimal policy in such special cases yields insights on the complexity of the problem and also guides the construction of heuristics for the general problem setting.
{"title":"Going Bunkers: The Joint Route Selection and Refueling Problem","authors":"Omar Besbes, Sergei V. Savin","doi":"10.1287/msom.1080.0249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.1080.0249","url":null,"abstract":"Managing shipping vessel profitability is a central problem in marine transportation. We consider two commonly used types of vessels---“liners” (ships whose routes are fixed in advance) and “trampers” (ships for which future route components are selected based on available shipping jobs)---and formulate a vessel profit maximization problem as a stochastic dynamic program. For liner vessels, the profit maximization reduces to the problem of minimizing refueling costs over a given route subject to random fuel prices and limited vessel fuel capacity. Under mild assumptions about the stochastic dynamics of fuel prices at different ports, we provide a characterization of the structural properties of the optimal liner refueling policies. For trampers, the vessel profit maximization combines refueling decisions and route selection, which adds a combinatorial aspect to the problem. We characterize the optimal policy in special cases where prices are constant through time and do not differ across ports and prices are constant through time and differ across ports. The structure of the optimal policy in such special cases yields insights on the complexity of the problem and also guides the construction of heuristics for the general problem setting.","PeriodicalId":80976,"journal":{"name":"Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76678729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Comparative labor law journal : a publication of the U.S. National Branch of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security [and] the Wharton School, and the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania