Records of 793,794 employees eligible to participate in 647 defined contribution pension plans are studied. About 71% of them choose to participate in the plans, and of the participants, 12% choose to contribute the maximum allowed, $10,500.
To study the effects of new information technologies (IT) on productivity, we have assembled a unique data set on plants in one narrowly defined industry?valve manufacturing?and analyze several plant-level mechanisms through which IT could promote productivity growth. The empirical analysis reveals three main results. First, plants that adopt new IT-enhanced equipment also shift their business strategies by producing more customized valve products.
The authors propose that individual differences in assertiveness play a critical role in perceptions about leaders. In contrast to prior work that focused on linear effects, the authors argue that individuals seen either as markedly low in assertiveness or as high in assertiveness are generally appraised as less effective leaders. Moreover, the authors claim that observers' perceptions of leaders as having too much or too little assertiveness are widespread.
We propose an analytically tractable continuous-time model of experimentation in which a risk-averse entrepreneur cannot fully diversify the idiosyncratic risk from his business investment. He makes consumption/savings and business exit decisions jointly, while learning about the unknown quality of the project over time.
We examine the predictive power of the dividend yield for forecasting future excess returns, cashflows, and interest rates. The ability of the dividend yield to predict excess returns is best visible at short horizons with the short rate as an additional regressor. At short horizons, the short rate strongly negatively predicts excess returns, while at long horizons, the predictive power of the dividend yield is weak. These results are robust in international data and are not due to lack of power.
This paper examines uncovered interest rate parity (UIRP) and the expectations hypotheses of the term structure (EHTS) at both short and long horizons. The statistical evidence against UIRP is mixed and is currency- not horizon-dependent. Economically, the deviations from UIRP are less pronounced than previously documented. The evidence against the EHTS is statistically more uniform, but, economically, actual spreads and theoretical spreads (spreads constructed under the null of the EHTS) do not behave very differently, especially at long horizons.
We investigated two types of metaphors in stock market commentary. Agent metaphors describe price trajectories as volitional actions, whereas object metaphors describe them as movements of inanimate objects. Study 1 examined the consequences of commentators? metaphors for their investor audience. Agent metaphors, compared with object metaphors and non-metaphoric descriptions, caused investors to expect price trend continuance. The remaining studies examined preconditions, the features of a price trend that evoke agent vs. object metaphors.
Profession- and job-related social events such as mixers are viewed by organizations and individuals as incubators of interpersonal ties, as arenas in which individuals can initiate new and different contacts. Theory and evidence on network dynamics, however, suggests that such outcomes may be unlikely, because past ties constrain future contacts, and because homophily inhibits contact between different types of people. We investigate whether guests at a social mixer "mix" despite these influences.
Given the cross-sectional and temporal variation in their liquidity, emerging equity markets provide an ideal setting to examine the impact of liquidity on expected returns. Our main liquidity measure is a transformation of the proportion of zero daily firm returns, averaged over the month. We find that it significantly predicts future returns, whereas alternative measures such as turnover do not.