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Unexplored Dimensions of Discrimination. Tito Boeri, Eleonora Patacchini and Giovanni Peri (eds). Oxford University Press. 2015.
What mechanisms serve to maintain the gender pay gap and other forms of discrimination in the labour market? This book provides a comprehensive, empirically-driven interrogation of various facets of discrimination through data obtained from the USA, Spain and Italy. Ria Ivandic welcomes it for opening […]
As the banking crisis of 2008 erupted, policymakers and economists alike asked: How different is this crisis from previous ones? The United States — perhaps the epicenter of the 2008 crisis — had not been afflicted with a major banking crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, rendering the post-crisis outlook particularly uncertain.
Yet, prior to the 1930’s, banking […]
Although companies are increasingly under social and legislative pressures to increase female representation in their boardrooms, research is far from conclusive with regards to the economic consequence of the increase in boardroom gender diversity.
An often-cited notion is that female directors may discourage risky firm policies. For example, Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and former Finance […]
Technology and finance have always gone together. So what’s new this time around? Virtual currencies are part of a broader tech revolution that is driving fundamental change in the global economy.
While the money is virtual, the rewards and the risks are very real. It boils down to this: how best to encourage financial innovation while regulating to protect consumers […]
Over the last two decades, an increasing number of companies have chosen to register or establish subsidiaries in offshore financial centres. OFCs are characterized by low taxation, flexible regulations, and secrecy policies (see Fig 1 for the list of OFCs, ranked by Offshore Attitude Index). Many companies with subsidiaries offshore are market icons, such as Google Inc., Apple Inc., […]
Despite the important role professional money managers play in financial markets, and decades of academic study, relatively little is known about how they generate investment ideas. Some choices are likely driven by information gathered through connections to particular firms. Previous research has shown that managers invest in companies headquartered nearby and in companies to which they are linked through […]
Despite the best efforts of software developers, we continue to discover mistakes in IT products. Often these mistakes are security vulnerabilities that, unfortunately, attackers can exploit to steal information or to disrupt operations. What should we do when these mistakes are found?
Ideally, we could keep these mistakes secret until they are corrected and all the users have installed the […]
Recent research has found that advertising has an important impact on the liquidity and breadth of ownership of stocks. This is intriguing as advertising is intended to increase the awareness of a firm’s products rather than its securities. Nevertheless, there appears to be a spillover effect. In a recent paper, I start by providing evidence of the spillover effect […]
Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-Destruction. Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg. Cambridge University Press. 2015.
Climate policies are rooted in the commonplace assumption that we can have economic growth without causing dangerous climate change. From this perspective, it is misguided to think of climate change as either a right-wing or left-wing issue — climate change can be […]
The US healthcare delivery system is famously inefficient, but the causes of its inefficiency are poorly understood. One widely discussed potential source of inefficiency is fragmented care delivery. Fragmentation occurs when health care delivery is spread across an excessively large number of weakly coordinated providers, leading to high costs and low quality. These inefficiencies are most apparent for patients […]
Should you be spending time at work interacting with your colleagues? In my recent working paper “Learning Spillovers in the Firm,” I show that the answer to this question is yes. Specifically, I show that learning from more educated colleagues is an important determinant of wage growth.
To show this, I first put together a unique data set, matching all Swedish workers […]
Every so often we have an event that steals the headlines for what it was not about and such was the case for Christine Lagarde’s four-day visit to Nigeria in January 2016. The IMF Managing Director sought to disabuse widespread speculation that Africa’s largest economy ($ 500.0 billion in GDP size) was out to secure bailout in view of […]
McKinsey reveals in its annual Women Matter reports that even companies doing all the “right things” to achieve gender diversity get disappointing results. The reports blame company cultures that fail to address underlying “mindsets,” which are “invisible, unconscious, and in the way.” McKinsey correctly identifies the cause, unconscious ways of thinking – or gender bias. To achieve and sustain gender […]
The European Union’s Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) defines personal data as any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person or data subject. Personal data can be viewed as an economic asset generated by the identities and behaviours of individuals which is traded in exchange for higher quality services and products. The amount of personal data stored is […]
There is an unusually high concentration of gay or lesbian workers in certain occupations. For example, both gay men and lesbians and are overrepresented in psychology, law, social work, and university teaching. And there are real occupational patterns behind some popular stereotypes, from the gay flight attendant to the lesbian truck driver.
Where does this kind of occupational segregation come […]
Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism. Judy Wajcman. The University of Chicago Press. 2015.
The Apple Watch makes its commercial debut today. Prices start at US $349 and rise sharply up to an eye-watering $10,000+ for a solid gold edition. Like the iPhone was not the first smartphone and the iPad was not the first tablet, the […]
2015 turned out to be a good year for Compton rap artist Kendrick Lamar. His album To Pimp a Butterfly debuted at the top of the charts, sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was nominated for Album of the Year at the 58th Grammy Awards. If critical acclaim and commercial success weren’t enough, President Obama declared one of the album’s […]
Contributing to nine percent of British business, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are considered to be the engine of the economic growth and are critical to rebuilding the British economy from the recent financial crisis. However, they are also particularly vulnerable to a volatile economic environment and more likely to experience churn even in a stable economy. In response […]
We examine the persistence and economic consequences of variations in reporting style across audit partners in individual engagements. Based on an analysis of audits performed over a six-year period by the Swedish subsidiaries of the Big 4 accounting firms (Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PwC), we find that:
aggressive or conservative reporting is associated with the particular engagement partners […]
In my 35 years as an executive coach, I have seen some of the world’s most powerful leaders struggle with changing their behaviour. I have come to believe that no one, no matter how determined or passionate, can do it without structure. You might wake up every morning sure that you will spend your day listening better, being more […]
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