Organizations & Markets

This paper presents a theory of disclosure in a market where investors have heterogeneous beliefs and face short-sale constraints. Assets trade above fundamentals reflecting the value of the option to sell to more optimistic investors in the future. The initial seller has an incentive to commit to an imprecise disclosure policy, despite the negative effect this has on the fundamental value of the asset, in order to increase the potential for disagreement and hence the magnitude of the speculative premium.

This article develops a model of optimal government debt maturity in which the government cannot issue state-contingent bonds and cannot commit to fiscal policy. If the government can perfectly commit, it fully insulates the economy against government spending shocks by purchasing short-term assets and issuing long-term debt. These positions are quantitatively very large relative to GDP and do not need to be actively managed by the government. Our main result is that these conclusions are not robust to the introduction of lack of commitment.

We study an international law firm that changed its compensation plan for team leaders to address a multitasking problem: team leaders were focusing their effort on billable hours and not spending sufficient time on "leadership" activities to build the firm. Compensation was changed to provide greater incentives for the leadership activities and weaker incentives for billable hours. The effect of this change on the task allocation of the firm's team leaders is large and robust; team leaders increase their non-billable hours and shift billable hours to team members.

Ethics in business is a major topic both in the social sciences and in business itself. Anthropologists, long attendant to the intersection of ethics and practice, are particularly well suited to offer vital insights on the subject. This timely collection considers a range of ethical issues in business through the examination of anthropologically informed theory and case examples.

This new and fully updated edition of <i>International Financial Management</i> blends theory, data analysis, examples and practical case situations to equip students and business leaders with the analytical tools they need to make informed financial decisions and manage the risks that businesses face in today's competitive global environment.

Background and objectives research suggests that altering situation-specific evaluations of stress as challenging versus threatening can improve responses to stress. The aim of the current study was to explore whether cognitive, physiological and affective stress responses can be altered independent of situation-specific evaluations by changing individuals mindsets about the nature of stress in general. Using a design, we experimentally manipulated stress mindset using multi-media film clips orienting participants to either the enhancing or debilitating nature of stress.

Recent bank regulations have imposed large compliance costs on banks of all sizes, and have increased the costs of borrowing to both consumers and companies. But in this summary of his recent book, the author argues that the problems with banking system regulation go well beyond the excessive costs. Indeed, Dodd-Frank and other post-crisis regulatory reforms have failed to address the major shortcomings that produced the crisis of 2007–2009. Most importantly, excessive housing finance risk was not dealt with adequately, and is already on the rise again.