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This paper investigates the psychological effects from stock market returns. Using an FBI database of over 55 million daily reported crime incidents across the United States, crime is proposed as a measure of psychological well-being. The evidence suggests that stock returns affect the well-being of not only investors but also noninvestors. Specifically, a contemporaneous negative (positive) relationship between daily stock market returns and violent crime rates is found for investors (noninvestors). A similar relationship is also found between local earnings surprises and violent crime. The contrasting relationships for investors and noninvestors suggests that relative wealth may influence well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a large literature on earnings and income volatility in labor economics, household finance, and macroeconomics. One strand of that literature has studied whether individual earnings volatility has risen or fallen in the United States over the last several decades. There are strong disagreements in the empirical literature on this important question, with some studies showing upward trends, some showing downward trends, and some showing no trends. Some studies have suggested that the differences are the result of using flawed survey data instead of more accurate administrative data. This article summarizes the results of a project attempting to reconcile these findings with four different datasets and six different data series—three survey and three administrative data series, including two which match survey respondent data to their administrative data. Using common specifications, measures of volatility, and other treatments of the data, four of the six data series show a lack of any significant long-term trend in male earnings volatility over the last 20-to-30+ years when differences across the datasets are properly accounted for. A fifth data series (the PSID) shows a positive net trend but small in magnitude. A sixth, administrative, dataset, available only since 1998, shows no net trend 1998–2011 and only a small decline thereafter. Many of the remaining differences across data series can be explained by differences in their cross-sectional distribution of earnings, particularly differences in the size of the lower tail. We conclude that the datasets we have analyzed, which include many of the most important available, show little evidence of any significant trend in male earnings volatility since the mid-1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper finds that capital and labor incomes in the United States have become more closely associated since the 1980s. This has contributed to the well-known increase in the top 1% share of total income, exacerbating rising inequality in capital incomes and earnings. We show that the trend in the association is U-shaped as the recent increase contrasts with a tendency toward a weakening association until the 1980s. The paper, using data derived from tax records, studies the asymmetries in the association and tests for robustness to alternative income definitions, including the role of income from closely held businesses at the top. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the potential long‐run effects of large‐scale unemployment during the COVID‐19 crisis in the labour market on vulnerable job losers and labour market entrants in the United States. The paper begins by contrasting measures of the scale of job loss during the crisis. These measures are paired with estimates from past recessions indicating that the costs of job loss and unemployment can reduce workers' earnings and raise their mortality for several decades. Focusing only on a subset of vulnerable job losers, the potential lifetime earnings losses from job loss related to the COVID‐19 pandemic are predicted to be up to $2 trillion. Related losses in employment could imply a lasting reduction in the overall employment–population ratio. For these workers, losses in potential life years could be up to 24 million. Even at the low range, the resulting estimates are substantially larger than losses in potential life years from deaths directly due to COVID‐19. New labour market entrants are at risk to suffer long‐term losses in earnings and mortality as well. Based partly on experiences in other countries, the paper discusses potential reforms to short‐time compensation programmes and unemployment insurance, which could help limit the short‐ and long‐term harm from layoffs going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benchmark replacement rates are a key parameter for retirement plans. Often, a pension level of around 70 per cent of net income during working life is considered as an adequate choice. However, this heuristic value is left unjustified, and data‐based benchmarks are limited. In this paper, we propose to estimate a pension‐level benchmark based on keeping the living standard achieved during working life constant after retirement. Applying parametric, semi‐parametric and non‐parametric estimation methods to data from the United States and Germany, we find that a net pension income of around 100 per cent of the last net working‐life income, plus or minus 10 percentage points, is required to keep the living standard constant. However, we also find that the outcome of the exercise can depend on how 'living standards' are measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to review trends in labor relations and reconsider the value of bringing the works council model to the United States. Design/methodology/approach: A review of current trends in labor relations and strike activity and an examination of the constraints of the National Labor Relations Act to the implementation of works councils. Findings: The works council model could provide a robust means for managing labor relations tensions as well as emerging concerns of the next generation of employees. Originality/value: While there have been discussions of the legal limitations on adopting work councils in the United States, there has been no recent discussion of them in the context of improving labor relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Companies are interested in maximizing profit, which happens at the individual product level. We introduce a two-stage model which uses both simulation and optimization to maximize the profit of an individual product. We utilize the concept of consumer margin, benefits minus price, as a way for consumers to determine which product within a competitive set to purchase (if any). The purpose of the stage 1 model is to find the consumer margins and standard deviation that will give the most accurate model. Next, the consumer margins and standard deviation are used in the stage 2 model to find the price that will maximize the profit of a given product. The model is illustrated through a case study involving the top 10 selling sedans in the United States in 2019. In short, this paper will help companies to maximize the profit of a given product through using this two-stage simulation–optimization model to find the optimal price for the product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the reliability of financial reporting when the credibility of the manager, represented by his misreporting propensity, is unknown. We show that credibility concerns affect the time-series of reported earnings, book values, and stock prices in ways that seem consistent with empirical evidence. When investors are uncertain about the credibility of the reporting process, earnings response coefficients, as well as market-to-book values (MTB), are random and time-varying; relatively low MTB reflect poor credibility of financial reporting; stock prices are s-shaped in earnings surprises and relatively insensitive to bad news. Finally, when the manager is more likely to have reporting discretion, discretionary accruals tend to be larger and more volatile. We estimate the model using U.S. earnings announcement data during 2002-2012 and find that the probability of misreporting is 7 percent. A counterfactual analysis reveals that ignoring the possibility of misreporting leads to overestimation of the mean (3.5 percent), volatility (13 percent), and persistence of earnings (17 percent). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the certification of companies as B Corps from 2007 through 2016, the first 10 years of certification. B Corps are for profit companies that promise to "Be a Force for Good" in our society. Over 2600 companies in over 50 countries are certified as B Corps, responding to demands for higher accountability, ethical behavior, and contributions to their environment and community. We focus here only on B Corps in the United States and analyze a state-level database we have developed of 851 companies that became certified in the first 10 years of certification, between 2007 and 2016. In the paper we ask: What conditions in the macro environment facilitate the spread of B Corps certification? This paper uses the framework of resource dependence theory and institutional theory to explore the diffusion of certification. We hypothesize that institutional, economic, and political resources in the external environment provide conditions that support B Corps certification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patent trolls, the epitome of greed, thoughtlessness, and unethical behavior, are impacting the survival, growth, and development of printing and related companies. The printing industry in the United States has been in a state of decline during the past 20 years (from approximately 55,000 companies to fewer than 30,000 today). Traditionally a low profit industry, printing companies and their suppliers are trying to find ways of increasing products and services focusing on digital technologies and related applications in order to increase profits and to save jobs. Patent trolls are inhibiting such growth and causing companies to consider closing, downsizing, and laying off employees because they cannot afford to absorb the huge fees being demanded by the trolls while also maintaining or growing business. The trolls are equivalent to extortionists with no sense of business morals and ethics or of the nation's push to grow companies, produce jobs, and keep, or bring back, as much business as possible to the United States. The hypothesis of this study is companies faced with the threat of patent troll litigation should not settle by paying license fees, but should partner in pooling resources to pursue invalidation of the patents in question. Such challenges are often won, and between 35% and 85% of patents being invalidated has been reported. The research methods used in this study include a review of the related literature, a case study of three patents of questionable validity claimed by two patent troll plaintiffs to be infringed upon by printing industry companies, and a survey of present defendants and those who were already sued and opted to settle out of fear and intimidation. This study concludes printing and related companies sued by patent trolls should not settle by paying the fees requested and should not enter into a single company litigation that can cost more than a settlement. Giving in to patent troll license fees or other demands will exacerbate the problem and encourage additional intimidating and threatening lawsuits in an attempt to extort funds from companies doing honest and legal business, working hard to survive and grow, and provide employment opportunities for skilled staff members. A solution is bringing together all of the companies named in a suit that has been filed by patent trolls and to work as a unit in bringing the matter of alleged patent infringements before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for invalidity hearings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on the consequences of increased disclosure regulation by investigating the effects of expedited reporting requirements of Form 4 filings, mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), on the market response to earnings announcements. We first confirm that SOX reduces opportunistic insider trading without deterring insider trading due to diversification needs, and that post-SOX, opportunistic insider trades more strongly reveal upcoming earnings surprises. We then document that, at the earnings announcement date, earnings response coefficients (ERCs) are lower when earnings are preceded by opportunistic insider trades. We conclude that accelerated disclosures of insider transactions mandated by SOX lend to more informationally efficient prices prior to earnings announcements. Our findings stand as one piece of evidence suggesting positive externalities from recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure regulation and add to the scarce evidence on the consequences of changes in Form 4 filing requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies airlines' competitive behavior in the U.S. airline industry, focusing on 2014 data. I use a structural model to estimate demand and test several supply models, including noncooperative competition, perfect collusion, and tacit coordination. There are three different types of tacit coordination, formed by multimarket contact, common ownership, and codeshare agreement, respectively. I find that the model that fits the data best is a tacit coordination model with coalitions between airlines with at least 30% of their markets overlapped and using price rather than quantity as the strategic variable. I further analyze the consumer welfare loss, each carrier's profit gains, and changes in market variables due to the tacit coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the motivation to manage earnings in US mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by investigating whether the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley act (SOX) has affected pre-merger earnings management.Design/methodology/approach The authors used a sample of over 700 completed M&As of US public firms during 1999-2008. Using quarterly reports, they tracked down earnings management during the four quarters preceding the deal and consequently drew inferences about the implications of SOX on interim reporting practices.Findings We report evidence that in the post-SOX era, non-cash acquirers begin pre-merger upwards earnings management in an earlier quarter than in the pre-SOX era. Further, our evidence indicates that in the quarters prior to the takeover, targets engage in more aggressive upwards earnings management in the post-SOX era.Originality/value Unlike what is anticipated regarding earnings management practices after SOX, the study reveals significant evidence of upward earnings management by firms engaging in M&A in post-SOX era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We surveyed 1,638 sales executives across 40 countries regarding their companies' likelihood of asking sales to perform real earnings management (REM) actions when earnings pressure exists. Using this information, which we refer to as companies' REM propensities, we study how company characteristics and environmental conditions relate to the responses received. The use of cash-flow incentives for sales personnel and the distribution of interfunctional power in favor of finance rather than sales are both associated with companies' REM propensities. In addition, we show that sales executives preemptively change their behaviors in anticipation of top management's REM requests. Sales executives working for public companies and companies in the United States reported higher levels of REM propensity. The data also support an association between REM propensity and finance-sales conflict. These findings and others are compared and contrasted with existing empirical and survey-based research on REM throughout the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This paper examines the hospital management practices of manipulating financial earnings within the bounds of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).Study Design: We conduct regression analyses that relate earnings management to hospital characteristics to assess the economic determinants of hospital earnings management behavior.Method and Data: From the CMS Cost Reports we collected hospital financial data of all U.S. hospitals that request reimbursement from the federal government for treating Medicare patients, and regress discretionary accruals on hospital size, profitability, asset liquidity, operating efficiency, labor cost, and ownership.Results: Hospitals with higher profit margin, current ratio, working capital, days of patient receivables outstanding and total wage are associated with more earnings management, whereas those with larger size and higher debt level, asset turnover, days cash on hand, fixed asset age are associated with lower level of earnings manipulation. Additionally, managers of non-profit hospitals are more likely to undertake some form of window-dressing by manipulating accounting accruals without changing business models or pricing strategies than their public hospital counterparts.Conclusions: We provide direct evidence of the use of discretionary accruals to manage financial earnings among U.S. hospitals and the finding has profound policy implications in terms of assessing the pervasiveness of accounting manipulation and the overall integrity of financial reporting in this very special public and quasi-public service sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide new evidence on the cyclicality of employers' real labor costs using BLS establishment job data for the 1982-2018 period. Average straight-time wages have become countercyclical since the financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession. So have benefit expenditures and overall labor costs, as well as major benefit expenditures, including health insurance and Social Security. Consistent with prior literature, we find that total earnings--the sum of straight-time wages, bonuses, and overtime earnings--were procyclical before 2008; even earnings have become countercyclical since then. The increasing countercyclicality of labor costs is largely attributable to periods with below-trend GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research suggests that loss firms are valued based on their abandonment/adaptation option values, while profit firms are valued as going concerns. However, conservative accounting treatment of expensing of R&D leads many R&D-intensive firms to report losses even though they are not in financial distress. In this paper we investigate the difference in valuation of profit and loss firms that invest in intangibles, either through internal development (R&D) or purchases. The accounting treatment for internally developed intangibles is conservative in that US GAAP requires immediate expensing. Yet, it allows recognition of purchased intangibles. We find that in valuation of firms with high recognized-intangible assets, book value has more prominence in loss firms than profit firms, while that is not the case for firms with high R&D expenditures. This suggests that their abandonment/adaptation option explains the difference in valuation between profit and loss firms with high recognized-intangibles, while conservative accounting explains the valuation difference between profit and loss firms with high R&D intensity. This result suggests that recognition of intangibles in financial statements might mitigate the conservative bias in accounting numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the complete history of regular quarterly and annual filings by U.S. corporations, we show that changes to the language and construction of financial reports have strong implications for firms' future returns and operations. A portfolio that shorts "changers" and buys "nonchangers" earns up to 188 basis points per month in alpha (over 22% per year) in the future. Moreover, changes to 10‐Ks predict future earnings, profitability, future news announcements, and even future firm‐level bankruptcies. Unlike typical underreaction patterns, we find no announcement effect, suggesting that investors are inattentive to these simple changes across the universe of public firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluate the robustness of momentum returns in the US stock market over the period 1965-2012. We find that momentum profits have become insignificant since the late 1990s. Investigations of momentum profits in high and low volatility months address the concerns about unprecedented levels of market volatility in this period rendering momentum strategy unprofitable. Momentum profits remain insignificant in tests designed to control for seasonality, up or down market conditions, firm size and liquidity. Past returns, can no longer explain the cross-sectional variation in stock returns, even following up markets. Investigation of post holding period returns of momentum portfolios and risk adjusted buy and hold returns of stocks in momentum suggests that investors possibly recognize that momentum strategy is profitable and trade in ways that arbitrage away such profits. These findings are partially consistent with Schwert (Handbook of the economics of finance. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2003) that documents two primary reasons for the disappearance of an anomaly in the behavior of asset prices, first, sample selection bias, and second, uncovering of anomaly by investors who trade in the assets to arbitrage it away. In further analyses we find evidence that suggest two other possible explanations for the declining momentum profits, besides uncovering of the anomaly by investors, that involve decline in the risk premium on a macroeconomic factor, growth rate in industrial production in particular and relative improvement in market efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether working long hours alters the motherhood earnings penalty in the context of the United States. The author uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979–2014) to model the annual earnings penalty mothers incur per child in the United States. The results support that working long hours (50+ hours per week) reduces the negative effect of motherhood on earnings for white women. Once we control for human capital and labour supply, however, there is no difference in the effect of children on earnings between full-time workers and overworkers. For Black full-time workers and overworkers, having an additional child has little effect on earnings. The findings suggest that although overwork appears to attenuate the earnings penalty for white mothers, white mothers who work long hours exhibit a smaller penalty because they already have high levels of human capital and supply a great amount of labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The longstanding concerted attacks on unions from multiple fronts in the United States have threatened to undermine labour's institutional security. Though much has been written on the nature and scope of labour's declining membership, less research exists on unions' financial state. We have addressed this void in several ways through an analysis of the finances of 53 major national unions in the United States over the years between 2006 and 2019. Our study has reported on the financial resources and performance of these 53 national unions on aggregated and disaggregated bases. Building from relevant theory, we have analysed an exploratory model to identify the determinants of variation in union financial resources and performance. We have shown that the unions' net worth over the 2006–2019 span deteriorated, though, in aggregation, their member‐based income grew. The unions have maintained high levels of liquidity and resilience in their capacity to fund their operating budgets. Business Income has fallen as a share of overall net revenues. Disaggregated data have shown vast variation in financial resources and performance across unions and over time. Multivariate analyses suggest differences correlated with selected organizational and environmental factors, such as union density, earnings and membership levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transfer pricing is a frequently discussed but often misunderstood aspect of international business. This article describes what it is, its legitimate functions in accounting for international intra-firm transactions, and its use by corporations for tax optimization. However, there may be mitigating factors that make efforts to optimize taxes more apparent than real. The issues of transfer pricing require sophisticated economic analysis for understanding and resolution, particularly as they relate to the internal and external pricing environment faced by a firm and the principles of profit allocation among different parts of a firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article explores several meanings of a regulatory preference for government inaction. It explains the rise to dominance of this inaction preference in the United States and its distorting influence on the perception and understanding of regulation. Specifically, the Article demonstrates how basic terms in regulation, such as 'government failure,' 'regulatory capture,' and 'deregulation,' acquired misleading connotations suggesting that government inaction is always superior to government action. The Article further explains how, through government inaction, the U.S. legal system accommodates rent extraction - the profitable exploitation of market imperfections and favorable laws. Several developments in recent decades have considerably improved the capacity of very small groups in society to collect rents, namely, use talent and positional advantages to gain increasing levels of earnings. The Article argues that the parallel rise of the inaction preference has contributed to this trend, primarily because the availability of rent extraction opportunities draws talent that utilizes them with growing effectiveness. The purpose of the Article is to clarify several aspects of the relationships between regulation and rent extraction or, more precisely, to emphasize that government inaction may entail undesirable income effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This corporate governance essay seeks to investigate whether business ethics are a hindrance or necessity for corporate profitability? The research analyzes the antagonistic views dividing the world of business ethics, using GLS panel analysis of 943 listed US firms (2005 -2009). Corporate governance is divided into good and questionable governance; their impact, along with the board of directors' compensation is regressed on pretax income. The results become clearer when controlling for trends in the data, although the model weakens. The results empirically strengthen the arguments that questionable corporate governance has a significant and negative effect on the profitability of the firm; questionable governance hinders profitability. Good corporate governance has a positive but insignificant effect on profitability. The board of directors' compensation has a significant positive effect on profitability. This study extends the agency theory by providing an avenue for dividing governance into good (GCG) and questionable corporate governance (QCG) and empirical examining their effect on corporate profitability; the study coins a new term Questionable Corporate Governance. The research provides empirical results that questionable corporate governance hampers profitability; as a policy, directors should try to marginalize its use. The research empirically reinforces the belief that firms reap the consequences of the ethics they pursue, thus contributing to the literature on the business ethics and profitability schism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses research regarding how companies can optimize a menu of multiformat subscription plans for advertising (ad)-supported mass media platforms as of 2017, and it mentions changes involving media content distribution, as well as profit-maximizing menus, business models, and the U.S. newspaper industry advertising revenue. Business profit management and consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) are examined, along with print and digital advertising.

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the Great Depression of the 1930s were triggered by the collapse of asset-price bubbles. However, preexisting structural imbalances in the US economy were the reason why the burst of speculative bubbles induced a general economic collapse. This article argues that the imbalance created by the combination of stagnant labor earnings and surging corporate profits not only played a leading role in the run-up to the downturns but also was chiefly responsible for the slow recoveries. On the one hand, the relative stagnation of labor income represented a key factor behind rising income inequality and a potential drag on consumption which was temporarily alleviated by credit expansion; hence, the rising household debt levels eventually became unsustainable. On the other hand, rising corporate profits created an overhang of idle money, eager to lend itself to speculative ventures, which played a key role in fueling the stock market bubble of the 1920s and the housing bubble of the 2000s. The article further argues that despite various superficial and deeper similarities between the circumstances surrounding the Great Recession and the Great Depression, some fundamental differences in the structure of the US economy then and now suggest vastly different future prospects for American capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Large corporations dominate economic and social life in the United States and around the globe. The mainstream corporate governance ideology of "shareholder primacy" claims that the exclusive purpose of a corporation is to generate returns for shareholders, which means that governance decisions should be exclusively in their hands. However, shareholder primacy lacks a theory of how companies innovate, and instead focuses solely on allocation of corporate profits, misunderstanding the relationship of shareholders to the twenty-first-century corporation. The theory of the corporation as an innovative enterprise—engaged in productive innovation by producing higher-quality goods and services for lower unit costs—is an accurate way to understand what makes corporations successful producers. Stakeholder theory from progressive legal scholarship illustrates specific corporate governance institutions that can assist innovation, including fiduciary duty, stakeholder participation in decision making, and equity ownership. This article contributes to the growing literature refuting shareholder primacy by utilizing the theories of the innovative enterprise and multi-stakeholder governance to propose reshaping US corporate governance to better to serve innovation in production and a balance of power in distributional decision making. JEL classification: B50, D21, G30, G35, K22 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many years, tax scholars have advocated, and policymakers have considered, integrating the two levels of tax on corporate earnings -- a tax imposed once at the corporate level and a second time at the shareholder level. The resulting integration -- a single level of tax on corporate earnings -- would be a business tax system achieving greater equity and efficiency in taxing corporate earnings. For much of the time, however, corporate America has opposed, or at best been lukewarm to, the idea of corporate tax integration. In addition, policymakers have been hesitant to fully support corporate integration. This Article discusses how to obtain the support of corporate America and policymakers and addresses a gap in existing proposals and the academic literature. The key for corporate America is financial accounting and addressing corporate America's near obsession with the interaction between financial accounting and the tax laws. For policymakers, the keys are economic growth, capital investment, and the labor force. By addressing the concerns of corporate America and policymakers, this Article proposes a business tax system that could garner the support of tax scholars, policymakers, and corporate America, all without sacrificing revenue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use industry-level returns in foreign markets to examine the hypothesis that value-relevant foreign information slowly diffuses into the stock prices of U.S. multinational firms. A trading strategy that exploits foreign information generates abnormal returns of 0.8% monthly. I find that the market responds more slowly in periods with lower media coverage of foreign news and to information from more linguistically and culturally distant countries. These results suggest that both investors' inattention and lack of understanding of foreign information slow the incorporation of new information into prices. I further separate these two mechanisms by examining market responses to earnings surprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the economy and human lives worldwide, particularly the vulnerable low-income population. We employ a large panel data of 5.6 million daily transactions from 2.6 million debit cards owned by the low-income population in the U.S. to quantify the joint impacts of the state lockdowns and stimulus payments on this population's spending along the inter-temporal, geo-spatial, and cross-categorical dimensions. Leveraging the difference-in-differences analyses at the per card and zip code levels, we uncover three key findings. (1) Inter-temporally, the state lockdowns diminished the daily average spending relative to the same period in 2019 by $3.9 per card and $2,214 per zip code, whereas the stimulus payments elevated the daily average spending by $15.7 per card and $3,307 per zip code. (2) Spatial heterogeneity prevailed: Democratic zip codes displayed much more volatile dynamics, with an initial decline three times that of Republican zip codes, followed by a higher rebound and a net gain after the stimulus payments; also, Southwest exhibited the highest initial decline whereas Southeast had the largest net gain after the stimulus payments. (3) Across 26 categories, the stimulus payments promoted spending in those categories that enhanced public health and charitable donations, reduced food insecurity and digital divide, while having also stimulated non-essential and even undesirable categories, such as liquor and cigar. In addition, spatial association analysis was employed to identify spatial dependency and local hot spots of spending changes at the county level. Overall, these analyses reveal the imperative need for more geo- and category-targeted stimulus programs, as well as more effective and strategic policy communications, to protect and promote the well-being of the low-income population during public health and economic crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Al-Frahids Arts is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We investigate whether U.S. multinational corporations shift income overseas to the point of recording domestic pretax earnings around zero. We label firms with near-zero domestic earnings "Small" firms, and present evidence that Small captures targeted income shifting that minimizes worldwide and domestic current taxes. Because shifting essentially all income out of the U.S. represents a very aggressive form of international tax planning, Small firms represent an important margin for understanding the income shifting of U.S. MNCs. We find that firms facing tax incentives to shift income and firms with greater income shifting ability are more likely to report near-zero domestic earnings. In addition, investors value the earnings of Small firms higher than that of other U.S. multinational firms, conditional on overall profitability, suggesting that, on average, investors hold a positive view of income shifting to the point of recording domestic earnings around zero. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: F23; H25; H26; M40. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior literature argues that managers make opportunistic income-decreasing accounting choices to limit the concessions made to trade unions. However, empirical research to date presents mixed evidence, potentially due to a common theoretical approach that views labor bargaining as a one-shot game in nature. Using a sample of U.S. firms that engage in firm-level labor collective agreement negotiations, we study whether managers act strategically to reduce the transfer of wealth to employees, and its consequences over investment efficiency. We expect that the repeated nature of this negotiation leads to cooperation among the parties and limits the incentives for earnings manipulation, particularly, over long windows. Our findings suggest that managers take both real and accounting actions, but that these choices are informative rather than opportunistic. In particular, we find evidence consistent with strategic timing of the negotiation and with increased conditional conservatism in the year when the agreement is signed. We do not find evidence of earnings manipulation through discretionary accruals or of decreased investment efficiency around labor bargaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the economic consequences of growing wealth inequality. Topics include U.S. government data shows that through the Great Recession, personal saving in the U.S. had been trending steadily downward and this downturn was often cited to justify tax cuts for high-income households, U.S.-based firms have a strong incentive to credit as much of their overseas profits as possible to subsidiaries in places with low rates of taxation on corporate profits, and leak of data from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network documents the enormous scale of illicit transactions.

We construct the first long-term comparison of cross-sectional and panel estimates of immigrant earnings assimilation in the United States from a single data source. Unlike previous results, we find that selective out-migration of higher-earning immigrants biases downward cross-sectional estimates for all education groups. Cross-sectional estimates dramatically understate earnings growth for high-skilled foreign-born workers. The bias stems from both selective out-migration and selective employment; among high-skilled immigrants, low earners find employment with a substantial delay, while high earners work immediately on arrival. We present suggestive evidence that the H-1B visa program may play a role in estimated immigrant earnings dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present experimental evidence on the effects of four U.S. reemployment programs for youth unemployment insurance (UI) recipients during the Great Recession. The three programs that emphasized monitoring and service referrals reduced UI receipt but had minimal effects on employment and earnings; these programs mainly induced the early exit of participants. The fourth program, which combined mandatory job counseling with monitoring, caused the largest reductions in UI receipt and clearly increased employment and earnings. Both early participant exits and effective job counseling underlie these impacts. We conclude that policymakers should require job counseling for youth UI recipients during recessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]