We examine the impact of board structure on executive pay for 1,880 UK public firms over 1983-2002, using panel data analysis. Firstly, the proportion of non-executive directors tends to decrease the rate of increase in executive pay whilst board size tends to increase it. Secondly, the proportion of non-executives strengthens the relation between the rate of increase in executive pay and chang...

Traditional computable general equilibrium (CGE) models based on the Armington assumption fail to capture the extensive margin of trade, and thereby underestimate the trade and welfare effects of trade opening. To address this problem, this paper introduces the Melitz (2003) theoretical framework with firm heterogeneity and fixed exporting costs into a global CGE model. Some illustrative simula...

Market Stress and Herding* We propose a new approach to detecting and measuring herding which is based on the cross-sectional dispersion of the factor sensitivity of assets within a given market. This method enables us to evaluate if there is herding towards particular sectors or styles in the market including the market index itself and critically we can also separate such herding from common ...

Government budget balance forces the endogenous use of distortionary tax instruments when an exogenous reform is implemented. The aggregate efficiency of such reforms is based on comparisons of simple summary measures of the Marginal Cost of Funds of the various tariff or quota changes with the Marginal Cost of Funds of the alternative taxes, or of the Marginal Benefit of Government supplied go...

The point of empirical work is commonly to test a very small number of crucial null hypotheses in a linear multiple regression setting. Endogeneity in one or more model explanatory variables is well known to invalidate such testing using OLS estimation. But attempting to identify credibly valid (and usefully strong) instruments for such variables is an enterprise which is arguably fraught and i...

We conducted a sensitivity analysis of the results of weighted voting experiments by varying two features of the experimental protocol by Montero et al. (2008): (1) the way in which the roles of subjects are reassigned in each round (random role versus fixed role) and (2) the number of proposals that subjects can simultaneously approve (multiple approval versus single approval). It was observed...

We consider a single-asset investment fund that in the absence of transactions costs would hold a constant amount of wealth in the risky asset. In the presence of market frictions wealth is allowed to fluctuate within a control band: Its upper (lower) boundary is chosen so that gains (losses) from adjustments to the target minus (plus) fixed plus proportional transaction costs maximize (minimiz...

Individual heterogeneity is an important source of variation in demand. Allowing for general heterogeneity is needed for correct welfare comparisons. We consider general heterogenous demand where preferences and linear budget sets are statistically independent. We find that the dimension of heterogeneity and the individual demand functions are not identified. We also find that the exact consume...

Effects of In-Class Variation and Student Rank on the Probability of Withdrawal: Cross-Section and Time-Series Analysis for UK University Students From individual-level data for nine entire cohorts of undergraduate students in UK universities, we estimate the probability that an individual will drop out of university during their first-year. We examine the 1984-85 to 1992-93 cohorts of students...

We consider one-to-one matching markets in which agents can either be matched as pairs or remain single. In these so-called roommate markets agents are consumers and resources at the same time. We investigate two new properties that capture the effect a newcomer has on incumbent agents. Competition sensitivity focuses on the newcomer as additional consumer and requires that some incumbents will...