Managers engage in income smoothing either to communicate private information about future earnings to investors (informativeness hypothesis) or to distort financial performance for opportunistic purposes (opportunism hypothesis). Business cycles and the monitoring role of institutional ownership may affect the earnings informativeness of income smoothing. The purpose of this research is to exa...

The absolute income hypothesis—that holding other factors constant, the higher an individual’s income the better is their health—is supported by a considerable body of evidence. 2 3 However, according to the more recent relative income hypothesis, an individual’s health is also affected by the distribution of income within society. Someone with a given income would have worse health if he or sh...

This paper considers the effect of status or relative income on work effort, combining experimental evidence from a gift-exchange game with the analysis of multi-country ISSP survey data. We find a consistent negative effect of others’ incomes on individual effort in both datasets. The individual’s rank in the income distribution is a stronger determinant of effort than is others’ average incom...

This paper considers the effect of status or relative income on work effort, combining experimental evidence from a gift-exchange game with the analysis of multi-country ISSP survey data. We find a consistent negative effect of others’ incomes on individual effort in both datasets. The individual’s rank in the income distribution is a stronger determinant of effort than is others’ average incom...

This study provides the first set of empirical evidence on the determinants of social benefits received by urban families in China and the impact on income inequality using the China Household Income Project (CHIP) 1988 and 2002 data. It finds that the total urban social benefits strongly targeted the bottom pre-tax pre-transfer income decile. Cash transfers were negatively associated with inco...

Contrary to popular opinion, we find evidence that the views of residents of both higher and lower income neighborhoods are represented by their legislators. Analyzing the voting behavior of California state legislators on 77 proposals on which both the legislature and the public cast ballots, we find first that the opinions of higher and lower income voters within a district are highly correla...

INTRODUCTION Self-immolation remains a significant contemporary problem. Its epidemiology and causes, and the intervention strategies these suggest vary significantly between higher- and lower-income countries. We summarize what is known about suicide by self-immolation in terms of its demographic and psychiatric risk factors, causes, local patterns and means employed, and points of possible in...

As an indicator of social development and human capital, health has aroused ever-increasing concerns. Using CHNS2000 data, we attempt to address the following two issues: how could income inequality influence health; does the rising income inequality result in health inequality, especially will the health of the lower-income group get worse. We find that there is an “inverted-U” association bet...

Low college enrollment rates among low income students may stem from credit constraints, low academic skill, low quality schools, or some combination of these. RecentMassachusetts data allow the first use of school district fixed effects in the analysis of credit constraints, leading to four primary findings. First, Massachusetts’ low income students have lower intended college enrollment rates...