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A model of managerial compensation, firm leverage and credit stimulus
Get PDFWe study a model in which leverage and compensation are both choice variables for the firm and borrowing spreads are endogenous. First, we analyze the correlation between leverage and variable compensation. We show that allowing for endogenous compensation and leverage can explain the conflicting findings of the empirical literature. We uncover a new channel of complementarity between effort and leverage that induces a correlation sign opposite to what current theoretical models predict. Second, we study the dynamics of leverage and compensation design after a credit stimulus. We derive a set of new empirical predictions. For outward-shifts in credit supply, variable compensation is increasing in leverage growth. Moreover, variable compensation increases after the credit stimulus, especially for firms with low idiosyncratic risk.yesPublishe
Remedies for Unfair Terms in Light of the General Principles of EU Law
Get PDFThis paper presents the status quo of the consequences for unfair terms (Art. 6(1) of Directive 93/13, on unfair terms in consumer contracts, UCTD), according to the interpretation of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In that task, it provides reasons for seemingly contradictory judgments and engages with inconsistent rulings. To navigate these troubled waters, the paper refers to the general principles of EU law, even beyond those that are explicit in the ECJ’s decisions. It is claimed here that those general principles explain the evolution of the remedy for unfair terms and its follow-on consequences. They could also bring light to the clashes between EU law and national private law in the application of the UCTD.YesPublishe
Re-thinking the ‘disciplinary’ power of accounting: A Foucauldian reading of how disciplinary accounting knowledge translates into managerial strategy in a Portuguese bank
Get PDFThis paper seeks to re-frame the importance of a diachronic understanding of accounting’s centrality (i.e., focusing on a sense of history) to modern modes of managing as a precondition for considering how it contributes to management change initiatives synchronically (i.e., focusing on the present). It offers a re-appraisal of how a Foucault-inspired approach may enable understandings of how the diachronic is implicated in what goes on in the synchronic episodes so well studied in recent critical research into accounting, management and strategy. It then offers a reading of how a change initiative undertaken in a Portuguese bank, Iberian Bank, takes place at three levels of development and involving different sets of protagonists. It thereby seeks to open out, within accounting research, the kind of historically-informed research of ‘the present’ recommended within the strategy field by Robert Chia (2004).This work was supported by Fundaçao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portugal). Bolsa de Doutoramento (BD) n.º 13962/97YesPublishe
Cambio de Actitudes Hacia una Propuesta Pro-ambiental Sobre Energía Solar: el Rol de Auto-Validación de Emisores del Endogrupo Versus Exogrupo
Get PDFBackground: In this study, we examined whether a persuasive message in favor of a pro-environmental proposal could influence attitude change through a self-validation process when individuals were told that the source of the proposal belonged to their ingroup (vs. their outgroup). Method: Participants read a message that advocated for the use of solar power. Immediately following the message, participants were asked to list their thoughts regarding the persuasive proposal. A thought favorability index was created for each participant. Following the thought-listing task, participants received the experimental manipulation (i.e., ingroup vs. outgroup source) based on the minimal group paradigm, after which they reported their attitudes towards the proposal. Results: A regression analysis showed the predicted interaction between thought favorability and type of source (i.e., ingroup vs. outgroup) on attitudes towards the solar power proposal. According to our expectations, thought favorability was a better predictor of attitudes for participants in the ingroup (vs. outgroup) source condition. Conclusions: Attitudes can be polarized as a function of ingroup versus outgroup differentiation through a self-validation process.This research was supported in part by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spain, Grant number: PID2020-116651GB-C33 / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033). This funding was obtained by the corresponding author. In addition, this research was also supported by another grant from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spain, Programa de Formación de Profesorado Universitario, Grant number: FPU18/04053) to the third author.YesPublishe
and Service Delivery in Brazil
Get PDFThe political appointment of bureaucrats is typically seen as jeopardizing development by selecting worse types into the bureaucracy or by depressing bureaucratic effort. I argue that political appointments also affect outcomes through a third,less studied channel,namely,by changing how bureaucrats work. Patronage provides connections between bureaucrats and politicians,and thereby grants access to material and nonmaterial resources,enhances monitoring,facilitates the application of sanctions and rewards,aligns priorities and incentives,and increases mutual trust. Political appointments can thus enhance bureaucrats’ accountability and effectiveness,not just for rent-seeking purposes but also,in certain conditions,for public service delivery. I test this theory using data on Brazilian municipal governments,leveraging two quasi-experiments,two original surveys of bureaucrats and politicians,and in-depth interviews. The findings highlight the countervailing effects of connections on bureaucratic governance in the developing world. © 2023 The Authors. American Journal of Political Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Midwest Political Science Association.I am indebted to Ben Ross Schneider, Lily Tsai and Daniel Hidalgo for invaluable advice and guidance throughout the project. For useful comments I also thank Felipe Barrera-Osorio, Héctor Blanco, Sarah Brierley, Josh Clinton, Loreto Cox, Aditya Dasgupta, Emmerich Davies, Belén Fernández Milmanda, Charles Gale, Sandra Gomes, Merilee Grindle, Frances Hagopian, Kosuke Imai, José Incio, Junyan Jiang, Paul Lagunes, Horacio Larreguy, Noam Lupu, Nina McMurry, Virginia Oliveros, Agustina Paglayan, Jan Pierskalla, Ignacio Puente, Pia Raffler, Blair Read, Tesalia Rizzo, Fritz Sager, Christian Schuster, Alberto Simpser, Julia Smith Coyoli, Guadalupe Tuñón,Julie Anne Weaver and Liz Zechmeister; audiences at MIT, Harvard, UFRN, Vanderbilt, Yale-NUS, TEC, CIDE, Rutgers, NYU Abu Dhabi, ITAM, Northwestern, University of Gothenburg, WZB, IE University, UC3M, Georgetown, Oxford. APSA, MPSA, NEWEPS, PolMeth and REPAL; and three anonymous reviewers. Special thanks to the following 23 people, who provided excellent research assistance on the survey of bureaucrats: Jenair Alves, Marcos Aurélio Freire da Silva Júnior, Francymonni Yasmim Marques de Melo, Karoline de Oliveira, Raiany Juliete da Silva, Aline Juliete de Abreu Feliciano, Pedro Henrique Correia do Nascimento Oliveira, Ana Vitória Araújo Fernandes, Jaedson Gomes dos Santos, Ana Beatriz Germano Barroca, Renata Lima de Morais, Myleyde Dayane Pereira da Silva, Marina Rotenberg, Filipe Ramos Pinheiro, Daniele Vitória Lima da Silva, Elvira Gomes Santos, Matheus Oliveira de Santana, Magda Emanuele Lima da Silva, Ayanne Marília Sousa da Silva, Júlio César Nascimento, Lidiane Freire de Jesús. André Silva, and Pâmela Kaissa Fernandes Lopes. I also thank the State Audit Court of Rio Grande do Norte and in particular Gilberto Jales, Anne Carvalho, Victor Fernandes, Marcelo Araújo and Ilueny Santos, for making the survey of politicians possible. The Lemann Foundation, MIT GOV/LAB, MISTI and CIS provided financial support for fieldwork and surveys. Surveys and interviews were approved by MIT's Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects (protocols 170593389, 1806407144, and 1810539206). Any errors are my own. This article was previously circulated under the title “The Benefits of Patronage: How Political Appointments Can Enhance Bureaucratic Accountability and Effectiveness.”yesPublishe
The Role of Companies in the Strategic Turn of EU Competition Law
Get PDFThe purpose of this chapter is to reflect upon the role of companies in the transformational change that competition law and policy is currently going through in the European Union (EU). The main causes of the disruption are well known. The EU’s commitment to tackling global warming and climate change, as expressed in the European Green Deal, affects EU competition law and policy. The weight that environmental considerations should have in antitrust and merger control remains controversial, but the movement towards a greener EU competition policy has gained track over the last few years. The objective of transforming the EU economy to make it more sustainable goes hand in hand with the objective of adapting it to the new digital reality. The ramifications of the so-called digital transition are also felt in the area of competition law, if only because of the need to rethink how some of its most basic tenets apply in the digital sphere. Finally, as a result of the recent COVID-19 and Ukrainian crises, the EU has embraced the goal of improving the resilience of its industry. In sum, the challenge is to ensure that EU competition policy remains ‘fit for purpose’ while contributing to the transition towards a ‘green, digital and resilient single market’. Because of the structural and long-term implications of this challenge, it is apposite to refer to this transformative moment as the ‘strategic’ turn in EU competition law....yesPublishe
Self-Selected Versus Assigned Target to Reduce Smartphone Use and Improve Mental Health: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial
Get PDFBackground: Smartphones have become integral to people’s lives,with a noticeable increase in the average screen time,both on a global scale and,notably,in India. Existing research links mobile consumption to sleep problems,poor physical and mental health,and lower subjective well-being. The comparative effectiveness of monetary incentives given for self-selected versus assigned targets on reducing screen time and thereby improving mental health remains unanswered. Objective: This study aims to assess the impact of monetary incentives and target selection on mobile screen time reduction and mental health. Methods: We designed a 3-armed randomized controlled trial conducted with employees and students at an educational institution in India. The study is conducted digitally over 12 weeks,including baseline (2 weeks),randomization (1 week),intervention (5 weeks),and postintervention (4 week) periods. We emailed the employees and students to inquire about their interest in participation. Those who expressed interest received detailed study information and consent forms. After securing consent,participants were asked to complete the initial survey and provide their mobile screen time during the baseline period. At the beginning of the intervention period,the participants were randomly allocated into 1 of 3 study groups in a 2:2:1 ratio (self-selected vs assigned vs control). Participants in the self-selected group were presented with 3 target options: 10%,20%,and 30%,and they were asked to self-select a target to reduce their mobile screen time from their baseline average mobile screen time. Participants in the assigned group were given a target to reduce their mobile screen time from their baseline average mobile screen time. The assigned target was set as the average of the targets selected by participants in the self-selected group. During the intervention period,participants in the self-selected and assigned group were eligible to receive a monetary incentive of INR (Indian Rupee) 50 (US 6.06) upon completion of the study and a chance to win 1 of 2 lotteries valued at INR 5000 (US $60.55) for consistently sharing their mobile screen time data. Results: Currently,the study intervention is being rolled out. Enrollment occurred between August 21,2023,and September 2,2023; data collection concluded in November 2023. We expect that results will be available by early 2024. Conclusions: The monetary incentives and self-selected versus assigned targets might be effective interventions in reducing mobile screen time among working professionals and students. Trial Registration: AsPredicted 142497; https://aspredicted.org/hr3nn.pdf ©Kamal Kant Sharma,Jeeva Somasundaram,Ashish Sachdeva. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (https://www.researchprotocols.org),06.05.2024. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),which permits unrestricted use,distribution,and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work,first published in JMIR Research Protocols,is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information,a link to the original publication on https://www.researchprotocols.org,as well as this copyright and license information must be included.The authors extend thanks for the active involvement of Indian School of Business (ISB) employees and students. The authors also value the contributions made by Akash Raj and Barsha Saha in tool development and study procedures as well as the support from the administrative teams at the Max Institute of Healthcare Management and ISB. The study is funded by the Max Institute of Healthcare Management ISB.yesPublishe
La comunicación de apertura de negociaciones y sus efectos
No full textEl marco de reestructuración preventiva y sus características ha sido una de las novedades introducidas en la última reforma del derecho de la insolvencia; en él aparece como clave el período en el que se van a producir las negociaciones entre el deudor y los acreedores para alcanzar un plan de reestructuración que haga viable la empresa, que impida el concurso de la misma y garantice, a su vez, los derechos de los acreedores afectados.yesPublishe
Government Performance and Democracy: Survey Experimental Evidence from 12 Countries during COVID-19
No full textCrises of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic may plausibly affect deep-seated attitudes of a large fraction of citizens. In particular, outcome-oriented theories imply that leaders’ performance in response to such adverse events shapes people’s views about the government and about democracy. To assess these causal linkages empirically, we use a preregistered survey experiment covering 12 countries and 22,500 respondents during the pandemic. Our design enables us to leverage exogenous variation in evaluations of policies and leaders with an instrumental variables strategy. We find that people use information on both health and economic performance when evaluating the government. In turn, dissatisfaction with the government decreases satisfaction with how democracy works, but it does not increase support for nondemocratic alternatives. The results suggest that comparatively bad government performance mainly spurs internal critiques of democracy.yesPublishe
Going Negative in Autocracy: A Field Experiment at the Moscow Mayoral Elections
Get PDFOpposition in autocracies often uses negativism against the regime to frame its principal message. This study is the first to experimentally evaluate the effectiveness of a negative campaign on a regime candidate’s vote share. For the field experiment conducted during the 2013 Moscow mayoral election, we published a newspaper criticizing the incumbent mayor. We distributed approximately 130,000 copies near the entrances of 20 stations on four randomly selected metro lines one month prior to the election. We found that the incumbent’s vote share was 1.7 percentage points lower at the voting stations where the newspaper was distributed. These votes go to other candidates who address issues raised by the negative campaign. Anti-regime campaigning does not suppress turnout or increase disapproval voting.yesPublishe