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Earnings Quality in the Microfinance Industry
No full textThis study investigates the popular claim that reported earnings are invalid as a performance measure of microfinance institutions. Using earnings quality metrics from the accounting literature, we are unable to document lower earnings quality for microfinance institutions than for listed corporations. Moreover, we find that the proposed alternative in the microfinance industry to reported earnings, adjusted earnings, do generally not score higher on earnings quality metrics than do reported earnings. This first study of earnings quality in the microfinance industry suggests that reported earnings are a relevant measure of the current and future financial performance of microfinance institutions
Climate mainstreaming in environmental treaties
No full textAre climate treaties, like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or the Paris Agreement, the only way forward for intergovernmental climate cooperation? By now, there are hundreds of multilateral treaties governing a wide range of environmental issues, including energy, freshwater, oceans, air pollution, biodiversity conservation, hazardous waste, agriculture and fisheries. This policy brief examines whether the 379 multilateral environmental treaties that do not primarily address climate change can nevertheless contribute to advancing climate commitments. We find that decisions adopted under environmental treaties have increasingly mainstreamed climate considerations since 1990. Today, climate-related decisions account for around 10% of regulatory decisions adopted under environmental treaties across different issue areas. Some treaty regimes are particularly active in addressing climate change, such as those focused on energy, freshwater and habitats, with up to 60% of their decisions addressing climate change. In contrast, treaties regulating agriculture and fisheries demonstrate a notably lower level of engagement in climate mainstreaming. These findings demonstrate that environmental treaties that do not specifically focus on climate change can still contribute to shaping climate governance, albeit to varying degrees. This policy brief concludes with a set of recommendations for researchers, treaty negotiators, secretariats, governments and climate activists seeking to advance intergovernmental cooperation on climate change through means other than climate treaties. Key policy messages: Non-climate-focused treaties can serve as a means for developing climate mitigation and adaptation commitments, notably through decisions adopted by their respective bodies. Yet, there is room for increased climate mainstreaming in those decisions. Various actors can contribute to such mainstreaming: • Researchers could further investigate why some conferences of the parties (COPs) are more receptive to climate concerns than others and what potential trade-offs are associated with climate mainstreaming in environmental treaties. • Treaty negotiators can favour cross-cutting mandates that enhance policy coherence across interconnected environmental challenges, enabling a more integrated approach to environmental decision-making. They can also design dynamic collective bodies, able to adopt decisions swiftly when new issues or information arise. • Governments can appoint climate experts in non-climate COPs and advisory committees and report climate-related aspects of their implementation of non-climate treaties. • Treaty secretariats can coordinate joint initiatives and promote knowledge exchange across climate and other environmental regimes. • Climate activists can intensify their engagement with non-climate COPs by participating in consultations, submitting position papers, and collaborating with sympathetic delegates to amplify the climate relevance of treaty decisions
Understanding the pricing of carbon emissions: New evidence from the stock market
No full textAre carbon emissions priced in equity markets? The literature is split with different approaches yielding conflicting results. We develop a stylized model showing that, if emissions are priced, stock returns depend on expected emissions and the product of the innovation in emissions and the price-dividend ratio. Building on this insight, we derive and test new predictions. We find that emissions are priced in equity markets, but the magnitude of such pricing is highly sensitive to the inclusion of a few "super emitters" (mostly operating in electric power generation). Our theoretical insight also helps reconcile seemingly divergent results in the literature
Serving with masks: a comparative analysis of flight attendants’ emotional labor between normal and COVID-19 times
No full textCOVID-19 induced significant changes for flight attendants, including reduced onboard service and face mask mandates. This study examined the impact of these changes on flight attendants’ emotional labor and the consequences of emotional labor on well-being. Comparing 206 propensity score-matched participants surveyed before and 206 surveyed during COVID-19, results revealed increased negative emotion requirements and greater use of surface and deep acting during COVID-19. While the negative impact of several emotional labor aspects and especially negative emotion requirements was more pronounced, only sensitivity requirements were less straining, and surface acting was less detrimental to job satisfaction compared to pre-COVID-19
Attempting to detect a lie: do we think it through?
No full textGame-theoretic analyses of communication rely on beliefs—especially, the receiver’s belief about the truth status of an utterance and the sender’s belief about the reaction to the utterance—but research that provides measurements of such beliefs is still in its infancy. Our experiment examines the use of second-order beliefs, measuring belief hierarchies regarding a message that may be a lie. In a two-player communication game between a sender and a receiver, the sender knows the state of the world and has a transparent incentive to deceive the receiver. The receiver chooses a binary reaction. For a wide set of non-equilibrium beliefs, the reaction and the receiver’s second-order belief should dissonate: she should follow the sender’s statement if and only if she believes that the sender believes that she does not follow the statement. The opposite is true empirically, constituting a new pattern of inconsistency between actions and beliefs
Health expenditure shocks and household poverty amidst COVID-19 in Uganda: How catastrophic?
No full textIn this paper, we utilize the 2019/20 Uganda National Household Survey data to answer three related questions: (i) To what extent did out-of-pocket payments (OOPs) for health care services exceed the threshold for household financial catastrophe amidst COVID-19? (ii) What is the impoverishing effect of OOPs for health care services on household welfare? (iii) What are the socioeconomic and demographic determinants of OOPs for health care services in Uganda? Leveraging three health expenditure thresholds (10%, 25%, and 40%), we run a Tobit model for 'left-censored' health expenditures and quantile regressions, and we find that among households which incur any form of health care expense, 37.7%, 33.6%, and 28.7% spend more than 10%, 25%, and 40% of their non-food expenditures on health care, respectively. Their average OOP budget share exceeds the respective thresholds by 82.9, 78.0, and 75.8 percentage points. While, on average, household expenditures on medicine increased amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, expenditures on consultations, transport, traditional doctors' medicines, and other unbroken hospital charges were reduced during the same period. We find that the comparatively low incidence and intensity of catastrophic health expenditures (CHEs) in the pandemic period was not necessarily due to low household health spending, but due to foregone and substituted care. Precisely, considering the entire weighted sample, about 22% of Ugandans did not seek medical care during the pandemic due to a lack of funds, compared to 18.6% in the pre-pandemic period. More Ugandans substituted medical care from health facilities with herbs and home remedies. We further find that a 10% increase in OOPs reduces household food consumption expenditures by 2.6%. This modality of health care financing, where households incur CHEs, keeps people in chronic poverty
Determinants of women empowerment: Case of refugee women living in Nairobi Kenya
No full textThis study investigates the determinants of women empowerment among refugee women living in Nairobi, Kenya. First, the study constructs an index to examine empowerment drivers using data from the Refugee and Host Household Survey (RHHS) 2021. A fractional logit regression model was employed in the study. The results obtained show that the incidence of refugee women empowerment among refugees living in Nairobi was six percent. In addition, the study finds evidence that age; the gender of the household head; the education level of the refugee woman; employment status; and the education of the household head play substantial roles in enabling women empowerment. Conversely, marital statuses (divorced/separated/widowed and single/never married) and religious affiliations (Muslim) hinder women empowerment. Efforts geared towards improving wage employment and education are likely to empower refugee women. The study emphasizes the recognition of the role played by women in household income through care work
Die Verteilung und Struktur des deutschen Nationaleinkommens von 1992 bis 2019
No full textWie haben sich die Einkommen unterschiedlicher Bevölkerungsgruppen in Deutschland seit der Wiedervereinigung entwickelt? Unsere Studie untersucht die Entwicklung und Zusammensetzung des Nationaleinkommens entlang der Verteilung im Zeitraum von 1992 bis 2019. Während die untere Hälfte der Einkommensverteilung (unterhalb des Medianeinkommens) bis Mitte der 2000er Jahre reale Einkommensverluste verzeichnete, stiegen die Einkommen der oberen Mittelschicht (die obersten 10%, ohne das einkommensstärkste 1%) stetig. Die Spitzeneinkommen (oberstes 1%) blieben zwischen 1992 und 2019 relativ stabil. Arbeitseinkommen dominieren bei den unteren 99%, während das oberste 1% von Unternehmenseinkommen - insbesondere aus arbeitsintensiven Dienstleistungsunternehmen und freien Berufen - bestimmt ist. Unsere Ergebnisse sind zentral für die Debatte über Reformen der Sozialversicherungsbeiträge und der Einkommensbesteuerung
Governance für eine moderne Industriepolitik: Das Beispiel des saarländischen Transformationsfonds
No full textDie Transformation im Saarland ist durch eine energieintensive Wirtschaftsstruktur und hohe Branchenkonzentration, insbesondere Stahl und Automotive, besonders herausfordernd. Den Erfolg des Transformationsfonds, der angesichts einer außergewöhnlichen Notsituation im Sinne der Schuldenbremse eingerichtet wurde, sollen fünf Governance-Elemente inklusive einer Verantwortungspartnerschaft sichern: (1) strengere Kontrollrechte des Landtags als im Kernhaushalt; (2) eine klare Abgrenzung der Transformation von anderen Politikfeldern; (3) eine Anhebung der Investitionsquote im Kernhaushalt zur Finanzierung zusätzlicher Investitionen; (4) die Ansiedlung der Geschäftsstelle des Fonds im Finanzministerium als zusätzlicher Ansprechpartner für die Risikoeinschätzung des Projektportfolios und (5) eine konstruktivkritische Begleitung durch einen unabhängigen Beirat.The transformation in Saarland is particularly challenging due to an energy-intensive economic structure and high industry concentration, especially in steel and automotive. This article explores a number of governance features of the Saarland Transformation Fund as an example of governance for industrial policy. The starting point was a broad-based consensus across the political spectrum and between the social partners to set up the Fund and to keep it running. The necessary level of trust is reinforced by five governance features: First, tight supervisory powers of the regional parliament. Second, a clear-cut mandate of the Transformation Fund to spend exclusively in the areas of industrial policy, infrastructure and innovation (the "Three Is") in order to avoid mission creep. Third, a firm political commitment to increase investment spending in the core budget, thus preventing indirect leakage which might otherwise have occurred by means of moving investment expenditures from the core budget to the Transformation Fund. Fourth, structured vetting of spending proposals by the Fund's secretariat at the Ministry of Finance before being presented to the board of the Fund. Fifth, an independent advisory council to the Fund bringing together outstanding and outspoken experts that offer a wealth of different perspectives
When Goliath sells to David: Explaining price gouging perceptions through power
No full textExternal shocks (e.g., due to a pandemic) may lead to price jumps in the short term. Rather than being read as a signal of increased scarcity, the resulting “price gouging” is often ascribed to sellers’ selfish exploitation of the crisis. In our experimental study, we investigate the drivers of fairness perceptions regarding voluntary transactions in situations of increased scarcity and explore how they pertain to the economic policy debate on price gouging restrictions. Departing from previous research, our results show that perceptions of power, not of the seller as the profiteer (mercantilism), drive fairness perceptions. The more powerful a transaction partner is assumed to be, the less the respective transaction is regarded as fair. In line with the literature, we also find that fairness perceptions are correlated with zero-sum thinking (i.e., a denial of the mutuality of benefits implied by voluntary transactions). Our study helps to better understand why some market regulations appear attractive despite suboptimal outcomes, thus revealing a mixing of the micro and the macro cosmos, against which Hayek warned. By casting a light on the psychological mechanisms behind attitudes toward markets, we aim to improve the assessment of legitimacy issues and contribute to explaining (and overcoming) the moral paradox of modernity