This paper provides the first systematic analysis of the link between economic, political, and social conditions and the global phenomenon of ISIS foreign fighters. We find that poor economic conditions do not drive participation in ISIS. In contrast, the number of ISIS foreign fighters is positively correlated with a country's GDP per capita and Human Development Index (HDI). In fact, many foreign fighters originate from countries with high levels of economic development, low income inequality, and highly developed political institutions. Other factors that explain the number of ISIS foreign fighters are the size of a country's Muslim population and its ethnic homogeneity. Although we cannot directly determine why people join ISIS, our results suggest that the flow of foreign fighters to ISIS is driven not by economic or political conditions but rather by ideology and the difficulty of assimilation into homogeneous Western countries.
What Explains the Flow of Foreign Fighters to ISIS? -- by Efraim Benmelech, Esteban F. Klor
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Motivating Effort In Contributing to Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence -- by Andrea Blasco, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani, Michael Menietti
We investigate the factors driving workers' decisions to generate public goods inside an organization through a randomized solicitation of workplace improvement proposals in a medical center with 1200 employees. We find that pecuniary incentives, such as winning a prize, generate a threefold increase in participation compared to non-pecuniary incentives alone, such as prestige or recognition. Participation is also increased by a solicitation appealing to improving the workplace. However, emphasizing the patient mission of the organization led to countervailing effects on participation. Overall, these results are consistent with workers having multiple underlying motivations to contribute to public goods inside the organization consisting of a combination of pecuniary and altruistic incentives associated with the mission of the organization.
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Decomposing Duration Dependence in a Stopping Time Model -- by Fernando E. Alvarez, Katarina Borovickova, Robert Shimer
We develop a dynamic model of transitions in and out of employment. A worker finds a job at an optimal stopping time, when a Brownian motion with drift hits a barrier. This implies that the duration of each worker's jobless spells has an inverse Gaussian distribution. We allow for arbitrary heterogeneity across workers in the parameters of this distribution and prove that the distribution of these parameters is identified from the duration of two spells. We use social security data for Austrian workers to estimate the model. We conclude that dynamic selection is a critical source of duration dependence.
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Age and Gender Profiling in the Chinese and Mexican Labor Markets: Evidence from Four Job Boards -- by Miguel Delgado Helleseter, Peter Kuhn, Kailing Shen
When permitted by law, employers sometimes state the preferred age and sex of their employees in job ads. We study this practice using data from one Mexican and three Chinese job boards, showing that it is widely used to request both genders and is especially prevalent in jobs with low skill requirements. For example, on the job board serving less-skilled production and service workers in China, 72 percent of ads specified a preferred gender, and 77 percent listed both a minimum and maximum age. We also document a new stylized fact we call the age twist in gender profiling: firms' explicit gender requests shift dramatically away from women and towards men when firms are seeking older (as opposed to younger) workers. While some of this twist can be attributed to employers' age-dependent requests for (female) beauty and (male) leadership, the timing of the shift suggests that young women's movement into childbearing also plays a role
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Homophily and Transitivity in Dynamic Network Formation -- by Bryan S. Graham
In social and economic networks linked agents often share additional links in common. There are two competing explanations for this phenomenon. First, agents may have a structural taste for transitive links -- the returns to linking may be higher if two agents share links in common. Second, agents may assortatively match on unobserved attributes, a process called homophily. I study parameter identifiability in a simple model of dynamic network formation with both effects. Agents form, maintain, and sever links over time in order to maximize utility. The return to linking may be higher if agents share friends in common. A pair-specific utility component allows for arbitrary homophily on time-invariant agent attributes. I derive conditions under which it is possible to detect the presence of a taste for transitivity in the presence of assortative matching on unobservables. I leave the joint distribution of the initial network and the pair-specific utility component, a very high dimensional object, unrestricted. The analysis is of the `fixed effects' type. The identification result is constructive, suggesting an analog estimator, whose single large network properties I characterize.
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Economic Analysis of Property Rights: First Possession of Water in the American West -- by Bryan Leonard, Gary D. Libecap
We analyze the economic determinants and effects of prior appropriation water rights that were voluntarily implemented across a vast area of the US West, replacing common-law riparian water rights. We model potential benefits and test hypotheses regarding search, coordination, and investment. Our novel data set of 7,800 rights in Colorado, established between 1852 and 2013 includes location, date, size, infrastructure investment, irrigated acreage, crops, topography, stream flow, soil quality, and precipitation. Prior appropriation doubled infrastructure investment and raised the value of agricultural output beyond baseline riparian rights. The analysis reveals institutional innovation that informs contemporary water policy.
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The Impact of the Civil War on Southern Wealth Holders -- by Brandon Dupont, Joshua Rosenbloom
The U.S. Civil War and emancipation wiped out a substantial fraction of southern wealth. The prevailing view of most economic historians, however, is that the southern planter elite was able to retain its relative status despite these shocks. Previous studies have been hampered, however, by limits on the ability to link individuals between census years, and have been forced to focus on persistence within one or a few counties. Recent advances in electronic access to the Federal Census manuscripts now make it possible to link individuals without these constraints. We exploit the ability to search the full manuscript census to construct a sample that links top wealth holders in 1870 to their 1860 census records. Although there was an entrenched southern planter elite that retained their economic status, we find evidence that the turmoil of 1860s opened greater opportunities for mobility in the South than was the case in the North, resulting in much greater turnover among wealthy southerners than among comparably wealthy northerners.
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Bond Risk Premia in Consumption-based Models -- by Drew D. Creal, Jing Cynthia Wu
Workhorse Gaussian affine term structure models (ATSMs) attribute time-varying bond risk premia entirely to changing prices of risk, while structural models with recursive preferences credit it completely to stochastic volatility. We reconcile these competing channels by introducing a novel form of external habit into an otherwise standard model with recursive preferences. The new model has an ATSM representation with analytical bond prices making it empirically tractable. We find that time variation in bond term premia is predominantly driven by the price of risk, especially, the price of expected inflation risk that co-moves with expected inflation itself.
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Impacts of the Affordable Care Act on Health Insurance Coverage in Medicaid Expansion and Non-Expansion States -- by Charles Courtemanche, James Marton, Benjamin Ukert, Aaron Yelowitz, Daniela Zapata
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed to achieve nearly universal health insurance coverage in the United States through a combination of insurance market reforms, mandates, subsidies, health insurance exchanges, and Medicaid expansions, most of which took effect in 2014. This paper estimates the causal effects of the ACA on health insurance coverage using data from the American Community Survey. We utilize difference-in-difference-in-differences models that exploit cross-sectional variation in the intensity of treatment arising from state participation in the Medicaid expansion and local area pre-ACA uninsured rates. This strategy allows us to identify the effects of the ACA in both Medicaid expansion and non-expansion states. Our preferred specification suggests that, at the average pre-treatment uninsured rate, the full ACA increased the proportion of residents with insurance by 5.9 percentage points compared to 3.0 percentage points in states that did not expand Medicaid. Private insurance expansions from the ACA were due to increases in both employer-provided and non-group coverage. The coverage gains from the full ACA were largest for those with incomes below the Medicaid eligibility threshold, non-whites, young adults, and unmarried individuals. We find some evidence that the Medicaid expansion partially crowded out private coverage among low-income individuals.
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Climate Econometrics -- by Solomon M. Hsiang
Identifying the effect of climate on societies is central to understanding historical economic development, designing modern policies that react to climatic events, and managing future global climate change. Here, I review, synthesize, and interpret recent advances in methods used to measure effects of climate on social and economic outcomes. Because weather variation plays a large role in recent progress, I formalize the relationship between climate and weather from an econometric perspective and discuss their use as identifying variation, highlighting tradeoffs between key assumptions in different research designs and deriving conditions when weather variation exactly identifies the effects of climate. I then describe advances in recent years, such as parameterization of climate variables from a social perspective, nonlinear models with spatial and temporal displacement, characterizing uncertainty, measurement of adaptation, cross-study comparison, and use of empirical estimates to project the impact of future climate change. I conclude by discussing remaining methodological challenges.
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REVISION: Discrete Homotopy Analysis for Optimal Trading Execution with Nonlinear Transient Market Impact
Optimal execution in financial markets is the problem of how to trade a large quantity of shares incrementally in time in order to minimise the expected cost. In this paper we study the problem of the optimal execution in the presence of nonlinear transient market impact. Mathematically such problem is equivalent to solve a strongly nonlinear integral equation, which in our model is a weakly singular Urysohn equation of the first kind. We propose an approach based on homotopy analysis method (HAM), whereby a well behaved initial trading strategy is continuously deformed to lower the expected execution cost. Specifically we propose a discrete version of the HAM, i.e. the DHAM approach, in order to use the method when the integrals to compute have no closed form solution. We find that the optimal solution is front loaded for concave instantaneous impact even when the investor is risk neutral. More important we find that the expected cost of the DHAM strategy is significantly smaller ...
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2016 Valuation Handbook: Guide to Cost of Capital
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Patrick Lencioni Pinpoints the Three Essential Virtues of Ideal Team Players In a Much Anticipated New Fable
 |  | In his first new book in nearly four years, bestselling author and acclaimed storyteller Patrick Lencioni returns with a compelling new title that furthers his innovative work with teams. In Lencioni’s latest work, The Ideal Team Player: A Leadership Fable About How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues he takes readers inside a fictional California construction company to reveal the three indispensable virtues that make some people |
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London Stock Exchange Group Plc Blocklisting Application
Application has been made to the UKLA and the London Stock Exchange for a block listing totalling 2,000,000 ordinary shares of 6 79/86 pence each to trade on the London Stock Exchange and to be admitted to the Official List. The shares shall rank equally with the existing issued shares of London Stock Exchange Group plc.
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Misys Launches Misys FinCloud
Misys today announced it is launching Misys FinCloud, a new range of Cloud solutions and global Cloud environment offering Misys clients the highest standards of security, performance and operating excellence in Cloud operations in the financial services industry.
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Londonâs Position As Home Of RMB Issuance Confirmed As Hungary Lists First Chinese Currency Bond
London Stock Exchange today saw the second RMB denominated government bond of a non-Chinese issuer admitted to trading on its markets. The Hungarian Government mandated the Bank of China to arrange an RMB denominated three year sovereign bond of RMB 1 billion as part of a wider initiative to boost links and commerce between Hungary and China.
London Stock Exchange has a strong track record of supporting RMB issuance on its markets. There are 65 so-called dim sum bonds on London Stock Exchange, with an aggregate value of RMB 28 billion / GBP 2.9 billion. In 2016 alone, 30 new RMB bonds have been admitted to trading in London, raising close to RMB 6 billion / GBP 640 million.
Nikhil Rathi Chief Executive Officer, London Stock Exchange plc:
“London is the world’s most international financial market and home to the largest number and most diversified issuer base for RMB bonds in the world. Today’s listing, Hungary’s first RMB denominated bond and a first for Continental Europe, is a clear demonstration of London Stock Exchange’s position as a leading centre for RMB debt issuance.”
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Deutsche Börse Receives ETF Awards In London And New York
Deutsche Börse was recognised as “Best European ETF Stock Exchange 2015” at the ETF.com Europe Awards in London.
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ESMA Publishes Response To Commission Green Paper On Retail Financial Services
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has today published its response to the European Commission’s Green Paper on Retail Financial Services (the ‘Green Paper’).
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Finansinspektionen: New Rules For Insider Reporting And Insider Lists
New rules for insiders will be issued on 3 July 2016. New rules have been added regarding insider lists, the term ”insider person” has been replaced by the term ”person discharging managerial responsibilities”, the time period within which changes must be reported has been shortened to three days and more financial instrument categories are now subject to the transaction reporting obligation.
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London Stock Exchange Group: Record Number Of Companies Join Elite â 46 Companies Welcomed Today
London Stock Exchange Group today welcomes 46 companies to ELITE, its innovative support programme for inspiring growth businesses. 16 companies join the fifth cohort of the UK programme, and 30 join Italy’s ninth cohort.
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