Abstract

“Woke” companies are those that are committed to socially progressive causes, with a particular focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion as these terms are understood through the lens of critical theory. There is little evidence of systematic support for woke ideas among executives and the population at large, and going woke does not appear to improve company performance. Why, then are so many firms embracing woke policies and attitudes? We suggest that going woke is an emergent strategy that is largely shaped by middle managers rather than owners, top managers, or employees. We build on theories from agency theory, institutional theory, and intra-organizational ecology to argue that wokeness arises from middle managers and support personnel using their delegated responsibility and specialist status to engage in woke internal advocacy, which may increase their influence and job security. Broader social and cultural trends tend to reinforce this process. We discuss implications for organizational behavior and performance including perceived corporate hypocrisy (“woke-washing”), the potential loss of creativity from restricting viewpoint diversity, and the need for companies to keep up with a constantly changing cultural landscape.

Abstract

Some state insurance regulators have been using their regulatory muscle to coerce insurers into furthering their political ends. They have protected favored but harmful commercial activity and have strangled legal but disfavored individual conduct.

In the process, those regulators have disabled the benefits that a properly functioning insurance market can provide. They have hampered individuals’ ability to engage in desirable activities, like home ownership, that would otherwise be too risky given their incomes; they have made socially desirable but not risk-free activities, like responsible firearm ownership, less safe; and they have deprived the market of data on safety and risks. Such use of government power to abuse an “outgroup” for the benefit of the “ingroup” can also have devastating effects on social stability.

This paper analyzes the situation through two cases and suggests solutions that preserve near-plenary state control over insurance under the McCarran-Ferguson Act while limiting state regulators’ ability to abuse this special federal-state arrangement.

El Banco Central de Costa Rica (BCCR) interpreta la regulación de las comisiones por el uso de tarjetas de crédito o débito como una justificación para establecer topes máximos, de tal forma que los emisores recuperen únicamente los costos operacionales y estáticos del sistema.

The use of technology to provide financial services (FinTech) represents one of the most fascinating interplays in economic history in the last 150 years. Beginning with the introduction of the telegraph in 1838 and the first transatlantic cable in 1866, technological innovation defined the development of global financial markets throughout the 19^th century. Similarly, Barclay’s introduction of the automatic teller machine in 1967 represents one of the most important financial innovations in the banking sector in the last century and initiated financial players’ shift toward digital infrastructure. Over the last half-century, the global financial industry has become one of the top purchasers of IT products. Regulation has struggled to keep apace.

Read the full piece here.

Abstract

The New Keynesian literature focuses on rules-based interest rate policies, abstracting from the role of monetary aggregates. In the background, though, the quantity equation must hold — every transaction requires money, with money units used in multiple transactions within a period. What is often overlooked is that imposing a rules-based interest rate policy is equivalent to assuming a particular money velocity specification. Using this alternative specification, we derive the efficient money supply rule and show that determinate equilibria exist with money supply policy and a fixed nominal interest rate. We estimate a New Keynesian model with either conventional interest rate policy or our money market reinterpretation of the model, accounting for the policy rate lower bound (PRLB). The money market estimates exactly match the PRLB duration in the data, whereas the conventional estimates fall short by four years.

[The attached was published by La Academia de Centroamérica, a private, nonprofit research center based in Costa Rica, as an adaptation of the ICLE issue brief “Regulating Payment-Card Fees: International Best Practices and Lessons for Costa Rica.” Translation by Juan Carlos Hidalgo.]

Resumen Ejecutivo

On Nov.10, new Twitter Inc. owner Elon Musk reportedly told employees that bankruptcy was a possibility unless Twitter’s cash flow improved. But that cash flow already has been reduced considerably because advertisers are pulling away from Twitter.

Read the full piece here.

Abstract

This article compares the classic liability rules, negligence and strict liability, under the hypothesis that injurers and victims formulate subjective beliefs about the probabilities of harm. Parties may reasonably disagree in their assessment of the precautionary measures available: a measure regarded as safe by one party may be regarded as not safe by the other. By relying on the notions of Pareto efficiency and “No Betting” Pareto efficiency, the article shows that negligence is the optimal liability rule when injurers believe that the probability of harm is always higher than the victims do, while strict liability with overcompensatory damages is the optimal rule in the opposite case. The same results apply to bilateral accidents and, specifically, to product-related harms in competitive markets. Overcompensatory (“punitive”) damages provide consumers with insurance against their own pessimism.

Abstract

Take-up rates for windstorm-resistant buildings remain relatively low even in areas with high exposure to hurricanes and tropical storms. To further investigate this issue, we extend the theory on WTP for prevention to include risk attitudes up to the fourth order, deriving total effects and testable predictions for mixed risk averters and mixed risk lovers’ WTP relative to higher order risk-neutral benchmarks. We then employ field experiments to elicit and test the effects of higher order risk attitudes (HORAs) and information friction on coastal homeowners’ WTP for precautionary building standards with insurance discounts. To elicit risk attitudes and WTP, we employ 50-50 model-free risk apportionment lotteries and payment card WTP experiments. Empirical analyses reveal insightful heterogeneity in the correlation between homeowners’ HORA subgroups and WTP for precautions that is partially consistent with theory. We demonstrate strong causal effects of information friction on WTP for precaution in the absence of a truncated WTP range; however, the effects appear to be positive among risk lovers.