Despite the interest in measuring price sensitivity of online consumers, most academic work on Internet commerce is hindered by a lack of data on quality. In this paper we use publicly available data on the sales ranks of about 20,000 books to derive quantity proxies at the two leading online...

The Internet has the potential to significantly reduce search costs by allowing consumers to engage in low-cost price comparisons online. This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact that the rise of Internet comparison shopping sites has had for the prices of life insurance in the...

The Internet may significantly reduce search costs by enabling price comparisons on-line. This paper provides empirical evidence on how Internet comparison shopping sites affected the prices of life insurance in the 1990s. Using micro data on individual insurance policies and controlling for...

This paper examines the economic impact of the apportionment formulae used to divide corporate income taxes among the states. Since such formulae usually include total payroll, they transform, at least partially, the state corporate income tax into a direct factor tax on payroll. Using panel...

We estimate the relation between top 5 executive stock option (ESO) grants and future earnings to examine whether incentive alignment or rent extraction by top managers explains option granting behavior. The future operating income associated with a dollar of Black-Scholes value of an ESO grant...

Recent evidence and statements in Harris and Kemsley (1999) suggests that shareholder-level dividend taxes on retained earnings are fully impounded at the top statutory rate into stock prices. We re-examine these claims and results. Using the traditional definition of dividend tax...

Although agency theory suggests that firms ought to index executive compensation to remove market-wide effects (i.e., RPE), there is little evidence to support this theory. Oyer (2004) posits that absence of RPE is optimal if the CEO's reservation wages from outside employment opportunities rise...

We estimate the relation between stock option (ESO) grants to the top five executives and future earnings to examine whether incentive alignment or rent extraction by top managers explains option granting behavior. The future operating income associated with a dollar of Black-Scholes value of an...

Harris and Kemsley (1999) suggest that shareholder-level dividend taxes on retained earnings are fully impounded into stock prices at the top statutory rate. Harris and Kemsley base their empirical tests on Ohlson (1995) with the addition of dividend taxes. We analyze Harris and Kemsley's...

This paper examines the decision to exercise employee stock options (ESOs). Our results indicate a positive relation between the extent of quot;earlyquot; exercise and the unhedged risk of the option. Specifically we document a positive relation between the variance of ESO returns and the extent...