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Three empirical regularities characterize markets for married workers: (1) productivity and leadership potential are predicted by intelligence; (2) assortative mating based on intelligence characterizes marriages; and (3) labor force participation declines with spouse income more rapidly for married women than for married men. Taken together these characteristics imply that labor force participation will decline for women relative to their husbands as intelligence rises. These three observations suggest a nondiscriminatory explanation for the alleged under-representation of females among corporate leaders. They imply that the women who might be predicted to win the tournament for these positions often do not enter this competition. Instead they choose employment in full time household production. Both the three regularities and the implication concerning labor force participation are empirically examined. The findings of these tests are supportive on all counts.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize and provide commentary on the US Department of Treasury's Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure, issued on March 31, 2008.

The paper summarizes and comments on the short‐, intermediate‐, and long‐term recommendations laid out in the Blueprint. The short‐term recommendations are to modernize the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, principally by broadening its focus to include the entire financial sector; to address gaps in mortgage origination oversight, principally though creating a federal Mortgage Origination Commission; and to enhance the Federal Reserve Board's current temporary liquidity provisioning process. The Treasury's intermediate‐term recommendations are intended to modernize the regulatory structure and to eliminate duplication. They are to phase out and transition the thrift charter to the national banking charter; to merge the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC); to establish a uniform, comprehensive regulatory system for, and create a federal charter for, “systemically important” payment and settlement systems; and to create an optional federal charter for insurers. The Blueprint's long‐term optimal regulatory structure envisions an “objectives‐based” regulatory approach in which three primary regulators would be established to focus individually on market stability regulation, prudential financial regulation and business conduct; three types of charters for financial institutions: federal insured depository institutions, federal insurance institutions, and federal financial services providers; the Federal Reserve Board assuming the role of market stability regulator; a prudential federal regulatory agency to regulate financial institutions with some type of explicit government guarantee associated with their business operations; and a conduct‐of‐business regulatory agency to regulate the business conduct of all financial institutions. In addition to the three objectives‐based regulators, the Blueprint recommends establishing two other regulatory entities: a federal insurance guarantee corporation and a corporate finance regulator.

The Blueprint finds that substantial regulatory reform is necessary to respond to significant developments including globalization of the capital markets, innovative and sophisticated new financial products and trading strategies, growing institutionalization of the capital markets, and convergence of financial service providers and financial products. Among the areas where one may see action and debate in the near future are: broadening the scope and membership of the President's Working Group on Capital Markets, adoption of uniform minimum licensing standards and the creation of a mortgage origination commission, further discussion of the terms and conditions attached to non‐depository institutions' access to the Federal Reserve discount window, continuing debate around the possible merger of the SEC and the CFTC, and updating by the SEC of the self‐regulatory organization (SRO) rule‐making process.

The paper is a clear and concise summary with commentary from expert securities lawyers.

This volume comprises 12 chapters, each accounting for a particular aspect of worker well-being. Among the issues addressed are: employee compensation, job loss, disability, health, gender, education, contract negotiation, and macroeconomic labor policy. In discussing these issues, the volume provides answers to a number of important questions. For example, why do smaller, newer companies do a better job matching CEO pay to profits than old, established corporations? Why do firms hire outside contractors rather than produce all goods internally? Which demographic groups are most prone to job losses? Can self-reported health predict which workers become disabled? How does AIDS affect the supply of nurses? What does marital status have to do with the glass ceiling? Does retiring from work increase one’s mental health? Does domestic violence drive women to work more? Do higher educational subsidies lead to more schooling than larger educational rates of return? Do different firm and worker discount rates lead to longer contract negotiations? And finally, how robust are estimated effects of public policy to changes in data definition? In short, the volume addresses a number of important policy-related research issues on worker well-being facing labor economists today.

Many entrepreneurs are able to manage their businesses within relatively contained and familiar geographical and cultural circles. With a world economy shrinking every day amid a flood of digital information, todayʼs entrepreneur is increasingly confronted with opportunities to consider new ways to secure vendors and recruit customers. Many unfamiliar possibilities emerge. Should the entrepreneur venture beyond “comfortable” surroundings to consider international connections? Specifically, what about China? How practical is this fetching business temptation of larger markets and lower-cost subcontractors? What are the social, trade, financial, and political issues? Should a “China strategy” be a true entrepreneurial offensive, or rather a defensive response to competition? Is this “China strategy” the promise of yet another entrepreneurial nirvana? Or is it perhaps again a case of “Be careful of what you wish for; it may really come true?”

This paper aims to contribute to the project of recognising the contribution of female scholars to the development of marketing thought. The paper presents a biography of Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt, a home economist, who contributed to the shaping of contemporary ideas about consumption and the consumer.

Source material used includes the Elizabeth Ellis Hoyt Papers (1884‐2009) in the Iowa State University Archives. The collection contains a variety of materials, of which the most important for this paper were news clippings, personal diaries (1907‐1918), and published and unpublished manuscripts (1953, 1964, n.d.). Also important for this study were two sources published by Alison Comish Thorne, Elizabeth Hoyt's PhD student. These include Thorne's autobiography Leave the Dishes in the Sink and her entry on Elizabeth Hoyt in the Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists.

The paper documents Elizabeth Hoyt's development of marketing thought, focusing on her early work on the cost of living index and subsequent contributions to an expanded theory of consumption and consumer learning.

Elizabeth Hoyt is one of a group of female home economists who pioneered consumption economics in America in the 1920s and 1930s yet who have been neglected in published accounts. Notwithstanding a short biographical note in the Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists, Hoyt's life and work are not yet documented.

This paper explores a phenomenon known as entrapment. Entrapment refers to situations where people become “locked into” decisions through the passage of time as distinct from actively re‐investing in failing projects. The present study examines Becker’s so called “side bets” theory which suggests that entrapment results from extraneous investments made during the course of employment. The exploration is conducted via two contrasting case studies of solicitors, one successful, the other unsuccessful. Analysis suggests some support for Becker’s theme. More importantly the study reveals that post hoc rationalization of events plays an important part in sustaining persistence. This insight raises a question. Do people become trapped by events as Becker suggests, or, do they largely imprison themselves?

The long-term financial stability of hospital systems represents a “grand challenge” in health care. New ownership forms, such as private equity (PE), promise to achieve better financial performance than nonprofit or for-profit systems. In this study, we compare two systems with many similarities, but radically different ownership structures, missions, governance, and merger and acquisition (M&A) strategies. Both were nonprofit, religious systems serving low-income communities – Montefiore Health System and Caritas Christi Health Care.

Montefiore's M&A strategy was to invest in local hospitals and create an integrated regional system, increasing revenues by adding primary doctors and community hospitals as feeders into the system and achieving efficiencies through effective resource allocation across specialized units. Slow and steady timing of acquisitions allowed for organizational learning and balancing of debt and equity. By 2019, it owned 11 hospitals with 40,000 employees and had strong positive financials and low reliance on debt.

By contrast, in 2010, PE firm Cerberus Capital bought out Caritas (renamed Steward Health Care System) and took control of the Board of Directors, who set the system's strategic direction. Cerberus used Steward as a platform for a massive debt-driven acquisition strategy. In 2016, it sold off most of its hospitals’ property for $1.25 billion, leaving hospitals saddled with long-term inflated leases; paid itself almost $500 million in dividends; and used the rest for leveraged buyouts of 27 hospitals in 9 states in 3 years. The rapid, scattershot M&A strategy was designed to create a large corporation that could be sold off in five years for financial gain – not for health care integration. Its debt load exploded, and by 2019, its financials were deeply in the red. Its Massachusetts hospitals were the worst financial performers of any system in the state. Cerberus exited Steward in 2020 in a deal that left its physicians, the new owners, holding the debt.