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The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential effectiveness of government reforms aimed at improving the accuracy of ratings issued by credit ratings agencies in US financial markets.

The paper identifies unconscious bias as a source of inaccuracy in the credit ratings process. It examines prior behavioral research on unconscious bias, and uses this research to identify structural issues within the credit ratings industry that give rise to biased judgments. Finally, it examines whether government reforms will be effective in improving the accuracy of credit ratings, and offers additional reforms aimed at combating unconscious bias.

Recent government reforms will be most effective in curbing intentional decisions to compromise the ratings process. However, the reforms will be less effective at mitigating unconscious biases in judgments underlying credit ratings, because they do not adequately address relevant structural issues. To combat unconscious bias, changes need to be made to ratings agencies' fee structures, business models, and risk management functions.

The analysis is of use to regulators who are contemplating the need for reforms aimed at improving the accuracy of credit ratings. While focusing on events in the USA, the analysis is relevant to any country in which credit ratings are influential in financial markets.

This is the first paper to examine the performance of credit ratings agencies through the lens of behavioral psychology, and to introduce the concept of unconscious bias as a determining factor in the accuracy of credit ratings.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of labor market freedom on state-level cost of living differentials in the USA using cross-sectional data for 2016 after allowing for the impacts of economic and quality of life factors.

The study uses two-stage least squares estimation controlling for factors contributing to cost of living differences across states.

The results reveal that an increase in labor market freedom reduces the overall cost of living.

The study can be extended using panel data and alternative measures of labor market freedom.

In general, the finding that less intrusive government and greater labor freedom are associated with a reduced cost of living should not be surprising. This is because less government intrusion and greater labor freedom both inherently allow markets to be more efficient in the rationalization of and interplay with forces of supply and demand.

The findings of this and future related studies could prove very useful to policy makers and entrepreneurs, as well as small business owners and public corporations of all sizes – particularly those considering either location in, relocation to, or expansion into other markets within the USA. Furthermore, the potential benefits of the National Right-to-Work Law currently under consideration in Congress could add cost of living reductions to the debate.

The authors extend the literature on cost of living differentials by investigating whether higher amounts of state-level labor market freedom act to reduce the states’ cost of living using the most recent annual data available (2016). That labor freedom has a systemic efficiency impact on the state-level cost of living is a significant finding. In our opinion, it is likely that labor market freedom is increasing the efficiency of labor market transactions in the production and distribution of goods and services, and acts to reduce the cost of living in states. In addition, unlike previous related studies, the authors investigate the impact of not only overall labor market freedom on the state-level cost of living, but also how the three sub-indices of labor market freedom, as identified and measured by Stansel et al. (2014, 2015), impact the cost of living state by state.

College placement assessments in the USA have underperformed in predicting college readiness. This has prompted a wave of reforms to placement practices and policies. Recently, student preparation for placement assessments has come to the forefront as a means for enabling better evaluation of college readiness. In this study, the authors explored the effects of an intervention aimed at preparing students for precollege placement assessments. The intervention focused on the provision of mathematics discipline-specific literacy skills because demonstrating mathematical mastery depends on students’ ability to read, understand and translate text into mathematical computations.

In this study, the authors used a randomized control trial design. The design enabled the authors to draw causal inferences while examining the effects of a placement assessment preparation intervention on mathematics placement and course outcomes. The authors also examined the intervention’s effect across incoming first-year college students with varying levels of readiness.

Findings demonstrated a positive and significant effect on assessment scores and placement for intervention participants with a stronger effect for those with higher levels of readiness. Intervention participants exhibited comparable academic success outcomes as those who did not receive the intervention.

Little assessment research has explored the intersection of mathematics and literacy skills in relation to college readiness assessment. In addition, findings support the utility of preparation for college placement assessments.

This systematic literature review analyses the determinants and consequences of executive compensation-related shareholder activism and say-on-pay (SOP) votes. The review covers 71 empirical articles published between January 1995 and September 2017. The studies are reviewed within an empirical research framework that separates the reasons for shareholder activism and SOP voting dissent as input factor on the one hand and the consequences of shareholder pressure as output factor on the other. This procedure identifies the five most important groups of factors in the literature: the level and structure of executive compensation, firm characteristics, corporate governance mechanisms, shareholder structure and stakeholders. Of these, executive compensation and firm characteristics are the most frequently examined. Further examination reveals that the key assumptions of neoclassical principal agent theory for both managers and shareholders are not always consistent with recent empirical evidence. First, behavioral aspects (such as the perception of fairness) influence compensation activism and SOP votes. Second, non-financial interests significantly moderate shareholder activism. Insofar, we recommend integrating behavioral and non-financial aspects into the existing research. The implications are analyzed, and new directions for further research are discussed by proposing 19 different research questions.