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This paper focuses on the effects of political ideology and party affiliation on support for more government spending on environmental protection. Pooled‐sample results show that Liberals (Democrats) are more likely to support higher government spending on environmental protection than Moderates (Independents), who, in turn, are more likely to support higher spending levels than Conservatives (Republicans). The results persist even when we control for respondents' opinions concerning whether the federal government, in general, does too little or too much. When stratifying by party, ideological divisions generally narrow, while stratifying by ideology leads to slightly wider divisions between Democrats and Republicans. Together, these results suggest that when Liberals and Conservatives form opinions about government spending on the environment, party affiliation, to some degree, dampens the effects of ideology. Between 2014 and 2018 the probability of supporting more environmental spending increased, albeit slightly, for all ideologies and parties, but more so for Liberals and Democrats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses explicitly on the methodological implications of the endogenous theory of governance as applied to firm performance. In particular, if firms choose their governance structures as part of a constrained performance maximization process, then application of an appropriate empirical methodology should reveal statistical evidence of such behavior. In this study we take advantage of the endogenous switching regression model framework to determine whether such predicted optimizing behavior can be corroborated by the data. The model allows us to test explicitly for selection behavior in accordance with comparative advantage and, concomitantly, the presence of selectivity bias, in estimating the impact of CEO duality on firm performance. The selection and performance equations are modeled in accordance with the extant accounting, economics, and management literature on the impact of the dual governance structure on firm performance. Overall, we tested four performance measures for the entire sample of firm-year observations as well as for the largest three industries in terms of sample sizes. The major finding, robust in all cases, is that there is no evidence to support a contention that CEO duality is a structure purposefully chosen for optimizing performance. If firms are indeed choosing the dual leadership structure, they are doing so for reasons other than improving performance from what it would be otherwise. In fact, for performance measured as market return and earnings per share, there is evidence of a significant selectivity bias that acts to lower performance below what it would have been under random assignment. For performance measured by Tobin's q and return on assets, we found neither evidence of selectivity bias, nor any significant marginal performance impacts of CEO duality. Such findings are inconsistent with an endogenous governance theory, at least when applied to firm performance. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. The effects of religiosity and sociodemographic characteristics on support for same-sex marriage (SSM) are estimated. Methods. An ordered probability model with ordinal endogenous treatment is estimated. Treatment effects of religiosity and marginal effects of other covariates are calculated. Results. Religiosity reduces the likelihood of SSM support. This impact can be attenuated by educational achievement, Democratic Party affiliation, higher incomes, and greater contact with gays and lesbians. The importance of religion has no differential impact on the marginal effects of other covariates. Conclusions. We expect the litigation of cases in which gay married couples allege victimization from some form of discrimination, which, in turn, will be defended on the grounds of religious freedom. Religious freedom supporters will come from the intrinsically religious, evangelicals, strong Republicans, and African Americans; same-sex couples will draw support from those who are more educated, strongly Democratic, and at the higher end of the income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eliminating or reducing the federal charitable deduction can have serious impacts on the level of charitable donations. Tax price elasticity estimates from a multivariate sample selection model indicate that changing the deduction to a 12% tax credit would have reduced individual donations in 2012 by 18.9% if applied to itemizing taxpayers and by 10.5% if extended to nonitemizers. Elimination of the deduction would have led to a 35% reduction in individual charitable donations. Even if coupled with cuts in marginal tax rates, eliminating the charitable deduction will still likely result in substantial reductions given the inelastic income elasticities of charitable donations. The estimates justify the ardent opposition of many in the nonprofit sector to the more radical proposals for changing the tax treatment of charitable contributions. ( JEL D34, C34) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether or not there is a link between conservative accounting practices and the sensitivity of executive pay to accounting performance. Using several accrual-based measures of accounting conservatism as well as alternative measures of accounting performance, we estimate an econometric model of CEO compensation that incorporates the interaction of accounting conservatism and accounting performance. Consistent with optimal contracting theory, we find that the sensitivity of executive pay to accounting performance is higher for firms that report conservative accounting earnings. These results support the hypothesis that accounting conservatism, by limiting earnings management opportunities and improving the reliability of accounting performance measures, allows firms to formulate contracts that tie executive compensation more closely to accounting performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether compensation committees actively intervene to adjust accounting performance-based incentive schemes for the real, or perceived, reduced earnings credibility signalled by the purchase of non-audit services. Using a nonlinear, two-stage least-squares method that accounts for the simultaneity of executive pay, firm performance and non-audit fees, we find a significant negative relationship between non-audit fees and the sensitivity of chief executive officer (CEO) pay to firm performance. Point estimates suggest that the reduced weight applied to accounting performance lowers the incentive component of executive pay between roughly 5 and 8 per cent for the CEO of the ‘average firm’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the relation between chief executive officer compensation and accounting performance measures as a function of the firm's capital structure. We specifically analyse pay–performance relationships for all-equity firms relative to high-levered firms. We find a significant positive association between return on equity and the level of compensation for all-equity firms. Consistent with optimal contracting theory, we cannot discern any such relationship for high-levered firms. Because of agency costs of debt, managerial compensation in high-levered firms plays the role of a precommitment mechanism in addition to its conventional role of aligning management incentives with shareholder interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study decomposes changes in science and engineering employment into their growth and technological change components, using an input-output approach. The analysis is based on highly disaggregated industry-occupation employment data and reveals that approximately 30 per cent of the change in total science and engineering employment can be attributed to technological change. This contrasts with the 54 per cent figure found in earlier research. The difference in these findings is due to the highly aggregated data employed in the earlier research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical research to date has provided some evidence on factors important to the determination of religious giving as well as to cross denominational differences in religious giving patterns For example, regression based models of religious giving, typically utilizing data on congregations and congregational contributions, lend considerable support to the observation that Catholics contribute less in amount and as a share of income than do Protestants A number of possible explanations for this difference can be offered Two often cited reasons are (1) a lower estimated marginal propensity to give out of income for Catholics than for Protestants and (2) the more formalized structure of the giving process found in Protestant denominations Here data on religious giving by individuals of different denominations is used to estimate a single equation econometric model using (a) the least squares and (b) the Tobit techniques The least squares results corroborate past findings regarding differences in the religious giving of Catholics and Protestants Unlike past results, however, the Tobit results reported suggest that though income is a statistically significant factor in the religious giving for both groups and the marginal impacts are actually higher for Catholics than for Protestants [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]