This study tests the agency cost hypothesis in the context of geographic earnings disclosures. The agency cost hypothesis predicts that managers, when not monitored by shareholders, will make self-maximizing decisions which may not necessarily be in the best interest of shareholders. These decisions include aggressively growing the firm, which reduces profitability and destroys firm value. Geog...

The verdant hills of Casablanca look down on homes and shops jammed chockablock against narrow, twisted streets filled with the odors of spices and dung. Casablanca is a very old city, passed over by Lawrence Durrell perhaps only by a geographical accident as the winepress of love. In the more modern quarter, located on a broad, sunny boulevard, is a building otherwise unremarkable except for a...

This paper explores the development of rail systems in Ireland and Australia. The paper highlights the different trajectories of both systems and charts the experiences and influences of Empire and Commonwealth on both. In Australia the rail system was developed as a way to promote nation building and overcome isolation while in Ireland both prior to and after partition the system enabled acces...

This study utilizes regression discontinuity to examine the long run impacts of the mita, an extensive forced mining labor system in effect in Peru and Bolivia between 1573 and 1812. Results indicate that a mita effect lowers household consumption by around one third in subjected districts today. Using data from the Spanish Empire and Peruvian Republic to trace channels of institutional persist...

All over the world “globalization has brought the fears that the social fabric of societies could be brought down by the market.“Anti-globalization” protest claim that the “world is not for sale”. French Prime Minister Line Jospin tried to draw a line in the sand by granting that he would go for a “market economy but not for a market society” and many more quotes from all quarters would point t...

During the 1800’s – before the well-known genocide, planned in the twentieth century – there were massacres and persecution on Armenian villages. It is important to underline that many Christian Armenians lived in Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of 1800’s they paid many taxes and felt themselves an important part of the Empire. Thus they would have liked to achieve more significant public role...

0278-4165/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Inc. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2012.08.002 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K. Killgrove) During the Empire, the population of Rome was composed mostly of lower-class free citizens and slaves. Viewed from historical records, the Roman diet included primarily olives, wine, and wheat, but poor and enslaved Romans may h...