Green,Yellow, Red: Implementing a New Workflow for Collection Management at College of Charleston Libraries

Abstract

This article summarizes the North Carolina Serials Conference presentation “Green, Yellow, Red: Implementing a New Workflow for Collection Management at College of Charleston Libraries,” a case study evaluating a new workflow created by the Collection and Content Services Department at the College of Charleston Libraries to streamline the renewals process after significant departmental and staff changes. The librarians involved in creating the workflow found that they could not only use it to organize their renewals processes, but also to open communication with faculty regarding underutilized resources.     

Detecting and explaining systemic risks of mortgage banks—evidence from the subprime crisis

In recent history, financial markets worldwide experienced severe turmoil due to the subprime crisis originating from the practice of US mortgage banks to securitize loans given especially to subprime borrowers. In the same crisis, several distressed banks were bailed out by states with even more banks receiving financial aids from governments. Using a unique data sample of 100 announcements of US mortgage banks between 2006 and 2009, this paper provides empirical evidence that isolated failures of US mortgage banks caused significant contagion effects in the US financial system. Conversely, especially the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac led to significant positive valuation effects at rival banks. In the cross-sectional analyses, contrary to previous studies in the literature on past financial crises, we find evidence for pure contagion effects following the failures of US mortgage banks. Furthermore, we analyze the reactions of the CDS spreads of several large US banks to the announcements of mortgage banks using a novel mixture copula model. The results show that the contagion effects were limited to the stock market thus underlining the notion of an irrational response of (stock) market participants. The results from our cross-sectional and CDS data analyses in turn indicate that several of the failures of US mortgage banks during the subprime crisis caused irrational contagion in the US financial system thus justifying government intervention. Finally, we rule out the possibility that the contagion effects limited to the US stock market were caused by a herding of investors.     

The perceived fair duration of unemployment benefits for older workers. The role of lifetime achievements in the labour market

The welfare state regulates social policies and reallocates scarce resources. For the social legitimacy of the welfare state, it is important that the public supports the principles underlying this reallocation. This article examines the impact of different activities during the life course on public deservingness perceptions of older unemployed people. In a factorial survey experiment conducted among a random sample of individuals drawn from German administrative employment records, we examine the maximum duration of benefit receipt which is perceived as fair for older unemployed persons with different biographies. The results indicate strong public support for a nexus between previous contributions and benefit entitlements. Besides financial contributions to unemployment insurance, parenting and further training are considered to be ‘lifetime achievements’ which justify longer unemployment benefit receipt. We interpret these findings as an expression of a generalised form of reciprocity which guides perceptions of deservingness regarding older unemployed persons.     

Search With Adverse Selection

This paper analyzes a sequential search model with adverse selection. We study information aggregation by the price—how close the equilibrium prices are to the full‐information prices—when search frictions are small. We identify circumstances under which prices fail to aggregate information well even when search frictions are small. We trace this to a strong form of the winner's curse that is present in the sequential search model. The failure of information aggregation may result in inefficient allocations.     

Informing employees in small and medium-sized firms about training: Results of a randomized field experiment

We mailed brochures to 10,000 randomly chosen employed German workers who were eligible for a subsidized occupational training program called WeGebAU, informing them about the importance of skills-upgrading training in general and about WeGebAU in particular. Using survey and register data, we estimate effects of the informational brochure on awareness of the program, on take-up of WeGebAU and other training, and on subsequent employment. The brochure more than doubles awareness of the program. There are no effects on WeGebAU take-up, but participation in other (unsubsidized) training increases among employees aged under 45. Short-term labor market outcomes are not affected.     

DO SUBSIDIES INCREASE CHARITABLE GIVING IN THE LONG RUN? MATCHING DONATIONS IN A FIELD EXPERIMENT

Subsidizing charitable giving—for example, for victims of natural disasters—is very popular, not only with governments but also with private organizations. Many companies match their employees' charitable contributions, hoping that this will foster the willingness to contribute. However, systematic analyses of the effect of such a matching mechanism are still lacking. This article tests the effect of matching charitable giving in a randomized field experiment in the short and the long run. The donations of a randomly selected group were matched by contributions from an anonymous donor. The results support the hypothesis that a matching mechanism increases contributions to a public good. However, in the periods after the experiment, when matching donations have been stopped, the contribution rate declines for the treatment group. The matching mechanism leads to a negative net effect on the participation rate. The field experiment therefore provides evidence suggesting that the willingness to contribute may be undermined by a matching mechanism in the long run. (JEL: C93, D64, H00)