Bo Becker and Per Strömberg find that managerial fiduciary duties affect conflicts between equity versus bond holders in a way that influences capital structure choices and economic welfare. They focus on a 1991 Delaware bankruptcy ruling that changed the nature of corporate directors’ fiduciary duties in firms incorporated in that state. After the ruling, managers had less incentive to favor equity over debt if their firms were close to being in financial distress. The researchers find that this ruling increased the likelihood of equity issues, increased investment, and reduced firm risk, but only among firms that were relatively close to default. They also find that the ruling was followed by an increase in average leverage, a reduction in the use of covenants, and ultimately in an increase in firm values.

Corporate mergers frequently force target-firm CEOs to retire early, costing them the forgone benefits of staying employed until their planned retirement date. Dirk Jenter and Katharina Lewellen find that the likelihood of receiving a takeover bid increases sharply when target CEOs reach age 65: the probability of a bid is close to 4 percent per year for target CEOs below age 65 but it increases to 6 percent per year for the retirement-age group. Moreover, observed takeover premiums and target announcement returns are significantly lower when target CEOs are over age 65.

Barry Eichengreen reviews 150 years of historical experience and concludes that successful international economic policy coordination is most likely to occur in four sets of circumstances: 1) when it focuses on technical issues; 2) when cooperation is institutionalized –that is, when procedures and precedents create presumptions about the appropriate conduct of policy and reduce the transactions costs of reaching an agreement; 3) when the concern is to preserve an existing set of policies and behaviors (a policy regime); and 4) when it occurs in the context of broad comity among nations.

Beginning with the 1996 federal welfare reform law, many U.S. safety net programs -- not only cash welfare assistance for families with children, but also food stamps, Medicaid, SCHIP, and SSI -- eliminated eligibility for legal immigrants who previously had been eligible on the same terms as citizens. Using data from the Current Population Survey for 1995-2010 and focusing on children, Marianne Bitler and Hilary Hoynes find that among low-income households with children, immigrant households have come to rely more heavily on earnings, and less on the safety net, than native households. Participation in safety net programs has declined for immigrants compared to natives during the period they study, and the declines were largest for food stamps and SSI. Using variation across states in the magnitude of the Great Recession, their results also show that labor market contractions have led to larger increases in poverty rates for children in immigrant-headed households than in native‐headed households.

While very few women ran for mayor of a U.S. city in 1970, about one-third of the elections in the 2000s have involved a female candidate. Using data on U.S. mayoral elections from 1950 to 2005, Fernando Ferreira and Joseph Gyourko find that the gender of the mayor has no effect on policy outcomes related to the size of local government, the composition of municipal spending and employment, or crime rates. However, female mayors appear to have higher political skills, putting them at an advantage as incumbents over comparable male candidates. Interestingly, electing a female mayor does not change the long-run political success of other female mayoral candidates in the same city, or of female candidates in local congressional elections.