Does membership come with privileges? The effect of ETFs on firm value

Raphaël Grach

Does membership come with privileges? The effect of ETFs on firm value

Raphaël Grach

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are in line to become the next big hit on financial markets. ETFs are a specific category of financial instruments that aim at replicating the performance of an underlying basket of securities. Since they are relatively new, ETFs are met with growing enthusiasm in both academia and in the financial world and some start to wonder if their apparent convenience hides a darker side where they create distortions. I use the yearly Russell 3000 reconstruction to study the effects of ETFs ownership on three different measures of the value of the firms that compose the index.

 

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Does more generous income assistance discourage work? Evidence from Canada

Yutong Lu

 

Policy makers often fear high social assistance benefit levels will have negative employment and labor force participation effects. However, do these negative effects actually exist, and if so, how big are they?

My thesis uses new detailed data on social assistance benefit rules and changes across Canada to estimate the effects of social assistance benefit levels on employment. I find that large increases in assistance levels are associated with a modest decrease in the labor force participation rate of singles and single parents with one child. However, higher assistance levels actually increase the labor force participation of couples with two children.

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