the birth of a new industry entry by start ups and the drivers of firm growth the case of encryption software the paper analyses the birth of the encryption software industry esi a new niche in the software industry using a chandlerian perspective this work reports the main facts about fir entry and growth with a particular focus on start up strategies and actions since scale economies do not play a major role in esi the paper investigates the different sources of fir competitive advantages this work shows that innovation and product differentiation along with investments in co specialised assets are variables strongly correlated to young fir probability to survive and grow in doing so we have collected highly detailed information on product introduction us patents granted worldwide alliances and biographical data of fir founders 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved jel classificatio m13 l86 o32

the impact of uncertainty shocks in emerging economies abstract a recent strand of research proposes that sudden jumps in uncertainty generate rapid drops and recoveries in real macroeconomic variables that drive the business cycle using an empirical model we find substantial heterogeneity in reactions to these shocks across countries in comparison to the u s and other developed countries emerging economies suffer much more severe falls in investment and private consumption following an exogenous uncertainty shock take significantly longer to recover and do not experience a subsequent overshoot in activity we provide evidence that the dynamics of investment and consumption are correlated with the depth of financial markets we control for the potential role of a credit channel and estimate that it can account for up to one half of the increased fall in investment generated by uncertainty shocks among emerging economies with less developed financial markets in this context monetary and fiscal policy actions that alleviate the impact of credit constraints facing firms may reduce the impact of uncertainty shocks in these economies

globalization and emerging markets with or without crash we analyze the effects of financial and trade globalization on the likelihood of financial crashes in emerging markets while trade globalization always makes crashes less likely financial globalization may make them more likely especially when trade costs are high pessimistic expectations can be self fulfilling and lead to a collapse in demand for goods and assets such a crash comes with a current account reversal and drops in income and investment lower income countries are more prone to such demand based financial crises a quantitative evaluation shows our model is consistent with the main stylized facts of financial crashes in emerging markets

liberalization of capital movements and of the domestic financial system this paper analyzes the dynamic impact of a joint liberalization of capital movements and of the domestic financial sector both a simultaneous and a sequential liberalization are examined in an overlapping generations model with a q theory of investment a liberalization generally leads to an initial period of capital inflows followed by capital outflows it also increases investment and causes an overshooting in share prices furthermore the interest rate level before a liberalization will usually not indicate the direction of net capital flows copyright 1992 by the london school of economics and political science

collateral damage for r d manufacturers how patent sharks operate in markets for technology patent sharks small firms that exploit information asymmetries in markets for technology to gain patent based competitive advantages challenge established theory by which i markets for technology benefit large firms and ii intellectual property rights systems strictly support markets for technology empirically linking the sharks different assault strategies to the patents they deploy we illustrate that patent sharks will likely be an enduring phenomenon in markets for technology we discuss policy and strategy implications copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

investment uncertainty and liquidity we analyze the dynamic investment decision of a firm subject to an endogenous financing constraint the threat of future funding shortfalls lowers the value of the firm s timing options and encourages acceleration of investment beyond the first best optimal level as well as highlighting another way by which capital market frictions can distort investment behavior this result implies that 1 the sensitivity of investment to cash flow can be greatest for high liquidity firms and 2 greater uncertainty has an ambiguous effect on investment

real options agency conflicts and optimal capital structure abstract we examine the impact of a stockholder bondholder conflict over the timing of the exercise of an investment option on firm value and corporate financial policy we find that an equity maximizing firm exercises the option too early relative to a value maximizing strategy and we show how this problem can be characterized as one of overinvestment in risky investment projects equityholders incentive to overinvest significantly decreases firm value and optimal leverage and significantly increases the credit spread of risky debt numerical solutions illustrate how the agency cost of overinvestment and its effect on corporate financial policy vary with firm and project characteristics

financial integration credit market imperfections and consumption smoothing abstract contrary to standard theoretical reasoning recent empirical research shows that financial integration is associated with higher consumption volatility in developing countries this paper illustrates how domestic credit market imperfections can alter the standard predictions about the consumption smoothing possibilities under financial autarky and international financial integration i use a two country international real business cycle model where the non traded sector in the small country faces borrowing constraints due to contract enforceability problems if the international risk sharing opportunities are non existent households can secure themselves against the shocks in the non traded sector only by adjusting their labor effort which leads to changes in sectorial output and terms of trade the deterioration of the terms of trade acts as a dampening effect on consumption causing it to be less volatile under financial autarky relative to financial integration under financial integration international financial assets provide the insurance against domestic productivity shocks without affecting the relative prices hence allowing the consumption to react more

microeconomic adjustments in uruguay during 1973 1981 the interplay of real and financial shocks abstract this paper uses the financial statements of industrial firms to develop an integrated firm s eye view of the changes in the uruguayan economy during 1973 1981 in the first of three subperiods 1973 1975 real financial costs were very negative and tended to offset low returns on operating assets during 1976 1978 the dismantling of interest rate controls increased real financial costs but other factors increased the returns on operating assets more rapidly during 1979 1981 financial costs jumped enough to more than absorb increases in gross earnings which were probably due to argentine demand the rates of earning and capital formation were highest among exporters in the second subperiod when a major export promotion program was in place this pattern was reversed in the third subperiod as the promotion programs were dismantled and real currency appreciation seemed to squeeze gross earnings of exportables relatively more this unequal squeezing was probably due to redundant tariff and other protection for import competing producers

entrepreneurship financiership and selection we develop an equilibrium model of the market for entrepreneurial finance in which all agents have some personal wealth and a project whose quality is their private information all agents choose whether to invest either as entrepreneurs or financiers or to invest in storage technology we find that a binding economy level wealth constraint which renders credit scarce can create advantageous selection where productive agents become entrepreneurs and unproductive agents become their financiers if funding is easier to obtain entrepreneurship also attracts unproductive agents in our model individual wealth and entrepreneurship are positively negatively correlated if financial market participation is complete incomplete

lending booms latin america and the world recent theories of crisis put lending booms at the root of financial collapses yet lending booms may be a natural consequence of economic development and fluctuations so are lending booms dangerous in this paper we investigate empirically this question using a broad sample of lending boom episodes over 40 years with a special eye for latin america our results indicate that 1 lending booms are often associated with i a domestic investment boom ii an increase in domestic interest rates iii a worsening of the current account iv a declines in reserves v a real appreciation vi a decline in output growth 2 typical lending booms do not increase substantially the vulnerability of the banking sector or the balance of payments comparing latin america and the rest of the world we find that latin america lending booms make the economy considerably more volatile and vulnerable to financial and balance of payment crisis

corporate control and real investment in incomplete markets abstract in the standard real options approach to investment under uncertainty agents formulate optimal policies under the assumptions of risk neutrality or perfect capital markets however in most situations corporate executives face incomplete markets either because they receive compensation packages that restrict their portfolios or because cash flows from the firm s investment opportunities are not spanned by those of existing assets the present paper examines the impact of managerial risk aversion on investment decisions when the manager is exposed to idiosyncratic risk and faces the risk of a control challenge in the paper the investment policy selected by the manager reflects a trade off between his incentives to reduce risk and the need to ensure sufficient efficiency to prevent control challenges the analysis demonstrates that risk aversion induces the manager to speed up investment leading to a significant erosion of the value of the option to wait

measuring macroeconomic instability a critical survey illustrated with exports series for at least 40 years the analysis of the causes and consequences of macroeconomic instability has greatly deepened our understanding of the handicaps faced by developing countries this concern on economic instability is evidenced by a broad spectrum of indicators based on the deviation of observed values of a given economic aggregate from its reference or trend value in general the choice of this or that indicator is not discussed advocating that the resulting instability indicators are closely correlated focusing on measurements of instability in export revenue data for 134 countries from 1970 to 2005 this paper finds that this assertion may be true for variancebased indicators measuring the average magnitude of deviations from the trend however great discrepancies may arise between different measures of the asymmetry or of the occurrence of extreme deviations around the trend when different trend computation methods are used our purpose is therefore to invite further discussions regarding the use of these indicators and to highlight the different dimensions of instability which have been so far unheeded by the economic literature

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

when liberal policies reflect external shocks what do we learn abstract we present a model where policies of free capital mobility can signal governments future policies but the informativeness of the signal depends on the path of world interest rates capital flows to emerging markets reflect investors perception of these markets political risk with low world interest rates emerging markets experience a capital inflow and engage in a widespread policy of free capital mobility with higher rates only sufficiently committed countries allow free capital mobility whereas others impose controls to trap capital onshore thus signaling future policies affecting capital mobility these predictions are consistent with the recent experience of capital flows and policies affecting capital mobility in developing countries

the demand for liquid assets corporate saving and international capital flows the recent period of capital outflows from emerging economies has coincided with an increase in their corporate saving in this paper we model corporate saving as a demand for liquid assets by credit constrained firms in a dynamic open economy macroeconomic model we find that the implications of this model are very different from standard models because the demand for foreign bonds is a complement to domestic investment rather than a substitute we show that this complementarity is at work when an emerging economy is on its convergence path or when it has a higher tfp growth rate this framework is consistent with a number of stylized facts found in high growth high investment emerging economies

are financial development and trade openness complements or substitutes this article studies the long and short run relationships between financial development and trade openness using the pooled mean group estimator of pesaran shin and smith 1999 for unbalanced panel data for 87 countries over the 1960 2005 period our empirical results indicate that long run complementarity between financial development and trade openness coexists with short run substitutionarity between the two policy variables but when splitting the data into oecd and non oecd country groups this finding can be observed only in non oecd countries for oecd countries financial development has negligible effects on trade in addition we find nonlinearity in the relationship in that long run responses of trade decrease with financial development the article further finds coexistence of negative trade effects of financial fragility and positive trade impacts of financial depth

north south lending and endogenous domestic capital market inefficiencies abstract we develop an open economy model of intertemporal trade under asymmetric information capital market imperfections are endogenous and depend on a country s stage of economic development relative to the perfect information benchmark north south capital flows are dampened and possibly reversed and world interest rates are lower whereas riskless rates are equalized across borders the domestic loan rate is higher in poorer countries the model can be applied to a number of policy issues including the debt overhang problem the indexation of foreign public debts and the effect of income distribution on growth

financial development financial fragility and growth the authors study the apparent contradiction between two strands of the literature on the effects of financial intermediation on economic activity on the one hand the empirical growth literature finds a positive effect of financial depth as measured by for instance private domestic credit and liquid liabilities for example levine loayza and beck 2000 on the other hand the banking and currency crisis literature finds that monetary aggregates such as domestic credit are among the best predictors of crises and their related economic downturns for example kaminski and reinhart 1999 the authors account for these contrasting effects based on the distinction between the short and long run impacts of financial intermediation working with a panel of cross country and time series observations they estimate an encompassing model of short and long run effects using the pooled mean group estimator developed by pesaran shin and smith 1999 their conclusion from this analysis is that a positive long run relationship between financial intermediation and output growth coexists with a mostly negative short run relationship the authors further develop an explanation for these contrasting effects by relating them to recent theoretical models by linking the estimated short run effects to measures of financial fragility namely banking crises and financial volatility and by jointly analyzing the effects of financial depth and fragility in classic panel growth regressions

measuring the agency cost of debt we adapt a contingent claims model of the firm to reflect the incentive effects of the capital structure and thereby to measure the agency costs of debt an underlying model of the firm and the stochastic features of its product market are analyzed and an optimal operating policy is chosen we identify the change in operating policy created by leverage and value this change the model determines the value of the firm and its associated liabilities incorporating the agency consequences of debt the optimal capital structure for a firm is now widely regarded to be determined by a broad range of factors including a mix of tax effects the various agency problems associated with different securities and the various costs of issuing securities including the costs created by adverse selection while the existence of a theoretical optimum has been demonstrated in a variety of papers a less explored area has been the construction of detailed models that enable us to measure each of the relevant factors for a particular company and thereby to determine the actual optimal mix for that firm this gap in our understanding is particularly glaring in the case of agency costs in order to allow a careful modelling of strategic relations the parameters of most agency models are either so simplified that it is impossible to associate them with measurable parameters of a real world case or else the models simply abstract from certain critical factors such as a robust measure of price risk that must be incorporated into any real application for example although we now understand that sinking funds dividend restrictions and other bond covenants help to resolve the conflict of interest between bondholders and equity we do not yet have much in the way of models with which to determine the optimal parameters of these very covenants contingent claims models can provide a consistent framework for multiperiod valuation that properly accounts for risk but they usually abstract from the agency factors entering capital structure decisions when using a contingent claims model to value a firm s securities it is common to take the value of the firm itself as governed by an exogenously defined stochastic process the value of the firm s securities are then derived from this underlying value and as merton 1974 points out in his paper on the pricing of risky debt the modigliani miller theorem obtains so that the value of the firm is independent of the value and the type of debt in order to apply the contingent claims techniques to a setting in which agency problems are central some adaptation is necessary in this paper we

irreversible investment managerial discretion and optimal capital structure abstract we explore the significance of employee compensation and alternative reservation income on investment timing endogenous default yield spreads and capital structure in a real options setting a manager s incentive to under over invest in a project is associated to labor income he has to forego in order to work on the project the manager s salary his stake on the project s equity capital and his subsequent income should he decide to terminate operations we find that the optimal level of coupon payments decreases with managerial salary and ownership stake while it is increasing in the manager s reservation income yield spreads optimal leverage ratios are increasing decreasing in the manager s salary and ownership stake while they are decreasing increasing in the manager s reservation income exploring agency costs of debt as deviations from a value maximizing investment policy we document a u shaped relationship between agency costs of debt and the managerial compensation parameters the manager s reservation income salary and ownership share

leverage decision and manager compensation with choice of effort and volatility abstract we study the incentive effects of granting levered or unlevered stock to a risk averse manager the stock is granted by risk neutral shareholders who choose leverage and compensation level the manager applies costly effort and selects the level of volatility both of which affect expected return the results are driven by the attempt of the risk neutral shareholders to maximize the value of their claims net of the compensation package we consider a dynamic setting and find that levered stock is optimal for high type managers firms with high momentum large firms and firms for which additional volatility only implies a modest increase in expected return

dualism and macroeconomic volatility this paper develops a simple macroeconomic model that shows that combining capital market imperfections together with unequal access to investment opportunities across individuals can generate endogenous and permanent euctuations in aggregate gdp investment and interest rates reducing inequality of access may be a necessary condition for macroeconomic stabilization moreover countercyclical escal policies have a role to play in our model savings are underutilized in slumps because of the limited debt capacity of potential investors therefore the government should issue public debt during recessions in order to absorb those idle savings and enance investment subsidies or tax cuts for investors the most important single fact about saving and investment activities is that in our industrial society they are generally done by different people and for different reasons for years there might tend to be too little investment leading to deeation losses excess capacity and unemployment for other years there might tend to be too much investment leading to periods of chronic ineation unless prudent and proper public policies in the escal and monetary eelds are followed paul a samuelson economics 8th edition 1970 pp 196 198

financial intermediation and regime switching in business cycles the authors study a one sector growth model where capital investment is credit financed and there is an adverse selection problem in credit markets the presence of adverse selection creates an indeterminacy of equilibrium many equilibria display permanent fluctuations characterized by transitions between walrasian regimes and regimes of credit rationing cyclical contractions involve declines in real interest rates increases in credit rationing and withdrawals of savings from banks for some configurations of parameters all equilibria display cyclical fluctuations the authors provide sufficient conditions for deterministic cycles consisting of m periods of expansion followed by n periods of contraction to exist copyright 1998 by american economic association

microeconomic adjustments in chile during 1977 1981 the importance of being a grupo abstract this paper uses the financial statements of industrial firms to provide an integrated firm level view of the changes in the chilean economy during 1977 1981 both real side and financial shocks had major effects on the performance of some types of firms exportable goods producers did relatively poorly in real activities for reasons probably tied to chile s real prolonged exchange rate appreciation import competing firms that began the period with high protection did even worse apparently reflecting the larger change in their output prices as protection was dismantled the reforms thus shifted demand away from industries least in line with the country s comparative advantage but they also hurt exportables the very sector authorities intended to promote on the financial side the highly positive real cost of peso borrowing reduced industrial profits considerably a handful of powerful conglomerates grupos generated large but presumably unrealized capital gains by investing in the securities of related enterprises such activities allowed them to offset relatively poor returns on real operations and their ownership of the country s major banks allowed them to consolidate control of a large volume of assets with debt finance these two results explain why the grupos were suddenly in considerable financial difficulty when the chilean boom ended in 1982

ideas for rent an overview of markets for technology this article surveys some of the recent literature on technology markets and summarizes its main issues and insights we structure our analysis in three parts the supply and demand of technology the factors that condition the formation and growth of technology markets industry structure and dynamic issues in addition we summarize some of the studies that have tried to document the size and growth of these markets we find that the literature has focused mainly on the supply of technology but several other aspects of these markets remain under studied including the demand for external technology the role of uncertainty in technology markets and the dynamic interaction between industry structure and the market for technology understanding these will illuminate whether markets for technology will continue to grow or remained confined to pockets of the economy copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

do capital market imperfections exacerbate output fluctuations abstract we develop a dynamic general equilibrium macroeconomic model where a proportion of firms are credit constrained due to asymmetric information in general a macroeconomic shock has additional effects created by a reallocation of funds between credit constrained and unconstrained firms as they have different marginal productivities we show however that the output response to shocks is not necessarily amplified and can be dampened by the presence of asymmetric information this depends on the impact of the shock on the composition of external and internal funds for credit constrained firms

sovereign defaults and liquidity crises abstract sovereign debt crises in emerging markets are usually associated with liquidity and banking crises the conventional view is that the domestic turmoil is the consequence of foreign retaliation although there is no clear empirical evidence on classic default penalties this paper emphasizes instead a direct link between sovereign defaults and liquidity crises building on two natural assumptions i government bonds represent a source of liquidity for the domestic private sector and ii the government cannot discriminate between domestic and foreign creditors in the event of default in this context external debt emerges even in the absence of classic penalties and government default is countercyclical triggers a liquidity crunch and amplifies output volatility in addition a reform that involves a substitution of government bonds with privately sourced liquidity instruments could backfire by restricting governments access to foreign credit

currency crises and monetary policy in an economy with credit constraints this paper presents a simple model of currency crises which is driven by the interplay between the credit constraints of private domestic firms and the existence of nominal price rigidities the possibility of multiple equilibria including a currency crisis equilibrium with low output and a depreciated domestic currency results from the following mechanism if nominal prices are sticky a currency depreciation leads to an increase in the foreign currency debt repayment obligations of firms and thus to a fall in their profits this reduces firms borrowing capacity and therefore investment and output in a credit constrained economy which in turn reduces the demand for the domestic currency and leads to a depreciation we examine the impact of various shocks including productivity fiscal or expectational shocks we then analyze the optimal monetary policy to prevent or solve currency crises we also argue that currency crises can occur both under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes as the primary source of crises is the deteriorating balance sheet of private firms

technological exploration through licensing new insights from the licensee s point of view the market for technology plays a crucial role in firms technology strategy as a way to undertake search in the available technological space drawing on innovation search theory and the literatures on licensing and absorptive capacity ac we address the issue of the factors that affect how technologically distant from the existing technological portfolio in licensing firms are able to move when they in license externally developed technologies we posit that a long technological distance reflects the outcome of more exploratory search while a short distance reflects the outcome of exploitative search we conjecture two distinct dimensions of ac in terms of the firms stock of knowledge assimilation capacity and the degree to which firms have searched broadly in the past monitoring ability t o affect the distance of exploration from the existing technological portfolio furthermore we compare firms that explore through licensing and firms which do not explore through licensing but do so through search reflected in own patenting activities we propose that the effects of assimilation capacity and monitoring ability should be more pronounced for licensees combining data on 176 license agreements and related patent information and while using a control sample of non licensing firms we find with exceptions support for these ideas

interactions of corporate financing and investment decisions a dynamic framework this article analyzes the interaction between a firm s dynamic investment operating and financing decisions in a model with operating adjustment and recapitalization costs using numerical analysis we solve the model for cases that highlight interaction effects we find that higher production flexibility due to lower costs of shutting down and reopening a production facility enhances the firm s debt capacity thereby increasing the net tax shield value of debt financing while higher financial flexibility resulting from lower recapitalization costs has a similar effect production flexibility and financial flexibility are to some extent substitutes we find that the impact of debt financing on the firm s investment and operating decisions is economically insignificant

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

the impact of debt financing on entry and exit in a duopoly this article investigates the interaction between market entry company foreclosure and capital structure in a duopoly we find that the order in which firms foreclose is determined not only by differences in firm specific factors but also by common economic factors such as the interest rate and the market profit volatility we extend the exit model by allowing financially distressed firms to renegotiate their debt contracts through a one off debt exchange offer we find that firms with high bankruptcy costs or with prospects of profit improvement can get bigger reductions on their debt repayments investigating market entry we find that financial vulnerability of the incumbent induces earlier entry article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

economic adjustment and exchange rates in developing countries in spite of the attention paid exchange rates in recent economic debates on developing countries relatively few studies have systematically analyzed in detail the various ramifications of exchange rate policy in these countries in this new volume from the national bureau of economic research leading economists use rigorous models to tackle various exchange rate issues while also illuminating policy implications that emerge from their analyses the volume divided into four main sections addresses the role of exchange rates in stabilization programs and the adjustment process the importance of exchange rate policy during liberalization reform in developing countries exchange rate problems relevant and unique to developing countries illustrated by case studies and the problems defining measuring and identifying determinants of real exchange rates authors of individual papers examine the relation between commercial policies and exchange rates the role of exchange rate policy in stabilization programs the effectiveness of devaluations as a policy tool and the interaction between exchange rate terms of trade an capital flow this research will not only prove crucial to our understanding of the role of exchange rates in developing countries but will clearly set the standard for future work in the field

chaotic dynamics in credit constrained emerging economies abstract this paper analyzes the role of financial development as a source of endogenous instability in small open economies by assuming that firms face credit constraints our model displays a complex dynamic behavior with high period cycles or even chaotic dynamic patterns for intermediate values of the parameter representing the level of financial development of the economy we derive sufficient conditions for global stability and we prove that chaos appears via a border collision bifurcation the basic implication of our model is that economies experiencing a process of financial development are more unstable than both very underdeveloped and very developed economies

dynamic capabilities and their indirect impact on firm performance this article seeks to empirically explore the relationship between dynamic capabilities and firm performance in particular it addresses the question of whether dynamic capabilities impact directly or indirectly on performance in doing so the article articulates and measures a construct of dynamic capabilities and using structural equation modeling it examines whether their impact on performance is mediated through operational marketing and technological capabilities the proposed model is tested in different levels of environmental dynamism using data on 271 greek firms belonging to the manufacturing sector empirical findings suggest that dynamic capabilities impinge on operational capabilities which in turn have a significant effect on performance direct effects on performance are found to be insignificant furthermore similar effects seem to hold for both higher and lower levels of environmental dynamism theoretical and practical implications are discussed

microeconomic adjustments in argentina during 1976 1981 the importance of changing levels of financial subsidies abstract this paper uses the financial statements of argentine industrial firms to study the micro level impact of recent liberalization and reform attempts the main lesson is that extremely large subsidies were provided to the industrial sector by way of negative effective financial costs these negative costs appeared first in the late 1970s because of real currency appreciation and unconstrained access to foreign credit then again in 1981 because of an exchange insurance program we also find that the argentine government s announced intention to promote exporting activities did not translate into relatively favorable product market conditions for exporting firms to the contrary the real currency appreciation squeezed exporters profits while redundant tariff protection insulated import competing firms from world competition at least until 1980

thresholds in the process of international financial integration abstract the financial crisis has re ignited the fierce debate about the merits of financial globalization and its implications for growth especially for developing countries the empirical literature has not been able to conclusively establish the presumed growth benefits of financial integration indeed a new literature proposes that the indirect benefits of financial integration may be more important than the traditional financing channel emphasized in previous analyses a major complication however is that there seem to be certain threshold levels of financial and institutional development that an economy needs to attain before it can derive the indirect benefits and reduce the risks of financial openness in this paper we develop a unified empirical framework for characterizing such threshold conditions we find that there are clearly identifiable thresholds in variables such as financial depth and institutional quality the cost benefit trade off from financial openness improves significantly once these threshold conditions are satisfied we also find that the thresholds are lower for foreign direct investment and portfolio equity liabilities compared to those for debt liabilities

finance and inequality the case of india although theory emphasizes the role of financial market frictions in explaining income inequality there is little empirical research exploring how financial development and financial sector reforms influence the evolution of income inequality this article examines how finance impacts income inequality in india using annual time series data for over half a century the results indicate that while financial development helps reduce income inequality financial liberalization seems to exacerbate it the results are robust to the use of different measures for financial development and financial liberalization although the relationship between financial development and economic growth has been extensively studied in the literature see for example king and levine 1993 demetriades and hussein 1996 arestis and demetriades 1997 levine loayza and beck 2000 bell and rousseau 2001 ang and mckibbin 2007 little is known about how finance impacts income inequality the importance of the finance inequality relationship has recently been highlighted in an insightful survey article by claessens and perotti 2007 they indicate that while financial development can help reduce income inequality financial liberalization captured by established interests may do the opposite the theoretical predictions of the effects of finance on income inequality are controversial rajan and zingales 2003b argue that improvements in the formal financial sector primarily benefit the rich greenwood and jovanovic 1990 predict a nonlinear relationship between financial development and income inequality where it is hypothesized that income inequality first increases with the degree of sophistication in the financial systems then stabilizes and eventually declines others propose that the presence of financial market imperfections deters the poor from borrowing adequately to invest in human and physical capital implying that financial development helps alleviate income inequality banerjee and newman 1993 galor and zeira 1993 aghion and bolton 1997 mookherjee and ray 2003 2006 given that theories provide ambiguous predictions regarding the effects of finance on the distribution of income it is useful to approach the issue at the empirical level this could facilitate our understanding of the relationship between finance and inequality and help us to assess the validity of each theoretical model despite the important role of financial market frictions in the theories of poverty and income inequality researchers so far have not adequately addressed whether financial

international capital flows and credit market imperfections a tale of two frictions the nancial crisis of 2007 08 has underscored the importance of adverse selection in nancial markets this friction has been mostly neglected by macroeconomic models of nancial imperfections however which have focused almost exclusively on the eects of limited pledgeability in this paper we ll this gap by developing a standard growth model with adverse selection our main results are that by fostering unproductive investment adverse selection i leads to an increase in the economy s equilibrium interest rate and ii it generates a negative wedge between the marginal return to investment and the equilibrium interest rate under nancial integration we show how this translates into excessive capital inows and endogenous cycles we also extend our model to the more general case in which adverse selection and limited pledgeability coexist we conclude that both frictions complement one another and show that limited pledgeability exacerbates the eects of adverse selection

financial development and the instability of open economies this paper introduces a framework for analyzing the role of financial factors as a source of instability in small open economies our basic model is a dynamic open economy model with a tradeable good produced with capital and a country specific factor we also assume that firms face credit constraints with the constraint being tighter at a lower level of financial development a basic implication of this model is that economies at an intermediate level of financial development are more unstable than either very developed or very underdeveloped economies this is true both in the sense that temporary shocks have large and persistent effects and also in the sense that these economies can exhibit cycles thus countries that are going through a phase of financial development may become more unstable in the short run similarly full capital account liberalization may destabilize the economy in economies at an intermediate level of financial development phases of growth with capital inflows are followed by collapse with capital outflows on the other hand foreign direct investment does not destabilize

why countries differ in thin capitalization rules the role of financial development abstract the purpose of thin capitalization rules is to limit multinational firms possibilities of engaging in tax planning via debt shifting this paper analyzes the optimal design of thin capitalization rules in the presence of financial frictions when a host country in the first stage chooses the type of thin capitalization rule and then in the second stage decides about the strictness we show that welfare under a safe haven rule is higher than under an earnings stripping rule if firms are not able to manipulate the interest rate on internal loans welfare however can be higher under an earnings stripping rule if firms are able to manipulate the interest rate on internal loans we also show that the optimal level of internal interest deductions decreases with the financial development of the host country our results are consistent with countries actual policy choice

a pecking order of capital inflows and international tax principles abstract even though financial markets today show a high degree of integration the world capital market is still far from the textbook story of high capital mobility the purpose of this paper is to highlight key sources of market failure in the context of international capital flows and to provide guidelines for efficient tax structure in the presence of capital market imperfections the analysis distinguishes three types of international capital flows foreign portfolio debt investment foreign portfolio equity investment and foreign direct investment the paper emphasizes the efficiency of a non uniform tax treatment of the various vehicles of international capital flows

a corporate balance sheet approach to currency crises this paper presents a general equilibrium currency crisis model of the third generation in which the possibility of currency crises is driven by the interplay between private firms credit constraints and nominal price rigidities despite our emphasis on microfoundations the model remains sufficiently simple that the policy analysis can be conducted graphically the analysis hinges on four main features i ex post deviations from purchasing power parity ii credit constraints a la bernanke gertler iii foreign currency borrowing by domestic firms iv a competitive banking sector lending to firms and holding reserves and a monetary policy conducted either through open market operations or short term lending facilities we derive sufficient conditions for the existence of a sunspot equilibrium with currency crises we show that an interest rate increase intended to support the currency in a crisis may not be effective but that a relaxation of short term lending facilities can make this policy effective by attenuating the rise in interest rates relevant to firms

international and domestic collateral constraints in a model of emerging market crises abstract we build a model of emerging markets crises which features two types of collateral constraints firms in a domestic economy have limited borrowing capacity from international investors they also have limited borrowing capacity with respect to each other we study how the presence and changes in these collateral constraints affect financial and real variables a binding international constraint in the aggregate leads to a sharp rise in interest rates and fire sales of domestic assets while limited domestic collateral can lead to wasted international collateral these two collateral constraints can interact in important ways the first is disintermediation a fire sale of domestic assets causes banks to fail in their function of reallocating resources across the economy leading to wasted international collateral the second is a dynamic effect we show that firms in an economy with limited domestic collateral and a binding international collateral constraint will not adequately precaution against adverse shocks increasing the severity of these shocks

top management compensation and capital structure the interrelationship between top management compensation and the design and mix of external claims issued by a firm is studied the optimal managerial compensation structures depend on not only the agency relationship between shareholders and management but also the conflicts of interests which arise in the other contracting relationships for which the firm serves as a nexus we analyze in detail the optimal management compensation for the cases when the external claims are 1 equity and risky debt and 2 equity and convertible debt in addition to the role of aligning managerial incentives with shareholder interests managerial compensation in a levered firm also serves as a precommitment device to minimize the agency costs of debt the optimal management compensation derived has low pay performance sensitivity with convertible debt instead of straight debt the corresponding optimal managerial compensation has high pay to performance sensitivity a negative relationship between pay performance sensitivity and leverage is derived our results provide a reconciliation of the puzzling evidence of jensen and murphy 1990 with agency theory other testable implications include 1 a relationship between the risk premium in corporate bond yields and top management compensation structures and 2 the announcement effect of adoption of executive stock option plans on bond prices the model yields implications for management compensation in banks and federal deposit insurance reform our results explain the dynamics of top management compensation in firms going through financial distress and reorganization

foreign direct investment and external financing conditions evidence from normal and crisis times this paper investigates the effects that external financing conditions in source and destination countries have on foreign direct investment fdi in normal and crisis times using a difference in differences approach we find that source and destination countries financial development have a strong positive impact on the relative volume of fdi in financially vulnerable sectors in normal times on the other hand during the 2008 2010 global financial crisis the relative volume of fdi in financially vulnerable sectors fell relatively more in financially developed source and destination countries most notably if these countries experienced a credit crisis

real options and earnings based bonus compensation this study extends the works of mauer and sarkar 2005 and andrikopoulos 2009 by incorporating a regime dependent earnings based bonus into managerial compensation examining the individual effects of ownership shares and earnings based bonus compensation we find that the former provides managers with incentives to issue debt whereas the latter induces the opposite result although consistent impacts are found for the two types of compensation on both agency costs and the optimal investment decisions of managers when managerial compensation comprises both ownership shares and an earnings based bonus there are significant differences in the effects of these two types of performance compensation on managers optimal investment and financing decisions agency costs optimal debt ratios and credit spreads as a result of the specific interactions between the investment and financing decisions

optimal strike prices of stock options for effort averse executives abstract this paper evaluates the common practice of setting the strike prices of executive option plans at the money hall and murphy hall brian murphy kevin j 2000 optimal exercise prices for executive stock options american economic review 90 2 209 214 claim this practice to be optimal since it maximizes the sensitivity of compensation to firm performance however they do not incorporate effort and the possibility that managers are effort averse into their model we revisit this question while explicitly introducing these factors and allowing the reward package to include fixed wages options and stock grants we simulate the manager s effort choice and compensation as well as the value of shareholders equity under alternative compensation schemes and identify schemes that are optimal our simulations indicate that when abstracting from tax considerations it is optimal to award managers with options that will most likely be highly valuable i e substantially in the money on their expiration date prior to 2006 the tax code and financial reporting standards provided incentives to award options that are closer to the money when issued than the options that were optimal in the absence of these considerations recent tax and reporting changes voided these incentives and thus we predict that these changes will induce firms to issue options with lower strike prices than those that were issued prior to 2006

interactions of corporate financing and investment decisions the effects of agency conflicts abstract we examine interactions between flexible financing and investment decisions in a model with stockholder bondholder conflicts over investment policy we find that financial flexibility encourages the choice of short term debt thereby dramatically reducing the agency costs of under and overinvestment however the reduction in agency costs may not encourage the firm to increase leverage since the firm s initial debt level choice depends on the type of growth options in its investment opportunity set the model has a number of testable predictions for the joint choice of leverage and maturity and how these choices interact with a firm s growth opportunities

the economic crisis of the 1990s in finland finland s depression a tale of bad luck and bad policies in the 1990s finland underwent a deep depression as its gdp dropped about 14 and unemployment rose from 3 to almost 20 this is a story of bad luck and bad policies bad luck took the form of external shocks the collapse of trade with the former soviet union in 1991 but also sharp cycles in the oecd area however bad luck is far from being the whole story in the absence of bad policies finland would have experienced a recession not a depression bad policies included a poorly designed financial regulation and mistaken reactions to the onset of the crisis of particular interest is the role of financial factors in triggering the crisis and aggravating the effects of bad policies not only were consumption and investment spending hurt by the credit crunch but there is evidence that the private sector s indebtedness has increased structural unemployment which explains why the recovery is proceeding with few job creations a number of general lessons emerge they concern the deregulation of financial markets the policy reaction to massive capital inflows and the role of employment policies seppo honkapohja and erkki koskela

financial innovation macroeconomic stability and systemic crises we present a general equilibrium model of intermediation designed to capture some of the key features of the modernnancial system the model incorporatesnan cial constraints and state contingent contracts and contains a clearly dened pe cuniary externality associated with assetre sales during periods of stress if a sufciently severe shock occurs during a credit expansion this externality is capa ble of generating a systemicnancial crisis that may be self fullling our model suggests thatnancial innovation and greater macroeconomic stability may have madenancial crises in developed countries less likely than in the past but poten tially more severe

complementarity and evolution of contractual provisions an empirical study of it services contracts an increasing volume of business activity appears to be occurring via alliances or other interfirm arrangements in which complex contracts are featured yet there has been relatively little study of contract design in the strategy or management literatures the economics literature on contracting has been extensive but it has been less concerned with learning and evolution phenomena in which strategy and organization scholars are deeply interested in this paper we investigate the relationship between two types of contractual provisions that are important in high technology contracts or contracts for which environmental uncertainty or technological complexity are significant namely contingency planning and task description previous research suggests that contracts can vary significantly in the degree of detail with which such key provisions are written and that they are each subject to learning in this paper we find evidence from a sample of 386 contracts that contingency planning and task description behave as complements in contractual design we argue that this complementarity reflects patterns of learning to contract we also find that repeated exchange between two firms leads to greater effort at contingency planning in subsequent contracts a finding that is also consistent with learning effects but not with frequently made claims that contracts and trust are substitutes

macroeconomic volatility trade and financial liberalization in africa this paper examines the effects of financial and trade liberalization on growth volatility of real output and consumption in africa our results suggest trade liberalization is associated with greater output and consumption growth volatility while financial liberalization increases the efficacy of consumption smoothing and stabilizes income and consumption growth in addition we find financial market depth and institutional quality operate jointly with trade and financial openness to reduce volatility in output and consumption growth there is also evidence that good institutions which foster low inflation levels and volatility promote consumption and output growth stability