direct revelation versus signalling an entrepreneur wishes to communicate private information to investors to secure a desirable financial contract the entrepreneur can signal project type through its choice of capital structure or can directly reveal sufficient information so that its type is known information directly revealed is observed by a rival who may enter and appropriate some of the project s rents conditions under which either of these communication policies are chosen are determined when local incentive compatibility is sufficient for global incentive compatibility the authors show that each type either reveals just enough information to credibly communicate its type or instead reveals no information and signals

effects of profitability and liquidity on r d intensity japanese and u s companies compared this study investigates the proposition that japanese companies have a greater propensity than u s companies to sustain commitment to r d in the face of fluctuating profits and liquidity the anal

not only what but also when a theory of dynamic voluntary disclosure we examine a dynamic model of voluntary disclosure of multiple pieces of private information in our model a manager of a firm who may learn multiple signals over time interacts with a competitive capital market and maximizes payoffs that increase in both period prices we show perhaps surprisingly that in equilibrium later disclosures are interpreted more favorably even though the time the manager obtains the signals is independent of the value of the firm we also provide sufficient conditions for the equilibrium to be in threshold strategies

government r d subsidies as a signal for private investors abstract government subsidies for r d are intended to promote projects with high returns to society but too little private returns to be beneficial for private investors this may be caused by spillovers or a low appropriability rate apart from the direct funding of these projects government grants may serve as a signal for good investments for private investors we use a simple signaling model with different types of r d projects to capture this phenomenon the agency has a preference for basic research projects as they promise high expected social returns while banks prefer applied research projects with high private returns in a setup where the subsidy can only be used to distinguish between basic and applied research projects government agency s signal is not very helpful for banks however if the subsidy is accompanied by a quality signal it can lead to increased or better selected private investments

south north trade and southern growth bleak prospects from the structuralist point of view abstract a three country three commodity model is developed to illustrate the dynamics of growth among the north the south and opec one conclusion is that the southern growth rate will be increased by faster growth of northern capital with a steady state response coefficient of unity however if the steady state is perturbed by increases in northern productivity or the oil price then the coefficient becomes less than one in the short run higher capital flows from north to south increase the former s growth rate but may have only marginal impact on growth in the south higher productivity in the south will slow its growth rate and reduce its terms of trade when the engel elasticity of northern demand for its exports is less than one these and other results follow from surplus labor in the south and its dependent position in international trade from which it will be difficult to escape

market share market value and innovation in a panel of british manufacturing firms this paper examines the empirical relationship between technological innovations market share and stock market value new developments in the estimation of dynamic count data models are used to control for unobserved firm specific heterogeneity we find a robust and positive effect of market share on observable headcounts of innovations and patents although increased product market competition in the industry tends to stimulate innovative activity furthermore the impact of innovation on market value is larger for firms with higher market shares we argue that our results are consistent with models where high market share firms have incentives to pre emptively innovate

high tech firms and credit rationing abstract informational frictions between borrowers and lenders differ across classes of borrowers innovative firms undertake high risk high return projects which are likely to be little understood by financial intermediaries as a consequence they may end up allocating too large a share of funds to traditional low risk low return projects this proposition finds some support in a cross section of italian manufacturing firms using several proxies to classify firms into high tech and low tech groups and direct information on each firm s access to bank credit high tech firms are found to be more likely to be credit constrained than low tech firms the results suggest that the responsiveness of r d expenditure to cash flow found in the literature is likely due to pervasive credit constraints on innovative firms rather than to cash flow proxying for future expectations the paper also sheds light on the main factors affecting the probability of a firm being rationed in the credit market

innovation and communication signalling with partial disclosure this paper introduces a model of feedback effect equilibrium i e equilibria in which an asymmetrically informed agent is motivated to communicate its privately known attribute but can do so only through channels or signals which convey directly useful information to competing agents this revelation to the competition serves to reduce the value of the private information held by the first agent models of this kind are of obvious relevance to realistic theories of product or financial market disclosure policies of firms patenting and a host of related behavioural and regulatory issues this model is developed in the context of a set of firms engaged in research and development rivalry in which the value of privately held and disclosed information arises from its implications for the likelihood and timing of productive innovation

the gains from agricultural research under distorted trade abstract this paper explores the gains from research issue within the framework of a product which is traded with the aid of export subsidies because of the taxpayer burden associated with increased exports it is quite possible for the returns to research to be negative a decline in the rate of protection through a rising world market leads to a linear increase in the gains from research while a rise in the internal support price will cause a non linear and negative response if the supply shift is pivotal and a linear and negative response if it is parallel finally global returns to research will be higher than individual country returns and will always be positive in a free trade environment

strategic transparency and informed trading will capital market integration force convergence of corporate governance dominant investors can influence the publicly available information about firms by affecting the cost of information collection under strategic competition transparency results in higher variability of profits and output thus lenders prefer less transparency since this protects firms when in a weak competitive position while equity holders prefer more market interaction creates strategic complementarity in gathering information on competing firms thus entry by transparent competitors will improve price informativeness moreover as the return to information gathering increases with liquidity increasing global trading may undermine the ability of bank control to keep firms opaque

technological expectations and adoption of improved technology abstract attention is focused upon the adoption demand rather than the creation supply of new technology which improves from time to time based on the expected flow of technological progress over which the firm demander has no control it must decide either to adopt the current best available technology or to postpone adoption the distinguishing features of the model are that more than one technological innovation is anticipated and expectations about the likelihood of such innovations are revised as time passes since the last innovation our analysis shows that the firm will adopt the current best practice if its technological lag exceeds a certain threshold moreover as time passes without new technological advances it may become profitable to purchase a technology that has been available even though it was not profitable to do so in the past

dynamic models of r d innovation and productivity panel data evidence for dutch and french manufacturing abstract this paper introduces dynamics in the r d to innovation and innovation to productivity relationships which have mostly been estimated on cross sectional data it considers four nonlinear dynamic simultaneous equations models that include individual effects and idiosyncratic errors correlated across equations and that differ in the way innovation enters the conditional mean of labor productivity through an observed binary indicator an observed intensity variable or through the continuous latent variables that correspond to the observed occurrence or intensity it estimates these models by full information maximum likelihood using two unbalanced panels of dutch and french manufacturing firms from three waves of the community innovation survey the results provide evidence of robust unidirectional causality from innovation to productivity and of stronger persistence in productivity than in innovation

bargaining and sharing innovative knowledge we consider the problem of bargaining over the disclosure of interimresearch knowledge between two participants in an r d race for an ultimate patentable invention licence fee schedules that are functions of the amount of knowledge disclosed by the leading to the laggingagent are examined for their abilities to attain efficient outcomes andvarying shares of the surplus arising from disclosure in hersequential offers bargaining games the uninformed buyer is able to elicitfull disclosures without sharing the incremental surplus with any type ofthe licensor and thus do as well as a perfectly informed and discriminatingknowledge licensee

the financing of research and development evidence on the funding gap for rd 2 evidence for high costs of rd 3 there are limits to venture capital as a solution to the funding gap especially in countries where public equity markets are not highly developed and 4 further study of governmental seed capital and subsidy programs using quasi experimental methods is warranted

sharing productive knowledge in internally financed r d contests we examine the optimal design of two stage research and development r d joint ventures at the second stage researchers choose r d effort levels independently in an attempt to achieve an innovation in the first stage researchers have an opportunity to share endowments of productive knowledge initial pecuniary resources are limited so rewards for disclosing knowledge and succeeding at the second stage must be financed from successful innovation we derive conditions under which full sharing of knowledge and the socially desired levels of r d effort can be motivated and examine the optimal incentive structure when this ideal outcome cannot be implemented full sharing will always be motivated at the first stage but inefficient r d effort will be induced to foster information sharing

attracting skeptical buyers negotiating for intellectual property rights expropriable disclosures of knowledge to prospective buyers may be necessary to facilitate the sale of intellectual property ip in principle confidentiality agreements can protect disclosures by granting the seller rights to sue for unauthorized use in practice sellers often waive confidentiality rights we provide an incomplete information explanation for the waiver of confidentiality rights that are valuable in complete information settings waiving sacrifices the protective value of confidentiality to gain greater buyer participation buyer skepticism which reduces participation arises endogenously from three elements asymmetric information regarding seller ip rent dissipation from competition for ip and ex post costs from expropriation lawsuits

the direction of trade past and present and the learning effects of exports to different directions abstract this paper looks at the direction of trade in manufacturer the pattern predicted by the hos model hasn r materialized but some sense of the historical pattern is made by looking at the distribution of world income as well as exporting countries policies and product composition given the historical pattern and in particular the direction of japan s trade it is argued that developing countries today are under exporting to one another this is to their detriment insofar as trade among less developed countries teends to be comprised of manufactures that are skill and learning intensive the scope for an increase in such trade is assessed

social capital innovation and growth evidence from europe this paper investigates the interplay between social capital innovation and economic growth in the european union we identify innovation as an important mechanism that transforms social capital into economic growth in an empirical investigation of 102 european regions in the period 1990 2002 we show that higher innovation performance is conducive to economic growth and that social capital affects growth indirectly by fostering innovation our estimates suggest that there is only a limited role for a direct effect of social capital on economic growth

theory of screening and the behavior of the firm comment possibilities the concept of equilibrium differs depending upon the assumptions concerning the behavior of the firm as michael rothschild and stiglitz and others point out in this comment i reconsider the stiglitz screening model assuming that the behavior of the firm is more responsive to profitable possibilities than that considered by stiglitz i show that the screening process in the stiglitz model has similarities with that in the spence model in some aspects i also point out other characteristics of the stiglitz model considering the existence of equilibria in the cases of no social return from screening and of positive social return from screening and show that the existence of equilibria depends upon the supposed behavior of the firm and the concept of equilibrium in the stiglitz model

on the potential for expanding south south trade through the extension of mutual preferences among developing countries abstract in spite of the fact that the proposal to establish a global system of trade preferences gstp among developing countries is a key element of the collective self reliance development strategy little empirical evidence exists as to the likely magnitude of the gstp s effects employing a partial equilibrium trade projection model this study simulates the potential increase in south south trade that could result fromdifferent preferential tariff margins the results suggest that full tariff preferences i e 100 margins could increase south south trade by about 14 billion annually which would be about 17 above existing levels however these results are found to be sensitive to changes in assumptions concerning developing country supply elasticities and the size of the preferential margins to be established the study also sjows that some developing countries are likely to register an important deterioration in their trade balances and that the benefits of a gstp would be very unevenly distributed among participating countries

rent seeking and innovation innovations and their adoption are the keys to growth and development innovations are less socially useful but more profitable for the innovator when they are adopted slowly and the innovator remains a monopolist for this reason rent seeking both public and private plays an important role in determining the social usefulness of innovations this paper examines the political economy of intellectual property analyzing the trade off between private and public rent seeking while it is true in principle that public rent seeking may be a substitute for private rent seeking it is not true that this results always either in less private rent seeking or in a welfare improvement when the public sector itself is selfish and behaves rationally we may experience the worst of public and private rent seeking together

the influence of voluntarily disclosed qualitative information we examine the voluntary disclosure of qualitative information about actions involving governmental agencies and managerial intentions or beliefs in r d project announcements in the wall street journal our analysis indicates that information regarding government approval and managerial intentions beliefs voluntarily disclosed in r d project announcements interacts with industry firm variables to provide significant incremental explanatory power in both the innovation and commercialization stages of r d projects our data also indicate that the biggest impact is from managerial intentions especially an intent to increase market share when coupled with being a larger firm copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

persistence of innovation in dutch manufacturing is it spurious this paper studies the persistence of innovation and the dynamics of innovation output in dutch manufacturing using firm data from three waves of the community innovation surveys cis pertaining to the periods 1994 1996 1996 1998 and 1998 2000 we estimate by maximum likelihood a dynamic panel data type 2 tobit model accounting for individual effects and handling the initial conditions problem we find that there is no evidence of true persistence in achieving technological product or process innovations while past shares of innovative sales condition albeit to a small extent current shares of innovative sales

gstp tariff reduction and its effects on south south trade in manufactures using a gravity model with import tariffs on manufactures as an explanatory variable both at the import and at the export side the impact of tariffs on trade in manufactures is analyzed for a sample of 39 less developed country ldc importers the consequences of an agreement on a global system of trade preferences gstp for manufactures are estimated by lowering these tariffs for intra ldc trade by 20 and 50 alternatively the short term effects are found to be relatively modest and the long term effects considerably larger trade diversion from developed country dc to ldc suppliers has only limited impact

internal vs external financing of r d the empirical evidence suggests that while small firms in united states united kingdom and canada rely on internal funds for financing r d similar firms in japan germany and france have access to bank loans in this paper we analyze the financial decisions of small firms willing to invest in r d we find that their high ratio of intangible assets along with the high risk nature of their investments can explain their inability to raise debt in external capital markets we also show that financing r d with bank loans might be feasible especially if banks are willing to monitor the investment activities of their clients

understanding the financing of innovation and commercialization the case of the canadian functional food and nutraceutical sector we develop and implement two models to show what factors affect a firm s decision to seek external financing and the level of financing obtained in the canadian functional food and nutraceutical sector data from a national survey of functional foods and nutraceutical firms in canada conducted by statistics canada in 2003 is used for this analysis firm size being privately held and engaging in contractual arrangements have negative impacts on the likelihood of a firm seeking external funding while firms which are intensively involved in the functional food and nutraceutical sector with greater prospects for business expansion and or involved in partnerships are more likely to seek external financing larger firms and those involved in functional food and nutraceutical research and development receive a greater amount of capital when they decide to raise capital however firms focused on functional foods and nutraceuticals as opposed to more diversified firms and those involved in product developm

trade benefits under the eec generalized system of preferences the purpose of the paper is to test for the existence of a statistically significant effect of the eec generalized system of preferences on actual trade flows between developing countries and the eec using a gravity type model we estimate the gross trade creation effect of the eec generalized system of preferences on the eec imports from 10 major developing countries estimation on a yearly basis for the period 1967 1978 indicates the presence of a statistically significant effect it would appear that gross trade creation amounted to about s2 billion for these 10 countries in 1978 in addition to these calculations the paper reviews the eec generalized system of preferences in detail and offers comments on its future impact on exports from developing countries

equity compensation and the sensitivity of research and development to financial market frictions abstract when financial market frictions exist executives may have to decide which investment activities to reduce when internal funds decrease expenditures on research and development r d may be particularly vulnerable because of the long term nature of innovative activity we find that equity compensation is associated with lower levels of firm r d expenditures rewarding executives to incur more risk has little effect on r d expenditures but rewarding executives for higher returns reduces r d expenditures and makes r d expenditures more sensitive to financial market frictions in contrast cash compensation reduces the sensitivity of r d expenditures to financial market frictions

the effects of the gstp on trade flow mission accomplished this paper investigates whether the global system of trade preferences among developing countries gstp achieves its intent to increase the trade of capital goods between member countries for this purpose trade data disaggregated by the degree of commodity differentiation and various gstp regional dummies are employed in a gravity equation estimation results say that the value of trade between gstp member countries has increased significantly since the formation of the gstp in 1989 and the trade of differentiated commodities has increased remarkably compared with other commodities therefore it can be asserted that the mission of the gstp has been accomplished successfully

international trade and environmental regulation time series evidence and cross section test this paper examines empiricallywhether more stringent domestic environmental policiesreduce the international competitiveness ofenvironmentally sensitive goods esgs our timeseries evidence indicates that there are no systematicchanges in trade patterns of esgs in the last threedecades despite the introduction of more stringentenvironmental regulations in most of the developedcountries in the 1970s and 1980s this observedphenomenon is then subjected to a multi countryeconometric test using an extended gravity equationframework the test suggests that overall morestringent environmental regulations do not reducetotal exports exports of esgs and exports ofnon resource based esgs neither was there anyevidence to support the hypothesis that new tradebarriers emerge to offset the effects of morestringent environmental regulations

the sale of ideas strategic disclosure property rights and contracting ideas are difficult to sell when buyers cannot assess an idea s value before it is revealed and sellers cannot protect a revealed idea these problems exist in a variety of intellectual property sales ranging from pure ideas to poorly protected inventions and reflect the nonverifiability of key elements of an intellectual property sale an expropriable partial disclosure can be used as a signal allowing the seller to obtain payment based on the value of the remaining undisclosed know how we examine contracting after the disclosure and find that seller wealth is pivotal in supporting a partial disclosure equilibrium and in determining the payoff size

assessing the effect of public subsidies on firm r d investment a survey this survey examines the empirical literature on the relationship between public r d subsidies and private r d investment over the past five decades the survey reveals a considerable heterogeneity of empirical results that cannot be explained fully by methodological issues we aim to provide further explanations of the possible causes of that heterogeneity in particular we emphasise a set of issues that in our view are critical to understanding the potential effect of public r d subsidies on private r d spending special attention is paid to the dynamic aspects and composition of firm r d the constraints faced by the firm such as financial constraints and the amount and source of public subsidies none of these issues have been investigated in depth we formulate a set of research assumptions to guide future empirical research in this field

domestic market integration and regional economic growth china s recent experience from 1995 2011 summary this paper constructs an enhanced indicator for trade barrier and examines the endogenous relationship between market integration and regional economies across china from 1995 to 2011 beyond the current literature this study shows the endogenous relationship is significant reflecting a virtuous cycle domestic openness contributes to the economies in the central region more than in the other regions the feedback effect is stronger in the eastern and central regions than in the western and northeastern domestic openness and regional economies are adversely affected by state owned enterprises and government non productive expenditure several policy implications relevant to chinese economy are drawn from the findings

deriving conditional and unconditional marginal effects in log earnings equations estimated by heckman s procedure although the heckman approach has often been used in empirical analysis the marginal effects necessary to interpret the effect of the regressors on the dependent variable appeared to be overlooked using the heckman approach general expressions are derived for calculating the conditional and unconditional marginal effects based on a sample of brazilian women the conditional and unconditional return to education are calculated for the logarithm of earnings equation estimated by heckman s procedure comparing them to the marginal effect of education obtained without correcting for selectivity bias the same analysis is carried out for a discrete variable black

private versus public ownership investment ownership distribution and optimality examined in this paper is the choice between private and public incorporation of an asset for an entrepreneur asset owner who hires a manager with superior information about the asset s return distribution public sale of equity is shown to be the preferred alternative when a capital market issue costs are low or b the asset s idiosyncratic risk is high and the owner is either sufficiently risk averse or sufficiently optimistic about the asset s expected return thus those as sets deemed most valuable by their owners will tend to be publicly incorporated the paper also explores the impact of incorporation mode private versus public and information structure on the firm s investment policy and ownership distribution the determinants of corporate ownership structure have attracted much attention see for example demsetz and lehn 7 the recent spate of leveraged buyouts lbo s and other activities designed to consolidate ownership structure and often to take it out of the public domain have raised questions about the optimality of public ownership of corporations a related issue is the link between real output and the mode of incorporation in firms with a separation of ownership and control do privately incorporated firms have systematically different investment policies from publicly incorporated firms if so aggregate output must be a function of the cross sectional distribution of incorporation modes in the economy there is also considerable interest in the impact of insider information a topic that concerns us in this paper we have two principal objectives the first is to explore the conditions that determine an asset owner s choice of incorporation for the asset that is when would the owner prefer to keep asset ownership private as opposed to having a portion of that ownership publicly traded in particular what is the role of the owner s perception of the value of the asset in this determination are the assets being taken privately more or less valuable than those that are publicly traded insights on this score should help in understanding corporate ownership structure evolution our second objective is to examine the impact of information structure symmetric versus asymmetric information and the firm s incorporation

the determinants of corporate capital structure japanese evidence this paper features a cross sectional regression analysis of the determinants of the company debt to value ratios of a sample of 125 japanese industrial and commercial companies for the period 1980 1983 inclusive the regression equations include a set of dummy variables designed to capture industry effects and a number of other variables acting as proxies for likely determinants of debt ratios suggested in the empirical literature such as profitability non debt tax shields risk etc the results are consistent with the existence of industry effects and suggest that paralleling recent american findings profitability is the most significant determinant of japanese company debt ratios

loan availability and investment can innovative companies better cope with loan denials this study examines the consequences of loan denials for the investment performance of small and medium sized german enterprises as a consequence of a loan denial innovative companies experience a smaller drop in the share of actual to planned investment than noninnovative companies the nonrandomness of loan denials is controlled for with a selection equation employing the intensity of banking competition at the district level as an exclusion restriction we can explain the better performance of innovative companies by their ability to increase the use of external equity financing such as venture capital or mezzanine capital when facing a loan denial

small and medium sized enterprises bank relationship strength and the use of venture capital we investigate the nexus between small and medium sized enterprises smes use of venture capital and bank financing relationships using a unique data set with detailed information on sme finance in italy germany and the uk the empirical regularities we uncover show that that entrepreneurial firms substitute venture capital for multiple banking relationships this substitution effect is primarily driven by expertise substitution and there is also some suggestive yet inconclusive indication in the data that smes turn to providers of venture capital to avoid rent extracting behavior by the firm s main bank our results do not support the view that firms obtain venture capital in instances when bank financing is difficult to obtain instead venture capital funds are used if bank funding is deemed not appropriate and firms do seem to be aware of which type of financing is more appropriate for them

the effect of pre emptive right amendments on shareholder wealth abstract pre emptive rights allow existing shareholders to purchase a new offering of shares before the general public this paper investigates the effect on shareholder wealth of removing pre emptive rights from corporate charters two hypotheses are constrasted 1 shareholder wealth maximization suggests that management uses this extra degree of freedom to pick the least cost method for raising new equity hence the amendment increases shareholder wealth 2 management welfare maximization holds that management will use the passage of the amendment to maximize their own welfare sometimes to the detriment of shareholders hence the amendment decreases shareholder wealth the evidence indicates that the amendment decreases shareholder wealth

conflicting interests in information disclosure and short term orientation of firms abstract this paper explains why firms might be excessively short term oriented even when they are able to inform the capital market about the true quality of their assets the information a firm reveals to the capital market can be used by competitors to the firm s detriment in this case the future profitability of the firm s assets is no longer exogenous but is influenced by the strategic actions of its competitors which in turn depend on the information the firm discloses this motivates the firm to switch resources from future prospects to short term profits the results have policy implications and may help explain the empirical observation that u s firms tend to be more short term oriented than japanese firms

optimal patents with compulsory licensing this paper examines the use of compulsory lincensing as a policy to combat the monopoly problem associated with the patent system it introduces the notion of an optimal patent one where the patent life and the licensing royalty rate are both determined optimally under certain simplifying assumptions it is shown that the optimal patent will have an indefinite life for both process and product innovations some preliminary calculations suggest that the use of compulsory licensing may lead to substantial welfare improvements even if the patent life is left unchanged at 17 years

new developments in trade theory and ldcs abstract this paper surveys the new literature on international trade relevant to the north south controversy in the first part two types of north south models are considered the unequal exchange theory of lewis and emmanuel and the models of dynamic interaction of findlay taylor and others the analysis focuses on the determinants of growth the terms of trade and relative employment in the world economy in the second part the paper reviews the empirical literature on south north and south south trade and the theories of north south technological gaps intra industry trade and external economies finally we analyze the literature on exports and economic growth and the neo classical keynesian and disequilibrium approaches to the theory of import controls

patents vs trade secrets knowledge licensing and spillover we develop a model of two stage cumulative research and development rd yet the contracting parties choose the closed sale whenever the interim knowledge is more valuable and leakage is sufficiently high if the extent of leakage is lower more rus choose open sales generating a nonmonotonic relationship between the strength of intellectual property rights and aggregate r d expenditures and the overall likelihood of development by either du jel d23 o32 o34

self selection and pareto efficient taxation abstract this paper analyses the set of pareto efficient tax structures the formulation of the problem as one of self selection not only shows more clearly the similarity between this problem and a number of other problems such as the optimal pricing of a monopolist which have recently been the subject of extensive research but also allows the derivation of a number of new results we establish i under fairly weak conditions randomization of tax structures is desirable ii if different individuals are not perfect substitutes for one another in production then the general equilibrium effects until now largely ignored in the literature of changes in the tax structure may be dominant in determining the optimal tax structure in particular if the relative wage of high ability and low ability individuals depends on the relative supplies of labor the optimal tax structure entails a negative marginal tax rate on the high ability individuals and a positive marginal tax rate on the low ability individuals the marnitude of which depends on the elasticity of substitution iii if individuals differ in their preferences pareto efficient taxation may entail negative marginal tax rates for high incomes while iv if wage income is stochastic the marginal tax rate at the upper end may be 100 our analysis thus makes clear that the main qualitative properties of the optimal tax structure to which earlier studies called attention are not robust to these attempts to make the theory more realistic