ipo underpricing and flotation methods in taiwan a stochastic frontier approach adopting stochastic frontier analysis this article studies the pricing model and underpricing phenomenon of the initial public offerings ipos in taiwan and further elucidates the potential impact of offering mechanisms on underpricing the sampling period is from 1996 to 2003 in which 647 ipos are selected empirical results suggest that issuing firms with greater earning potentials less risk or less asymmetric information have lower underpricing furthermore the variables included to explain underpricing are mostly significant especially the proxy variable for flotation method observed mean ipo underpricing is 20 59 in the sample period compared to 17 12 for the subgroup using the auction method this statistically significant difference implies that the introduction of the auction method can help reduce ipo underpricing

bank acquisitions and ownership structure theory and evidence abstract in this paper we both theoretically and empirically consider the joint nature of two ownermanager conflict resolution mechanisms insider shareholdings and shareholder concentration we find evidence of a significant entrenchment effect for high low firms moreover bidder returns are found to be positive for high high firms only we utilize a switching of regression regimes model to solve for critical values of and that subdivide the universe of acquiring firms into separate and distinct ownership structure regimes i e that define high vs low levels of or

labor force participation interest rate shocks and unemployment dynamics in emerging economies abstract emerging economies emes have highly volatile unemployment and real wages standard models with interest rate shocks can generate higher unemployment volatility but still fall quantitatively short of matching the empirical volatility of unemployment a small open economy search model with endogenous participation and self employment a feature of emes generates 90 percent of the volatility of unemployment in the data highly volatile wages and quantitatively consistent cyclical aggregate dynamics amid productivity and interest rate shocks of plausible magnitudes endogenous participation amplifies shocks and plays a critical role in overcoming a key limitation of standard search models for emes

initial public offer underpricing the issuer s view a note many studies for example bear and curley 1 beatty and ritter 2 block and stanley 3 ibbotson 4 ibbotson and jaffe 5 logue 6 mcdonald and fisher 7 neuberger and la chapelle 8 reilly 9 and ritter 10 11 show that initial public offers ipos are underpriced on average when offered to the public all these studies focus on the difference between the offer price and the observed market price which is the return earned by new investors only a few studies refer to issuer oriented measures of underpricing and each also uses the observed market price as the benchmark bear and curley 1 for example based the efficiency of new issue pricing on the relationship between the offering price and the initial secondary market price ibbotson 4 used the market price to describe various explanations for underpricing from the issuer or underwriter s perspective ritter 11 developed a detailed pricing analysis for the choice between firm commitment and best efforts underwriting contracts but the comparison price remained the post issue market price a similar reliance upon the observed market price in measuring ipo underpricing is found in corporate finance textbooks this note demonstrates that traditional investor oriented measures of underpricing may mislead issuers ipos do not simply have a cost with the opposite sign of the investors return rather underpriced new shares create a dilutive effect that may make their real cost or wealth transfer much different section i develops an alternative measure of underpricing that is issuer oriented and documents the difference between the two measures using ipos issued in singapore from 1978 1985 section ii analyzes the increased costs for issuers of underpricing ipos using the new measure of underpricing

what drives deregulation economics and politics of the relaxation of bank branching restrictions this paper investigates private interest public interest and political institutional theories of regulatory change to analyze state level deregulation of bank branching restrictions using a hazard model we find that interest group factors related to the relative strength of potential winners large banks and small bank dependent firms and losers small banks and the rival insurance firms can explain the timing of branching deregulation across states during the last quarter century the same factors also explain congressional voting on interstate branching deregulation while we find some support for each theory the private interest approach provides the most compelling overall explanation of our results

the growing supply of physicians has the market become more competitive the stock of u s physicians at any point in time is modeled as a weighted average of the supply that a perfect cartel would produce and that would prevail under perfect competition estimation of a system of stock and income equations over the post world war ii period shows that after holding constant demand and marginal cost conditions and accounting for gradual adjustment to changes in equilibrium the weighting parameter has moved toward the competitive extreme since 1965 this rise in the degree of competition is estimated to have increased physician stock by 6 20 and concomitantly decreased medical incomes by 19 45

does bank competition reduce cost of credit cross country evidence from europe abstract despite the extensive debate on the effects of bank competition on economic welfare and growth only a handful of single country studies deal with the impact of bank competition on the cost of credit we contribute to the literature by investigating the impact of bank competition on the cost of credit in a cross country setting using a panel of firms from 20 european countries covering the period 2001 2011 we consider a broad set of measures of bank competition including two structural measures herfindahl hirschman index and cr5 and two non structural indicators lerner index and h statistic we find that bank competition increases the cost of credit and observe that the positive influence of bank competition is stronger for smaller companies our findings accord with the information hypothesis whereby a lack of competition incentivizes banks to invest in soft information and conversely increased competition raises the cost of credit this positive impact of bank competition is however influenced by the institutional and economic framework as well as by the crisis

off the cliff and back credit conditions and international trade during the global financial crisis abstract we study the collapse of international trade flows during the global financial crisis using detailed data on monthly us imports we show that credit conditions were an important channel through which the crisis affected trade volumes by exploiting the variation in the cost of capital across countries and over time as well as the variation in financial vulnerability across sectors countries with higher interbank rates and thus tighter credit markets exported less to the us during the peak of the crisis this effect was especially pronounced in sectors that require extensive external financing have limited access to trade credit or have few collateralizable assets exports of financially vulnerable industries were thus more sensitive to the cost of external capital than exports of less vulnerable industries and this sensitivity rose during the financial crisis the quantitative implications of our estimates for trade volumes highlight the large real effects of financial crises and the potential gains from policy intervention

financial development and financing constraints international evidence from the structural investment model this article provides evidence that financial development impacts growth by reducing financing constraints that would otherwise distort efficient allocation of investment the financing constraints are inferred from the investment euler equation by assuming that the firm s stochastic discount factor is a function of the firm s financial position specifically the stock of liquid assets the magnitude of the changes in the cost of capital is twice as large in a country with a low level of financial development as in a country with an average level of financial development the size effect business cycles and legal environment effects are also considered copyright 2003 oxford university press

exchange rate pass through and credit constraints abstract the macroeconomic evidence of the short term impact of exchange rates on exports and prices is notoriously weak this paper examines the microfoundations of this disconnect i study the response of firms export and price setting decisions to fluctuations in exchange rates and credit conditions using firm level survey data financially constrained firms pass through exchange rate changes to prices at almost twice the rate of unconstrained firms similarly their export volumes are about twice as sensitive to exchange rate fluctuations the effect of borrowing constraints is particularly strong during the recent financial crisis

stock markets banks and growth panel evidence this paper investigates the impact of stock markets and banks on economic growth using a panel data set for the period 1976 98 and applying recent gmm techniques developed for dynamic panels on balance we find that stock markets and banks positively influence economic growth and these findings are not due to potential biases induced by simultaneity omitted variables or unobserved country specific effects

the decision to go public accrued capital gains and taxation abstract the decision to go public is considered in a competitive capital market equilibrium with self selection linear progressive taxes on capital gains accruing from public offerings can increase the incentives to go public in this case the tax improves the risk allocation

global supply chains and trade policy responses to the 2008 crisis the collapse in trade and the contraction of output that occurred during 2008 9 was comparable to and in many countries more severe than the great depression of the 1930s however it did not give rise to the rampant protectionism that followed the great crash the idea that the rise in the fragmentation of production across global value chains vertical specialization may be a deterrent against protectionism is under appreciated in the literature institutions also played a role in limiting the extent of protectionist responses world trade organization discipline raises the cost of using trade policies for member countries and has proved to be a stable foundation for the open multilateral trading system that has been built over the past 50 years using tradeand protection data for seven large emerging market countries that have a history of active use of trade policy the influence of these and other factors on trade policy responses to the 2008 crisis are empirically examined an instrumental variables strategy is used to identify their impact participation in global value chains is found to be a powerful economic factor determining trade policy responses

financial intermediation capital composition and income stagnation the case of europe abstract we look into the role of financial intermediation in inducing the european financial crisis of 2008 by exploring the effects of overall lending and the allocation of credit to specific categories of borrowers namely households vs firms we find that for the eu26 during the period 1995 2008 excessive household leverage through mortgage lending exerted a crowding out effect on availability of credit to support innovation and productive investment the crowding out effect ultimately translated into a gdp growth that was decoupled from real household income in this article we explain that shifting credit towards mortgages and away from corporate projects is consistent with rational behaviour based on historical trends aimed at minimizing short term risk for each individual bank nevertheless as a whole the sum of individual risk reducing attitudes generated a long term systemic risk

capital accumulation and deposit pricing in mutual financial institutions this paper presents a multiperiod model of a deposit type mutual financial institution and analyzes the manager s capital accumulation and deposit pricing decisions under uncertainty the model is meant to describe a mutual savings and loan assoeiation sla or a credit union in which there are no stockholders

competition and operating volatilities around the world numerous papers have shown that developing economies are more volatile we show that despite greater aggregate and industry stability performance and size of individual firms in developed countries are more volatile in developing countries market imperfections insulate incumbent firms from competition consistent with this firms in developing countries have higher profit higher market concentration and less capital raising cross country differences in operating risk and competition intensity are greater in industries that are dependent on external finance where we expect higher impacts of capital market imperfections we show the inverse relation between aggregate and firm level volatilities has important implications for international studies of cash holding

signalling by direct disclosure under asymmetric information abstract in this paper an informational asymmetry exists between investors and the issuer of an initial public offering about the value of the security to avoid market failure a solution is proposed in which the issuer makes a disclosure about firm value that is verified by an investment banker the investment banker enters into a contingent contract with investors which imposes a penalty if the ex post observable cash flow indicates fraudulent disclosure a bivariate signalling model is formulated and solved and testable implications are derived from comparative statics analysis

extra credit bank finance and firm export status in germany this paper estimates the exporter premium in bank lending we examine credit relationships in germany covering all loans of more than 1 5 million euro over the period from 2005 to 2010 having controlled for a wide range of other firm and bank characteristics our results indicate that exporting firms take out loans around 15 percent larger than those of nonexporters

productive efficiency performance of minority and nonminority owned banks a nonparametric approach abstract this study examines the efficiency performance of the minority owned banks mobs as multiproduct firms relative to that of the nonminority banks nmobs using a highly flexible nonparametric approach since mobs and nmobs employ distinct technologies the efficiency indices for the two groups are derived relative to their respective group specific frontiers and are contrasted to shed light on the ownership efficiency relationship the mob sample is then disaggregated and the intra group efficiency differentials are investigated the findings support the hypothesis that abstracting the regional regulatory size and maturity characteristics of banks efficiency differentials between mobs and nmobs are statistically insignificant

credit union policies and performances in latin america this paper presents a conceptual framework for explaining credit unions cus loan delinquency and profitability in developing countries it also offers an empirical estimation for a unique sample of cus in latin america

the dominance of inefficiencies over scale and product mix economies in banking abstract this study measures and analyzes inefficiencies for all u s banks in 1984 inefficiencies are measured relative to a thick frontier cost function and are found to dominate measured scale and product mix economies most inefficiencies are operational in nature involving the overuse of physical inputs rather than financial involving overpayment of interest also technical inefficiencies proportionate overuse of all inputs dominate allocative inefficiencies improper mix of inputs these results suggest that competitive pressures in banking from deregulation will be focused primarily on banks that do not control costs rather than on those of a particular size or product mix

psychometrics as a tool to improve credit information this paper studies the use of psychometric tests designed by the entrepreneurial finance lab efl as a tool to screen out high credit risk and potentially increase access to credit for small business owners in peru we compare repayment behavior patterns across entrepreneurs who were offered a loan based on the traditional credit scoring method versus the efl tool we find that the psychometric test can lower the risk of the loan portfolio when used as a secondary screening mechanism for already banked entrepreneurs that is those with a credit history the efl tool can also allow lenders to offer credit to some unbanked entrepreneurs that is those without a credit history who were rejected based on their traditional credit scores without increasing the risk of the portfolio

expense preference behavior in the savings and loan industry neoclassical microeconomic theory traditionally has assumed that the decision process in the firm is guided by the objective of profit maximization a number of economists have suggested however that managers may pursue goals which maximize personal utility rather than firm profitability 1 10 11 23 24 conditions under which managerial discretion may be substituted for profit maximization include weak competition in the product or service market a high degree of regulation and the separation of ownership and control under these conditions managers have greater opportunity to indulge in discretionary expenditures and the pursuit of managerial emoluments that is managers may seek to achieve a higher level of personal utility via higher salaries additional staff and other perquisites for which they have positive preferences in general this results in an expansion of expenditures beyond the profit maximizing level and a suboptimal x inefficient use of resources within the firm the expense preference theory of the firm recently received considerable support by the work of edwards 3 in which he developed a test to distinguish between expense preference and profit maximizing behavior upon application of this test to the banking industry edwards found that the number of employees and bank expenditures on wages and salaries are higher in noncompetitive banking markets

bank linkages and international trade abstract we uncover a new channel through which international finance is related to trade the formation of international bank linkages increases exports bank linkages are measured for each pair of countries in each year as a number of bank pairs in these two countries that are connected through cross border syndicated lending using a gravity approach to model trade for 66 countries over 24 years with a full set of fixed effects source year target year source target we find that new connections between banks in a given country pair lead to an increase in trade flows between these countries in the following year and to trade diversions from countries competing for similar imports we conjecture that the mechanism for this effect is the role bank linkages play in reducing export risk and present evidence supporting this conjecture in particular using industry level trade data and controlling for country pair year and industry fixed effects we find that new bank linkages have larger impacts on trade in industries which tend to be subject to more export risk for u s banks we can show that bank linkages are positively associated with foreign letter of credit exposures

sme credit constraints in asia s rising economic star fresh empirical evidence from vietnam this study provides a fresh look at the sme sector s economic backbone vis a vis credit constraint dichotomy in vietnam asia s rising economic star the study uses data from the survey of manufactu

the impact of the business environment on young firm financing this paper uses a dataset of more than 70 000 firms in over 100 countries to systematically study the use of different financing sources for new and young firms in comparison to mature firms the authors find that in all countries younger firms rely less on bank financing and more on informal financing however they also find that younger firms use more bank finance in countries with stronger rule of law and better credit information and that the reliance of young firms on informal finance decreases with the availability of credit information overall the results suggest that improvements to the legal environment and availability of credit information are disproportionately beneficial for promoting access to formal finance by young firms

savings savings and loan ownership structure and expense preference reply abstract we present counterarguments to the points krinsky and thomas make and express confidence with our original conclusions and the tests that support them

can informal firms hurt registered smes access to credit using firm level survey responses from 2009 to 2012 we examine whether competitors from the informal sector affect the credit constraints of registered smes in 86 countries worldwide we also investigate the role played by the quality of institutional environment in exacerbating or in alleviating such effect a weak quality of institutional environment strengthens inter linkages between the formal and the informal sectors increases the costs and decreases the benefits assumed by formal firms and reduces the costs attributed to informality moreover it also results in a large informal economy which influences perceptions about the substitutability between formal and informal goods and law evasion our findings indicate that registered smes facing competition from informal firms are more likely to be credit constrained than other formal smes that are not confronted with such competition this result is consistent with the parasite view and the entrepreneurial perspective of informality which assert that informal firms are capable of competing against registered smes and hurting the latter s profits further we find that such adverse impact manifests only in countries with weak rule of law and high degree of corruption and bureaucracy our results also show that registered micro and small firms are more likely to be affected by the presence of informal firm competitors than medium sized firms this is because the benefits of formality that include access to credit from financial institutions increase with firm size on the whole our findings suggest that governments must enhance their role in increasing access to credit to smaller firms and in providing incentives for informal firms to be integrated in the formal economy moreover in order to achieve inclusive growth our results highlight the importance of improving the business environment which affects all entrepreneurs

financial shocks and trade finance evidence from korea using two novel measures of bank intermediated trade finance in korea this paper empirically assesses the effects of financial shocks on the availability of trade finance and finds that these effects are generally negative and last for at least three months implying significant delays and losses for traders

trade credit and credit rationing asymmetric information between banks and firms can preclude financing of valuable projects trade credit alleviates this problem by incorporating in the lending relation the private information held by suppliers about their customers incentive compatibility conditions prevent collusion between two of the agents e g the buyer and the seller against the third e g the bank consistent with the empirical findings of petersen and rajan 1995 firms without relationships with banks resort more to trade credit and sellers with greater ability to generate cash lows provide more trade credit finally small firms react to monetary contractions by using trade credit consistent with the empirical results of nilsen 1994 article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

firm credit in the euro area a tale of three crises using survey data from 2009 to 2011 we analyse the effects of the recent euro area economic financial and private debt crisis on the supply of and demand for bank finance for small and medium enterprises smes at the country level we identify three distinct aspects of the recent crisis in the euro area affecting firm credit through different channels controlling for country fixed effects the impact of a weak real economy on firm credit operates both by reducing firms demand for bank financing and by lenders increasing loan rejections and tightening terms and conditions on credit allocated on the other hand financial conditions have no significant effect on demand but they do affect credit supply as we find that financial tensions worsen the chances of obtaining credit and its terms and conditions we interpret this as evidence of a bank balance sheet channel negatively impacting credit provision we find that private sector indebtedness has important effects on smes credit access and its terms

long term debt maturity and financing constraints of smes during the global financial crisis we use the recent financial crisis to investigate financing constraints of private small and medium sized enterprises smes in belgium we hypothesize that smes with a large proportion of long term debt maturing at the start of the crisis had difficulties to renew their loans due to the negative credit supply shock and hence could invest less we find a substantial variation in the maturity structure of long term debt firms which at the start of the crisis had a larger part of their long term debt maturing within the next year experienced a significantly larger drop in investments in 2009 this effect is driven by firms which are ex ante more likely to be financially constrained consistent with a causal effect of a credit supply shock to corporate investments we find no effect in placebo periods without a negative credit supply shock

remittances entrepreneurship and employment dynamics over the business cycle abstract we incorporate remittances and micro entrepreneurship self employment into a small open economy business cycle model with capital and labor market frictions countercyclical remittances moderate the decline of households consumption during recessions these remittances also are used to finance the start up costs of microenterprises that bolster households income during economic downturns we show that the positive income effect from countercyclical remittances also leads to a decrease in salaried labor supply which generates offsetting upward pressure on wages during recessions and adversely affects the recovery of the economy consistent with the microeconomic evidence the behavior of remittances decisively affects labor force participation and the composition of employment between non salaried and salaried employment over the business cycle the model delivers labor market and aggregate cyclical dynamics that are consistent with the mexican data including a highly volatile and countercyclical unemployment rate

loan guarantee schemes in the uk the natural experiment of the enterprise finance guarantee and the 5 year rule loan guarantee schemes have existed since 1953 in the us and are widely used throughout the world to provide financial support to smaller firms by guaranteeing loans from commercial banks the uk government has been an active supporter of loan guarantees since 1981 and has a long track record of modifying its scheme to reflect changing market conditions and the financing needs of its sme sector arguably the two most significant changes occurred in 2008 when the 5 year rule on eligibility was removed and in 2009 when the long standing small firms loan guarantee scheme was replaced by the enterprise finance guarantee scheme we treat the removal of the 5 year rule as a natural policy experiment and empirically question whether on economic grounds this was a sensible policy our findings suggest that the 5 year rule was a better policy choice with regard to employment but had no impact on sales growth

signaling and the valuation of unseasoned new issues a comment in the march 1982 issue of this journal david downes and robert heinkel 1 present an empirical examination of the role of signaling in the valuation of initial public offerings of common stock for a large sample of unseasoned new issues they examine the leland pyle 2 signaling hypothesis that firm value should be positively related to the fraction of equity retained by the original shareholders downes and heinkel conclude that the data are consistent with the leland pyle signaling hypothesis in this comment i present a more complete test of the leland pyle signaling model i also present two alternative explanations for the positive empirical relation between firm value and insider holdings which i label the agency hypothesis and the wealth effect hypothesis i find that the testable implications of the agency hypothesis are supported while the evidence is ambiguous with respect to the testable implications of the wealth effect and signaling hypotheses

new issues on the u k unlisted securities market the ability of entrepreneurs to signal firm value the present paper investigates whether small firm entrepreneurs are able to signal the value of their firms to potential investors when seeking a listing on the u k unlisted securities market usm the signals considered are the percentage of equity retained by the original entrepreneurs the net proceeds raised by an issue the choice of advising agents to an issue the disclosure of an earnings forecast and the level of underpricing of the new issue in addition the possible interactions between the individual signals are considered and included in the analysis the results of the empirical analysis suggest that firm value is positively and significantly related to the percentage of retained equity and the net proceeds raised thus suggesting therefore that stock markets will invest at higher values ceteris paribus if entrepreneurs indicate confidence in their enterprises via levels of equity retention and the funds they intend to invest in future projects

financial and legal constraints to growth does firm size matter using a unique firm level survey database covering 54 countries we investigate the effect of financial legal and corruption problems on firms growth rates whether these factors constrain growth depends on firm size it is consistently the smallest firms that are most constrained financial and institutional development weakens the constraining effects of financial legal and corruption obstacles and it is again the small firms that benefit the most there is only a weak relation between firms perception of the quality of the courts in their country and firm growth we also provide evidence that the corruption of bank officials constrains firm growth

law finance and firm growth we investigate how differences in legal and financial systems affect firms use of external financing to fund growth we show that in countries whose legal systems score high on an efficiency index a greater proportion of firms use long term external financing an active though not necessarily large stock market and a large banking sector are also associated with externally financed firm growth the increased reliance on external financing occurs in part because established firms in countries with well functioning institutions have lower profit rates government subsidies to industry do not increase the proportion of firms relying on external financing the corporate finance literature suggests that market imperfections caused by conflicts of interest and informational asymmetries between corporate insiders and investors constrain firms in their ability to fund investment projects the magnitude of these imperfections depends in part on the effectiveness of the legal and financial systems because these systems differ across countries the literature implies that there should exist systematic cross country differences in firms ability to obtain external capital to finance investment in this paper we examine whether the underdevelopment of legal and financial systems does prevent firms in some countries from investing in potentially profitable growth opportunities in particular we focus on the use of long term debt or external equity to fund growth see our earlier work demirgut kunt and maksimovic 1996a which compares firms financial structures in developed and developing countries and finds the greatest difference to be in the provision of long term credit we estimate a financial planning model to obtain the maximum growth rate that each firm in our thirty country sample could attain without access to long term financing we then compare these predicted growth rates to growth rates realized by firms in countries with differing degrees of development in their legal and financial systems our approach enables us to identify specific characteristics of the legal and financial systems that are associated with long term financing of firm growth thus we provide a micro level test of the hypoth

financial development and corporate growth in the eu single market the establishment of the eu 15 single market in 1993 brought about a high degree of similarity in firms growth opportunities across countries while substantial diversity existed in the development of national financial markets we compare within industry growth rates of similar single market firms facing financial systems of different depth and institutional quality as of 1993 moving from the least to the most developed financial market within the eu 15 boosts firms annual value added growth by about three percentage points our results also suggest that the growth gap due to initially underdeveloped financial systems was closed by 2003

when arm s length is too far relationship banking over the credit cycle we conduct face to face interviews with bank ceos to classify 397 banks across 21 countries as either relationship or transaction lenders we then use the geographic coordinates of these banks branches and of 14 100 businesses to analyze how the lending techniques of banks in the vicinity of firms are related to credit constraints at two contrasting points of the credit cycle we find that while relationship lending is not associated with credit constraints during a credit boom it alleviates such constraints during a downturn this positive role of relationship lending is stronger for small and opaque firms and in regions with a more severe economic downturn moreover our evidence suggests thatrelationship lending mitigates the impact of a downturn on firm growth and does not constitute evergreening of loans

partial credit guarantees and firm performance evidence from colombia this paper studies the effect of government backed partial credit guarantees on firms performance in colombia these guarantees are automatically granted by the national guarantee fund ngf to firms without enough collateral to lift their credit constraints we put together a panel of firms covering the period 1997 2007 that allows us to control for observed and unobserved firm characteristics potentially affecting both the selection of firms into the program and firms performance we find that firms that gain access to credit backed by the ngf were able to grow in terms of both output and employment however we do not find any effect on productivity wages or investment

banks responses to deregulation profits technology and efficiency the deregulation of interest rates in the early 1980s raised bank funding costs and lowered profits in response banks raised fees for deposit services reduced branch operating costs and shifted to higher earning assets rates of return did not regain their prederegulation levels until the early 1990s our goal is to decompose the change in bank profits following deregulation into i intemal bank initiated adjustments to the new regulatory structure and ii external contemporaneous changes in banks business environment this decomposition will depend in part on the assumed competitive structure of the banking industry with perfect competition output and input prices are part of the external environment and banks responses are limited to changes in output and input quantities an alternative approach assumes imperfect competition where banks have some control over output prices deposit fees minimum balance requirements and interest rates on certain loans and output quantities and input prices comprise the external environment the altemative model is supported by the data using this model large banks but not smaller banks are found to have relied primarily on changing output prices and input use to mitigate and reverse the negative effects of deregulation on profits the adjustment to deregulation was essentially complete after four years following this additional changes in bank profitability during the late 1980s were primarily due to changes in banks business environment

a new database on the structure and development of the financial sector this article introduces a new database of indicators of financial structure and financial development across countries and over time the database is unique in that it combines a wide variety of indicators that measure the size activity and efficiency of financial intermediaries and markets it improves on previous efforts by presenting data on the public share of commercial banks introducing indicators of the size and activity of nonbank financial institutions and constructing measures of the size of bond and primary equity markets this article introduces a new database the first to provide comprehensive measures of the development structure and performance of the financial sector this database is the first to define and construct indicators of the size and activity of nonbank financial intermediaries such as insurance companies pension funds and non deposit money banks it is also the first to include indicators of the size of primary equity markets and primary and secondary bond markets in constructing the database authors carefully deflate measures and match stock and flow variables

effects of deregulation on failing thrift institutions the purpose of this paper is to test the hypothesis that much of the decline in the net worth of the failing saving and loan institutions was a result of deregulation variables are developed to represent major actions to deregulate sltime series analysis is developed to estimate the effects of financial deregulation on failing thrifts net worth the data are 1984 89 balance sheet adn income statement data for thrift institutions prior to the enactment of the 1989 legislation to solve the crisis the reuslts of the analysis indicate that deregulation of asset and deposit activities was not the cause of the financial distress of failing us thrift institutions the primary cause appears to be the increase in the federal deposit insurance limit to 100 000 and how attractive this legislative action made brokering deposits that became insured up to 100 000

access to credit by firms in sub saharan africa how relevant is gender the literature on the determinants of firms financing constraints has paid little attention to gender as a determinant of access to finance using data for 34 342 firms from 90 developing countries the paper analyzes the determinants of firms financing constraints and assesses whether female owned firms are more financially constrained than male owned businesses the results show that female owned firms in sub saharan africa are more likely to be financially constrained than male owned firms but there is no gender gap in other developing regions the gender gap in sub saharan africa is robust to variations in specifications and econometric estimation procedures

bank competition and access to finance international evidence using a unique database for 74 countries and for firms of small medium and large size we assess the effect of banking market structure on the access of firms to bank finance we find that bank concentration increases obstacles to obtaining finance but only in countries with low levels of economic and institutional development a larger share of foreign owned banks and an efficient credit registry dampen the effect of concentration on financing obstacles while the effect is exacerbated by more restrictions on banks activities more government interference in the banking sector and a larger share of government owned banks

general economic equilibrium as a unifying concept in energy economic modeling in the pristine model of general economic equilibrium producers and consumers are assumed to take prices for their inputs and outputs as given a market equilibrium solution is obtained when the prices of all products lead to equal amounts of supply and demand for each the mathematical properties of this model provide a rich and powerful unifying foundation for much of modern microeconomic theory however in many practical applications it is difficult or impossible to develop the data and formulate and solve the equations required to implement the model of general economic equilibrium in its most general form in practice generality of formulation is often sacrificed for ease of computation and interpretation these tradeoffs allow the latest breakthroughs in optimization algorithms and computer technology to be applied in the analysis of important societal problems a potential drawback associated with this otherwise desirable trend is that the analysis could become infatuated with the use of particular algorithms and lose sight of the restrictive simplifying assumptions they imply the present paper includes a comparison of the simplifying assumptions required in four of the most popular types of energy economic models with respect to the model of general economic equilibrium this comparison helps sharpen our appreciation for the tradeoffs between generalization of formulation and ease of computation and interpretation that are available the concept of general economic equilibrium is employed to provide a common framework for four ostensibly different approaches to large scale modeling 1 variable coefficient input output theory 2 process network methodology 3 linear programming and 4 general nonlinear optimization the similarities and the differences of the four approaches are isolated within this framework this comparison makes both the absolute and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the models more transparent

income induced expenditure switching abstract this paper shows that an income effect can drive expenditure switching between domestic and imported goods we use a unique latvian scanner level dataset covering the 2008 2009 crisis to document several empirical findings first expenditure switching accounted for one third of the fall in imports and took place within narrowly defined product groups second there was no corresponding within group change in relative prices third consumers substituted from expensive imports to cheaper domestic alternatives these findings motivate us to estimate a model of nonhomothetic consumer demand which explains two thirds of the observed expenditure switching estimated switching is driven by income not changes in relative prices jel e21 f14 f31 f32 i11 l81

signalling and the valuation of unseasoned new issues revisited this paper provides further empirical evidence on the relation between entrepreneurial ownership retention and the initial value of unseasoned common shares a canadian data set is employed to estimate the various empirical specifications used in previous studies and to examine additional variables suggested by recent developments in the theoretical literature the estimation is carried out using a more general procedure to correct for heteroskedasticity in contrast to previous findings the entrepreneurial ownership reten tion signal does not possess statistical significance in any ofthe models examined

the effects of population aging on the physician services market a computable equilibrium analysis this paper formulates a computable equilibrium model cem of the market for physician services the simulation results based upon the cem are consistent with widely held beliefs about the effects of aging on the health care sector for example that aggregate expenditures will increase as the population ages in addition however the simulations suggest differential effects on prices and expenditures for various types of services and on expenditures by different types of consumers for example prices and aggregate expenditures for services typically used by the elderly are found to increase under older age distributions whereas prices and aggregate expenditures for other services are found to decrease elderly women are found to be unequivocally worse off under older as opposed to younger age structures they spend more yet consume fewer services

financing patterns around the world are small firms different using a firm level survey database covering 48 countries we investigate how financial and institutional development affects financing of large and small firms our database is not limited to large firms but includes small and medium size firms and data on a broad spectrum of financing sources including leasing supplier development and informal finance small firms and firms in countries with poor institutions use less external finance especially bank finance protection of property rights increases external financing of small firms significantly more than of large firms mainly due to its effect on bank finance small firms do not use disproportionately more leasing or trade finance compared with larger firms so these financing sources do not compensate for lower access to bank financing of small firms we also find that larger firms more easily expand external financing when they are constrained than small firms finally we find suggestive evidence that the pecking order holds across countries

exports and profitability first evidence for german manufacturing firms using unique recently released nationally representative high quality longitudinal data at the enterprise level for germany this paper presents the first comprehensive evidence on the relationship between exports and profitability it documents that the positive profitability differential of exporters compared to non exporters is statistically significant though rather small when observed firm characteristics and unobserved firm specific effects are controlled for in contrast to nearly all empirical studies on the relationship between productivity and exports we do not find any evidence for selfselection of more profitable firms into export markets due to the sampling frame of the data used we cannot test the hypothesis that firms which start exporting perform better in the years after the start than their counterparts which do not start instead we use a newly developed continuous treatment approach and show that exporting improves the profitability almost over the whole range of the export sales ratio only firms that generate 90 percent and more of their total sales abroad do not benefit from exporting in terms of an increased rate of profit this means that the usually observed higher productivity of exporters is not completely absorbed by the extra costs of exporting or by higher wages paid by internationally active firms

trade finance matters evidence from the covid 19 crisis this study documents a substantial decline in the exports of major trading nations taking place in march 2020 accounting for product specific seasonality and annual trends the data suggest a drop by 38 per cent in france about a quarter in turkey and germany and 12 per cent in the us relative to their historical averages detailed export data from turkey disaggregated by financing terms show another striking pattern flows using bank intermediation which eliminates or reduces the risk of non payment or non arrival of prepaid goods such as letters of credit or documentary collection appear to have been much more resilient to the current downturn relative to flows using other financing terms these findings suggest that access to trade finance is vital during times of heightened uncertainty the author s 2020 published by oxford university press for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com

economies of diversification in the banking industry abstract this paper defines a new measure economies of diversification to examine the cost effect of product line expansion this measure is a special case of expansion path subadditivity and contains economies of scope as a special case a nonparametric frontier technique which isolates the effects of inefficiency and scale is used to measure economies of diversification applied to a set of 468 u s depository institutions operating in 1984 we find slight diseconomies of diversification diseconomies of diversification and inefficiency due to the overutilization of resources are found to be more important determinants of bank costs than is the failure to operate at optimal scale

savings and loan ownership structure and expense preference abstract this paper studies the influence of ownership structure on managerial expense preference behavior the hypothesis is that the greater the diffusion of ownership the weaker is the monitoring by owners and the greater is the degree of expense preference behavior whereas expense preference behavior affects inputs particularly on the job consumption of managers well functioning managerial labor markets should resolve the problem by equating the total compensation of managers across firms of different ownership structures a more serious problem however is the potential impact of expense preference behavior on output evidence from the savings and loan industry is adduced indicating that the more diffuse ownership structures associated with mutuality exhibit greater agency costs through the expansion of inputs and outputs beyond profit maximizing levels

testing for deliberate underpricing in the ipo premarket a stochastic frontier approach we re evaluate the ipo underpricing phenomenon using the stochastic frontier methodology the advantage of the stochastic frontier is that it can be used to measure the level of deliberate underpricing in the premarket without using after market information this is accomplished through the estimation of a systematic one sided error term that measures inefficiency or the difference between the maximum predicted offer price and the actual offer price data for the analysis are comprised of 1 035 ipos of common stock issued by firm commitment between 1975 and 1984 ipos appear to be deliberately underpriced in the premarket in both hot market and nonhot market periods moreover the determinants of the maximum ipo price have different effects in the two time periods article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

government intervention and firm investment evidence from international micro data abstract building on the important study by beck et al 2005 we examine how government intervention in firms decision making is related to their investment and sales growth using the unique world bank dataset wbes covering 6500 firms in 70 countries we find strong evidence that the extent of government intervention in firms investment employment sales pricing dividend and merger and acquisition decisions is negatively related to their investment and sales growth with the effect being more profound in foreign owned firms and less significant in state owned firms the empirical results are robust to a series of robustness tests and instrumental variable regressions

savings and loan ownership structure and expense preference abstract this note demonstrates that the conclusion of the akella and greenbaum 1988 study that managers of mutual s ls exhibit more expense preference behavior than managers of stockholder owned s ls is premature it is shown that in operationalizing their theoretical model a g introduce an endogenous variable in their correction for homogeneity invalidating their results the only firm conclusion which can be drawn from their results is that a higher proportion of assets of mutual s ls is invested in loans while a higher proportion of liabilities are sourced from deposits than is the case for stockholder owned s ls

financial structure corporate savings and current account imbalances abstract we explore the effects of a country s financial structure on its corporate savings and current account a financial system that relies relatively more on banks and less on the capital market presents more difficulties for small and medium sized enterprises to access external finance these firms find it necessary to accumulate more savings on their own as a result countries that have a less developed capital market are more likely to run current account surpluses or smaller current account deficits using panel data of 66 countries for the period 1990 2007 we find consistent and robust evidence in favor of this hypothesis further explorations based on firm level data reveal that firms especially smaller firms in economies with relatively underdeveloped capital markets do save significantly more than their counterparts in countries with relatively more developed capital markets

information production dilution costs and optimal security design abstract we investigate the problem of a firm wishing to finance a project by issuing securities under asymmetric information we find that when outside investors can produce noisy information on the firm s quality the degree of information asymmetry resulting in equilibrium is endogenous and depends on the information sensitivity of the security issued thus in contrast to the prediction of the pecking order theory see e g myers and majluf j financial econom 13 1984 187 a security with low sensitivity to private information such as debt does not always dominate one with high information sensitivity such as equity a firm s preference for equity rather than debt depends on the costs of information production the precision of the information production technology and the extent of the information asymmetry we also study the optimal security design problem and find that depending on the cost and precision of the information production technology risky debt or a composite security with a convex payoff emerges as optimal securities

bank credit rates across the business cycle evidence from a french cooperative contracts database abstract financial theory indicates that bank firm relationships can induce a hold up problem resulting in higher interest rates yet only weak empirical confirmation of this result exists moreover the potential influence of the business cycle on the bank firm relationship still requires empirical consideration with a unique contracts data set collected from a french cooperative bank between 1996 and 2009 this study shows that the effects of bank firm relationships on the credit rate depend on economic conditions and that the hold up problem is at play only during economic recessions

financial development unemployment volatility and sectoral dynamics abstract we document a negative and significant relationship between domestic financial development and unemployment volatility in developing and emerging economies demes and the absence of such relationship in advanced economies aes a business cycle labor search model with firm heterogeneity collateral constraints and interfirm input credit capital can quantitatively rationalize these facts greater financial development is associated with lower usage of input credit capital greater bank credit and greater capital accumulation all of which make firms more resilient in the presence of financial shocks firms increased shock resiliency stabilizes employment decisions ultimately leading to smoother unemployment fluctuations then by establishing explicit linkages between firms interfirm input credit acts as an important mechanism that fosters lower volatility across firms under greater financial development as such increases in financial development have a smaller impact in stabilizing unemployment in economies with higher average bank credit gdp ratios and less input credit usage which is the case of aes compared to economies with lower average bank credit gdp ratios and more input credit usage which is the case of demes

effect of the global financial meltdown on india s aggregate export volumes this paper sets up a demand supply model to analyse india s export performance in terms of volumes rather than values between 2000q1 2014q4 the main objective is to determine the impact of the f

access to finance in sub saharan africa is there a gender gap we show the existence of an unconditional gender gap in sub saharan africa however when key observable characteristics of the enterprises or individuals are taken into account the gender gap disappears in the case of enterprises we explain our finding with differences in key characteristics and a potential selection bias in the case of individuals the lower use of formal financial services by women can be explained by gender gaps in other dimensions related to the use of financial services such as their lower level of income and education and by their household and employment status

the commitment problem of secured lending the paper presents a new theory of trade credit in which firms buy inputs on credit from suppliers to restore the benefits of secured bank financing impaired by contract incompleteness in a setting where investment is endogenous and unobservable to financiers we show that a bank secured credit contract is time inconsistent upon being granted credit the entrepreneur has an incentive to alter the original input combination jeopardizing the bank s revenues anticipating the entrepreneur s opportunism the bank offers an unsecured credit contract reducing the surplus from the venture one way for the entrepreneur to commit to the contract terms is to purchase inputs on credit from the supplier the supplier observes the input investment and acts as a guarantor that inputs will be purchased as contracted thus facilitating access to secured bank financing the commitment role of trade credit still holds in a multi period extension that investigates the impact of bank relationship lending on secured debt and trade credit our model provides novel testable predictions on optimal financial contracts in both one period and repeated lending relationships

frontier estimation and firm specific inefficiency measures in the presence of heteroscedasticity the purpose of this article is to illustrate a straightforward and useful method for addressing the problem of heteroscedasticity in the estimation of frontiers a heteroscedastic cost frontier model is developed and estimated using bank cost data similar to that used by ferrier and lovell our results show dramatic changes in the estimated cost frontier and in the inefficiency measures when accounting for heteroscedasticity in the estimation process we find that the rankings of firms by their inefficiency measures is affected markedly by the correction for heteroscedasticity but not by alternative distributional assumptions about the one sided error term

r d and credit rationing in smes we study the effects of credit rationing on research and development r d investment using survey and accounting data on a large representative sample of manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises smes our econometric model accounts for the endogeneity of our credit rationing indicator and employs an innovative theory based identification strategy we find that credit rationing has a significantly negative effect on both the probability to set up r d activities and on the level of r d spending conditioned on the r d decision but the overall estimated reduction in r d spending is largely to be associated with the first effect jel g21 d82 032 c35 i introduction long run economic growth and welfare resides on the production of new knowledge and its implementation into new or improved products or processes for this reason identification evaluation and correction of the detrimental effects of potential underinvestment in research and development r d activities have a prominent place in the policy agendas of all industrialized countries this is particularly the case in europe where since the start of the recent economic crisis the policy debate has been focused on the role of capital market imperfections as they increase the cost of r d when firms do not have sufficient internal funds to finance it the credit crunch that is the lack of availability or reduction in supply of credit to businesses from traditional financial institutions is said to reduce firms investment in innovative activities and growth prospects however despite its theoretical appeal and in contrast with the proven sensitivity of fixed capital investment to financing constraints evidence on the susceptibility of r d investment to financial frictions and in particular to credit rationing is still mixed and inconclusive three explanations have been put forward for the lack of robust evidence first it is claimed that the variety in the results reflects the contrast between theoretical explanations based on asymmetric information arguments suggesting a sensitivity of r d to financing constraints potentially higher than that of ordinary investment and the characteristics of r d as a long term investment with high adjustment costs suggesting rather the opposite 1 second existing evidence is based almost exclusively on the sensitivity of firm level r d spending to the availability of internal finance typically measured through cash flow which is however known to be problematic in its ability to proxy for financing constraints kaplan and zingales 1997 2000 third recent contributions have stressed the difficulty in identifying the role of financing constraint using standard investment models when firms have access to multiple channels for raising external financial resources and managing buffer stocks of liquidity brown martinsson and petersen 2011 in this study we use firm level data on r d investment and credit constraints to measure the detrimental effect of credit rationing on r d investment dealing with all the above specified issues first we claim that the ambiguity originated by information problems versus the nature of r d as a long term investment might be resolved if we distinguish between the probability of r d investment the r d participation decision and the size of r d investment once the decision to invest has been taken the amount of r d spending decision we therefore study the effect of credit rationing on the decision to do r d and on the amount of r d investment our hypothesis is that credit rationing displays a stronger effect on the first decision compared with the latter while this expectation might seem obvious to our knowledge econometric analyses on the topic have not yet addressed or proven the differential impact of credit rationing on the participation and amount decisions respectively

the great synchronization of international trade collapse in this paper we examine the extent of international trade synchronization during periods of international trade collapses and us recessions based on monthly data for the g7 economies over the period 1961 2011 our results suggest rather idiosyncratic patterns of international trade synchronization during international trade collapses and us recessions during the great recession of 2007 2009 however international trade experienced the most sudden severe and globally synchronized collapse

a note on savings and loan ownership structure and expense preference a re examination this study extends the work of akella and greenbaum journal of banking finance 12 1988 419 through the use of a much larger nationwide sample of us saving and loan associations and supports their original finding of significant expense preference behavior in mutual savings and loans during their original study period 1979 80 this study also provides evidence that over the time period of substantial deregulation and changes in the competitive environment in the us financial services industry expense preference behavior for savings and loans decreased the results are consistent with the idea that the removal of barriers that restrict competition should improve managerial efficiency in firms that survive 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

trade finance and the great trade collapse pieces of evidence that support the trade finance channel first we show that export prices rose relative to domestic manufacturing prices across a large number of countries second we find that import and export prices of goods shipped by sea which are likely to be affected most by trade finance contractions rose disproportion ately more than those shipped by air or land

the structure of ownership and the theory of the firm the separation of ownership from control produces a condition where the interests of owner and of ultimate manager may and often do diverge and where many of the checks which formerly operated to limit the use of power disappear in creating these new relationships the quasi public corporation may fairly be said to work a revolution it has divided ownership into nominal ownership and the power formerly joined to it thereby the corporation has changed the nature of profit seeking enterprise 1

the impact of economic regulation on attempts to curb expense preference behavior a micro data analysis of ceo compensation schemes for electric utilities this study uses a large micro data set to present evidence which suggests that owners of regulated electric utilities have little incentive to structure ceo compensation packages in an effort to curb potential expense preference behavior because such potential behavior occurs or would occur at no cost to the firm or the firm s owners little incentive exists to structure compensation schemes in a way that would curb such behavior e g by compensating them with incentive bonus plans and stock options the results presented here augment those which examine other industries e g banking in an effort to point out the relationships between ownership organization political involvement and expense preference behavior

testing for expense preference behavior mutual versus stock savings and loans this article investigates expense preference behavior in the savings and loan industry previous studies used an intercept test and in general concluded that managers of mutual s ls exhibit expense preference behavior i derive the necessary and sufficient conditions on cost functions for the intercept test to be valid these restrictions are rejected for the savings and loan industry stock and mutual s ls have different cost structures and both have non cobb douglas production technologies i derive a new more general test for expense preference behavior that does not require the restrictive assumptions of the intercept test the results of this test do not support earlier conclusions of managerial expense preferences

finance and the sources of growth the authors evaluate whether the level of development in the banking sector exerts a causal impact on economic growth and its sources total factor productivity growth physical capital accumulation and private saving they use 1 a pure cross country instrumental variable estimator to extract the exogenous component of banking development and 2 a new panel technique that controls for country specific effects and endogeneity they find that banks do exert a large causal impact on total factor productivity growth which feeds through to overall gdp gross domestic product growth the long run links between banking development and both capital growth and private savings are more tenuous

capital income taxation and risk spreading with adverse selection domar and musgrave 1944 showed that taxing the return from risky investments may encourage risk taking the effect has come under attack as being one of partial analysis that would disappear in general equilibrium this paper shows that the contrary is true if capital markets suffer from adverse selection asymmetric information induces investors to bear risk that could be spread in the capital market the tendency to such behaviour may be increased by a tax on risky capital income in that case social risk spreading decreases while the opposite effect would hold if general equilibrium repercussions were ignored imposition du revenu de capital et repartition des risques quand il y a selection adverse domar et musgrave 1944 ont montre que l imposition des rendements sur les investisse ments risques pouvait encourager a courir plus de risque ce resultat a ete attaque comme resultat emergeant d une analyse d equilibre partiel et devant disparaitre en equilibre general