robust stochastic discount factors when the market is incomplete a new non redundant derivative security cannot be priced by no arbitrage arguments alone moreover there will be a multiplicity of stochastic discount factors and each of them may give a different price for the new derivative security this paper develops an approach to the selection of a stochastic discount factor for pricing a new derivative security the approach is based on the idea that the price of a derivative security should not vary too much when the payoff of the primitive security is slightly perturbed i e the price of the derivative should be robust to model misspecification the paper develops two metrics of robustness the first is based on robustness in expectation the second is based on robustness in probability and draws on tools from the theory of large deviations we show that in a stochastic volatility model the two metrics yield analytically tractable bounds for the derivative price as the underlying stochastic volatility model is perturbed the bounds can be readily used for numerical examination of the sensitivity of the price of the derivative to model misspecification

new issues in corporate finance flow of funds data are used to compare methods of finance in 5 countries over the period 1970 to 1985 many of the problems associated with previous studies are avoided by estimating net instead of gross financing proportions the degree of consolidation of accounts reciprocal arrangements between borrowers and lenders and compensating deposit requirements on borrowers no longer distort financing patterns corrections for inflation are provided by employing flow rather than stock figures and using own aggregation procedures to derive stock measures significant variations in financing emerge these are not readily explained by traditional descriptions of corporate finance in particular taxation as an alternative the paper suggests that relationships between borrowers and lenders establish forms of commitment that are conducive to the provision of long term finance the separation between investment and finance which has been the starting point of corporate finance theory is untenable in a multiperiod context in which terms of finance define future allocation of control

determinants of mortgage default and consumer credit use the effects of foreclosure laws and foreclosure delays the mortgage default decision is part of a complex household credit management problem we examine how factors affecting mortgage default spill over to other credit markets as home equity turns negative homeowners default on mortgages and home equity lines of credit at higher rates whereas they prioritize repaying credit cards and auto loans larger unused credit card limits intensify the preservation of credit cards over housing debt although mortgage nonrecourse statutes increase default on all types of housing debt they reduce credit card defaults foreclosure delays increase default rates for housing and nonhousing debts our analysis highlights the interconnectedness of debt repayment decisions

financial factors and investment in belgium france germany and the united kingdom a comparison using company panel data we construct company panel data sets for manufacturing firms in belgium france germany and the united kingdom covering the period 1978 1989 these data sets are used to estimate empirical investment equations and to investigate the role played by financial factors in each country a robust finding is that cash flow and profits terms appear to be both statistically and quantitatively more significant in the united kingdom than in the three continental european countries this is consistent with the suggestion that financial constraints on investment may be relatively severe in the more market oriented u k financial system

the response of firms to eligibility thresholds evidence from the japanese value added tax abstract it is common to define benefit eligibility for small business policies by restrictions on the firm size this paper documents the effects of the value added tax vat threshold in japan focusing on the incentives for a large firm to masquerade as many small firms by separately incorporating business segments a comparison of the corporate size distributions before and after the vat introduction of 1989 shows a clustering of corporations just below the threshold a pattern that is attributable to the behavioral responses to rule out the confounding influences of the changes in the company attributes over the years we applied a semiparametric density decomposition technique developed by dinardo fortin and lemieux dinardo j fortin n m lemieux t labor market institutions and the distribution of wages 1973 1992 a semiparametric approach econometrica 1996 64 1001 1044 this study suggests that the masquerading behavior by firms may be commonplace in other settings

the relative economic performance of foreign subsidiaries in uk manufacturing there is now considerable evidence to show that domestically owned firms does have lower levels of labour productivity than foreign owned subsidiaries foss in uk manufacturing industry in explaining these productivity differences most studies refer to the firm specific advantages which multinationals possess allowing them to succeed in foreign environments in fact as barrell and pain 1997 point out if foreign owned assets are no more productive than those that are locally owned the rational for fdi particularly among developed countries disappears superior foreign owned assets are also important from a policy viewpoint in that there is a perception that host countries can benefit from the potential for spillover effects to domestic firms given the importance of firm specific advantages to fdi theory it is surprising that there has been little attempt to directly measure these assets in studies of relative productivity performance

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

flexible specialisation the new competition and industrial districts flexible specialisation the new competition and industrial districts are concepts reviewed in this article to determine whether they can provide an alternative for the description of the industrial sector as a system of mass production the concepts mentioned are discussed and criticized in this article all three concepts stress the importance of a certain division of labour of interfirm relations of cooperation versus competition of technological development and innovation diffusion of flexibility the role of small enterprises and a local value system however a number of differences between the concepts are also highlighted as well as the problems to use them in empirical research it is concluded that the three terms are complementary and could be used in combination the flexible competitive districts would provide an alternative type of industrial organization somewhere between the large scale integrated enterprise and the atomized self contained individual firm the challenge lies in turning the positive theory into a normative one how can industrial development in eastern europe and third world countries be turned into the development of flexible competitive district which contribute significantly to the development of these countries and allow for an important role for micro small and medium enterprises it is argued that this can be done in the framework of urban and regional development policies but this requires a different role for the government and the provision of an adequate infrastructure

on arbitrage free pricing of interest rate contingent claims unlike most interest rate claim models the ho lee model utilizes full information on the current term structure unfortunately the model has a major deficiency in that negative interest rates can occur this article modifies the model such that interest rates are well behaved

cash flow constraints and firms investment behaviour this paper examines the role of cash flow as a determinant of investment in fixed capital at the firm level a criterion was established for classifying firms as cash flow constrained or unconstrained on a year by year basis firms were then assigned to one of these two categories data for a sample of 58 australian firms for the period 1974 75 to 1989 90 were used to estimate separate regressions incorporating a common set of facilitating and incentive variables for constrained and unconstrained cases the results suggest that the investment behaviour of firms when they are financially constrained exhibits a greater sensitivity to cash flow than that of firms when they are unconstrained in addition incentive variables such as tobin s q and sales growth only have an explanatory role when firms are unconstrained the implications of these findings for monetary policy are also discussed

a dynamic programming approach for pricing options embedded in bonds abstract we propose a dynamic programming dp approach for pricing options embedded in bonds the focus being on call and put options with advance notice an efficient procedure is developed for the cases where the interest rate process follows the vasicek cox ingersoll ross cir or generalized vasicek models our dp methodology uses the exact joint distribution of the interest rate and integrated interest rate at a future date conditional on the current value of the interest rate we provide numerical illustrations for the vasicek and cir models comparing our dp method with finite difference methods our procedure compares quite favorably in terms of both efficiency and accuracy an important advantage of the our dp approach is that it can be applied to more general models calibrated to capture the term structure of interest rates e g the generalized vasicek model

the influence of foreclosure delays on borrowers default behavior this paper conducts loan level analysis to investigate the influence of expected foreclosure delay on a borrower s default propensity we include the actual foreclosure times in the analysis to capture the dynamic nature of foreclosure duration consistent with theoretical predictions we find a statistically and economically significant impact of foreclosure delay on borrower default behavior in the current market condition where many borrowers have negative equity the increase in delay may make default an optimal choice for more borrowers the negative effect of increased foreclosure delay may need to be considered when devising policies to aid troubled borrowers

valuing managerial flexibility an application of real option theory to mining investments abstract the value of managerial flexibility is assessed using data on prices costs grades reserves ore extraction and metal output for a panel of canadian copper mines a real option model is estimated and solved for project and option values most empirical researchers i consider the initial investment decision but neglect flexible operation thereafter ii assume that price is stochastic but ignore cost and reserve uncertainty and iii model price as a nonstationary stochastic process the evolution of three state variables price cost and reserves is assessed here differences in assumptions compared to others are found to lead to large differences in estimated project and option values

financial systems financing constraints and investment empirical analysis of oecd countries this paper investigates the influence of cash flow on corporate investment in 11 oecd countries we find that the sensitivity of investment levels to internally available funds differs significantly across countries and is lower in countries with predominantly close bank firm relationships than in countries with predominantly arm s length bank firm relationships at the same time we find no relationship of the levels of financial constraints to indicators of overall financial development our results are consistent with the view that information and incentive problems in the capital market have important effects on corporate investment and that close bank firm relationships can reduce these problems and thus improve the access of firms to external finance

loss given default of residential mortgages in a low ltv regime role of foreclosure auction process and housing market cycles abstract using loan level foreclosure auction data we study the loss given default lgd of defaulted residential mortgages originated in korea a low ltv regime we find that senior mortgages generate very low loss rates 5 10 while losses of subordinated claims are in 30 50 range we document the effects of housing market cycles on loss severity by showing that collateral characteristics that are overvalued during the boom increase loss severity during the market downturn we also investigate how a broad set of time of origination and post origination information on loan collateral and borrower characteristics and foreclosure auction process influence the lgd of residential mortgages

entry barriers exit and sunk costs an analysis the relationship between entry rates entry barriers and sunk costs are examined across a set of four digit industry data results indicate that product differentiation barriers reduce entry rates and sunk capital costs reduce exit rates whether entry and exit are truly simultaneous however is not clear

no deep pockets some stylized empirical results on firms financial constraints this paper is a survey of recent empirical work on financial constraints faced by firms it is organized as a series of stylized results which mirror what is generally understood about the severity of financial constraints and the effects that they have upon firms the review of the literature shows that a financial constraints are a widespread key concern for firms hindering their ability to carry out their optimal investment and growth trajectories and b the severity of such constraints depends on institutional and firm specific characteristics as well as on the nature of investment projects

are german banks different in recent years there has been a vigorous revival of the long standing debate about the uniqueness of german banks to date little consensus has been reached while some see few differences between the role of banks in germany and in other countries others claim that universal banks equity shareholdings in and nomination of representatives to the boards of nonfinancial firms are the key institutional features driving the rest of the german model of long term investment in high quality internationally competitive manufacturing this article argues that the uniqueness of the german banking system lies 1 in its unusually high capacity to provide industrial finance in the form of long term debt capital and 2 in its avoidance of the speculative boom credit crunch cycle experienced by almost every other advanced industrialized country in the 1980s and early 1990s these two key characteristics are attributable to a regulatory framework which involves strict prudential regulation access to long term refinancing sources and a federalist form of corporatism furthermore the behavior of german banks must be analyzed within a broader institutional system of economic governance which includes corporatist labor market institutions and a relatively large and modern sme sector

is relationship lending special evidence from credit file data in germany the german financial market is often characterized as a bank based system with strong bank customer relationships the corresponding notion of a housebank is closely related to the theoretical idea of relationship lending it is the objective of this paper to provide a direct comparison between housebanks and normal banks as to their credit policy therefore we analyze a new data set representing a random sample of borrowers drawn from the credit portfolios of five leading german banks over a period of five years we use credit file data rather than industry survey data and thus focus the analysis on information that is directly related to actual credit decisions in particular we use bank internal borrower rating data to evaluate borrower quality and the bank s own assessment of its housebank status to control for information intensive relationships the major results of our study support the view that housebanks are able to establish a distinct behavioral pattern consistent with the idea of long term commitment we find that housebanks do provide liquidity insurance in situations of unexpected deterioration of borrower ratings with respect to loan pricing we find no evidence for intra or intertemporal price differentiation related to housebanking

an intertemporal general equilibrium model of asset prices this paper develops a continuous time general equilibrium model of a simple but complete economy and uses it to examine the behavior of asset prices in this model asset prices and their stochastic properties are determined endogenously one principal result is a partial differential equation which asset prices must satisfy the solution of this equation gives the equilibrium price of any asset in terms of the underlying real variables in the economy in this paper we develop a general equilibrium asset pricing model for use in applied research an important feature of the model is its integration of real and financial markets among other things the model endogenously determines the stochastic process followed by the equilibrium price of any financial asset and shows how this process depends on the underlying real variables the model is fully consistent with rational expectations and maximizing behavior on the part of all agents our framework is general enough to include many of the fundamental forces affecting asset markets yet it is tractable enough to be specialized easily to produce specific testable results furthermore the model can be extended in a number of straightforward ways consequently it is well suited to a wide variety of applications for example in a companion paper cox ingersoll and ross 7 we use the model to develop a theory of the term structure of interest rates many studies have been concerned with various aspects of asset pricing under uncertainty the most relevant to our work are the important papers on intertemporal asset pricing by merton 19 and lucas 16 working in a continuous time framework merton derives a relationship among the equilibrium expected rates of return on assets he shows that when investment opportunities are changing randomly over time this relationship will include effects which have no analogue in a static one period model lucas considers an economy with homogeneous individuals and a single consumption good which is produced by a number of processes the random output of these processes is exogenously determined and perishable assets are defined as claims to all or a part of the output of a process and the equilibrium determines the asset prices our theory draws on some elements of both of these papers like merton we formulate our model in continuous time and make full use of the analytical tractability that this affords the economic structure of our model is somewhat similar to that of lucas however we include both endogenous production and

the investment decision a re examination of competing theories using panel data in the united states gross business fixed investments constitute about 10 percent of the gross national product gnp such investments may represent gnp s most important component because a plant and equipment have a long term effect on the economy s productive capacity b changes in investment spending directly affect employment levels and workers incomes in durable goods industries and c supply and demand are sensitive to investment changes economists have long been concerned about what determines capital spending investments using data for us manufacturing firms for 1972 90 the author compares five investment theories accelerator theory cash flow theory neoclassical theory modified neoclassical theory and q theory if the results for cross section regressions can be viewed as representing the long term equilibrium the single most important determinant of capital spending appears to be cash flow apparently managers care more about cash flow and cost of capital than about stock market signals and the level of output and at the firm level managerial perceptions about fundamentals are more important that market perceptions for managers the stock market may be a side show to capital spending decisions to generalize in a way useful for developing countries firm level financial decisions are closely linked to real decisions in the economy internal finance is the most important use of funds so there is a close relationship between real and financial decisions

continuous time methods in finance a review and an assessment i survey and assess the development of continuous time methods in finance during the last 30 years the subperiod 1969 to 1980 saw a dizzying pace of development with seminal ideas in derivatives securities pricing term structure theory asset pricing and optimal consumption and portfolio choices during the period 1981 to 1999 the theory has been extended and modified to better explain empirical regularities in various subfields of finance this latter subperiod has seen significant progress in econometric theory computational and estimation methods to test and implement continuous time models capital market frictions and bargaining issues are being increasingly incorporated in continuous time theory the roots of modern continuous time methods in finance can be traced back to the seminal contributions of merton 1969 1971 1973b in the late 1960s and early 1970s merton 1969 pioneered the use of continuous time modeling in financial economics by formulating the intertemporal consumption and portfolio choice problem of an investor in a stochastic dynamic programming setting merton 1973b also showed how such a framework can be used to develop equilibrium asset pricing implications thereby significantly extending the asset pricing theory to richer dynamic settings and expanding the scope of applications of continuous time methods to study problems in financial economics 1 within a span of about 30 years from the publication of merton s inf luential papers continuous time methods have become an integral part of financial economics indeed in certain core areas in finance such as e g asset pricing derivatives valuation term structure theory and portfolio selection continuoustime methods have proved to be the most attractive way to conduct research and gain economic intuition the continuous time approach in these areas has produced models with a rich variety of testable implications the econometric theory for testing continuous time models has made rapid strides in the last decade and has thus kept pace with the impressive progress on the theoretical front one hopes that the actual empirical investigations and estimation using the new procedures will follow suit soon

a continuous time equilibrium model of forward prices and futures prices in a multigood economy abstract this paper is a theoretical investigation of equilibrium forward and futures prices we construct a rational expectations model in continuous time of a multigood identical consumer economy with constant stochastic returns to scale production using this model we find three main results first we find formulas for equilibrium forward futures discount bond commodity bond and commodity option prices second we show that a futures price is actually a forward price for the delivery of a random number of units of a good the random number is the return earned from continuous reinvestment in instantaneously riskless bonds until maturity of the futures contract third we find and interpret conditions under which normal backwardation or contango is found in forward or futures prices these conditions reflect the usefulness of forward and futures contracts as consumption hedges

stochastic house appreciation and optimal mortgage lending w e characterize the optimal mortgage contract in a continuous time setting with stochastic growth in house price and income costly foreclosure and a risky borrower who requires incentives to repay his debt we show that many features of subprime loans can be consistent with properties of the optimal contract and that when house prices decline mortgage modification can create value for borrowers and lenders our model provides a number of empirical predictions that relate the features of mortgage contracts originated in a housing boom and the extent of their modification in a slump to location and borrowers characteristics jel g20 g21 g33

valuing commercial mortgages an empirical investigation of the contingent claims approach to pricing risky debt this paper empirically investigates a contingent claims model of commercial mortgage pricing we find that the magnitude of the observed default premia for a sample of nonprepayable fixed rate bullet mortgages can be explained by the contingent claims model in addition the model explains a significant proportion of the period to period changes in the default premia however given an assumed negative correlation between building value changes and interest rate changes the model s risk structure tends to increase less steeply with increasing maturity than the observed risk structure since the seminal work of black and scholes 1973 corporate liabilities have been modeled as options on the total value of the firm this contingent claims approach to bond pricing was refined by merton 1974 to allow for cash dispersals prior to the bonds maturities and by brennan and schwartz 1980 and ingersoll 1987 to allow for interest rate uncertainty although variants of these bond pricing models are currently being used extensively on wall street they have not been tested extensively moreover empirical studies have not successfully accounted for the observed spread between the rates on risky and default free debt jones mason and rosenfeld 1984 empirically investigate a model that assumes a nonstochastic term structure of interest rates while ramaswamy and sundaresan 1986 examine a model with stochastic interest rates to price floating rate notes in both cases the models could not explain the observed default premia the relative lack of empirical analysis is due partly to the complicated nature of corporate bonds major corporations generally have a large number of different bond issues outstanding that have different priorities in the event that the firm goes bankrupt moreover the bonds can have a variety of covenants specifying sinking fund provisions conditions under which technical default will occur and other restrictions that can have an impact on their value although these complications do not preclude pricing various bond issues on a case by case basis they make it difficult to test systematically the accuracy of the pricing model

does the influence of institutional investors depend on the institutional framework an international analysis this article analyses the effect of institutional ownership in alleviating or exacerbating the conflicts of interests among stakeholders in different legal and institutional frameworks this analysis is carried out based on two characteristics the concentration of power of institutional ownership and the identification of the main types of institutional investors in common law countries consistent with the convergence and entrenchment hypotheses we find a u shape relation between ownership structure and firm performance in civil law countries consistent with the collusion and contest theories we find an inverted u shape relation we also find that when institutional investors are classified as pressure resistant and pressure sensitive according to the strength of their ties with managers pressure resistant investors who operate more independently are the most capable of improving the value of the firm

recourse and residential mortgage default evidence from us states we quantify the effect of recourse on default and find that recourse affects default by lowering the borrower s sensitivity to negative equity at the mean value of the default option for defaulted loans borrowers are 30 more likely to default in non recourse states furthermore for homes appraised at 500 000 to 750 000 borrowers are twice as likely to default in non recourse states we also find that defaults are more likely to occur through a lender friendly procedure such as a deed in lieu in states that allow deficiency judgments we find no evidence that mortgage interest rates are lower in recourse states the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com oxford university press

optimal mortgage design this article studies optimal mortgage design in a continuous time setting with volatile and privately observable income costly foreclosure and a stochastic market interest rate we show that the features of the optimal mortgage are consistent with an option adjustable rate mortgage option arm under the optimal contract the borrower is given discretion of how much to repay until his balance reaches a certain limit the default rates and interest rate payment on the mortgage correlate positively with the market interest rate gains from using the optimal contract relative to simpler mortgages are the biggest for those who face more income variability buy pricey houses given their income level or make little or no down payment our model thus may help to explain a high concentration of option arms among riskier borrowers jel g20 g21 g33

time horizon and the discount rate abstract we consider an economy a la lucas 1978 econometrica46 1429 1446 with a risk averse representative agent the exogenous growth rate of the economy follows a random walk we characterize the set of utility functions for which it is efficient to discount more distant cash flows at a lower rate the benchmark result is that when the growth rate is almost surely nonnegative the yield curve is decreasing if and only if relative risk aversion is decreasing with wealth relaxing the assumption on the absence of recession requires more restrictions on preferences such as increasing relative prudence journal of economic literature classification numbers d81 d91 q25 q28

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

mortgage default and possession under recourse a competing hazards approach recent studies by ambrose buttimer and capone have stressed the fact that lender and borrower decisions after the initial default on amortgage may significantly affect the amount and timing of recoveries and hence more broadly the value and riskiness of mortgage loan portfolios this study uses microeconomic data from the uk to examine the timing decisions of mortgage lenders and borrowers when mortgages are in default the results suggest that salary and interest rates influence timing decisions more than loan to value ratios do and that lenders and borrowers accelerate the resolution of delinquent mortgages as the economic climate deteriorates

demand shocks and firm financed r d expenditures business cycles might affect firms ability and incentive to perform r d firms finance most r d activities out of cash flow so when cash flow decreases the funds available for r d also decreases this limits the ability of firms to perform r d potentially leading to reduced r d expenditures during recessions however business cycles also influence the incentive to perform r d the opportunity cost of funds devoted to r d falls during recessions since the return on production will likely be lower than during an expansion during recessions this provides firms with an incentive to redistribute an existing pool of funds away from production and towards r d projects this paper tests whether the business cycle influences the incentive and ability of firms to engage in r d activities in particular examining whether the response is symmetric across the business cycle

bank interest rates and credit relationships in italy abstract when evaluating the performance of a financial system in supporting the investment activity of the corporate sector a distinction is usually drawn between banking economies and market economies the former being characterized by long term relations between banks and the industrial sector although theoretical studies and empirical results seem to agree that lending relationships increase the available quantity of capital to firms they have little to say on the cost of bank credit it is not clear whether a close relationship with a main bank would allow the borrower to pay a lower interest rate or expose him to a monopolistic rent using a unique data set reporting detailed information on the evolution over time of individual bank borrower relationships in italy we show evidence that a main bank provides credit at a lower cost and that some competition helps to reinforce the commitment between the borrower and the bank

nominal contracts in a bimetallic standard as its central feature a bimetallic standard grants nominal debtors an option to deliver either of two metals with results from the option pricing literature construction of a formula to evaluate the bimetallic option in debt instruments is straightforward with this formula one can compute the option value in a wide range of nineteenth century u s treasury securities posession of the option values permits an adjustment of the yields on u s securities to make them comparable to yields on nonmetallic european securities evaluating the option allows the estimation of transfers from debtors to creditors copyright 1986 by american economic association

the share of small and medium sized enterprise in greek manufacturing this paper examines the determinants of small establishment shares in greek manufacturing and compares the results to previous findings for u s small firms two groups of explanatory variables are used industry variables and small firm performance variables both types of variables are found to have an impact on the determination of small firms shares with performance variables being at least as strong as industry variables measures of entry barriers give mixed results capital intensity exercizes an expected negative impact advertising intensity shows a trace of positive impact for medium sized establishments in consumer goods sectors operating efficiency of small firms also appears as a strong influence on their shares whereas investment intensity does not appear significant these results are in partial agreement to earlier findings for u s small firms their generality is tempered both by the fact that they come from a small country of middle level of development and by the recognition that the year of observation 1983 was at the start of greece s industrial adjustment to entry in the eec both these concerns constitute areas of future research

entry and exit on the competitive fringe microeconomic theories of industry evolution reserve key roles for the entry and exit of firms competitive models of industry supply often assume that individual firms have ushaped long run average cost curves in consequence an industry s output adjustment in movement from one long run equilibrium to another is entirely accomplished through the entry and exit of firms rather than through changes in long run equilibrium output of individual firms in empirical applications the speed of movement to new equilibrium levels of output and price measured by the time it takes for profits to return to competitive levels following a demand shock clearly depends upon the ease of entry and exit however the simplest competitive models have a clear theoretical weakness abundant evidence against u shaped long run average cost curves precludes a simple identification of entry with industry expansion and exit with industry contraction expansion of industry supply can be met either by incumbents or entrants and we have little empirical evidence of the division entry conditions are also a staple of oligopoly and monopoly models potential entry constrains the pricing options open to industry leaders and actual entry of new firms and new products erodes at varying rates the market power of incumbent firms if actual entry responds rapidly to profit opportunities then the persistent exercise of monopoly power will be rare however analyses of monopoly and oligopoly models typically approach entry indirectly by inferring that persistent profit differentials reflect high barriers to entry there are few direct tests of the effects of such barriers on actual entry despite their importance very few empirical studies of entry and exit exist severe data limitations restrict both the number of studies and the scope of extant analyses the research reported in this paper provides measures of entry and exit in 46 food manufacturing industries during the 1976 82 period measures of incidence the number of firms as well as extent the size of firms are provided the analysis also distinguishes between diversified firms and specialist producers entry and exit rates vary considerably across industries and the paper reports the results of statistical analyses that account for industry differences in entry and exit rates by specialist firms

the decision to go public an overview abstract firms motives for going public are reviewed and significant cross country differences in the propensity to seek a listing are documented and discussed

small and medium sized enterprises technology and globalization introduction to a special issue on small and medium sized enterprises in the global economy this paper is an introduction to the special issue on small and medium sized enterprises in the global economy the paper gives a broad outline of globalization the role of technology and examines the role that small and medium sized enterprises play in the global economy we focus on foreign direct investment of small technology based firms and how their innovations diffuse into the global economy

credit and efficiency in centralized and decentralized economies we study a credit model where because of adverse selection unprofitable projects may nevertheless be financed indeed they may continue to be financed even when shown to be low quality if sunk costs have already been incurred we show that credit decentralization offers a way for creditors to commit not to refinance such projects thereby discouraging entrepreneurs from undertaking them initially thus decentralization provides financial discipline nevertheless we argue that it puts too high a premium on short term returns the model seems pertinent to two issues soft budget constraint problems in centralized economies and differences between anglo saxon and german japanese financing practices

small business in german manufacturing in recent years one observes a renaissance of small business research efforts the stimuli came from different directions one strand of more policy oriented research concentrated on the impact of small businesses on the creation of new employment opportunities 1 another host of studies paid attention to the relationship of innovation productivity of small versus large business 2 and industrial economics research examined the role of small businesses as actual and potential challengers of larger competitors in a given market 3 whatever motive guided this research it was emphasized that the cumulated knowledge about large business behavior is by far greater than about their small business counterparts

long term decline of small and medium size enterprise share there exist few studies of long term small and medium size enterprise sme share in developing countries this paper presents and examines evidence that sme share in venezuelan manufacturing has experienced serious decline from 1961 to present times evidence is given of this decline in terms of key performance measures numbers of firms employment numbers and manufacturing value added an absolute decline of this stratum has also occurred from 1979 onwards economic modelling suggests that efficiency and innovation variables are significantly correlated with this decline while a structural variable explains movement around this trend this broadly concurs with studies in other select economies where these groups of variables have also been found to be significant however unlike venezuela these variables often explain a recent revival in these economies sme share in particular we find evidence that the decline in venezuelan smes relative efficiency and innovation performance along with the prejudicial business environment cause this decline in sme share

single factor heath jarrow morton term structure models based on markov spot interest rate dynamics this paper considers the class of heath jarrow morton term structure models where the spot interest rate is markov and the term structure at time t is a function of time maturity and the spot interest rate at time t a representation for this class of models is derived and i show that the functional forms of the forward rate volatility structure and the initial forward rate curve cannot be arbitrarily chosen i provide necessary and sufficient conditions indicating which combinations of these functional forms are allowable i also derive a partial differential equation representation of the term structure dynamics that does not require explicit modeling of both the market price of risk and the drift term for the spot interest rate process using the analysis presented in this paper a class of intertemporal term structure models is derived

multiple banking relationships and the fragility of corporate borrowers abstract the widespread italian practice of multiple borrowing has been studied with respect to the continuity of bank lending and to the interest rates charged to individual borrowers however there is a lack of empirical evidence on the effects of multiple credit relationships over the fragility of the corporate borrowers two theses are competing one asserts that multiple borrowing results in a desirable sharing of risks the other that the parcellization of loans substantially weakens the discipline exercised by the banks and makes corporate borrowers more fragile through multivariate techniques we check whether the indicators describing the structure of lending relationships can help along with balance sheet variables to separate healthy from failed firms this exercise shows that multiple banking relationships are associated with a higher riskiness of the borrowers even though the impact is moderate in comparison with the importance of real and financial variables derived from balance sheets

why don t lenders renegotiate more home mortgages redefaults self cures and securitization we document the fact that servicers have been reluctant to renegotiate mortgages since the foreclosure crisis started in 2007 having performed payment reducing modifications on only about 3 percent of seriously delinquent loans we show that this reluctance does not result from securitization servicers renegotiate similarly small fractions of loans that they hold in their portfolios our results are robust to different definitions of renegotiation including the one most likely to be affected by securitization and to different definitions of delinquency our results are strongest in subsamples in which unobserved heterogeneity between portfolio and securitized loans is likely to be small and for subprime loans we use a theoretical model to show that redefault risk the possibility that a borrower will still default despite costly renegotiation and self cure risk the possibility that a seriously delinquent borrower will become current without renegotiation make renegotiation unattractive to investors

concentration and profitability in a dichotomous economy the case of taiwan this paper is an attempt to apply a two regime and a recursive structure performance analysis to one of the newly industrializing countries taiwan a two regime approach is employed because taiwan s market structure is hypothesized as being dichotomous the export oriented sector being distinct with the domestic oriented sector a recursive system is used because industry concentration is not only a determinant of profitability but is itself determined by other variables

the relationship between u k banks and their small business customers much emphasis is placed upon the benefits to both parties of a good relationship between banks and their small business customers having explained the significance of smes in the u k economy the papers goes on to consider briefly some of the arguments which underpin the rationale for these relationships the roles of information and communication are discussed and the poor co ordination between banks smes and their accountants is highlighted evidence from over 6 000 small businesses in response to the forum of private business survey in 1994 is then presented this demonstrates the strong positive association between more participative relationships and more positive perceptions of their banks by firms finally it is suggested that a virtuous circle of information and communication could be established if the parties cooperate in a systematic process of risk assessment

pricing mortgage default and foreclosure delay this paper extends current mortgage pricing models to recognize the impact that delays between default and foreclosure have on the value of default to the borrower and the resulting value of the mortgage to investors the model explicitly captures potential costs through postforeclosure deficiency judgments and benefits in the elimination of negative equity and free rent that must be weighed at the time of default in determining whether the ultimate put option via allowing foreclosure is in the money the results provide policy implications concerning the operation of the fha insurance program copyright 1997 by ohio state university press

risk based pricing and the enhancement of mortgage credit availability among underserved and higher credit risk populations this paper estimates an option based hazard model of the competing risks of fha mortgage termination results indicate that the elevated default risks of loans originated among lower credit quality and minority borrowers are more than offset by the damped prepayment speeds of those loans so as to result in markedly lower loan termination probabilities among underserved borrower groups those damped termination risks translate into sizable reductions in risk premia to investors in simulated lower creditquality mortgage pools empirical findings suggest that such pooling and risk based pricing of fha insured mortgages could serve to substantially reduce housing finance costs among underserved borrowers so as to advance both their homeownership opportunities and related federal housing policy objectives

the post entry performance of new small firms in german manufacturing industries while recent years have witnessed a growing interest in research on market entry by new firms evidence regarding their postentry performance is scarce this paper uses longitudinal data for small firms that entered german manufacturing industries between 1979 and 1982 and monitors their performance until 1990 entrants face a high risk of failure hazard rates tend to increase during the first years and to decrease afterwards decline of employment in a cohort due to exits and shrinking firms is compensated by growing survivors no clear cut nexus between start up size and probability of survival shows up copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

does bank affiliation mitigate liquidity constraints evidence from germany s universal banks in the pre world war i period this paper compares two similar samples of mining and steel corporations in pre world war i germany one sample consists of corporations that were affiliated to one or more of the german universal banks and the second sample consists of companies that had to rely on other sources of finance statistical analysis conducted in the framework of a linear fixed effects model indicates that the non affiliated companies were liquidity constrained the paper also sets out the corporate control structure as laid down in the trade law reform of 1884 and traces the origins of the current german dual board system as well as the origins of several other aspects of the institutions that tied the german banking system to industrial concerns

does firm size matter evidence on the impact of liquidity constraints on firm investment behavior in germany abstract this paper examines the link between liquidity constraints and investment behavior for german firms of different sizes from 1970 to 1986 results indicate that medium sized firms appear to be more liquidity constrained in their investment behavior than either the smallest or largest firms in the study suggesting that the unique german infrastructure designed to assist the small firm has indeed succeeded in alleviating to some degree such liquidity constraints findings also support the hypothesis that the emerging competition and internationalism which characterized the german financial markets in the 1980s have been improving access to capital for some groups of firms

corporate structure liquidity and investment evidence from japanese industrial groups this paper presents evidence suggesting that information and incentive problems in the capital market affect investment we come to this conclusion by examining two sets of japanese firms the first set has close financial ties to large japanese banks that serve as their primary source of external finance and are likely to be well informed about the firm the second set of firms has weaker links to a main bank and presumably faces greater problems raising capital investment is more sensitive to liquidity for the second set of firms than for the first set the analysis also highlights the role of financial intermediaries in the investment process

on the costs of a bank centered financial system evidence from the changing main bank relations in japan we examine the effects of bank firm relationships on firm performance in japan when access to capital markets is limited close bank firm ties increase the availability of capital to borrowing firms but do not lead to higher profitability or growth the cost of capital of firms with close bank ties is higher than that of their peers this indicates that most of the benefits from these relationships are appropriated by the banks finally the slow growth rates of bank clients suggest that banks discourage firms from investing in risky profitable projects however liberalization of financial markets reduces the banks market power the close relationship between manufacturing firms and financial institutions in japan has recently been at the center of the debate on the appropriate financial system for the reforming economies of eastern europe as opposed to the anglo saxon separation of finance and industry long term ties between main banks and their client firms involving bank loans bank equity holding and some bank appointed personnel which are common in japan and germany have often been described as a growth oriented financial system that could serve the needs of developing and reformed economiies better than anonymous capital markets modeled after the arnerican and british financial systems the claim that close ties between investmentoriented banks and industrial firms could help overcome the difficulties of relative backwardness dates back to gerschenkron 1962 who investigates european development rosovsky 1961 applies gerschenkron s framework to the analysis of japanese growth more recently aoki patrick and sheard 1994 hoshi kashyap and loveman 1994 and teranishi 1993 among others portray the close ties between finance and industry in japan as an important factor in the international competitiveness of modern japanese

moment based estimation of stochastic volatility abstract this paper makes use of the distributional information contained in high frequency data to test for the specification of the functional form of the volatility process within the class of stochastic volatility models it s calculus is implemented in order to obtain the first and second conditional moment of the driving stochastic differential equation for the volatility process these analytical expressions are augmented by their lag and lag squared and are used to form the corresponding gmm estimator the base case stochastic volatility model is extended to allow for the leverage effect and jumps in returns empirical estimation confirms the presence of fast mean reversion in volatility and jumps in returns for the 5 min s p 500 stock market index further estimation results also seem to indicate the presence of jumps in the volatility process that are correlated to the jumps in returns

the benefits of lending relationships evidence from small business data this paper empirically examines how ties between a firm and its creditors affect the availability and cost of funds to the firm we analyze data collected in a survey of small firms by the small business administration the primary benefit of building close ties with an institutional creditor is that the availability of financing increases we find smaller effects on the price of credit attempts to widen the circle of relationships by borrowing from multiple lenders increases the price and reduces the availability of credit in sum relationships are valuable and appear to operate more through quantities rather than prices

financial development and economic growth views and agenda this critique argues that the preponderance of theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence suggests a positive first order relationship between financial development and economic growth the body of work would push even most skeptics toward the belief that the development of financial markets and institutions is a critical and inextricable part of the growth process and away from the view that the financial system is an inconsequential sideshow responding passively to economic growth many gaps remain however and the paper highlights areas in acute need of additional research

stock market and investment the signaling role of the market the author examines the role of the stock market as a signal to managers in undertaking capital expenditures he concludes that while both managerial and market perceptions are integral managerial perception is of greater importance the evidence suggeststhat as a statistic the q ratio is not sufficient to explain firms capital expenditure decisions thus the standard q model of investment should be modified to provide a more meaningful description of a firm s capital spending decisions overall the results suggest that stock market activity has only limited implications for the economy s resource allocation process evidence for the q theory of investment confirms previous findings in the literature that the model s poor empirical perfomance was partly the result of using aggregate data for the whole economy also since market perception plays only a limited role in determining capital expenditures shareholder myopia is unlikely to result in managerial myopia the implications for developing countries are while the stock market may not be central to a firm s capital spending decisions it is not a sideshow either the market plays an important signaling role for managers this is a powerful rationale for financial reform and capital development in developing countries the results also suggest that complaints that stock market activity leads to misallocation of resources may be exaggerated

the determinants of smes market share in 1991 taiwan manufacturers small and medium sized enterprises smes have become increasingly popular in recent decades having caused concern among scholars of various areas our line of research focuses on the determinants of smes market share this study explores the topic base on taiwan s manufacturers data collected in 1991 our empirical results indicate that taiwan has witnessed smes becoming prosperous in manufacturing industries with higher relative labor productivity low entry barriers prosperous subcontracting activities and young ages our results indicate that in the transitory process of industrial development taiwan s smes no longer can afford high wage payments when at the same time the quality of labor does not increase accordingly as taiwan approaches the status of a developed economy the beneficiaries of export activities have changed unlike 1986 in 1991 there was a smaller share of smes in taiwan s export oriented industries furthermore smes benefited from their efforts to increase their automation status the emphasis on issues concerning environmental protection proved to be another source of entry barrier that kept smes from prospering certain similarities arise when comparing our conclusions with those of the u s canada germany and japan all of whom represent industrialized countries we can conclude that as taiwan matures in her industrial development process smes also struggle to a certain maturity in theirs

comparative dynamics of an equilibrium intertemporal asset pricing model this paper uses recursive competitive theory to develop a general equilibrium asset pricing model in this framework all prices and rates of return are endogenously determined thus enabling us to analyze the effects of changes in preferences technological uncertainty and expectations on the structure of security prices in particular we focus on how the market risk premium varies with changes in the underlying economic environment an issue which other asset pricing models have chosen not to address

dutch inventory investment are capital market imperfections relevant this paper analyses inventory investment using a balanced panel of 82 dutch firms we start from the lovell 1961 inventory model and amend it with cash flow to introduce capital market imperfections the empirical evidence provides support for the relevance of capital market imperfections in explaining dutch inventory investment the results suggest that cash flow is a relevant variable omitted from the original lovell model the study provides a better understanding of inventory behaviour in general

hedging derivative securities and incomplete markets an e arbitrage approach given a european derivative security with an arbitrary payoff function and a corresponding set of underlying securities on which the derivative security is based we solve the optimal replication problem find a self financing dynamic portfolio strategy involving only the underlying securities that most closely approximates the payoff function at maturity by applying stochastic dynamic programming to the minimization of a mean squared error loss function under markov state dynamics we derive recursive expressions for the optimal replication strategy that are readily implemented in practice the approximation error or e of the optimal replication strategy is also given recursively and may be used to quantify the degree of market incompleteness to investigate the practical significance of these e arbitrage strategies we consider several numerical examples including path dependent options and options on assets with stochastic volatility and jumps