food price transmission and economic development in this paper we challenge the conventional wisdom that the world s poorest countries are also the most vulnerable to spikes in international food prices we derive an inverted u shaped relationshi

do vietnamese upland farmers benefit from high world market prices for maize for rural households in the north of vietnam maize cropping is the main source of income in the face of the world market price increases of the recent past we analyze the regional marketing chain of this commodity qualitatively and econometrically investigating to what extent smallholder farmers in developing countries are affected by international price movements vietnamese maize markets are found to be well integrated recent price hikes have fully transmitted along the regional supply chain so that farmers profited nevertheless adverse factors such as increasing input prices have neutralized these benefits resulting in a decline in real income of smallholders

on the transmission of world agricultural prices two questions are asked about the relationship between domestic prices and world prices of agricultural commodities are variations in world prices transmitted to domestic prices domestic prices are regressed on world prices in various forms taking into account the possible effects of exchange rates and inflation the empirical analysis is based on data from the food and agriculture organization of the united nations for 58 countries from 1968 78 and for the countries of the european community from 1961 85 the results show that most of the variations in world prices are transmitted and that they constitute the dominant component in the variations of domestic prices

a survey of agricultural household models recent findings and policy implications semicommercial farms that produce multiple crops make up a large part of the agricultural sector in developing economies these farms or agricultural households combine two fundamental units of microeconomic analysis the household and the firm traditional economic theory has dealt with these units seperately but in developing economies in which peasant farms dominate their interdependence is of crucial importance researchers have developed models of agricultural households that combine producer and consumer behavior in a theoretically consistent fashion recent empirical applications of these models have extended them and expanded the range of policy issues which can be investigated using this general framework this article reports the results of empirical applications of this model in india indonesia japan the republic of korea malaysia nigeria senegal sierra leone taiwan and thailand it provides a comparative analysis of the policy implications of the approach for such matters as the welfare of farm households the size of marketed surplus the demand for nonagricultural goods and services and for hired labor and the availability of budget revenues and foreign exchange

distributional effects of wto agricultural reforms in rich and poor countries rich countries agricultural trade policies are the battleground on which the future of the wto s troubled doha round will be determined subject to widespread criticism they nonetheless appear to be almost immune to serious reform and one of their most common defenses is that they protect poor farmers the authors findings reject this claim the analysis uses detailed data on farm incomes to show that major commodity programs are highly regressive in the united states and that the only serious losses under trade reform are among large wealthy farmers in a few heavily protected subsectors in contrast analysis using household data from 15 developing countries indicates that reforming rich countries agricultural trade policies would lift large numbers of developing country farm households out of poverty in the majority of cases these gains are not outweighed by the poverty increasing effects of higher food prices among other households agricultural reforms that appear feasible even under an ambitious doha round achieve only a fraction of the benefits for developing countries that full liberalization promises but protect u s large farms from most of the rigors of adjustment finally the analysis indicates that maximal trade led poverty reductions occur when developing countries participate more fully in agricultural trade liberalization

hedging and liquidity this article develops a model for evaluating alternative hedging strategies for financially constrained firms a key advantage of the model is the ability to capture the intertemporal effects of hedging on the firm s financial situation we characterize the optimal hedge a wide range of alternative hedging strategies can be specified and the model allows us to determine in each case if the hedging strategy raises or lowers firm value and by how much we show that hedging firm value hedging cash flow from operations and hedging sales revenue are not optimal the article highlights the fact that every hedging strategy comes packaged with a borrowing strategy which requires careful consideration futures markets often provide the most liquid and convenient instruments for managing risk however because futures contracts are marked to market it is often impossible to simultaneously hedge cash flows and values for example a futures contract that locked in the value of gold that a corporation planned to extract in one year would generate an uncertain cash flow pattern over the year this article examines how liquidity and cash flow timing problems associated with different hedging strategies can affect a firm s value in our model the objective for hedging is to increase the firm s financial flexibility an optimal hedge maximizes the firm s liquidityslack in the form of excess cash or unused debt capacitywhen liquidity is most valuable this lowers the danger of costly financial distress reduces the effective cost of external financial constraints and makes value maximizing investments affordable a firm with no financial constraints does not gain from hedging and the higher the firm s financial constraints the greater the potential value of hedging the value of hedging depends critically on the design of the hedging strategy we show that the optimal hedge minimizes the variability in the marginal value of the firm s cash balances such a hedge efficiently redistributes cash balances across different states and periods taking cash from those states for which the marginal cost of the financial constraint is low and giving cash to those states for which the marginal

the future of branch cash holdings management is here new markov chains abstract liquidity management is one of the main concerns of the banking sector since it provides control in key areas such as treasury management working capital financing and business valuation under the assumption that branch efficiency makes a fundamental contribution towards the effective performance of the global banking institution this paper provides a new methodology markov chains by blocks in order to achieve knowledge on the branch cash holdings conditions which ensure optimal cash holdings recurring properties which help to better predict cash holdings shifts and the study of the branch cash holdings steady states using ergodic theory these findings will let bank managers know the time validity of the current cash holdings this is a crucial advantage to ensure efficient cash management while helping keep banking institutions on sound financial footing by guaranteeing the compulsory by law safety cushion it also allows bank managers to make sound decisions upon fund investments this incipient mathematical framework based on the re definition of classical theory on markov chains provides an alternative standpoint which may also apply to those dynamical systems which can be categorized into groups of similar features

agricultural household models extensions applications and policy this book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far the model assumes that households are price takers and is therefore recursive the decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies the empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive the book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households marketed surplus the demand for nonagricultural goods and services the rural labor market budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings in addition it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition nutritional status health saving and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings methodological topics primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions along with aggregation market interaction uncertainty and market imperfections are discussed the most important methodological issues the question of the recursive property of these models is also discussed

openness and wage inequality in developing countries the latin american challenge to east asian conventional wisdom the experience of east asia in the 1960s and 1970s supports the theory that greater openness to trade tends to narrow the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers in developing countries in latin america since the mid 1980s however increased openness has widened wage differentials this conflict of evidence is probably not the result of differences between east asia and latin america instead the conflict is probably the result of differences between the 1960s and the 1980s specifically the entry of china into the world market and perhaps the advent of new technology biased against unskilled workers

structural and market predictors of corporate labor relations strategies the authors develop a model predicting which of three broad labor relations strategies union avoidance union management collaboration or a mixed strategy combining elements of union avoidance and

the global food crisis and guatemala what crisis and for whom summary international food prices rose sharply during 2006 08 precipitating the global food crisis we analyze the welfare effects of changes in prices over categories of households in guatemala and find three surprising results the first is that the transmission of international into domestic prices was quite modest the second is that most farm households are net buyers of food implying that they lost from rising prices the third is that farm households represent two thirds of all poor households losing from rising food prices stressing the importance of production for home consumption in sheltering the poor from the crisis

an empirical investigation of u s firms in reorganization the purpose of this paper is to understand the institutional features of chapter 11 from an empirical examination of thirty firms that have emerged from reorganization we find the recontracting framework of chapter 11 to be complex lengthy and costly violations of absolute priority in favor of stockholders are frequently encountered these deviations may result from the bargaining process of chapter 11 or from a recontracting process between creditors and stockholders which recognizes the ability of stockholder oriented management to preserve firm value an example of such recontracting addresses myers underinvestment problem an investigation of the effects of chapter 11 on the pricing of risky debt is also provided the purpose of this paper is to understand the institutional features of chapter

trade liberalisation and poverty what are the links this paper asks whether a developing country s own trade liberalisation could translate into increased poverty and what information would be required to identify whether it will do so it plots the channels through which such effects might operate identifying the static effects via four broad groups of institutions households distribution channels factor markets and government and the dynamic issues of volatility long term economic growth and short term adjustment stresses an increase in the price of something a household sells labour good service increases its welfare thus the paper first explores the likely effects of trade liberalisation on the prices of goods and services taking into account the distribution sector also critical is whether trade reform creates or destroys markets trade reform is also likely to affects factor prices of which the wages of the unskilled is the most important for poverty purposes if reform boosts the demand for labour intensive products it boosts the demand for labour and wages and or employment will increase however not all developing countries are relatively abundant in unskilled labour and trade can boost demand for semi skilled rather than unskilled labour hence poverty alleviation is not guaranteed trade reform can affect tariff revenue but much less frequently and adversely than is popularly imagined even if it does it is a political decision not a law of nature that the poor should suffer the resulting new taxes or cuts in government expenditure opening up the economy can reduce risk and variability because world markets are usually more stable than domestic ones but sometimes it will increase them because stabilisation schemes are undermined or because residents switch to riskier activities the non poor can generally tide themselves over adjustment shocks from a liberalisation so public policy should focus on whether the initially poor and near temporary setbacks the key to sustained poverty alleviation is economic growth there is little reason to fear that growth will not boost the incomes of the poor similarly while the argument that openness stimulates long run growth has still not been completely proven there is every presumption that it will

modelling labour market adjustment to trade liberalisation in an industrialising economy this paper investigates labour market responses to trade liberalisation in an industrialising country short and long run responses of employment and wages are examined using a specific factor trade model which underpins the empirical work employment and wage equations are estimated using dynamic panel techniques for importable and exportable sectors in mauritius and for a period covering both the pre and post liberalisation regimes the empirical testing finds some support for the theoretical predictions of differential responses between sectors increases in female participation however appear to have dampened the adjustment burdens of liberalisation on importables there is relatively little evidence available about the effects of trade induced shifts in the composition of demand on inter industry employment and wage levels in developing countries analyses of the factor content of imports and exports suggest that a shift from import substitution is to export promotion ep policies will typically in the case of a developing country expand the more labour intensive industries increase labour demand overall and drive up real wages in the long run but trade liberalisation and increased foreign competition may not only affect the composition of the tradeables goods sector i e the distribution between importables and exportables they may also affect both the efficiency with which all firms use factors including labour and the distribution of output within a sector between more and less efficient firms thus the net long run effects of trade liberalisation on employment will depend upon the balance of structural and efficiency effects which cannot be identified from analyses of the composition of trade alone further we must also recognise that the short and long run effects of trade liberalisation on employment and wages may diverge the divergence depending on the degree of factor mobility and the competitiveness of labour markets the aim of this paper is to model labour market adjustment to trade liberalisation in an industrialisingz country it will do so using panel data evidence for mauritius an economy that has undergone significant trade liberalisation and transformation during the 1980s indeed mauritius is viewed simultaneously as a successful liberaliser and an economy with extensive government intervention in the labour market it provides a valuable test base

capital budgeting for interrelated projects a real options approach this paper explores the effect of project interrelationships on investment decisions and project values in a real options framework we examine in detail the mutually exclusive case where a firm may invest in the development stage of two projects and then may select only a single project to implement the firm can develop the projects in parallel or in sequence the choice of development policy depends on the relative values of the embedded options for each strategy sequential development is shown to be superior to parallel development when projects have highly correlated values and when they require a large commitment of capital for development are short term in nature and have relatively low volatility we also show that the optimal ordering of sequential projects does not always begin with the most profitable project

how do export controls affect price transmission and volatility spillovers in the ukrainian wheat and flour markets abstract this study investigates the impact of export controls implemented on ukrainian wheat during two periods of significant commodity price spikes and volatility first we investigate the equilibrium price relationship between wheat and flour prices to identify whether export restrictions dampened the price transmission from the wheat market to the flour market second we estimate an asymmetric vec bekk garch model to characterize the nature of short run price adjustments and volatility spillovers between the ukrainian wheat and flour markets the results indicate that export controls insulated the flour market from price shocks in the wheat market by reducing the transmission elasticity by 25 we also find evidence that suggests export controls lead to increased volatility in the flour market in the periods immediately before and after the export controls however we find no evidence that the export controls increase the time invariant i e the constant part of volatility of wheat or flour prices lastly we do not observe asymmetric spillover effects in the flour market but we do find that the wheat market is more volatile when experiencing positive shocks than negative ones

the political economy of food price volatility the case of vietnam and rice this article argues that the structure of the vietnamese rice export system is in political economy terms a rational response to the volatility present in the international rice market in particular it is argued that the vietnamese food agency along with vinafood 1 and vinafood 2 have been structured so that they can benefit from the domestic demands for export restrictions anticipated to occur as a consequence of international price volatility and the psychological demand of consumers for price stability in turn the actions of these agencies also contribute to international price volatility and the resulting demand for export restrictions since the political and economic elite in vietnam obtain both political and economic power from this system it is unlikely to be replaced with more effective and efficient policies to combat domestic price volatility thus continued volatility in the price of rice can be expected

the failure to negotiate first contracts determinants and policy implications this study examines why unions after winning certification rights fail to secure agreements in roughly one of every four first contract negotiations hypotheses are derived from chamberlain s theory that the relative power of the negotiating parties is a function of the costs of agreeing and disagreeing costs that are shaped by economic legal and organizational factors the author analyzes data through 1982 on 118 cases in which unions had won nlrb elections in indiana in the years 1979 and 1980 he finds that an employer s discrimination against union activists and his refusal to bargain measured by section 8 a 3 and 8 a 5 charges deemed meritorious by the regional office of the nlrb have substantial negative effects on the probability that a first contract will be reached similarly negative efffects result from lengthy delay in the nlrb s resolution of employer objections and challenges to lost elections on the other hand unions are also more likely to obtain first contracts when firms pa

reducing the size of the public sector workforce institutional constraints and human consequences in guinea public sector employment reduction programmes have become an important component of economic reform efforts in sub saharan africa this article examines the fiscal institutional and human consequences of an employment reduction programme in the west african state of guinea while fiscal benefits appear to have been marginal and compensation schemes well targeted the human costs of the programme were significant due to long spells of unemployment among retrenched workers

accounting for the decline in union membership 1950 1980 this study analyzes the components of the post 1950 trends in the share of the private work force organized by unions which rose from 1950 to 1954 and then fell steadily to 1980 the authors decompose the sources of growth and decline into changes in organizing activity success in certification elections losses from decertification elections and net growth due to economic causes the last a residual measure designed to capture the effect of factors such as plant closings layoffs and new hires they find that all factors except decertifications accounted for a substantial part of the decline since 1954 when the level of aggregate economic activity is held constant loss of membership due to other economic causes shows no downward trend a finding that challenges the view that the decline in the unionized share of the work force has been due primarily to a secular decline in employment in the strongly unionized industries

determinants of the incidence of group incentives evidence from canada we use canadian data on four group incentive schemes to examine the deter minants of the probability that a firm offers each scheme to its non managerial workers and to production workers alone we find that unionization lowers the incidence of group incentives except for productivity gainsharing larger firms are more likely to offer share purchase plans to all non managerial employees and profit sharing to production workers cash bonuses are less common in larger firms we find little indication that group incentives are either discouraged by machine paced production or more common in firms with good industrial relations

the pecking order debt capacity and information asymmetry abstract we quantify the empirical relevance of the pecking order hypothesis using a novel empirical model and testing strategy that addresses statistical power concerns with previous tests while the classificatory ability of the pecking order varies significantly depending on whether one interprets the hypothesis in a strict or liberal e g modified pecking order manner the pecking order is never able to accurately classify more than half of the observed financing decisions however when we expand the model to incorporate factors typically attributed to alternative theories the predictive accuracy of the model increases dramatically accurately classifying over 80 of the observed debt and equity issuances finally we show that what little pecking order behavior can be found in the data is driven more by incentive conflicts as opposed to information asymmetry

spice price spikes simulating impacts of saffron price volatility in a gendered local economy wide model summary access to international markets provides smallholders with unprecedented opportunities but also exposes them to world market whims we use a local economy wide impact evaluation lewie model to analyze how the recent global saffron price variability affected morocco s taliouine taznakht region a specialized agro export economy with a stark gender division of labor prices of saffron increased by 71 per year over the 2007 09 period before falling quickly back to their trend our modeling approach allows us to simulate such shocks and evaluate impacts not only on producers but also on the local economies around them in our simulations positive price shocks and increases in productivity both cause large reallocations of labor resources particularly for female workers at harvest time we use monte carlo simulations to evaluate how saffron price variance affects the economy female wage income is especially sensitive to global price variability a 100 increase in saffron price variance leads to 133 increase in female wage income variance but only 36 for males accounting for general equilibrium effects is critical for understanding the ramifications of exposure to export price volatility in poor economies

the link between increased trade openness and the terms of trade an empirical investigation abstract despite the fairly widespread move towards more open trade policies in developing countries relatively little attention has been paid to the effect of these policies on the terms of trade using a large sample of countries this paper tries to assess empirically the validity of the small country assumption which underlies the washington consensus on development strategies our evidence suggests that there is a sizable group of countries ldcs and non ldcs for which the assumption of exogenous traded goods prices can be rejected one implication is that terms of trade considerations should be included in the assessment of trade liberalization policies these effects might rise considerably when several countries liberalize simultaneously

optimal security design and dynamic capital structure in a continuous time agency model we derive the optimal dynamic contract in a continuous time principal agent setting and implement it with a capital structure credit line long term debt and equity over which the agent controls the payout policy while the project s volatility and liquidation cost have little impact on the firm s total debt capacity they increase the use of credit versus debt leverage is nonstationary and declines with past profitability the firm may hold a compensating cash balance while borrowing at a higher rate through the credit line surprisingly the usual conflicts between debt and equity asset substitution strategic default need not arise in this paper we consider a dynamic contracting environment in which a riskneutral agent or entrepreneur with limited resources manages an investment activity while the investment is profitable it is also risky and in the short run it can generate arbitrarily large operating losses the agent will need outside financial support to cover such losses and continue the project the difficulty is that while the probability distribution of the cash flows is publicly known the agent may distort these cash flows by taking a hidden action that leads to a private benefit specifically the agent may i conceal and divert cash flows for his own consumption and or ii stop providing costly effort which would reduce the mean of the cash flows therefore from the perspective of the principal or investors that fund the project there is the concern that a low cash flow realization may be a result of the agent s actions rather than the project s fundamentals to provide the agent with appropriate incentives investors control the agent s wage and may also withdraw their financial support for the project and force its early termination we seek to characterize an optimal contract in this framework and relate it to the firm s choice of capital structure we develop a method to solve for the optimal contract given the incentive constraints in a continuous time setting and study the properties of the credit line debt and equity that implement the contract as in the discrete time model of demarzo and fishman 2003 the continuous time setting offers several peter m demarzo is from stanford university and yuliy sannikov is from u c berkeley we

agricultural trade liberalization and poverty dynamics in three developing countries many developing countries implemented sweeping agricultural reforms over the last decade reforms have included the removal of quotas and price controls changes in international trade barriers and the commercialization and privatization of state marketing boards for key crops these reforms have often generated intense criticism from groups claiming that they hurt poor farmers and poor households this concern has generated an extensive literature on the economics of agricultural trade reform in developing countries much of which has focused on explaining the large variations in supply response across countries regions and households e g key sadoulet and de janvry in addition anumber of papers have attempted to simulate the impact on poverty using household survey data and actual or predicted price changes e g chen and ravallion however in many cases the true impact of agricultural reform is difficult to determine in part this is because the analysis is based upon household surveys at a single point in time so that the final post adjustment consequences upon individual households are unknown also even where observations are available over time it has so far proved difficult to disentangle the effects of trade and agricultural liberalization from other contemporary shocks this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

toward a stakeholder theory of the firm the saturn partnership this paper seeks to engage the organization theory community in contemporary debates over the role of the corporation in american society by using the case of the saturn corporation to develop and illustrate a stakeholder theory of the firm one normative and three positive questions are posed for a stakeholder theory the normative question is why should stakeholder models be given serious consideration at this moment in history the positive questions are 1 under what conditions is a stakeholder firm likely to emerge in the united states 2 what are the critical determinants of performance in a stakeholder firm and 3 what will determine the sustainability and diffusion of this organizational form in the american environment the history design features and dynamics of the labormanagement partnership at saturn are used to illustrate and interpret a specific case of employees as stakeholders saturn s original mission governance structure and internal processes fit the characteristics of a stakeholder firm employees establish themselves as influential definitive stakeholders by using their knowledge to improve organizational performance the local union likewise contributes to firm performance by organizing workers into a dense social network that contributes to problem solving conflict resolution and quality improvement however the legal and political environment in which the firm operates produces considerable uncertainty over the sustainability and diffusion of saturn s features in particular and the stakeholder organizational form in general additional hypotheses and research questions are proposed to continue theory building around the more general model of the stakeholder firm researchers are encouraged to take up the analysis of stakeholder models and thereby contribute to the contemporary and future debates over the role of the corporation in american society

global market shocks and poverty in vietnam the case of rice world food prices have experienced dramatic increases in recent years these shocks affect food importers and exporters alike vietnam is a major exporter of rice and rice is also a key item in domestic production employment and consumption accordingly rice price shocks from the world market have general equilibrium impacts and as such their implications for household welfare are not known ex ante in this paper we first present a simple framework for understanding the direct and indirect welfare effects of a global market shock of this kind second we quantify the transmission of the price shock from global indicator prices to domestic markets third we then we use an applied general equilibrium age model to simulate the effects of domestic price changes in more detail fourth a recursive mapping to a large nationally representative living standards survey permits us to identify in detail the ceteris paribus effects of the shock on household incomes and welfare in this analysis interregional and intersectoral adjustments in the labor market emerge as key channels transmitting the effects of global price shocks across sectors and among households

estimation of the depreciation rate of physical and r d capital in the u s total manufacturing sector i introduction numerous studies on production and cost the sources of productivity and endogenous growth have recognized the pivotal role of the physical capital stock studies at various levels of aggregation over assets and industries have emphasized the crucial role of investment in plant and equipment in the growth of demand and productive capacity it is clearly recognized by economists and policymakers that knowledge capital approximated by rd 1986 to measure the depreciation rates of the stock of rd 1980 in the literature on dynamic demand models such an approach was first adopted by epstein and denny 1980 and more recently by kollintzas and choi 1985 for a single capital good and on a theoretical level in bernstein and nadiri 1987a 1987b the paper is organized as follows the specification of the model is presented in section ii section iii is devoted to a discussion of the data and to the presentation of the parameter estimates of the model in section iv we present the empirical results for the depreciation rates for physical and r d capital and compare them with those reported in the literature we compare the physical capital stock estimates generated by our model with the official capital stock estimates produced by u s department of commerce bureau of economic analysis in this section we also present our estimates of the decomposition of gross investment into replacement and expansion investment for both physical and r d capital these decompositions are important from the vantage point of public policy analysis

the distributional impacts of indonesia s financial crisis on household welfare a rapid response methodology analyzing the distributional impacts of economic crises is an ever more pressing need if policymakers are to intervene to help those most adversely affected they need to identify those who have been hurt most and estimate the magnitude of the harm they have suffered they must also respond in a timely manner this article develops a simple methodology for measuring these effects and applies it to analyze the impact of the indonesian economic crisis on household welfare using only pre crisis household information it estimates the compensating variation for indonesian households following the 1997 asian currency crisis and then explores the results with flexible nonparametric methods it finds that virtually every household was severely affected although the urban poor fared the worst the ability of poor rural households to produce food mitigated the worst consequences of the high inflation the distributional consequences are the same whether or not households are permitted to substitute toward relatively cheaper goods households with young children may have suffered disproportionately large adverse effects

peasant household behaviour with missing markets some paradoxes explained a model of peasant household behavior under varying degrees of household specific food and labor market failures is constructed to show that these structural features can explain several well known patterns of peasant response which have often been attributed to peculiar motives presumed specific to peasants the model explains sluggish response to cash crops prices and high instability in perceived food and labor scarcities the key role of manufactured consumer goods prices in stimulating peasants effort in cash crops production the effectiveness of taxation as opposed to incentives in stimulating cash crops production and the key role of technological change in food production to enhance cash crop production results are obtained analytically in the case of one market failure and by numerical simulation with more than one

the effects of corporate strategy and workplace innovations on union representation this paper explores the decline of union membership within partially organized firms using data from two conference board surveys of labor relations practices 1977 and 1983 the authors test a series of propositions concerning the effects of corporate industrial relations values and strategies and workplace innovations on union representation and membership the results show that whereas the average firm reduced the number of workers represented by unions by approximately 977 from 1977 to 1983 firms that placed a high priority on union avoidance reduced union representation by an average of 2 647 workers over the same period moreover the typical firm that emphasized union avoidance reduced the probability that its new facilities would be organized from approximately 15 percent to less than 1 percent

diversification and cash dynamics abstract why do diversified firms hold significantly less cash than focused firms we study this question using a dynamic model of corporate investment saving and diversification decisions we find that investment dynamics are more important in explaining the cash differences than financing frictions more efficient internal capital markets increase cash differences and are especially valuable when a firm diversifies or refocuses contrary to static models more diverse conglomerates have lower cash differences endogenous selection diversifying firms are larger and have better growth opportunities accounts for 68 of the cash difference and the diversification event itself reduces cash holdings by 32

the effect of company campaigns on certification elections law and reality once again recent studies have challenged the conclusion getman goldberg and herman reached in their 1976 study that company campaigns have little if any effect on how workers vote in union certification elections this study attempts to reconcile these conflicting results by re analyzing data collected by getman goldberg and herman for their study the author estimates a probit model of voting that controls for several variables not considered in other studies he finds that employer threats and actions taken against union supporters some written communications and captive audience speeches all have statistically significant effects on voting election simulations based on the voting model also show that the effects of these employer tactics can be important in determining election outcomes

target behavior and financing how conclusive is the evidence the notion that firms have a debt ratio target that is a primary determinant of financing behavior is influential in finance yet how definitive is the evidence we address this issue by generating samples where financing is unrelated to a firm s current debt ratio or a target we find that much of the available evidence in favor of target behavior based on leverage ratio changes can be reproduced for these samples taken together our findings suggest that a number of existing tests of target behavior have no power to reject alternatives

unionization and shareholder interests drawing on agency theory this study examines union nonunion differences in the allocation of both firm profits and business risk to employees and shareholders using a sample of more than 1 000 large private sector firms the authors find that over the period 1970 81 shareholders in unionized firms assumed less of the firm s business risk than shareholders in nonunion firms this finding is interpreted as evidence that managers of unionized firms attempted to minimize agency costs by capitalizing on the incentive effects of risksharing in addition risk adjusted returns to shareholders were lower in unionized firms than in nonunion firms the authors view the relatively poor performance of union firms as a primary motivating factor behind the restructuring of the american industrial relations system during the period studied

cash holdings and credit risk intuition suggests that rms with higher cash holdings are safer and should have lower credit spreads yet empirically the correlation between cash and spreads is robustly positive and higher for lower credit ratings this puzzling nding can be explained by the precautionary motive for saving cash in our model endogenously determined optimal cash reserves are positively related to credit risk resulting in a spurious positive correlation between cash and spreads by contrast spreads are negatively related to the exogenous component of cash holdings independent of credit risk factors similarly although rms with higher cash reserves are less likely to default over short horizons longer term endogenously determined liquidity may be positively related to the probability of default our empirical analysis conrms these predictions suggesting that endogenous precautionary savings are central to understanding the eects of cash on credit risk

why has economic growth been more pro poor in some states of india than others abstract we use 20 household surveys for india s 15 major states spanning 1960 1994 to study how the sectoral composition of economic growth and initial conditions interact to influence how much growth reduced consumption poverty the elasticities of measured poverty to farm yields and development spending did not differ significantly across states but the elasticities of poverty to urban and rural non farm output varied appreciably and the differences were quantitatively important to the overall rate of poverty reduction states with higher elasticities did not experience higher rates of non farm growth the non farm growth process was more pro poor in states with initially higher literacy higher farm productivity higher rural living standards relative to urban areas lower landlessness and lower infant mortality

the impact of food price increases on caloric intake in china world food prices have increased dramatically in recent years we use panel data from 2006 to examine the impact of these increases on the consumption and nutrition of poor households in two chinese provinces we find that households in hunan suffered no nutrition declines households in gansu experienced a small decline in calories though the decline is on par with usual seasonal effects the overall nutritional impact of the world price increase was small because households were able to substitute to cheaper foods and because the domestic prices of staple foods remained low due to government intervention in grain markets

corporate liquidity and capital structure we solve for a firm s optimal cash holding policy within a continuous time contingent claims framework using dividends short term borrowing and equity issues as controls assuming mean reversion of earnings optimal cash is non monotone in business conditions and increasing in the level of long term debt the model matches closely a wide range of empirical benchmarks and predicts cash and leverage dynamics in line with the empirical literature firm value is quite insensitive to changes in the level of long term debt the model has interesting implications for asset substitution hedging and pecking order growth opportunities do not greatly affect cash holding policy

analysis of food demand in vietnam and short term impacts of market shocks on quantity and calorie consumption a complete demand system for vietnam was estimated using household survey data results showed that demand for rice with respect to prices and expenditure is relatively inelastic compared to other foods demand for food in general tends to be less elastic at higher levels of income and for urban households in the short term a market shock such as a 10 decrease in income or a 30 increase in rice prices forces households to spend a larger portion of their expenditure on rice at the expense of other foods low income households face a higher risk of undernourishment as their daily calorie intake is more negatively affected by the shocks than high income households the results suggest the importance of policies that provide necessary safety net programs for the poor

the corporate propensity to save why do corporations accumulate liquid assets we show theoretically that intertemporal trade offs between interest income taxation and the cost of external finance determine optimal savings intriguingly we find that controlling for tobin s q saving and cash flow are negatively related because firms lower cash reserves to invest after receiving positive cash flow shocks and vice versa consistent with theory we estimate negative propensities to save out of cash flow we also find that income uncertainty affects saving more than do external finance constraints therefore contrary to previous evidence saving propensities reflect too many forces to be used to measure external finance constraints

rice prices and income distribution in thailand a non parametric analysis rice is a staple crop in thailand significantly entering both household production and consumption this paper examines the effect of rice prices on the distribution of real income across households taking into account household characteristics and geographical location the data set is a large scale survey of 11 893 households simple nonparametric techniques for regression and density estimation are used these methods depend on few assumptions and generate flexible graphical results that are directly informative about the problem at hand the main results are that higher rice prices should benefit all rural households but the largest benefits accrue to rural households in the middle of the income distribution copyright 1989 by royal economic society

contraction and expansion the divergence of private sector and public sector unionism in the united states the institutional structure of the american labor market changed remarkably from the 1950s and 1960s to the 1980s in the 50s and 60s trade unions seemed permanently established in the private sector of the economy a third of nonagricultur al wage and salary workers and over half of blue collar workers were union members hundreds of thousands of workers voted annually in national labor relations board nlrb representation elections to join unions most large firms sought stable collective bargaining relations with their unions by contrast in the public sector only 10 12 percent of workers were union members fewer were covered by collective bargaining contracts and most experts regarded public employees as intrinsically nonorganizable according to afl cio president george meany it was impossible to bargain collectively with the government kramer 1962 p 14 the massive contraction of unionism in the private sector and expansion in the public sector in the 1970s and 1980s see exhibit 1 has produced an utterly different situation today in the private sector the proportion of wage and salary workers in unions plummeted to 14 percent in 1986 a level comparable to that in the great depression only a minuscule number of workers joined unions through nlrb elections and national companies openly proclaimed their intent to establish a union free environment by contrast in the public sector over a third of the work force was unionized some 40 percent were covered by collective contracts 1 and 1 estimates of organization in the public sector differ somewhat among sources though all data show greater organization than in the private sector see freeman ichniowski and zax forthcoming for a detailed analysis of the various statistics

farmers welfare and changing food prices nonparametric evidence from rice in madagascar this paper uses nonparametric density estimation and kernel smoothing techniques to examine the instantaneous distributional implications of rice price changes in madagascar while many farmers do not participate in product markets as either buyers or sellers and net sales or marketable surplus are fairly small for many others the roughly one third of rice farmers who fall below the poverty line face significant negative first order welfare effects from increases in the mean or variance of rice prices conversely the first order gains from rice price increases are highly concentrated among the largest rice farmers and particular regions in madagascar

trade liberalisation poverty and inequality in vietnam a quantile regression approach abstractthis study examines the effects of trade liberalisation on rural household welfare poverty and inequality in vietnam with the use of multiple estimation strategies including the panel quantile regression approach based on canay s two step estimator taking account of the multi faceted nature of trade liberalisation we consider a set of household level trade related variables including employment in export import competing and manufacturing sectors a unique panel data set is constructed from the vietnam household living standards surveys conducted in 2002 2004 and 2006 we find that employment in trade related sectors contributes significantly to rural household welfare moreover the effects of trade related employment on welfare are heterogeneous across the welfare income distribution in that trade related employment sectors have different influences on different groups quantiles of households

term structures of credit spreads with incomplete accounting information we study the implications of imperfect information for term structures of credit spreads on corporate bonds we suppose that bond investors cannot observe the issuer s assets directly and receive instead only periodic and imperfect accounting reports for a setting in which the assets of the firm are a geometric brownian motion until informed equityholders optimally liquidate we derive the conditional distribution of the assets given accounting data and survivorship contrary to the perfect information case there exists a default arrival intensity process that intensity is calculated in terms of the conditional distribution of assets credit yield spreads are characterized in terms of accounting information generalizations are provided

the paradox of liquidity the more liquid a firm s assets the greater their value in a short notice liquidation it is generally thought that a firm should find it easier to raise external finance against more liquid assets this paper focuses on the dark side of liquidity greater asset liquidity reduces the firm s ability to commit to a specific course of action as a result greater asset liquidity can in some circumstances reduce the firm s capacity to raise external finance firms with excessively liquid assets are in the best position to finance illiquid projects this leads us to a theory of financial intermediation and disintermediation based on the liquidity of assets

fairtrade and labour markets in ethiopia and uganda abstractdrawing on four years of fieldwork in ethiopia and uganda this paper addresses gaps in knowledge about the mechanisms linking agricultural exports with poverty reduction the functioning of rural labour markets and the relevance to the lives of the poorest people of fairtrade statistical analysis of survey evidence complemented by qualitative research highlights the relatively poor payment and non pay working conditions of those employed in research sites dominated by fairtrade producer organisations we conclude that fairtrade is not an effective way to improve the welfare of the poorest rural people

the off farm labor supply of farmers theoretical and empirical models are developed to examine the off farm wages labor force participation and hours of work of farmers econometric estimates use data from a 1971 survey of illinois farmers the off farm wage depends on farmer human capital and the local labor market the major result confirms the sensitivity of off farm work to economic incentives a 10 increase in the off farm wage entails an 11 increase in hours of off farm work holding farm characteristics constant results also indicate effects of seasonality risk and life cycle factors on off farm work

global rice trade competitiveness a shift share analysis changes in country shares of global rice exports from 1997 to 2008 are analyzed using an econometric shift share analytical framework this framework estimates growth rates and disaggregates these rates of change into geographical structure effects and performance effects the performance effect is further decomposed into two subeffects accounting for adaptation to changes in the geographical structure of the marketplace and a competitiveness effect a restricted weighted two way fixed effects model is specified for estimating the geographical structure and performance effects results indicate a growing concentration among a few exporting countries in the global rice market and the competitiveness effect is often significant government policies affecting rice trade and the competitiveness of trading partners are important factors for the shifts in rice trade patterns in particular vietnam is an emerging major player in global rice trade in competition with thailand

world food prices and poverty incidence in a food exporting country a multihousehold general equilibrium analysis for thailand a multisectoral multihousehold general equilibrium model of the thai economy is used to analyze the implications of recent increases in international food prices higher food prices especially staple grains worsen poverty incidence in thailand despite the presence of large numbers of poor farmers many of whom benefit from higher prices the positive effect on the welfare of poor farmers is dominated by the negative effect on poor consumers of the recent price increases for rice sugar cassava maize soybeans urea and petroleum the increases in rice prices raise poverty incidence the most despite thailand being the world s largest rice exporter

equity bonds and bank debt capital structure and financial market equilibrium under asymmetric information this paper proposes a model of financial markets and corporate finance with asymmetric information and no taxes where equity issues bank debt and bond financing coexist in equilibrium the relationship banking aspect of financial intermediation is emphasized firms turn to banks as a source of investment mainly because banks are good at helping them through times of financial distress this financial flexibility is costly since banks face costs of capital themselves which they attempt to minimize through securitization to avoid this intermediation cost firms may turn to bond or equity financing but bonds imply an inefficient liquidation cost and equity an informational dilution cost we show that in equilib rium the riskier firms prefer bank loans the safer ones tap the bond markets and the ones in between prefer to issue both equity and bonds this segmentation is broadly consistent with stylized facts

impacts of world prices transmission to domestic rice markets in rural iran abstract this paper attempts to assess the degree to which iranian rural households have responded to the change in price of imported rice due to exchange rate unification and to examine the extent to which the policy has affected the economic welfare of various household income groups particularly the poor utilizing samples of 2472 households selected from national expenditure survey data of 2002 and 2003 armington and pass through elasticities were calculated as two measures of substitutability and are discussed separately for each household group in these areas the findings of this study indicate that domestic rice prices are associated differently with imported rice prices among the households however a price increase in imported rice that is mainly consumed by the poor worsens their position much more severely than for the rich people who mainly prefer domestic rice the findings contribute to the understanding of how price changes resulting from trade liberalization may affect various groups of households and the ways they respond to such changes in prices

investment incentives debt and warrants abstract this paper models and characterizes investment incentive problems associated with debt financing the decision problem of residual claimants is explicity formulated and their investment policies are characterized the paper also analyzes the use of conversion features and warrants to control distortionary incentives these claims reverse the convex shape of levered equity over the upper range of the firm s earnings and this mitigates the incentive to take risk it is shown that under certain conditions such claims can be constructed to restore net present value maximizing incentives and simultaneously meet the financing requirements of the firm

inter provincial migration and inequality during vietnam s transition abstract vietnam s economic boom during the transition to a market economy has centered on very rapid growth in some sectors and provinces yet poverty has diminished across the entire country with capital investments highly concentrated by province and sector geographic labor mobility may be critical in spreading the gains from growth conversely rising income inequality may be attributable in part to impediments to migration we first use census data to investigate migration patterns and determinants we then examine the role of migration as an influence on income ratios between pairs of provinces the former analysis robustly confirms economic motives for migration but also suggests the existence of poverty related labor immobility at the provincial level examination of income ratios between pairs of provinces reveals that the impact of migration on inequality can be either negative or positive a robust inequality reducing impact of migration is found for migration flows into provinces where most of vietnam s trade oriented industrial investments are located

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

households vulnerability from trade in vietnam abstract this paper assesses vulnerability from trade in vietnam by presenting an extended version of ligon and schechter s 2003 vulnerability as low expected utility veu measure it uses the vietnam household living standard surveys vhlss panel data covering the period 2002 06 the empirical results show that risk induced vulnerability and heterogeneity in trade exposure matter in determining household overall vulnerability and that this is not linked to the actual manifestation of shocks although it does not represent by any means an argument against free trade this work is relevant for policymaking since it contributes to deepen our knowledge on the subtle links between trade openness and vulnerability and informs us about suitable instruments to accompany it

implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low income countries in many poor countries the recent increases in prices of staple foods raise the real incomes of those selling food many of whom are relatively poor while hurting net food consumers many of whom are also relatively poor the impacts on poverty will certainly be very diverse but the average impact on poverty depends upon the balance between these two effects and can only be determined by looking at real world data results using household data for ten observations on nine low income countries show that the short run impacts of higher staple food prices on poverty differ considerably by commodity and by country but that poverty increases are much more frequent and larger than poverty reductions the recent large increases in food prices appear likely to raise overall poverty in low income countries substantially

the simultaneous evolution of growth and inequality research on inequality and growth can be divided into two strands one deriving from kuznets and lewis has tried to identify a mechanistic relationship between growth or level of income and inequality the other has tried to find causal explanations of growth and inequality treating each independently in this paper we draw from both strands to test whether growth and inequality are the joint outcomes of other variables and processes we find that simultaneous examination of growth and inequality yields significantly different results and has different consequences for policy from previous independent studies the empirical literature on growth and inequality can be divided into two broad strands one following the pioneering work of kuznets and lewis is motivated by the pessimistic conjecture that the process of growth and development somehow requires increasing inequality at least in the early stages this has led to many efforts to identify a mechanical relationship between the level of development and inequality anand and kanbur 1993 or to determine whether faster growth requires higher or lower inequality the second strand has sought to identify the causal factors influencing the evolution of growth and inequality independently this research has looked either at growth for example barro and sala i martin 1995 or at inequality li et al 1997 but has not tried to identify those factors that might simultaneously influence both growth and inequality 2 thus the literature that looks simultaneously at growth and inequality descending most notably from kuznets 1955 relates them in a mechanistic manner that ignores or minimises the role of other causal factors including policy while the literature that incorporates other causal factors including policies looks independently at growth and inequality neither approach is particularly convincing from a theoretical standpoint the evolution of growth and inequality must surely be the outcome of similar processes in addition neither approach is particularly useful for the policy maker who needs to balance the impact of policies on both growth and distribution in this paper we investigate whether growth and inequality are simultaneously determined and if so whether or not they are subject to

opening of china s trade labour market reform and impact on rural wages government policy in china supports urban wages at the expense of returns to farm labour a model is developed to estimate how wto accession and complementary labour market reform will influence factor returns in china with wto membership a larger cut in manufacturing tariffs compared to agriculture will improve agriculture s terms of trade and will raise the agricultural wage complementary labour market reforms will further boost farm wages as labour exits agriculture in large numbers we estimate that wto membership and complementary labour market reforms will result in a decline in the agricultural labour force by about 25 per cent

investment and financing decisions with learning curve technology abstract the learning curve has a significant impact on production cost hence corporate profit in a number of industries while the learning curve is well recognized in the economics literature and its effect on operating costs and production decisions widely studied its effect on corporate investment has been largely unexplored to our knowledge there is one paper that examines this issue but it is limited to unlevered firms we therefore examine a levered firm s optimal investment and financing choices when using learning curve technology the main findings are as follows the effect of leverage on the investment decision depends on the level of debt using the optimal debt level will result in earlier and larger investment thus leverage has a positive effect on investment overall and the difference between levered and unlevered firm is an increasing function of learning speed the optimal leverage ratio without a borrowing constraint is an increasing function of learning speed with a borrowing constraint the investment decision is similar to the unconstrained borrowing case but the leverage ratio is initially increasing and subsequently decreasing in learning speed moreover it is a decreasing function over a wider range for a more stringent borrowing constraint for decreasing returns to scale technology and for a less volatile product market

implications of high food prices for poverty in pakistan the study estimates the impacts of rising world food prices on poverty in rural and urban areas of pakistan household income and expenditure data for 2004 2005 is used to estimate compensated and uncompensated price and expenditure elasticities using the linear approximation of the almost ideal demand system taking the unexpected component of higher domestic food prices in 2007 2008 own and cross price compensated elasticities are used to derive the changes in the quantity consumed food expenditure and impacts on poverty assuming the food crisis happened in 2004 2005 the results indicate that poverty increased by 34 8 severely affecting the urban areas where poverty increased by 44 6 as compared to 32 5 in rural areas the estimates show that 2 3 million people are unable to reach even one half of poverty line expenditures while another 13 7 million are just below and 23 9 million are just above the poverty line in the short run it is important to ensure food availability to these people in the long run the policy environment of subsidizing urban food consumers by keeping wheat prices lower than the international price needs to be reconsidered to provide the right incentives to increase food availability