estimates of the value of patent rights in great britain and ireland 1852 1876 parameters of the distribution of the value of patent rights in britain and ireland for the 1852 76 period are estimated and compared with similar estimates by schankerman and pakes 1986 for the 1950 76 period market variables of the earlier period have a low ability but those of the later period a high ability to explain fluctuations in the value of patent rights aggregate patent rights have more lower valued patents in the earlier period in the earlier period there was no trade off between quantity and quality of patents but in the later period there was aggregate value of patent rights increased relative to gross fixed capital formation from 1870 to 1970 by approximately 100 percent a greater amount of r d effort helps to explain many of the differences found between the two periods copyright 1994 by the london school of economics and political science

collateral and credit rationing a review of recent empirical studies as a guide for future research abstract the relationship between firms and banks often suffers from informational opacity that may result in credit rationing in theory providing collateral to the bank can have a mitigating effect on these informational asymmetries and thus solve the credit rationing problem even though collateral is already a widespread debt contract feature recent trends predict that in the future collateral will become even more important for informationally opaque firms the aim of this paper is twofold first we provide a review of the recently growing empirical research on collateral as a remedy for credit rationing second we would like to pinpoint gaps and limitations in current empirical research most studies contend with a flawed research design by not distinguishing between business and personal collateral and excluding other information opaqueness reducing tools such as the strength of the relationship between borrower and lender loan maturity and covenants we also discuss the limitations of using a single equation estimation method and the usefulness of incorporating interaction effects into the estimation models finally we provide suggestions for fruitful research avenues that would fill these gaps and enrich the empirical knowledge in this research domain

a model of target changes and the term structure of interest rates abstract we investigate the effects of short term rate targeting by the federal reserve on the term structure of interest rates and make contributions at two levels using a new series of interest rate targets made available by the federal reserve bank of new york we develop a family of models that highlight the implications of discrete changes in interest rate targets for the term structure of interest rates we show that spreads between short term rates and the overnight federal reserve funds rate are mainly driven by expectations of changes in the target not by the transitory dynamics of the overnight rate around the target hence the bias in tests of the expectations hypothesis that we document can be mainly attributed to the erroneous anticipation of future changes in monetary policy our modeling assumptions and newly available data make it possible to extract a series of market expectations of the next target change which are compared with a series of realized target changes

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

was there a peso problem in the u s term structure of interest rates 1979 1982 during the period following october 1979 through 1982 the u s federal reserve allowed interest rates to fluctuate widely in contrast to its previous policy of targeting these rates in the 1970s the policy was abandoned in 1982 in favor of an operating procedure that reduced the variation in interest rates this paper implements an estimation method to identify from the term structure of eurodollar returns the market s beliefs that the federal reserve may revert to interest rate targeting the model is not rejected and gives plausible estimates of the probability of a switch in monetary regimes copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

china s official rates and bond yields abstract recent research shows that bond yields are influenced by monetary policy decisions to learn how this works in a bond market that differs significantly from those in the us and europe we model chinese bond yields using the one year deposit interest rate as a state variable we also include the spread between the one year market interest rate and the one year deposit interest rate as another factor the model is developed in an affine framework and closed form solutions are obtained we then test the model empirically with a markov chain monte carlo simulation procedure the results show that the new model that incorporates the official rate in china characterizes the changing shape of the yield curve well

devaluation expectations the swedish krona 1982 1991 devaluation expectations for the swedish krona are estimated for the period 1982 1991 with several methods first the simplest test is applied under either only the minimal assumption of no positive minimum profit or the additional assumption of uncovered interest parity then a more precise method suggested by bertola and svensson is used in which expected rates of depreciation within the exchange rate band estimated in several ways are subtracted from interest rate differentials finally estimated devaluations expectations are to some extent explained by a few macrovariables and parliament elections

the stochastic volatility of short term interest rates some international evidence this paper estimates a stochastic volatility model of short term riskless interest rate dynamics estimated interest rate dynamics are broadly similar across a number of countries and reliable evidence of stochastic volatility is found throughout in contrast to stock returns interest rate volatility exhibits faster meanreverting behavior and innovations in interest rate volatility are negligibly correlated with innovations in interest rates the less persistent behavior of interest rate volatility reflects the fact that interest rate dynamics are impacted by transient economic shocks such as central bank announcements and other macroeconomic news the past decade has witnessed unprecedented growth in the market for fixedincome derivatives domestically as well as internationally in light of this growth recent research has attempted to empirically characterize the dynamics of short term riskless interest rates necessary for the valuation of many of these securities with few exceptions much of this evidence has been concerned with the behavior of u s interest rates the purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics of short term interest rates across a number of countries a particularly noteworthy feature at least of the u s evidence is that the volatility of short term interest rates is itself volatile the stochastic nature of volatility is an important property of interest rate dynamics which we wish to focus on in our comparison to do so practically this paper implements a computationally efficient and statistically reliable method for estimating stochastic volatility models in finance we apply this method to chan et al s 1992 specification of short term riskless interest rate dynamics augmented with stochastic volatility for a clean international comparison we use proxies for short term riskless interest rates drawn from the same market the london interbank market over the same sample period unlike nowman 1997 we find that the

the effect of changes in the federal reserve s policy rule on the stochastic structure linking reserves interest rates and money in october 1979 the federal reserve announced a fundamental reform in its monetary control procedures 2 the alleged rationale for abandoning the old procedures utilized more or less continuously since 1970 was to improve the fed s control over the growth of the monetary aggregates the so called intermediate policy targets as often accompanies political and social reform the spectrum of criticism of the fed s alteration in procedures was wide this criticism ranged from the charge that the fed had gone too far or alternatively had regressed to ironically the charge that nothing had changed such competing contentions are in this case largely generated by the lack of incontrovertible evidence that monetary control improved after 1979 and the considerable increase in the volatility of interest rates which ensued

taylor rules and the term structure abstract the expectations model of the term structure has been subjected to numerous empirical tests and almost invariably rejected with the failure generally attributed to systematic expectations errors or to shifts in risk premia rules for monetary policy designed along the lines of taylor 1993 discretion versus policy rules in practice carnegie rochester conference series on public policy 39 195 214 specify that the central bank adjusts short term yields in response to deviations of inflation and output gaps from target level such rules give a good empirical account of the behavior of the short term interest rate combining the taylor rule and expectations theory it is possible to generate along lines pioneered by campbell and shiller 1987 cointegration and tests of present value models journal of political economy 95 1062 1088 a series of theoretical long term interest rates when such theoretical rates are calculated for the us over 1980 2004 considerable support for the expectations theory emerges

a tractable interest rate model with explicit monetary policy rates abstract this paper proposes a novel interest rate model that presents simple analytical pricing formulas for interest rate based derivatives including swaps futures swaptions caps and floors exploring the regime switching feature of markov chains the proposed model focuses on discrete changes in the central bank policy rates the main driver of short term rate fluctuations an empirical analysis shows that the proposed model generally outperforms other standard short term rate models in fitting cross sections of options prices moreover the explicit nature of policy rates to some extent enables the model to infer risk neutral probabilities of the central bank rate decisions

r d and internal finance a panel study of small firms in high tech industries since joseph schumpeter economists have argued that internal finance should be an important determinant of r d expenditures yet almost without exception previous empirical studies have not found evidence of such a relation using newly available data the authors investigate this puzzle with a panel of 179 small firms in high tech industries under each estimation strategy they employ the authors find an economically large and statistically significant relationship between r d investment and internal finance their results are consistent with the view that because of capital market imperfections the flow of internal finance is the principal determinant of the rate at which small high tech firms acquire technology through r d copyright 1994 by mit press

a micro model of the federal funds market this paper demonstrates that valuable insights into the determination of federal funds rates can be gained through modeling the micro decisions of market participants fed fund demand functions are derived for different bank valuation functions and several implications are discussed specifically it is i possible to rationalize the observation that large banks are net purchasers and small banks net sellers of fed funds ii to explain the positive spread of fed funds rates over other short term money market rates and iii to link the size of this spread to the federal reserve s underlying monetary policy strategy

do financial constraints hold back innovation and growth evidence on the role of public policy abstract this paper provides evidence that capital market imperfections hold back innovation and growth and that public policy can complement capital markets we deliver the evidence by studying the effects of government funding on the behavior of smes in finland by adapting the methodology recently proposed by rajan and zingales rajan r g zingales l 1998 financial dependence and growth american economic review 88 pp 559 587 to firm level data we show that government funding disproportionately helps firms from industries that are dependent on external finance we demonstrate that the result is economically significant and robust to a variety of tests

expected and predicted realignments the ff dm exchange rate during the ems an empirical model of time varying realignment risk in an exchange rate target zone is developed expected rates of devaluation are estimated as the difference between interest rate differentials and estimated expected rates of depreciation within the exchange rate band using french franc deutsche mark data during the european monetary system the behavior of estimated expected rates of depreciation accord well with the theoretical model of bertola svensson 1990 we are also able to predict actial realignments with some success

the berlin stock exchange in imperial germany a market for new technology analysing 474 cases of firms going public in the german capital between 1892 and 1913 we show that innovative firms could rely on the berlin stock market as a source of financing the data also reveal that initial public offerings ipo of innovative firms were characterized by particularly low underpricing comparatively high first trading prices and no long run underperformance we interpret these empirical results as evidence for the surprising fact that contemporary investors had rational expectations

the 1979 federal reserve policy shift some evidence using causality tests on 6 october 1979 the fomc announced a shift from federal funds rate ffr to nonborrowed reserves nbr targeting the sequence of events preceding this major policy change are well known and require only a brief recounting here prior to the 1979 announcement the fomc implemented monetary policy by confining the ffr to a narrow band about 50 to 100 basis points in width any tendency for the rate to move outside this range was countered by providing more or fewer nbr to the banking system the underlying assumption upon which this strategy was based was that money demand was stable the fed could then control the money stock by altering interest rates thereby moving the public along a fixed money demand function during the mid 1970s however various events in the money market e g income and supply shocks financial innovation and portfolio readjustments lessened the stability of money demand and brought the twin objectives of monetary control and financial market stability into frequent conflict the record shows that these conflicts were usually resolved in favor of interest rate stability rather than monetary control the consequence of ffr targeting was inflation attempts to maintain a stable ffr at the operating level in the face of money demand shifts forced the central bank to exceed its money growth targets for periods long enough to increase nominal aggregate demand in the economy with the adoption of the nbr strategy the fed attempted to achieve better control over inflation by short circuiting the endogenous influences of spending on the growth of the money stock in contrast to the pre 1979 policy spending shocks would now be reflected in ffr movements which would to some extent generate pressures to return money growth to its desired path subsequent to the announced policy shift there was much doubt about whether the federal reserve was successfully executing a nbr plan the gist of this skepticism centers on the belief that the new procedures were technically flawed specifically that reserves targeting when combined with lagged reserve accounting and borrowings projection errors resulted in short run accommodation increased interest rate and money growth volatility

an optimal ipo mechanism we analyse the optimal initial public offering ipo mechanism in a multidimensional adverse selection setting where institutional investors have private information about the market valuation of the shares the intermediary has private information about the demand and the institutional investors and intermediary collude theorem 1 states that uniform pricing is optimal all agents pay the same price and characterizes the ipo price in terms of conditional expectations theorem 2 states that the optimal mechanism can be implemented by a non linear price schedule decreasing in the quantity allocated to retail investors this is similar to ipo procedures used in the u k and france relying on french ipo data we perform a gmm structural estimation and test of the model the price schedule is estimated and the conditions characterizing the optimal mechanism are not rejected

dynamics of the federal funds target rate a nonstationary discrete choice approach we apply a discrete choice approach to model the empirical behaviour of the federal reserve in changing the federal funds target rate the benchmark of short term market interest rates in the us our methods allow the explanatory variables to be nonstationary as well as stationary this feature is particularly useful in the present application as many economic fundamentals that are monitored by the fed and are believed to affect decisions to adjust interest rate targets display some nonstationarity over time the chosen model successfully predicts the majority of the target rate changes during the time period considered 1994 2001 and helps to explain strings of similar intervention decisions by the fed based on the model implied optimal interest rate our findings suggest that there is a lag in the fed s reaction to economic shocks during this period copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

uncertainty on monetary policy and the expectations model of the term structure of interest rates abstract in this paper we jointly estimate a forward looking reaction function for the 3 month rate along with a term structure relationship linking the 6 month interest rates to current and expected future 3 month rates in our empirical model the response of the 6 month interest rates to current and future 3 month interest rates is allowed to depend on uncertainty on monetary policy the expectations theory cannot be rejected in periods of low uncertainty on monetary policy

the term structure with semi credible targeting the federal reserve sets targets for interest rates which it enforces through direct market intervention these targets are changed periodically in this paper we develop a term structure model in which the short rate is subject to a control which keeps it close to a target which changes from time to time the probability of target changes is not constant in the model but changes as a function of observables the model performs well at explaining the shifts in the yield curve that accompany target changes in u s financial markets the federal reserve bank the fed is a unique player usually we assume that market participants are price takers in financial markets however there is evidence that this is not true of the fed in fact the fed sets targets for short term rates which it attempts to maintain by market intervention injecting or withdrawing funds from the market to keep the rates near their targets targets are changed from time to time and market participants know when such a target change occurs they may in fact have some limited ability to forecast such target changes several recent papers have provided evidence that models which allow the short rate to revert toward a mean which is itself a random process perform

reserve regulation and recourse as a source of risk premia in the federal funds market abstract in this paper we demonstrate that there is a pronounced and persistent daily pattern of returns in the federal funds market centered on wednesday we present evidence that explains this phenomenon as a reflection of the optimal behavior of banks operating in an environment in which there are effective reserve requirements and a penalty cost for recourse to discount borrowing in particular we report empirical evidence that shows there was a significant upward shift in the amplitude of this pattern of daily returns that resulted from 1 the increase in uncertainty associated with the change in federal reserve operating procedures during the 1979 1982 period and 2 the imposition of a surcharge on discount borrowing instituted by the federal reserve our results demonstrate that what otherwise might be regarded as anomalous interest rate behavior is consistent with the optimal response of banks to the regulatory environment within which they operate

the effect of monetary policy actions on exchange rates under interest rate targeting abstract we specify a theoretical model of the exchange rate response to u s monetary policy actions that is capable of explaining a wide range of recent empirical results we show that the response pattern of spot and expected future exchange rates depends on the predictability of federal reserve actions the persistence of shocks to the economy and the reaction of foreign central banks to the us monetary policy shock we also show that the movements of spot and expected future exchange rates in anticipation of a monetary policy change can outweigh the immediate responses at the time of the change

endogenous financial constraints and innovation we investigate which indicators of a firm s innovation activities are associated with financial constraints and analyze the nature and direction of causal links between innovation and financial constraints by estimating simultaneous bivariate probit models on data from the uk innovation surveys we show that among innovation inputs research and development r d activity increases the likelihood that firms face financial constraints among innovation outputs only new to market products generate financial constraints reverse effects on innovation appear limited to external r d

should a monetary policymaker look at money abstract this paper examines whether monetary indicators are useful in implementing optimal discretionary monetary policy when the policymaker has incomplete information about the environment we find that money does not contain useful information for the policymaker if we calibrate the model to the u s economy if money demand were to be appreciably less variable observations on money could be useful in response to productivity shocks but would be harmful in response to money demand shocks we provide an incomplete information example where equilibrium welfare declines when the money demand volatility decreases

tests of the expectations hypothesis resolving the campbell shiller paradox one of the more puzzling results in the expectations hypothesis eh testing literature is the campbell shiller paradox csp in an influential paper campbell and shiller 1991 found that the slope of the term structure almost always gives a forecast in the wrong direction for the short term change in the yield on the longer bond but gives a forecast in the right direction for long term changes in short rates this paper provides an econometric resolution to the csp specifically it shows that by their construction these tests can generate results consistent with the csp if the eh does not holdnwhatever the reason monte carlo experiments confirm that this explanation can account for campbell and shiller s paradoxical results for most pairings of short term and long term rates considered

a more complete conceptual framework for sme finance abstract we propose a more complete conceptual framework for analysis of sme credit availability issues in this framework lending technologies are the key conduit through which government policies and national financial structures affect credit availability we emphasize a causal chain from policy to financial structures which affect the feasibility and profitability of different lending technologies these technologies in turn have important effects on sme credit availability financial structures include the presence of different financial institution types and the conditions under which they operate lending technologies include several transactions technologies plus relationship lending we argue that the framework implicit in most of the literature is oversimplified neglects key elements of the chain and often yields misleading conclusions a common oversimplification is the treatment of transactions technologies as a homogeneous group unsuitable for serving informationally opaque smes and a frequent misleading conclusion is that large institutions are disadvantaged in lending to opaque smes

no money no honey financial versus knowledge and demand constraints on innovation the paper adds to the literature on the barriers to innovation in two ways first we assess comparatively what mostly constrains firms ability to translate investment in innovation activity into new products and processes whether it is mainly finance as most of the literature would suggest or whether it is mostly knowledge and market related aspects second we suggest a method to correct for the sample selection bias that often affects empirical contributions to this scholarship by filtering out firms that are not interested in innovation from those that struggle to engage in it we obtain a relevant sample of potential innovators which allows us to analyse the comparative effect of financial and non financial barriers on innovation success we find that demand side factors particularly concentrated market structure and lack of demand are as important as financial constraints in determining firms innovation failures this evidence redirects attention from financial to non financial barriers by considering traditional demand market structure and regulation factors involved in reduced firm innovation performance the empirical analysis is based on an unbalanced panel of firm level data from four waves of the uk community innovation survey cis between 2002 and 2010 merged with data from the uk business structure database

nonlinear mean reversion in the term structure of interest rates abstract the expectations hypothesis implies that the yield curve provides information on the future change in the short term interest rate however transaction costs exist in the financial market which prevent investors from realizing the arbitrage opportunity when the arbitrage does not fully cover the transaction costs the purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of transaction costs on the predictability of the term structure by using the threshold vector error correction model which allows for the nonlinear adjustment to the long run equilibrium relationship a significant amount of threshold effect is found and the adjustment coefficients are regime dependent the empirical result supports the nonlinear mean reversion in the term structure of interest rates

federal funds rate prediction we examine the forecasting performance of a range of time series models of the daily us effective federal funds ff rate recently proposed in the literature we find that i most of the models and predictor variables considered produce satisfactory oneday ahead forecasts of the ff rate ii the best forecasting model is a simple univariate model where the future ff rate is forecast using the current difference between the ff rate and its target iii combining the forecasts from various models generally yields modest improvements on the best performing model these results have a natural interpretation and clear policy implications

you can lead a firm to r d but can you make it innovate uk evidence from smes the uk government introduced tax credits for smes to promote and support r d in 2000 since then the policy has become more generous in this respect particularly since 2008 in this paper we use the national systems of entrepreneurship as a conceptual framework in which to question whether smes take up of tax credits has actually led to an increase in product service or process innovations our evidence suggests that a sme engagement with the policy is fairly randomly distributed across the sector and b there is little additional product service innovation to justify the expenditure in foregone taxes given the current distribution of credits but c there is evidence of enhanced radical process innovations particularly when combined with strong capability and planning at the firm level

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

investment bank reputation information production and financial intermediation we model reputation acquisition by investment banks in the equity market entrepreneurs sell shares in an asymmetrically informed equity market either directly or using an investment bank investment banks who interact repeatedly with the equity market evaluate entrepreneurs projects and report to investors in return for a fee setting strict evaluation standards unobservable to investors is costly for investment banks inducing moral hazard investment banks credibility therefore depends on their equity marketing history investment banks evaluation standards their reputations underwriter compensation the market value of equity sold and entrepreneurs choice between underwritten and nonunderwritten equity issues emerge endogenously

pricing initial public offerings further evidence from germany abstract in a recent article in this review wasserfallen and wittleder pricing initial public offerings evidence from germany european economic review 38 1505 1517 1994 ww provide evidence of the well known underpricing phenomenon for 92 german ipos coming to market in 1961 1987 using a larger sample of 189 firms from 1970 1993 this paper i reassesses the evidence on underpricing in germany after choosing a different risk proxy to avoid potential endogeneity problems and ii provides evidence of long run ipo performance a number of new results emerge stock market returns the macroeconomic climate insider retention rates and inverse offer size all affect underpricing positively over longer horizons german ipos are poor investments losing more than twelve percent over their first three years of trading relative to the market exclusive of the initial underpricing return negative performance is heavily concentrated after the end of ww s sampling period in the post 1987 cohort

innovation without patents evidence from world s fairs abstractthis paper introduces a unique historical data set of more than 8 000 british and american innovations at world s fairs between 1851 and 1915 to explore the relationship between patents and innovations the data indicate that the majority of innovations 89 percent of british exhibits in 1851 were not patented comparisons across british and u s data also show that patenting decisions were unresponsive to differences in patent laws cross sectional evidence suggests that high quality and urban exhibits were more likely to be patented the most significant differences however occurred across industries inventors were most likely to use patents in industries in which innovations are easy to reverse engineer and secrecy is ineffective relative to patents in the late nineteenth century scientific breakthroughs including the publication of the periodic table reduced the effectiveness of secrecy in the chemical industry difference in differences regressions suggest that this change resulted in a

a theory of financing constraints and firm dynamics there is widespread evidence supporting the conjecture that borrowing constraints have important implications for firm growth and survival in this paper we model a multiperiod borrowing lending relationship with asymmetric information we show that borrowing constraints emerge as a feature of the optimal long term lending contract and that such constraints relax as the value of the borrower s claim to future cash flows increases we also show that the optimal contract has interesting implications for firm dynamics in agreement with the empirical evidence as age and size increase mean and variance of growth decrease and firm survival increases

stochastic devaluation risk and the empirical fit of target zone models in the model of this paper an exchange rate fluctuates between given boundaries for random lengths of time and jumps discretely when devaluation occur we provide explicit solutions for the stochastic processes followed by the exchange rate and by the expected rate of depreciation when the likelihood and the size of devaluations vary stochastically over time the model produces realistic patterns of covariation between exchange rates and interest rate differentials and provides interesting interpretations of available empirical evidence we also specify how to infer devaluation risk from target zone data

a political model of monetary policy with application to the real fed funds rate abstract we construct an empirical model of u s monetary policy assuming that the federal reserve is an ordinary federal bureaucracy we use the real federal funds rate as our policy measure and show the existence of significant executive legislative and bureaucratic influence on the real rate of interest from 1961 to 1996 we find that presidential party is an adequate statistical measure of executive influence and that the voting scores of the senate banking committee leadership best represent legislative influence we argue that political changes cause systematic and predictable changes in monetary policy

the behavior of interest rates implied by the term structure of eurodollar futures this paper considers an equilibrium model of the term structure that is determined by two stochastic factors a short term interest rate and a target level to which the short rate is expected to revert a kalman filter technique that uses a time series cross section of eurodollar futures prices is developed to estimate the parameters of the model the term structures of spot libor and eurodollar futures volatility are compared to that predicted by the model the empirical results indicate that the two factor specification represents a significant improvement over its one factor version copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

term structure evidence on interest rate smoothing and monetary policy inertia abstract numerous studies have used quarterly data to estimate monetary policy rules or reaction functions that appear to exhibit a very slow partial adjustment of the policy interest rate the conventional wisdom asserts that this gradual adjustment reflects a policy inertia or interest rate smoothing behavior by central banks however such quarterly monetary policy inertia would imply a large amount of forecastable variation in interest rates at horizons of more than 3 months which is contradicted by evidence from the term structure of interest rates the illusion of monetary policy inertia evident in the estimated policy rules likely reflects the persistent shocks that central banks face

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

the october 1979 regime of monetary control and the behavior of the money supply in 1980 in october 1979 the federal reserve system instituted a regime of monetary control characterized by lagged reserve accounting and a nonborrowed reserves operating target section 2 of this paper provides an analytical framework for this regime section 3 appraises the efficacy for purposes of monetary control of this regime by comparing it to a regime characterized by contemporaneous reserve accounting and a total reserves operating target section 4 describes the actual implementation of the regime section s examines the question of why the rate of growth of the money supply was so variable within 1980

estimates of the value of patent rights in european countries during the post 1950 period this paper examines the distribution of the values of patent rights in the united kingdom france and germany during the post 1950 period these values are inferred from the behavior of patentees with respect to payment of renewal fees on their patents a simple economic model of renewal decisions is combined with data on the proportion of patents renewed at alternative ages and the renewal fee schedules to produce estimates of the distribution and the total value of patent rights in these countries moreover the data indicate that there have been changes in the value distribution and we follow these changes over the period the empirical results of particular interest concern the total value of patent rights and the relationship between changes in it and changes in the quantity of patents the skew in the distribution of patent values and the rate of obsolescence on the returns to patents

monetary policy secrecy and federal funds rate behavior abstract the behavior of the federal reserve system can be characterized as secretive one common justification for this secrecy is the financial markets will overreact to information causing undue variability in interest rates this paper examines the credibility of this assertion under the post october 1979 non borrowed reserves operating procedure the major result is that conditional on this operating procedure secrecy can reduce the variability of the federal funds rate however in a result analogous to barro 1976 secrecy raises the variance of the forecasting error of the federal funds rate

the term structure of very short term rates new evidence for the expectations hypothesis abstract empirical researchers have frequently rejected the expectations hypothesis the expectations hypothesis however has seldom if ever been tested at the extreme short end of the term structure where maturities are measured in days or weeks using overnight weekly and monthly repo rates i find that term rates are almost unbiased estimates of the average overnight rate this evidence provides new support for the expectations hypothesis

presidential influence on the federal reserve in the 1970 s this research examined presidential influence on federal reserve monetary policy in the 1970s a reaction function for the change in the federal funds rate was estimated and then checked to determine whether that reaction function shifted at politically important points the two political influences studied were elections and administration the federal reserve did not appear to manipulate the money supply in 1972 to aid president nixon s reelection the reaction function shifted between the nixon and ford administrations it did not shift with the ascension of carter and it did not shift with the replacement of chairman arthur burns by chairman william miller

expectations and the treasury bill federal funds rate spread over recent monetary policy regimes this paper shows that the spread between the 3 month treasury bill and the federal funds rate has significant predictive power for the future change in the federal funds rate during the volatile nonborrowed reserves operating regime but it has less and no predictive power during the borrowed reserves regime and the federal funds targeting regime respectively these findings suggest that treasury bill rates forecast future federal funds rates most accurately when the federal reserve follows a well defined rule that does not smooth the impact of shocks on the federal funds rate

endogenous term premia and anomalies in the term structure of interest rates explaining the predictability smile abstract numerous studies have documented a predictability smile in the post war term structure of interest rates spreads between long rates and short rates predict subsequent movements in short rates provided the long horizon is less than three months or greater than two years but not for intermediate maturities proposed explanations of the smile involve interest rate smoothing by the fed time varying risk premia peso problems and measurement error we show that despite their highly restrictive nature some parameterizations of the cox ingersoll ross cir and chen scott cs models of the term structure can account for the predictability smile cir and cs parameterizations which are consistent with the smile regularity are inconsistent with other features of the data however

bond yields and the federal reserve bond yields respond to policy decisions by the federal reserve and vice versa to learn about these responses i model a high frequency policy rule based on yield curve information and an arbitrage free bond market in continuous time the fed s target is a pure jump process jump intensities depend on the state of the economy and the meeting calendar of the federal open market committee the model has closed form solutions for yields as functions of a few state variables introducing monetary policy helps to match the whole yield curve because the target is an observable state variable that pins down its short end and introduces important seasonalities around fomc meetings the volatility of yields is snake shaped which the model explains with policy inertia the policy rule crucially depends on the two year yield and describes fed policy better than taylor rules

new techniques to extract market expectations from financial instruments this paper is a selective survey of new or recent methods to extract information about market expectations from asset prices for monetary policy purposes traditionally interest rates and forward exchange rates have been used to extract expected means of future interest rates exchange rates and inflation more recently these methods have been refined to rely on implied forward interest rates so as to extract expected future time paths very recently methods have been designed to extract not only the means but the whole risk neutral probability distribution from a set of option prices

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

analysis of exchange rate target zones using a limited dependent rational expectations model with jumps this article examines the exchange rate determination in a target zone regime when the bounds can be fixed for an extended period but are subject to occasional jumps in this case the behavior of the endogenous variable is affected by the agents expectations about both the occurrence and the size of the jump empirical results using data for the franc mark exchange rate provide support for the nonlinear model with time varying realignment probability and indicate that the agents correctly anticipated most of the observed changes in the central parity

the federal reserve system and control of the money supply in the 1970s this paper addresses the question of whether the federal reserve system in the 1970s used the money supply as its predominant intermediate target of policy l did the federal reserve control the money supply in the 1970s where control is defined as requiring that the behavior of the money supply accurately reflect the stance of monetary policy desired by the federal open market committee fomc of the federal reserve system the question just posed is approached through an examination of the system s operating procedures for implementing monetary policy in the 1970s what intermediate target of policy was the fomc trying to achieve as inferred by its choice of operating procedures 2

small and medium size enterprises access to finance as a growth constraint abstract this paper presents recent research on access to finance by small and medium size enterprises smes smes form a large part of private sector in many developed and developing countries while cross country research sheds doubt on a causal link between smes and economic development there is substantial evidence that small firms face larger growth constraints and have less access to formal sources of external finance potentially explaining the lack of smes contribution to growth financial and institutional development helps alleviate smes growth constraints and increase their access to external finance and thus levels the playing field between firms of different sizes specific financing tools such as leasing and factoring can be useful in facilitating greater access to finance even in the absence of well developed institutions as can systems of credit information sharing and a more competitive banking structure

investment cash flow sensitivities credit rationing and financing constraints in small and medium sized firms the controversy on whether investment cash flow sensitivity is a good indicator of financing constraints is still unsolved we apply a comprehensive approach by cross validating our analysis with both balance sheet and qualitative data on self declared credit rationing and financing constraints on a sample of mainly small and medium sized firms our qualitative information shows that self declared credit rationing is weakly related to both traditional a priori factors such as firm size age and location and lenders rational decisions taken on the basis of their credit risk models we use the qualitative information on firms which were denied additional credit to provide evidence relevant to the investment cash flow sensitivity debate the evidence shows that self declared credit rationing significantly discriminates between firms which possess or not such sensitivity while a priori criteria do not the same result does not apply when we consider the wider group of financially constrained firms which do not seem to have a higher investment cash flow sensitivity supporting the more recent empirical evidence in this direction

the term structure of commercial paper rates this paper tests the expectations hypothesis in the market for commercial paper our main dataset which is new to the literature consists of daily indexes constructed from the actual market yields for nearly all commercial paper issued by u s corporations between january 1998 and august 2003 we show that the term premia built into commercial paper yields rise dramatically at year end causing the expectations hypothesis to be rejected however once we control for these predictable year end eects we nd the reverse that commercial paper yields largely conform with the expectations hypothesis