is there private information in the fx market the tokyo experiment it is a common view that private information in the foreign exchange market does not exist we provide evidence against this view the evidence comes from the introduction of trading in tokyo over the lunch hour lunch re turn variance doubles with the introduction of trading which cannot be due to public information since the flow of public information did not change with the trading rules having eliminated public information as the cause we exploit the volatility pattern over the whole day to discriminate between the two alternatives private information and pricing errors three key re sults support the predictions of private information models first the vola tility u shape flattens greater revelation over lunch leaves a smaller share for the morning and afternoon second the u shape tilts upward an impli cation of information whose private value is transitory finally the morning exhibits a clear u shape when tokyo closes over lunch and it disappears when trading is introduced

an index number approach to measuring bank efficiency an application to mergers abstract the current wave of bank mergers has resulted in an interest in the measurement of consequent efficiencies previous studies have generally focused on the measurement of merger induced cost efficiencies in this paper we turn to the production side and examine the change in relative productivity arising from bank mergers after deriving our superlative multilateral productivity index we compute the indexes for our entire sample of banks approximately 2 000 banks in each of the years 1984 1988 and for a cohort of 160 banks that merged in 1986 we find that acquiring banks achieve no gains in efficiency and this finding supports those of other studies on the other hand we find that our acquiring banks are consistently more productive than the sample as a whole by implication if mergers can be generally characterized as the acquisition by a relatively more productive bank of a relatively less productive bank an empirically valid supposition then industry performance should improve as a result of these mergers

ownership based entry mode strategies and international performance this study examines the relationship between ownership entry modes and performance the ownership entry modes examined are the wholly owned modes of acquisition and new venture entry and the non wholly owned mode of joint venture entry a theoretical relationship is developed for international entry modes that is based on the contingency characteristics of resource requirements and organizational control factors this model suggests that different entry modes have different performance outcomes based upon their resource and organizational control demands the theoretical model although developed using the eclectic theoretical approach is based largely on concepts and relationships previously delineated in contingency theory our hypotheses suggest that new ventures should outperform joint ventures and joint ventures should outperform acquisitions an empirical test using a sample of 321 japanese firms entering the north american market provides supporting evidence

competition from specialized firms and the diversification performance linkage in this study we show that the effect of diversification on performance is not homogeneous across industries and explore analytically and empirically the implications of this finding for the diversification literature diversified firms perform better in industries with a small number of nondiversified competitors or equivalently when specialized firms have a small combined market share but worse as the presence of specialized firms increases in the industries in which they compete the results are robust to the use of methods that alleviate the self selection problem and call for a reassessment of the diversification performance relationship

the endogenous relationship between innovation and diversification and the impact of technological resources on the form of diversification abstract this research has endeavoured to build on earlier research on the relationship between a firm s technological resources and the direction of its diversification by trying to confirm the endogeneity of this relationship and by addressing the influence of innovation on the choice of the mode of diversification based on a sample of spanish firms our results suggest that innovation drives diversification but not the reverse the second important finding of this research is the empirical confirmation that knowledge assets are not related to the diversification mode

estimation of technical efficiency using flexible functional form and panel data this article presents an econometric model capable of accommodating a nonradial measure of input specific technical inefficiency and suggests an estimation technique that reduces dependency on distributional assumptions on inefficiency it also makes use of the demand system derived from a flexible cost function and imposes concavity restrictions as required by economic theory panel data on 12 finnish foundry plants are used to estimate technical efficiency of labor and energy for each of these plants

impact of information technology capital on firm scope and performance the role of asset characteristics this research draws on transaction cost and resource based theory to examine how information technology it capital moderates the relationship between different types of assets and firm scope both vertical integration and diversification the analysis suggests that it capital enables firms with narrowly valuable assets to be less vertically integrated and less diversified and enables firms with broadly valuable assets to be more vertically integrated and more diversified the moderating influence of it capital on the relationship between different types of assets and firms vertical and product market scope is consistent with transaction cost as well as resource based traditions abstract from author

the price concentration relationship in banking the commonly observed positive correlation between market concentration and profitability may be explained by noncompetitive pricing behavior as argued by the structure performance hypothesis or by the greater efficiency of firms with dominant market shares as argued by the efficient structure hypothesis by examining the price concentration relationship instead of the profit concentration relationship this paper tests the structure performance hypothesis in a manner that excludes the efficient structure hypothesis as an alternative explanation of the results the results strongly support the structure performance hypothesis and are robust with respect to model specification measurement of concentration and econometric technique copyright 1989 by mit press

explaining interfirm cooperation and performance toward a reconciliation of predictions from the resource based view and organizational economics interfirm cooperation and its performance implications are examined in the context of two widely cited theoretical approaches to organizations broadly speaking the resource based view suggests that firms seek to capitalize on and increase their capabilities and endowments whereas organizational economics asserts that firms focus on minimizing the costs of organizing although these perspectives agree on managers likely actions in many areas their predictions diverge when interfirm cooperation is considered we take a step toward reconciling these differences by positing that firms place resource based concerns in front of considerations from organizational economics when deciding whether or not to engage in interfirm cooperation we examined this prediction using data from 94 publicly held restaurant chains the results support our integrated view but also suggest that giving primacy to resource concerns detracts from the performance of some firms we derive several implications of these findings in an effort to guide subsequent inquiry copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

can leading indicators assess country vulnerability evidence from the 2008 09 global financial crisis abstract we investigate whether leading indicators can help explain the cross country incidence of the 2008 09 financial crisis rather than looking for indicators with specific relevance to the recent crisis the selection of variables is driven by an extensive review of more than eighty papers from the previous literature on early warning indicators our motivation is to address suspicions that indicators found to be useful predictors in one round of crises are typically not useful to predict the next round the review suggests that central bank reserves and past movements in the real exchange rate were the two leading indicators that had proven the most useful in explaining crisis incidence across different countries and episodes in the past for the 2008 09 crisis we use six different variables to measure crisis incidence drops in gdp and industrial production currency depreciation stock market performance reserve losses and participation in an imf program we find that the level of reserves in 2007 appears as a consistent and statistically significant leading indicator of who got hit by the 2008 09 crisis in line with the conclusions of the pre 2008 literature in addition to reserves recent real appreciation is a statistically significant predictor of devaluation and of a measure of exchange market pressure during the current crisis we define the period of the global financial shock as running from late 2008 to early 2009 which probably explains why we find stronger results than earlier papers such as obstfeld et al 2009 2010 and rose and spiegel 2009a b 2010 2011 which use annual data

linking corporate strategy to capital structure diversification strategy type and source of financing this study examines the relationship between corporate strategy and capital structure specifically the diversfication and financing strategies of a firm the results show that equity financing is preferred for related diversification and unrelated diversification is associated with debt financing additionally firms diversifying through acquisitions are more likely to use public sources of financing and those emphasizing internal development of new businesses depend primarily on private sources of financing using simultaneous equation estimation we found a reciprocal relationship between a firm s financial strategy and its corporate diversification strategy mode and nature of diversification are also reciprocally interrelated 1998 john wiley sons ltd

a note on the risk adjusted price concentration relationship in banking abstract price concentration studies in banking typically find a significant and negative relationship between consumer deposit rates i e prices and market concentration this implies highly concentrated banking markets are bad for depositors it also provides support for the structure conduct performance hypothesis and rejects the efficient structure hypothesis however these studies have focused almost exclusively on supply side control variables and neglected demand side variables when estimating the reduced form price concentration relationship for example previous studies have not included in their analysis bank specific risk variables as measures of cross sectional derived deposit demand we find that when bank specific risk variables are included in the analysis the magnitude of the relationship between deposit rates and market concentration decreases by over 50 we offer an explanation for these results based on the correlation between a bank s risk profile and the structure of the market in which it operates these results suggest that it may be necessary to reconsider the well established assumption that higher market concentration necessarily leads to anticompetitive deposit pricing behavior by commercial banks this has direct implications for the antitrust evaluations of bank merger and acquisition proposals by regulatory agencies and in a more general sense these results suggest that any structure conduct performance based study that does not explicitly consider the possibility of very different risk profiles of the firms analyzed may indeed miss a very important set of explanatory variables and thus the results from those studies may be spurious

measurement of firm diversification is it robust this study investigated the convergent validity of rumelt s categorical classification of types of business diversification across different data sources and variations from rumelt s method the st

multiproduct technology and market structure a recent line of research has exposed some technological determinants of the structure of industries that produce more than one good the analyses of both multiproduct perfect competition and natural monopoly require a generalized notion of average cost and in addition several newly identified technological characteristics pertinent only to joint production this paper provides an overview of these new results and suggests a unifying framework in which the theory can be further developed

financial services and the urban system an exploration financial services have come to represent an increasingly important sector in the economies of developed nations although a substantial literature has accumulated on this topic relatively little attention has been given to the locational aspects of nancial services an attempt is made here to examine the spatial structure of this sector in terms of the urban system drawing on the principles of central place theory the limitations and applicability of which are considered this is followed by a discussion of the salient features of financial services within the overall urban system after describing the differentiation of financial services in frequency terms the hierarchical structure of the uk urban system is outlined these two aspects are then related in order to demonstrate the ordered nature of the spatial structure of financial services there follows a brief discussion of the findings and their implications for future work

are foreign institutional investors good for emerging markets in den 1990er jahren waren die portfolio flows institutioneller investoren die dynamischsten kapitalstrome in die emerging markets in dieser arbeit leiten wir in einem rahmen asymmetrischer information funf aussagen ab stellen diese in einen zusammenhang mit der existierenden empirischen literatur und entwickeln daraus entsprechende wirtschaftspolitische implikationen die undurchsichtige informationslage auf den emerging markets behindert vor allem auslandische marktteilnehmer daruber hinaus konnen institutionelle investoren in folge finanzwirtschaftlicher offnung die position lokaler investoren unabsichtlich durch unausgewogene diversifikation und undurchsichtige risiken verschlechtern schlieslich verstarken institutionelle investoren aus dem ausland oft investitionsbooms oder finanzielle ansteckung deshalb sollten kapitalverkehrs und finanzielle liberalisierung stets von sorgfaltiger regulierung begleitet werden

foreign portfolio investors before and during a crisis different categories of foreign portfolio investors in korea have differences as well as similarities in their trading behavior before and during the currency crisis first non resident institutional investors are always positive feedback traders whereas resident investors were negative feedback contrarian traders before the crisis but switch to be positive feedback traders during the crisis second individual investors herd significantly more than institutional investors non resident institutional as well individual investors herd significantly more than their resident counterparts third differences in the western and korean news coverage are correlated with differences in net selling by non resident investors relative to resident investors

the impact of order and mode of market entry on profitability and market share market share performance and profitability of overseas business activities has long been an important issue in international business in this study we explore the impact of order and mode of market entry into an overseas market we find that early entrants have significantly higher market shares and profitability than late followers we also find that equity joint ventures have a higher profitability than either wholly owned operations or contractual joint ventures a significant interaction exists between order and mode of market entry as expected firm efficiency and size affect the performance of firms these results are based on the business activities of a sample of 14 466 foreign firms in china in 1995

an advantage of the multiproduct firm the transferability of firm specific capital abstract in a world of uncertainty particular benefits of multiproduct organization arise out of a need to revise production plans when transactions for inputs are costly production involves inputs which are firm specific the ability to transfer firm specific inputs withi n the multiproduct firm yields benefits not available to the single product firm these benefits to firm diversification are not dependent on the assumption of managerial risk aversion and cannot be replicated by investors diversifying their portfolios

the growth of us credit unions abstract the growth of us credit unions during the 1990s is investigated empirically using univariate and multivariate cross sectional and panel estimation techniques univariate tests of the law of proportionate effect suggest that in general large credit unions grew faster than their smaller counterparts on average credit unions with above average growth in one period tended to experience below average growth in the next smaller credit unions tended to have more variable growth than large ones while credit unions share a common co operative philosophy they differ in terms of age profile scope for membership growth charter type and financial structure and performance in estimations of a multivariate growth model most of these characteristics are found to have a significant influence on the size growth relationship while large state chartered credit unions grew faster than their smaller counterparts the reverse was true for federally chartered credit unions in general if larger credit unions grew faster than smaller ones they tended to do so for specific reasons because their charters were less restrictive because they were more efficient or because they had a financial structure that was more conducive to growth therefore credit union growth was not random but highly systematic

predicting currency fluctuations and crises do resident firms have an informational advantage the authors investigate whether resident enterprise managers have an informational advantage about the countries in which they work they propose a method for extracting information available to resident managers but unknown to investors and forecasters they rest their hypothesis of informational advantage using a unique data set the global competitiveness survey the survey asks local managers about their outlook for the country in which they reside they find that local managers do have useful private information local managers responses improve on conventional forecasts of future volatility and changes in the exchange rate which are based on economic fundamentals or interest rate differentials they find that the local business community perceived in advance the recent crises in the republic of korea russia and thailand but not those in indonesia and malaysia markets have had limited success predicting crises and might do better by drawing on private information available to resident enterprise managers who seem to know better than markets about future movements in exchange rates

make buy or ally a transaction cost theory meta analysis since the publication of williamson s markets and hierarchies many empirical articles have investigated the tenets of transaction cost theory using meta analytic techniques we quantitatively syn

the effects of uncertainty on the leverage of nonfinancial firms this paper investigates the link between the optimal level of nonfinancial firms short term leverage and macroeconomic and idiosyncratic sources of uncertainty we develop a structural model of a firm s value maximization problem that predicts a negative relationship between uncertainty and optimal levels of borrowing this proposition is tested using a panel of nonfinancial u s firms drawn from the compustat quarterly database covering the period 1993 2003 the estimates confirm that as either form of uncertainty increases firms decrease their levels of short term leverage this effect is stronger for macroeconomic uncertainty than for idiosyncratic uncertainty jel c23 d8 d92 g32

gross capital flows and asymmetric information abstract this paper shows that the behavior of gross capital flows can identify the nature of information asymmetries in international equity markets information asymmetry between foreign and domestic investors implies a correlation between net flows and returns information asymmetry within groups of foreign and domestic investors implies that gross flows and absolute returns are correlated i find that the correlation between gross flows and absolute returns is stronger than the correlation between net flows and returns suggesting that information asymmetries within countries are more important than those between countries

move to the beat rhythms of change and firm performance this study examines how different rhythms of change relate to firm performance an explorative analysis of 67 european insurance companies between 1995 and 2004 reveals that corporate strategic changes occur in four distinct rhythms which are classified as either regular or irregular focused punctuated and temporarily switching subsequent quantitative analysis shows that companies that change regularly outperform those that change irregularly this finding prevails under different internal and external contingencies under different change characteristics and over time periods we also find that the rhythm and frequency of change have distinct performance effects our findings contribute to research on the change stability paradox by showing that a regular and sequential balance between change and stability is associated with long term success

firm growth and efficiency in the banking industry a new test of the efficient structure hypothesis abstract in this paper we propose a new test of the efficient structure es hypothesis which predicts that efficient firms come out ahead in competition and grow as a result our test has significant advantages over existing ones because it is more direct and can jointly test the so called quiet life hypothesis which predicts that in a concentrated market firms do not minimize costs we then apply this test to large banks in japan consistent with the es hypothesis we find that more efficient banks become larger we also find that market concentration reduces banks efficiency which supports the quiet life hypothesis these findings imply that there is an intriguing growth efficiency dynamic throughout banks life cycle although our findings also suggest that the es hypothesis dominates the quiet life hypothesis in terms of economic impact

tobin s q and the structure performance relationship comment the exchange of comments between william shepherd and michael smirlock thomas gilligan and william marshall this review december 1986 raised two key points that remain unresolved the first point is whether tobin s q ratio a firm s financial market value divided by replacement cost of its assets is a better measure of firm performance than accounting rates of return the second point of contention is whether superior performance however measured can be attributed to efficiency rather than market power this paper offers further clarification on both of these points in section i the performance measure choice is shown to be influenced by fundamental differences between finance and economics in section ii the structure performance model employed by smirlock gilligan and marshall hereafter sgm and shepherd is shown to be a special case of a more general model allowing for a dependence of the market share performance relationship on the concentration ratio the same data from the original study by sgm 1984 are used in section iii to provide a comparison of sgm s findings with empirical results from an alternative specification of the structure performance model this comparison suggests that attributing superior firm performance exclusively to efficiency is not well founded concluding remarks are found in section iv

related diversification and r d intensity dynamics abstract using longitudinal data of spanish manufacturing companies we study the dynamic bidirectional relationship between firm research and development r d intensity and corporate diversification in an organic growth setting our empirical approach accounts for the different sources of endogeneity although we find a positive linear effect of r d intensity on related diversification the effect of related diversification on r d intensity assumes the form of an inverted u thus the effect of related diversification on r d intensity is positive but marginally decreases for moderate levels of related diversification such an effect can become negative however for high levels of related diversification additionally as a consequence of dynamics the effects after one year are substantially lower than the overall effects that occur over several years

testing the relationship between competition and efficiency in banking a panel data analysis the relationship between competition and efficiency in the banking sectors of five eu countries is investigated using granger type causality test estimations we find positive causation between market power and efficiency whereas the causality running from efficiency to competition is weak

currency crashes in emerging markets an empirical treatment we use a panel of annual data for over 100 developing countries from 1971 through 1992 to characterize currency crashes we define a currency crash as a large change of the nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of nominal depreciation we examine the composition of the debt as well as its level and a variety of other macroeconomic factors external and foreign crashes tend to occur when output growth is low the growth of domestic credit is high and the level of foreign interest rates are high a low ratio of fdi to debt is consistently associated with a high likelihood of a crash

enjoying the quiet life under deregulation evidence from adjusted lerner indices for u s banks abstract the quiet life hypothesis posits that firms with market power incur inefficiencies rather than reap monopolistic rents we propose a simple adjustment to lerner indices to account for the possibility of forgone rents to test this hypothesis for a large sample of u s commercial banks we find that adjusted lerner indices are significantly larger than conventional lerner indices and trending upward over time instrumental variable regressions reject the quiet life hypothesis for cost inefficiencies however lerner indices adjusted for profit inefficiencies reveal a quiet life among u s banks

what is the impact of bankrupt and restructured loans on japanese bank efficiency the japanese banking system provides a distinctive platform for the examination of the long lasting effect of problem loans on efficiency we measure technical efficiency by modifying a translog enhanced hyperbolic distance function with two undesirable outputs identified as problem loans and problem other earning assets our unique database allows us to distinguish between bankrupt and restructured loans to investigate the underlying causality between these loans and efficiency from the flexible panel vector autoregression specification primary results reveal that bankrupt loans have a positive impact on efficiency related to the moral hazard skimping hypothesis with the causality originating from bankrupt loans in contrast findings for the relationship between restructured loans and efficiency support the bad luck hypothesis

international equity flows and returns a quantitative equilibrium approach this paper models trading by foreign and domestic investors in developed country equity markets the key assumptions are that i both the foreign and domestic investor populations contain investors of different sophistication and ii investor sophistication matters for performance in both public equity and private off market investments a quantitative model with these assumptions delivers a unified explanation for three stylized facts about us investors international equity trades that have been documented in the literature i trading by us investors occurs in bursts of simultaneous buying and selling ii americans build and unwind foreign equity positions gradually and iii us investors increase their market share in a country when stock prices there have recently been rising

the fat years the structure and profitability of the us banking sector in the pre crisis period bank profitability in the usa was extremely high in the pre crisis period yet this did not prevent the current crisis it has become clear that these profits were on shaky grounds and also that bank profits were not used to buttress banks capital bases this paper analyses the effects of structure on profitability from 1994 to 2005 banklevel panel data are used to test the effects of concentration market power bank size and operational efficiency on profitability efficiency is not found to be a strong determinant of profitability suggesting that banks high profits during this period were not earned through efficient performance robust evidence is found that concentration increases bank profitability this holds even when the largest banks are excluded from the sample suggesting that the relationship between concentration and profitability acts in a generalised structural way and that the higher profits arising from concentration are at the expense of the rest of the economy the analysis points to various policy implications relevant to the current crisis in particular in terms of the legitimacy of expectations of the restoration of pre crisis profit rates and the need for much stronger regulation of the banking sector especially in terms of the structure of the sector pricing behaviour and use of profits

the global configuration of a speculative trading operation an empirical study of foreign exchange trading this paper proposes a theory of firm boundaries based on fore knowledge development and exploitation in speculative or informed trading foreign exchange trading provides this study s empirical context from research on information economics we suggest optimal speculative trading operations are multiunit and globally dispersed alternatively transaction cost economics suggests atomistic actors prevail in the market for fungible commodities like currencies we also develop competing hypotheses about information technology s effects on foreign exchange trading operations speculation arguments predict that the global scope of trading operations will expand after the introduction of generic information technologies transaction cost economics proposes that when atomistic actors do not prevail trading operations will contract after this introduction we test competing predictions with models of the expansion contraction and net change in a firm s global dispersion we estimate these models with data from the population of banks worldwide engaged in interbank foreign exchange currency fx trading from 1974 to 1993 our results uncover two types of firms those that approach the atomistic actor of transaction cost economics and those that resemble the globally dispersed multiunit configuration from our speculation discussion these results encourage reflection on how the theory of the firm differs when firms trade to produce versus speculate

managers investors and crises mutual fund strategies in emerging markets the authors address the trading strategies of mutual funds in emerging markets the data set they develop permits analyses of these strategies at the level of individual portfolios a methodologically novel feature of their analysis they disentangle the behavior of fund managers from that of investors for both managers and investors they strongly reject the null hypothesis of no momentum trading funds momentum trading is positive they systematically buy winners and sell losers contemporaneous momentum trading buying current winners and selling current losers is stronger during crises and stronger for fund investors than for fund managers lagged momentum trading buying past winners and selling past losers is stronger during noncrises and stronger for fund managers investors also engage in contagion trading selling assets from one country when asset prices fall in another these findings are based on data about mutual funds that represent only 10 percent of the market capitalization in the countries considered were it a larger share of the market finding counterparties for their trades the investors who buy when they sell and sell when they buy would be difficult and the premise that funds respond to contemporaneous returns rather than causing them would become tenuous

econometric issues in macroeconomic models with generated regressors the paper critically reviews the literature on the econometric issues raised by the use of generated regressors gr in empirical models the economic rationale for the use of gr is considered with examples being drawn from several macroeconomic examples including new classical macroeconomic ncm models which postulate monetary neutrality various estimation methods are discussed for models which include surprise or unexpected terms and the strengths and weaknesses of each approach are investigated drawing upon the work of mcaleer and mckenzie 1991 situations where the typically inefficient two step estimation 2se method will be efficient are highlighted problems of model misspecification and measurement errors are also investigated an empirical section highlights some of the dangers of using uncorrected 2se estimation results through a careful consideration of many recent attempts to test the ncm monetary neutrality hypothesis copyright 1993 by blackwell publishers ltd

rational contagion and the globalization of securities markets this paper argues that globalization may promote contagion by weakening incentives for gathering costly information and by strengthening incentives for imitating arbitrary market portfolios in the presence of short selling constraints the gain of gathering information at a fixed cost may diminish as markets grow moreover if a portfolio manager s marginal cost for yielding below market returns exceeds the marginal gain for above market returns there is a range of optimal portfolios in which all investors imitate arbitrary market portfolios and this range widens as the market grows numerical simulations suggest that these frictions can have significant implications for capital flows in emerging markets

domestic banks as lightning rods home bias and information during the eurozone crisis european banks have been criticized for holding excessive domestic government debt during the recent eurozone crisis which may have intensified the diabolic loop between sovereign and bank credit risks by using a novel bank level data set covering the entire timeline of the eurozone crisis i first reconfirm that the crisis led to the reallocation of sovereign debt from foreign to domestic banks in contrast to the recent literature focusing only on sovereign debt i show that the banks private sector exposures were at least equally affected by the rise in home bias consistent with this pattern i propose a new debt reallocation channel based on informational frictions and show that the informationally closer foreign banks increase their relative exposures when the sovereign risk rises the effect of informational closeness is economically meaningful and robust to the use of different information measures and controls for alternative channels of sovereign debt reallocation

new ventures or acquisitions the choice of swedish multinational enterprises this study examines the factors influencing the multinational enterprises choice between the takeover of already existing firms and investments in new ventures as a means of entering a foreign market the results suggest that the degree of industrial diversification of the parent company and the host country s per capita income seems to have a positive influience on the propensity for takeovers this propensity appears to be negatively related to the rate of growth of industrial production in the industry entered further we found that the more recent the entry into a foreign market the greater the probability for choosing acquisition

are foreign exchange forecasts rational new evidence from survey data abstract tests of rationality in foreign exchange markets have been inconclusive because of disagreement over the relevant asset pricing model this paper uses a newly available set of data on foreign exchange expectations to directly test the rationality of four foreign currency markets overall the results reject the rational expectations hypothesis

growth profits and foreign ownership in the brazilian banking industry the deregulation of the financial markets and their progressive globalization has favoured the internationalization of banking moreover during the international financial crisis the presence of

on the implications of market power in banking evidence from developing countries abstract this paper investigates how different degrees of market power affect bank efficiency and stability in the context of developing economies it sheds light on the competition stability nexus by documenting and analyzing the complex interactions between a tripod of variables that are central for regulators the degree of market power bank cost and profit efficiency and overall firm stability the results show that an increase in the degree of market power leads to greater bank stability and enhanced profit efficiency despite significant cost efficiency losses the findings lend empirical justification to the traditional view that increased competition may undermine bank stability and may bear significant implications for stressed banking systems in developing economies

greenfield vs acquisition the strategy of japanese investors in the united states multinational firms can enter a foreign market by taking over existing local firms acquisitions or by setting up new ventures greenfield investments surprisingly there has been limited empirical work on this topic this paper examines the determinants of this choice by looking at japanese entries into the united states by focusing on firms of one country entering a single market we are able to separate the impact of a firm s strategy from that of the characteristics of the target industry or country this paper tests simultaneously a number of competing hypotheses the results suggest that acquisitions are used by japanese investors with weak competitive advantages while investors with strong advantages find that greenfield investments are a more efficient way to transfer these advantages to the u s acquisitions are also chosen to enter industries with either very high or very low growth rates when entry is at a scale that is large relative to the parent and when entry is into a different industry the japanese investor s previous experience of the u s market its financial situation and its status as a follower in an oligopolistic industry have no statistically significant impact on the entry mode neither do u s stock market conditions

foreign exchange rate expectations micro survey data this paper analyzes the panel data of biweekly surveys on the yen dollar exchange rate expectations of forty four institutions for two years and contains four major findings first market participants are heterogeneous that is significant individual effects exist in their expectation formation second the individual effects have a characteristic of wishful expectations exporters expect yen depreciation and importers expect yen appreciation relative to others third many violate the rational expectations hypothesis fourth forecasts with long horizons show less yen appreciation than those with short horizons cross equation constraints implied by the consistency of the forecast term structure are strongly rejected in the data copyright 1990 by american economic association

are tradeoffs inherent in diversification moves a simultaneous model for type of diversification and mode of expansion decisions drawing on the premise that the diversification decisions are driven by antecedent factors such as a firm s existing resources teece 1982 and industry structural conditions this paper develops formal hypotheses for reciprocity between the type of diversification and mode of expansion decisions we consider the specificity of antecedent resources that affect these two decisions and conceptually demonstrate that there is a contradictory tension in trying to optimize the decisions jointly implying that one or both diversification decisions have to be sub optimized i e there has to be a trade off we make a conceptual argument that this sub optimization is likely to be in the form of subordination of the mode decision subject to constraints impo sed by resources that are highly specific to the mode decision following this we empirically investigate this contradictory tension by using a simultaneous equation model sem on a large sample of firms between 1981 and 1989 the results suggest that one antecedent factor internal funds act as the key mediating influence in the joint optimization and leads to a subordination of the mode decision in the joint optimization process however the existence of time compression economies and market power benefits are the exceptions to this subordination and trade off process

determinants of venture capital firms preferences regarding the industry diversity and geographic scope of their investments abstract competition is intensifying in the venture capital industry in the u s the number of venture capital firms vcfs tripled from 1980 to 1989 supplier power in the form of institutional investors such as pension funds continues to grow foreign venture capital has grown to the extent that commitments to foreign vcfs exceeded domestic commitments in both 1988 and 1989 further alternative sources of financing for entrepreneurs such as individual investors angels corporations and strategic alliances are increasingly viable options vcfs face pressure to seek lower risk investments improve rates of return and provide value to new venture development surprisingly few scholarly studies have begun to investigate the strategies vcfs are aiming to implement in order to deal with this increasing pressure building on the premise that decisions regarding product market scope are a key component of firm strategy hofer and schendel 1978 this study examined 169 domestic vcfs in order to identify factors that might explain variations in preferences regarding the industry diversity and geographic scope of their investments the sample drawn from california massachusetts and texas represented about 27 of all u s based vcfs in 1987 the year in which the data were gathered in terms of the total size of investment portfolio the average for these 169 vcfs was 69 8 million which is statistically indistinguishable from the u s average of 65 million results indicate that 1 vcfs specializing in early stage ventures prefer less industry diversity and narrower geographic scope relative to other vcfs 2 corporate vcfs i e those owned by non financial corporations prefer less industry diversity but broader geographic scope relative to non corporate vcfs 3 larger vcfs prefer greater industry diversity and broader geographic scope than do smaller vcfs and 4 provision of small business investment companies sbic financing by the vcf has no impact on preferences regarding industry diversity but is associated with a preference for narrower geographic scope one implication of these results is that vcfs in the u s are not homogeneous as regards the intended product market scope of their portfolios this in turn holds implications not only for vcfs but also for their suppliers limited partners buyers entrepreneurs and policy makers vcfs can no longer rely on haphazard investment schemes they need to attract investors by virtue of the benefits offered by their portfolio strategy and they need to attract superior investments via offering valueadded services and know how potential investors in venture capital will want to examine for example the impact on risk and return of investing smaller amounts in several vcfs at one extreme versus making one large investment in a very diversified vcf at the other extreme the results of this and other studies suggest that outcomes timing magnitude and riskiness of returns of choosing such alternatives will vary widely and will depend in great part on the strategies of the vcfs involved it will not be possible for investors to make wise choices without a full examination of their own objectives and of the profiles of vcfs entrepreneurs with the most attractive ventures have alternative sources of financing to consider and should weigh the benefits of being financed and supported by various vcfs as part of the vcfs portfolios knowing a vcf s preferences regarding product market scope improves their chances of approaching and selecting the right fit and for those entrepreneurs with a narrower set of options such knowledge may make the difference between receiving and not receiving financing in a timely manner finally policy makers may be able to make use of knowledge of the forces that influence the investment strategies of vcfs presently concerns for policy makers may include the gap in seed capital increased foreign presence in the u s market and the export of promising innovative technology via alliances with foreign firms all of these factors are influenced by the strategies pursued by vcfs as they jockey for position in the increasingly competitive venture capital market

internal capital market controls and financial performance in multidivisional firms it is proposed that within the population of m form firms the control systems necessary to realize economic benefits from interrelationships between subunits o f a firm are incompatible with the systems necessary to realize benef its from an m form type internal capital market this hypothesis is t ested on 156 large u k firms questionnaire data are used to classif y the firms according to their internal control characteristics the findings provide tentative support for the hypothesis copyright 1988 by blackwell publishing ltd

global cities and multinational enterprise location strategy we combine the concept of location derived by economic geographers with theories of the multinational enterprise mne and the liability of foreignness developed by international business scholars to examine the factors that propel mnes toward or away from global cities we argue that three distinctive characteristics of global cities global interconnectedness cosmopolitanism and abundance of advanced producer services help mnes overcome the costs of doing business abroad and we identify the contingencies under which these characteristics combine with firm attributes to exert their strongest influence consistent with these arguments our analysis of a large sample of mne location decisions using a multilevel multinomial model suggests not only that mnes have a strong propensity to locate within global cities but also that these choices are associated with a nuanced interplay of firm and subsidiary level factors including investment motives proprietary capabilities and business strategy our study provides important insights for international business scholars by shedding new light on mne location choices and also contributes to our understanding of economic geography by examining the heterogeneous strategies and capabilities of mnes the primary agents of economic globalization that shape the nature of global cities

are currency crises predictable abstract this paper studies whether exchange rate expectations and overvaluations are predictors of currency crises the results suggest that overvaluation has predictive power in explaining the crises however although expected depreciation obtained from survey data partially takes different exchange rate misalignment measures into consideration expectations fail to anticipate currency crises

product complementarities capabilities and governance a dynamic transaction cost perspective the organization and governance of the transactions that comprise a bundling arrangement depend on the distribution of capabilities among firms and the amount of time during which the window of opportunity for earning rents is expected to remain open firms engaged in inter firm collaboration must undertake support transactions related to billing marketing customer support and product repair these support transactions differ from the core transactions that have traditionally been perceived as sufficient to provide a product bundle since support transactions create costs of their own the market may turn out to be an expensive means of governing collaborative arrangements undertaken for bundling purposes the telecommunications service sector provides an illustration copyright 1997 by oxford university press

institutional cultural and transaction cost influences on entry mode choice and performance in this study we examine foreign market entry mode choice and firm performance for a sample of european union firms examining both financial and non financial performance measures we attempt to determine if firms that select their entry mode based on transaction cost institutional context and cultural context variables perform better than firms that make other mode choices we found that mode choice did matter firms whose mode choice could be predicted by the extended transaction cost model performed significantly better on both financial and non financial measures than did firms whose mode choice could not be predicted by the extended transaction cost model implications for future research are discussed

towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm this paper outlines a theory of the multiproduct firm important building blocks include excess capacity and its creation market imperfections and the peculiarities of organizational knowledge including its fungible and taut character a framework is adopted in which profit seeking firms are seen to diversify in order to avoid the high transactions costs associated with using various markets to trade the services of various specialized assets neoclassical explanations of the multiproduct firm are shown to be seriously deficient

the response of firms leverage to risk evidence from uk public versus nonpublic manufacturing firms this article empirically investigates the effects of macroeconomic and firm specific risk on firms leverage the analysis is carried out for a large panel of public and nonpublic uk manufacturing firms over the period 1999 2008 our investigation provides evidence that uk manufacturing firms use less short term debt during periods of high risk however the leverage of nonpublic manufacturing firms is more sensitive to firm specific risk in comparison to their public counterparts while macroeconomic risk affects both types of firms similarly our investigation also shows that firms with high liquid assets reduce their leverage more less during periods of heightened firm specific macroeconomic risk jel c23 g32