investment and coordination in oligopolistic industries we examine investment by firms in 24 chemical product industries to determine whether firms invest preemptively to achieve persistent increases in market share or whether there is evidence of behavior to maintain market share the data indicate that investment reduces the probability that rival firms will expand capacity but the effect is temporary large firms tend to maintain market share while smaller firms tend to invest simultaneously with rivals the role of preemptive investment is limited to that of permitting a firm to invest with a lower probability of redundant investment by rivals preemption does not allow a persistent increase in market share but instead acts as a means by which firms may coordinate capacity investment to help avoid episodes of industry overcapacity

spillovers through banking centers a panel data analysis of bank flows abstract this paper presents evidence that spillovers through bank lending contributed to the transmission of currency crises during the recent episodes of financial instability in emerging markets the innovation of the paper is that it looks beyond aggregated measures of contagion into the structure of bank flows disaggregating by banking centers the main findings are that spillovers caused by banks exposures to a crisis country help predict flows in third countries after the mexican and asian crises but not after the russian crisis in the latter there is evidence of a generalized outflow from emerging markets the importance of spillovers through banking centers suggests that countries might reduce contagion risk by diversifying the sources of their financing and by carefully monitoring borrowing from creditors exposed to potential crisis countries

central bank transparency and cross border banking abstract we analyze the effect of central bank transparency on cross border bank activities based on a panel gravity model for cross border bank claims for 21 home and 47 destination countries from 1998 to 2010 we find strong empirical evidence that a rise in central bank transparency in the destination country on average increases cross border claims using interaction models we find that the positive effect of central bank transparency on cross border claims is only significant if the central bank is politically independent and operates in a stable economic environment central bank transparency and credibility are thus considered complements by banks investing abroad

cournot duopoly with two production periods and cost differentials abstract saloner 1987 analyzes a cournot model with two production periods before the market clears if costs do not vary across periods any point on the outer envelope of the reaction functions between the firms stackelberg outputs is attainable with a subgame perfect nash equilibrium spne saloner s analysis is generalized by allowing for cost differences across periods the continuum of equilibria vanishes for any cost differential if costs fall slightly over time there are multiple leader follower equilibria otherwise the model generates a unique spne where both firms produce their single period cournot outputs in the period when production is cheaper

the role of games in security design we contend that security design should be approached as a problem of game design that is contracts should specify the procedures that govern the behavior of contract participants in determining outcomes as well as the allocations resulting from those outcomes we characterize optimal contracts in two nested classes all contracts including those that depend on the state and state independent contracts we demonstrate that in situations in which the dependence of contracts on the state is limited contracts designed as games can improve the allocation of resources relative to nonstrategic allocation rules article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

drivers of cross border banking exposures during the crisis abstract the recent crisis highlighted the role of cross border banking linkages this paper analyzes these linkages through an examination of both banking systems foreign credit exposures and borrower countries reliance on foreign bank credit it does this by combining bis data with bank level data the results indicate that the proposed refinements on measuring those two exposures are important especially when foreign bank affiliates funding relies heavily on local deposits after developing novel and necessary break in series and exchange rate variation adjustments estimations looking at the driving factors of both measures during 2006 2012 highlight i the role of systemic banking crises and global financial conditions in the evolution of banks foreign credit exposures ii the role of a larger set of factors in the case of the evolution of borrower countries reliance on foreign bank credit how countries borrowed from whom they borrowed and global financial and domestic demand conditions

excess capacity as a barrier to entry an empirical appraisal this paper examines excess capacity barriers to entry and investment dynamics in a sample of thirty eight chemical product industries logit and log linear models of investment behavior are estimated and specific case examples are considered the results show that incumbents rarely built excess capacity pre emptively in an effort to deter entry in general entrants and incumbents exhibited similar investment behavior

jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete malecki e j 2004 jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete regional studies38 1093 1112 the realization that places compete for investment has expanded in recent years to encompass competition among places for the attention of migrants tourists and media glow as well as investment the most competitive places have been multidimensional in their attractions and have made the transition to the knowledge based economy the latest priority is being placed on attracting mobile workers and mobile investment creative workers are the core of the knowledge economy and of its geographies such as intelligent places and learning regions knowledge metrics innovation indices and report cards are increasingly common each seemingly developed to sort the list of places in a different order lists or league tables of the best places for business to live retire and visit are key features of economies and societies whose factors of success

borrowing costs and the role of multilateral development banks evidence from cross border syndicated bank lending abstract cross border bank lending is a growing source of external finance in emerging and developing countries and could play a key role in infrastructure and development financing this paper looks at the role of multilateral development banks mdbs on the terms of syndicated loans focusing on loan pricing the results show that mdbs participation is associated with higher borrowing costs and longer maturities signaling a greater willingness by mdbs to finance risky projects which may not be financed by the private sector we also show that mdbs are more likely to lend to borrowers located in countries with high credit and financial risk overall our findings suggest that mdbs could play a role in easing access to credit for high risk borrowers

financial crises and cross border banking new evidence the surge in cross border banking prior to global financial crises took place not only in the interbank market but also in the retail market e g between banks and their private customers abroad we utilize confidential data to estimate for the first time the effects of banking currency and twin crises on the geography of cross border deposits and loans we show that each crisis type has its own specific effects that these effects themselves lead to sustained increases in cross border banking and that they are different for cross border loans and deposits respectively

mutually exclusive investment with technical uncertainty a firm which faces technical uncertainty as in pindyck 1993 can choose between two mutually exclusive investment projects projects 1 and 2 the added option to exercise project 2 makes the firm less likely to exercise project 1 an increase in the degree of technical uncertainty the investment rate or the investment value upon completion for project 2 encourages the firm to exercise project 2 by increasing the trigger level of the expected cost of project 2 this however ambiguously affects the firm s incentive to exercise project 1 as the firm would rather implement project 1 2 in a region where the expected cost of project 2 is relatively high low

seniority and maturity of debt contracts abstract this paper provides a model of how borrowers with private information about their credit prospects choose seniority and maturity of debt increased short term debt leads lenders to liquidate too often it also increases the sensitivity of financing costs to new information although better than average borrowers desire information sensitivity the model implies that short term debt will be senior to long term debt and that long term debt will allow the issue of additional future senior debt the model also has implications on the structure of leveraged buyouts and on how various types of lenders respond to potential defaults

the effect of unconventional monetary policy on cross border bank loans evidence from an emerging market abstract we analyze the impact of quantitative easing by the federal reserve european central bank and bank of england on cross border credit flows relying on comprehensive loan level data we find that fed qe strongly boosts cross border credit granted to turkish banks by banks located in the us euro area and uk while ecb and boe qes work only moderately through banks in the ea and uk respectively in general qe works at short maturities across bank locations and loan currencies more strongly for weaker lenders and borrowers and may have resulted in maturity mismatches in turkish banks searching for yield 99 words

knowledge in cities this study identifies clusters of us and canadian metropolitan areas with similar knowledge traits these groups ranging from making regions characterised by knowledge about manufacturing to thinking regions noted for knowledge about the arts humanities it and commerce can be used by analysts and policy makers for the purposes of regional benchmarking or comparing the types of programme and infrastructure available to support closely related economic activities in addition these knowledge based clusters help to explain the types of region that have levels of economic development that exceed or fall short of other places with similar amounts of college attainment regression results show that engineering building enterprising and making regions are associated with higher levels of productivity and or income per capita while teaching understanding working and comforting regions have lower levels of economic development

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

what s different about banks abstract negotiable certificates of deposit cd s trade in the capital market in competition with other securities like commercial paper and bankers acceptances if cd s must pay lenders competitive monetary interest the reserve tax on cd s is borne by bank borrowers viability of the tax means there must be something special about bank loans that makes some borrowers willing to pay higher interest rates than those on other securities of equivalent risk moreover there must be something special about banks that prevents other intermediaries from competing to assure that it never pays to finance loans with cd s

discussion of the effects of corporate governance on firms credit ratings abstract ashbaugh skaife collins and lafond 2006 the effects of corporate governance on firms credit ratings journal of accounting and economics this issue find that better governed firms receive better credit ratings and poor governance costs the median speculative grade firm 38 million in excess interest they also find that managers choose to be poorly governed to expropriate wealth the results from the primary analysis are persuasive leaving little doubt on whether ratings agencies value corporate governance however the authors estimate of the economic costs of poor governance is likely to be overstated despite the evidence on the costs of poor governance the final analysis leaves the question as to why firms choose to be poorly governed largely unanswered

the determinants of cross border equity flows abstract we explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross border equity flows between 14 countries 1989 1996 we show that a gravity model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions gross transaction flows depend on market size in source and destination country as well as trading costs in which both information and the transaction technology play a role distance proxies some information costs and other variables explicitly represent information transmission an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors and the efficiency of transactions the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive once we control for the informational friction we broaden the scope of our results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings

fear anger and credit on bank robberies and loan conditions we study the impact of emotions on real world decisions made by loan officers by analyzing the loan conditions of loans granted immediately after a bank branch robbery we find significant differences in conditions of the loans granted after a robbery compared to changes in loan conditions that occur contemporaneously at unaffected branches in general loan officers seem to adopt so called avoidance behaviour in accordance with the literature on posttraumatic stress their avoidance behavior is halved within two weeks after the robbery and the effect further varies depending on the presence of a firearm during the robbery

covenants and collateral as incentives to monitor although monitoring borrowers is thought to be a major function of financial institutions the presence of other claimants reduces an institutional lender s incentives to do this thus loan contracts must be structured to enhance the lender s incentives to monitor covenants make a loan s effective maturity and the ability to collateralize makes a loan s effective priority contingent on monitoring by the lender thus both covenants and collateral can be motivated as contractual devices that increase a lender s incentive to monitor these results are consistent with a number of stylized facts about the use of covenants and collateral in institutional lending modern finance theory suggests that financial intermediaries such as commercial banks insurance companies and finance companies monitor and control their borrowers on behalf of other investors 1 this article investigates how the loans made by these institutions can be structured so as to best enhance the institutions role as delegated monitors covenants and collateral are common features of loans made by financial institutions but these features are somewhat difficult to justify consider loan covenants clauses in a loan contract that require the borrower to take or refrain from various actions berlin and mester 1992 magee and sridhar 1994 and park 1994 show that by giving institutions the right to renegotiate or call loans when covenants are violated covenants serve as tripwires that enhance the flexibility and efficiency of financial contracting also as documented in smith and warner 1979 control rights from covenants reduce borrower adverse selection or moral hazard nevertheless by allowing institutions to demand repayment based on any information contractible or not

collateral type of lender and relationship banking as determinants of credit risk abstract this paper analyses the determinants of the probability of default pd of bank loans we focus the discussion on the role of a limited set of variables collateral type of lender and bank borrower relationship while controlling for the other explanatory variables the study uses information on the more than three million loans entered into by spanish credit institutions over a complete business cycle 1988 2000 collected by the bank of spain s credit register central de informacion de riesgos we find that collateralised loans have a higher pd loans granted by savings banks are riskier and finally that a close bank borrower relationship increases the willingness to take more risk

secured lending and default risk equilibrium analysis policy implications and empirical results the authors examine collateral in a competitive equilibrium in which borrowers can choose hidden actions and may additionally possess hidden knowledge apart from explaining the widespread use of collateral despite deadweight costs they show that an increase in the riskless interest rate causes equilibrium loan rates and collateral requirements to increase a decline in the deadweight costs of collateral reduces the equilibrium collateral use under moral hazard and an increase in the borrower s project size reduces equilibrium collateral use under moral hazard some of these predictions are tested and found to be supported by the data copyright 1991 by royal economic society

the impact of lead time on capital investments abstract we study equilibrium investment strategies of firms competing in stochastic dynamic market settings and facing two types of investment structures investment with significant lead time or time to build and investment without or minor lead time we investigate how investment behavior changes when investment is subject to time to build versus when it is not we characterize equilibrium investment strategies under several information structures and compare results to the social optimum we offer some new results the model predicts that controlling for demand and production and investment costs investments and outputs can be higher in progressive industries which often exhibit time to build than in fast paced industries where time to build is insignificant furthermore for both investment types investment with or without time to build we offer a novel equilibrium in which firms incrementally invest this behavior is driven by demand uncertainty and capacity constraints also expected outputs are lower than cournot outputs as firms face uncertainty moreover the amount of uncertainty has different effects over investment types

a theory of the syndicate form follows function we relate the organizational form of investment banking syndicates to moral hazard in team production although syndicates are dissolved upon deal completion membership stability across deals represents a barrier to entry that enables the capture of quasi rents this improves incentives for individual bankers to cultivate investor relationships that translate into greater expected proceeds reputational concerns of lead bankers amplify the effect we derive conditions under which restricted entry and designation of a lead banker strictly pareto dominate in which case it is also strictly pareto dominant for the syndicate s fee to be greater than members cost of participation copyright the american finance association 2001

financial crises and the composition of cross border lending abstract we examine the composition and drivers of cross border bank lending between 1995 and 2012 distinguishing between syndicated and non syndicated loans we show that on balance sheet syndicated loan exposures which account for almost one third of total cross border loan exposures increased during the global financial crisis due to large drawdowns on credit lines extended before the crisis our empirical analysis of the drivers of cross border loan exposures in a large bilateral dataset leads to three main results first banks with lower levels of capital favor syndicated over other kinds of cross border loans second borrower country characteristics such as level of development economic size and capital account openness are less important in driving syndicated than non syndicated loan activity suggesting a diversification motive for syndication third information asymmetries between lender and borrower countries became more binding for both types of cross border lending activity during the recent crisis

international capital flows to emerging markets national and global determinants using a novel dataset for emerging markets we empirically investigate the nature and determinants of aggregate and disaggregate capital inflows we present formal statistical evidence of commonalities in capital inflows with the strongest evidence for the level of equity and bank flows advanced economy long run bond yields and commodity prices are identified as determinants of global capital flows we also consider the national determinants of capital flows finding that financial openness and institutions matter for country flows finally we identify important commonalities in the volatility of bank inflows

european cities in the knowledge economy towards a typology the shift towards a knowledge based economy seems to favour some well endowed urban areas however not all cities benefit equally this paper discusses the shift towards a knowledge based economy

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

correlating the knowledge base of cities with economic growth the competitive advantage of cities in the developed world is increasingly thought to lie in their superior access to the knowledge base the generation of new knowledge through investment in research and development leads to new products services and processes which form the basis of the new economy attempts to correlate knowledge creation with economic growth have therefore tended to use r d measures such as the numbers of research establishments in a rather narrow sense this paper develops a much wider measure of the knowledge base comprising tacit knowledge codified knowledge and knowledge infrastructure for 19 european cities with the exception of the two world cities london and paris which significantly underperform there is a broad relationship between the quality of the knowledge base and economic change as measured by the competitive shift share residual

the information content of distressed restructurings involving public and private debt claims abstract this paper examines debt restructurings by financially distressed firms we develop a model which predicts that in public debt exchange offers firms with unfavorable private information will offer equity claims to convince bondholders that the firm s prospects are poor in contrast offering equity to well informed private lenders conveys favorable private information to outsiders consistent with our analysis we find positive average abnormal returns around restructurings that offer equity to private lenders and senior debt to public debtholders and we find significant negative average abnormal returns when private lenders are offered senior debt and public lenders are offered equity

uncertainty and cross border banking flows abstract while global uncertainty measured by the vix has proven to be a robust global push factor of international capital flows there has been no systematic study assessing the role of uncertainty in driving bilateral capital flows this paper examines the effects of higher country specific uncertainty on cross border banking flows using data from the bank for international settlements locational banking statistics the bilateral structure of this data allows disentangling supply factors from demand factors thereby helping identify the effect of higher uncertainty on cross border banking flows from other confounding factors the results of this analysis suggest that i uncertainty in a source country domestic economy is both a lender specific push and pull factor that robustly predicts a decrease in outflows cross border lending and inflows cross border borrowing ii the decline in cross border borrowing is larger than the decline in cross border lending that is the net cross border position of the banking sector increases iii despite a decline in cross border bank lending in the absolute sense the share of cross border bank lending in total bank lending increases suggesting a portfolio rebalancing iv this rebalancing occurs only when banks are lending to borrowers in advanced economies but not to those in emerging market economies

debt and communications technology diffusion retrospective evidence this study has evaluated the relationship between debt in the capital structure of firms and the dynamics of broadband and digital technology adoption in the united states based on a large dataset on local exchange carriers in the united states over a contemporary historical fourteen year period from 1988 to 2001 using treatment effects modeling the impact of debt in impacting the levels of firms broadband deployment has been found to be negative and significant the primary source of debt in the sector has been in the form of arm s length corporate bonds and the assumptions of the monitoring hypothesis associated with such debt that lenders in the face of information and collective actions problems might not be able to control managers and hence invest less in highly technology intensive situations are supported by the data additionally the data set has been split into separate sets for two periods one between 1988 and 1995 for the period before the telecommunications act of 1996 came into force and the other set between 1996 and 2001 and the results have stayed consistent a test of the coefficients between the two periods has shown that the negative impact of leverage on broadband deployment has become stronger after the introduction of competition in the sector and this has suggested that the change in the institutional logics between the two periods has been of material impact in influencing lenders perceptions

collateral and rationing sorting equilibria in monopolistic and competitive credit markets the authors examine how market structure affects credit allocation under universal risk neutrality and asymmetric information about borrowers they consider both monopolistic and perf ectly competitive banks and examine the role of collateral in each ca se when a bank is a monopolist on the loan side they find collatera l is never used and asymmetric information results in reduced bank le nding under perfect competition collateral has a useful sorting rol e moreover rationing is possible even with collateral availability and perfectly elastic deposit supply in this setting the authors sh ow co signers are valuable social welfare properties of the monopoly and competitive equilibria are also compared copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the design of internal control and capital structure we study the design of internal control and capital structure we pose the question when is control allocated only to shareholders and when is it allocated to other stakeholders such as debtholders or the management team we show that shareholders debtholders get control when the firm s cash flow is relatively sensitive insensitive to managerial effort our theory implies that the signs of the correlations between endogenous variables when shareholders have absolute control are reversed when debtholders have veto power in particular debt level and firm value are negatively positively correlated when debtholders have veto power shareholders have absolute control article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

explicit investment rules with time to build and uncertainty abstract we establish explicit socially optimal rules for an irreversible investment decision with time to build and uncertainty assuming a price sensitive demand function with a random intercept we provide comparative statics and economic interpretations for three models of demand arithmetic brownian geometric brownian and the cox ingersoll ross committed capacity that is the installed capacity plus the investment in the pipeline must never drop below the best predictor of future demand minus two biases the discounting bias takes into account the fact that investment is paid upfront for future use the precautionary bias multiplies a type of risk aversion index by the local volatility relying on the analytical forms we discuss in detail the economic effects for example the impact of volatility on the optimal investment is negligible in some cases it vanishes in the cir model for long delays and in the gbm model for high discount rates

production and spatial distribution of switchgrass and miscanthus in the united states under uncertainty and sunk cost abstract the u s cellulosic biofuel mandate has not been enforced in recent years uncertainty surrounding the enforcement of the mandate in addition to high production and harvest cost have contributed to a delay in the widespread planting of bioenergy crops such as switchgrass and miscanthus previous literature has shown that under uncertainty and sunk cost an investment threshold is further increased due to the value associated from holding the investment option in this paper we extend the previous literature by applying a real option switching model to bioenergy crop production first we calculate the county level break even price which triggers a switching away from traditional field crops corn soybeans and wheat to bioenergy crops under various scenarios differing by commodity prices production cost and biomass price expectations we show that the resulting break even prices at the county level can be substantially higher than previously estimated due to the inclusion of the option value in a second step we identify counties that are most likely to grow switchgrass or miscanthus by simulating a stochastic biomass price over time our results highlight two issues first switchgrass or miscanthus are not grown in the midwest under any scenario under low agricultural residue removal rates biomass crops are mostly grown in the southeast second under the assumption of a high removal rates bioenergy crops are not grown anywhere in the u s since the cellulosic biofuel mandate can be covered by agricultural residues

resolving the commitment versus flexibility trade off the role of resource accumulation lags we examine how time consuming resource accumulation influences the classic strategy trade off between commitment and flexibility in particular using 1975 95 data from the worldwide petrochemical

bonds or loans the effect of macroeconomic fundamentals the costs of debt crises are not invariant to the foreign debt instrument composition bank loans or bonds the lending boom of the 1990s witnessed considerable variation over time and across countries in the debt instrument used by emerging market em borrowers this paper tests how macroeconomic fundamentals afiect the composition of international debt instruments used by em borrowers analysis of micro level data using ordered probability model shows that macroeconomic fundamentals explain a signiflcant share of variation in the ratio of bonds to loans for private borrowers but not for the sovereigns jel classiflcation f34

the great retrenchment international capital flows during the global financial crisis the current crisis saw an unprecedented collapse in international capital flows after years of rising financial globalization we identify the stylized facts and main drivers of this development the retrenchment in international capital flows is a highly heterogeneous phenomenon first across time being especially dramatic in the wake of the lehman brothers failure secondly across types of flows with banking flows being the hardest hit due to their sensitivity of risk perception and thirdly across regions with emerging economies experiencing a shorter lived retrenchment than developed economies our econometric analysis shows that the magnitude of the retrenchment in capital flows across countries is linked to the extent of international financial integration its specific nature with countries relying on bank flows being the hardest hit as well as domestic macroeconomic conditions and their connection to world trade flows gian maria milesi ferretti and cedric tille

global banks and crisis transmission abstract we study the effect of financial integration through banks on the transmission of international business cycles in a sample of 18 20 developed countries between 1978 and 2009 we find that in periods without financial crises increases in bilateral banking linkages are associated with more divergent output cycles this relation is significantly weaker during financial turmoil periods suggesting that financial crises induce co movement among more financially integrated countries we also show that countries with stronger direct and indirect financial ties to the u s experienced more synchronized cycles with the u s during the recent 2007 2009 crisis we then interpret these findings using a simple general equilibrium model of international business cycles with banks and shocks to banking activity the model suggests that the relation between integration and synchronization depends on the type of shocks hitting the world economy and that shocks to global banks played an important role in triggering and spreading the 2007 2009 crisis

home production meets time to build an innovation in this paper is to introduce a time to build technology for the production of market capital into a model with home production our main finding is that the two anomalies that have plagued all household production models the positive correlation between business and household investment and household investment s leading business investment over the business cycle are resolved when time to build is added

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

the effect of time to build on strategic investment under uncertainty we show that time to build which creates a lag between the decision to invest and production is an important element of industry structure we study a multiperiod investment game where there is demand uncertainty adding time to build to the model alters the classic tradeoff between making strategic commitments and exploiting the option to wait furthermore time to build gives rise to novel equilibria in which firms invest incrementally which contrasts with most prior work on multiperiod investment games in which firms invest only once we show how time to build affects firm heterogeneity investment timing the option value of waiting the evolution of prices and social welfare copyright 2003 by the rand corporation

the determinants of contract terms in bank revolving credit agreements the paper examines the determinants of contract terms on bank revolving credit agree ments revolvers of medium large publicly traded companies we model the duration maturity secured status and pricing decisions within a simultaneous decision frame work thereby overcoming the biased and inconsistent estimates in prior single equation studies of debt contract terms we find strong interrelationships between contract terms with significant bi directional relationships between duration and secured status and be tween the all in spread and commitment fees and a unidirectional relationship from both duration and secured status to all in spread we also illustrate how several single equa tion studies of contract terms draw incorrect conclusions because of their inappropriate assumption that other contract terms and leverage were exogenous finally our results sup port the hypothesis that the setting of contract terms plays an important role in alleviating contracting problems

technological competition uncertainty and oligopoly abstract in an oligopoly context the present technological choice of a firm which expects to receive private revelant information just prior to the uncertain market stage has both a flexibility value and a strategic commitment value in contrast to some common wisdom ideas we provide a natural two stage competition framework in which an increase in uncertainty always raises the commitment value of the technological choice of the firm and may decrease its flexibility value when the increased uncertainty takes the form of more variable beliefs the first result tends to reinforce therefore the findings of the strategic commitment literature under certainty

flexibility premium of emissions permits abstract investments in abatement technology are often characterised by irreversibility and significant implementation lags whereas emissions permits can be traded at any time as such abatement and emissions permit trading systems are hardly perfect substitutes we formally study the flexibility of emissions permits and propose a unified framework to rationalise the impact of both investment divestment lags and irreversibility in relation to the price of emissions permits using option pricing concepts we reformulate the technology adoption problem in terms of the technology s characteristics irreversibility and implementation lags and offer a conceptual quantification of the flexibility premium of emissions permits

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

firm scale and the endogenous timing of entry a choice between commitment and flexibility abstract this paper presents a model of stochastic oligopoly with demand uncertainty where firms endogenously choose entry timing we examine two extreme types of market structure and show that the equilibrium correspondence that connects them is continous with two identically sized firms there are symmetric cournot type equilibria where the probability of early entry declines with greater uncertainty and for low uncertainty two asymmetric equilibria with one large firm with a continuum of nonatomic firms there is a unique stackelberg equilibrium we conclude that the behavior of a dominant firm with a finite fringe can be approximated by stackelberg equilibrium journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d21 l11

a theory of debt and equity diversity of securities and manager shareholder congruence this paper shows how the optimal financial structure of a firm complements incentive schemes to discipline managers and how the securities return streams determine the claim holders incentives to intervene in management the theory rationalizes 1 the multipucity of securities 2 the observed correlation between return streams and control rights of securities and 3 the partial congruence between managerial and equity holder preferences over policy choices and monetary rewards as well as the low level of interference of equity in management the theory also offers new prospects for a reappraisal of the earlier corporate finance literature

u s monetary policy and fluctuations of international bank lending abstract there is no consensus in the empirical literature on the direction in which u s monetary policy affects cross border bank lending we find robust evidence that the impact of the u s federal funds rate on cross border bank lending in a given period depends on the prevailing international capital flows regime and on the level of the two main components of the federal funds rate macroeconomic fundamentals and the monetary policy stance during episodes in which bank lending from advanced to emerging economies is booming the relationship between the federal funds rate and cross border bank lending is positive and mostly driven by the macroeconomic fundamentals component which is consistent with a search for yield behavior by internationally active banks in contrast during episodes of stagnant growth in bank lending from advanced to emerging economies the relationship between the federal funds rate and bank lending is negative mainly due to the monetary policy stance component of the federal funds rate the latter set of results is most pronounced for lending to emerging markets which is consistent with the international bank lending channel and flight to quality behavior by internationally active banks

investment and competition this paper examines how industry structure affects corporate investment patterns real options theory shows that deferring irreversible investment in the face of uncertainty is valuable theory also shows that the value of waiting to invest falls if investment opportunities are contestable consistent with these theories we find that firms in monopolistic industries exhibit lower investment q sensitivity and are slower to invest than firms in competitive industries however we find that investment q sensitivity and investment speed are highest in oligopolistic industries suggesting that the value of investing strategically can outweigh the value of waiting indeed oligopolistic industries experience less entry and more exit than other industries

the drivers of financial globalization over the past decade emerging markets have accounted for a growing fraction of world gdp and international trade reflecting fast growth in china and india but also strong economic performance across the board and the spec tacular increase in foreign exchange reserve holdings the growing importance of sovereign wealth funds and the pattern of global imbal ances more generally suggest that these coun tries are also playing a major role in financial globalization