investment financing decisions and tax policy mists have analyzed the effects of taxes on capital spending most studies assume that firms respond to prices set in centralized securities markets such as market interest rates of tobin s q and firms undertake all profitable investment projects firms choose the mix or finance among internal funds debt and new equity independently the availability of finance does not limit investment the implications for tax policy are clear the marginal tax rate on returns from a new project matters for investment not the firm s average tax burden on returns from its investments in place for firms that face imperfect markets for

student responsiveness to earnings data in the college scorecard using the universe of sat score sends to colleges and the exact date on which these scores are sent we estimate how students responded to the release of the u s department of education s college scorecard in september 2015 we find that data on annual cost and graduation rate both of which were previously available did not impact the volume of score sends received by colleges by contrast we estimate that each 10 increase in reported earnings resulted in a 2 4 increase in score sends the impact is driven almost entirely by well resourced high schools and students we find little evidence that the count or composition of enrolled students changed as a result of the scorecard information shock with the exception of a slight increase in academic preparedness as measured by sat scores among enrollees at colleges with higher reported earnings jel i2 i23 i26 i28 l15

the role of application assistance and information in college decisions results from the h r block fafsa experiment growing concerns about low awareness and take up rates for government support programs like college financial aid have spurred calls to simplify the application process and enhance visibility we present results from a randomized field experiment in which low income individuals receiving tax preparation help were also offered immediate assistance and a streamlined process to complete the free application for federal student aid fafsa for themselves or their children treated participants were also provided with aid estimates that were compared against tuition cost amounts for nearby colleges the combined assistance and information treatment substantially increased fafsa submissions and ultimately the likelihood of college attendance persistence and aid receipt in particular high school seniors whose parents received the treatment were 8 percentage points more likely to have completed two years of college going from 28 to 36 during the first three years following the experiment families who received aid information but no assistance with the fafsa did not experience improved outcomes the findings suggest many other opportunities for using personal assistance to increase participation in programs that require filling out forms to become eligible jel codes i2 h4 j24 copyright 2012 oxford university press

size age and firm growth in an infant industry the computer hardware industry in india abstract in contrast to the existing studies on the relationship of firm growth with size and age of the firm which typically focus on relatively mature industries in developed economies this study analyses firm growth patterns for an infant industry in a developing economy it is found that a age positively impacts growth which is the opposite of the result in previous studies b as in previous studies current size negatively impacts growth but the magnitude is much higher and c lagged size negatively impacts growth suggesting that fixed factors become a hindrance to growth in rapidly growing infant industries

growth of firms in developing countries evidence from cote d ivoire the paper presents evidence in support of a particular growth process of firms that is consistent with a missing middle in the size distribution of manufacturing firms in african countries firm growth is explained by size and age effects as a result of efficiency exploiting through scale enlargements and learning but is strongly moderated by reputation effects and formal legitimation which facilitate access to output markets and resources complementing the model with data on growth obstacles as perceived by the owners of firms medium sized firms are found to be strongly hurt by insufficient access to infrastructure and financial services

size age and activity sector on the growth of the small and medium firm size although corporate growth is one of the most researched subjects in different areas of economic science it is not currently based on a general theory or generally accepted conceptual definition in spite of this growth has usually been considered an essential objective for a firm contributing to its survival and competitiveness this work aims to provide a more in depth study of the factors that condition the growth of small and medium sized firms by offering some empirical evidence that will contribute to its modelling especially in relation to the influence of size age and activity sector in this context we shall attempt to contrast the validity of gibrat s approach and the learning theory

the behaviour of state firms in eastern europe pre privatisation in this paper we explore the behaviour of state firms pre privatisation the incentives and the constraints facing managers and the nature and the power of the coalitions within the firms we show that managers on low incentive payment schemes with little formal stake in privatisation and who face possible redundancy have little incentive to embark on restructuring hardened budget constraints career concerns and potential stakes in the privatised firm however may strengthen managerial incentives to restructure we then introduce an influence function which captures how the distribution of winners and losers within the firm and size of their loss and gain affects the probability of restructuring the function illustrates how strong opposition coming from large concentrated losses is likely to dominate diffuse support from small widely distributed gains government measures such as hardening budget constraints financing of severance payments and selective debt writedowns affect the distribution of gainers and losers and may be used to overcome blocking coalitions and increase support for restructuring examination of a range of enterprise case studies vindicates our hypothesis that the structure of control and production strongly affect incentives to restructure centralised management structures the presence of non performing units and a functional division of activities have all acted as serious constraints on the unbundling restructuring process whilst the removal of state subsidies has been critical in forcing firms to rationalise production and unbundle activities

can socioeconomic heritage produce a lost generation with regard to entrepreneurship a considerable amount of literature deals with the influence of institutions on entrepreneurship but for all that little is known about the interplay between institutions and personal determinants of entrepreneurship in this paper the empirical evidence that older people in transition economies have low engagement in entrepreneurial activity is the starting point for analyzing how institutions moderate the relationship between individual characteristics and entrepreneurial choice the results show that the socioeconomic heritage of being exposed to socialism deters entrepreneurship an effect that is more pronounced for high impact entrepreneurship detailed analyses reveal that the effect is driven by devaluation of socialist work experience and the influence of socialism on mindset

comparing the impact of credit constraints on the growth of smes in a transition country with an established market economy in this paper we compare the role of internal finance on the growth of firms between a leading transition country slovenia and an established market economy belgium we find that firms in slovenia are more sensitive to internal financing constraints than their belgian counterparts furthermore we find that de novo firms and firms with long term debt are most constrained and that micro and smes can face great difficulties in accessing external sources of finance foreign firms however are able to raise external finance and consequently their growth is less reliant on the availability of internal finance our findings appear to indicate that although slovenian firms are no longer recipients of soft budget constraints the financial environment is not yet fully functional

non cooperative negotiation strategies for vendor selection vendor selection decisions are typically multi objective in nature in an environment of competing vendors for a product or service some vendors are selected and some are not this paper describes three approaches for the selection and negotiation with vendors who were not selected furthermore it describes how in certain situations two multi criteria analysis tools multi objective programming and data envelopment analysis can be used together for this selection and negotiation process the paper describes non cooperative vendor negotiation strategies where the selection of one vendor results in another being left out of the solution

college selectivity and earnings this article shows that college performance and selectivity have significant effects on earnings it suggests that work that does not include college performance overstates the effect of college se

supply chain focus dependent supplier selection problem increasing globalization diversity of the product range and increasing customer awareness are making the market s highly competitive thereby forcing different supply chains to adapt to different stimuli on a continuous basis it is also well recognized that overall supply chain focus should be given an overriding priority over the individual goals of the players if one were to improve overall supply chain surplus among all the possible order winners cost and responsiveness seem to be the most significant metrics based on which majority of the supply chains compete with each other supplier selection problem is one of the crucial problems that need to be addressed in configuring a supply chain that could have far reaching ramifications on the total supply chain costs and order winnability our model that considers inventory costs and the supply chain cycle time reduction costs would aid a supply chain manager to make informed decisions with regard to supplier selection problem at any stage dependent upon the priorities attached to supply chain costs and cycle time inventory related costs and responsiveness related costs are the two primary cost elements that are considered in this model we are also making use of a novel dimensionless quantity called the coefficient of inverse responsiveness that not only facilitates the introduction of responsiveness related costs into the model but also improves the scalability and simplifies the analysis and interpretation of the results based on the strategic model developed we offer some very interesting managerial insights with respect to the effect of cost efficient operations and or location and cost of volume related flexibility at a stage on alternate suppliers which in turn affects the overall supply chain performance

sales growth of spanish tourist firms some implications of gibrat s law on marketing management abstract the research presented in this paper is targeted towards empirical validation of three hypotheses deduced from gibrat s law and concerning sales growth in the spanish tourism industry the research refers to the years 1997 2000 and uses a sample of 1131 surviving firms all of which are devoted to tourism activities regression correlation and automatic interaction detection techniques were used throughout the sample the results show the existence of two firm growth segments set apart by a threshold size reached only when initial size is measured in sales terms firms above the threshold size grow at a significantly lower accumulated rate than firms below it thus contradicting gibrat s law however no relationship was observed for successive inter annual growth rates this in turn suggests that marketing actions and programmes have rather a medium and long term effect than a short term effect over sales growth sound implications about the firms degree of market opportunity management strategic interdependence and market orientation were deduced from these results

on the relationship between firm size and export intensity export marketing literature supports the view that firm size is positively related to export intensity although the empirical findings have been mixed a number of theoretical arguments are used to support this proposition i e international marketing economies of scale limited managerial and financial resources of small firms decisionmaker s risk perception based on a large survey of the italian manufacturing industry the article falsifies the proposition and challenges some widely held assumptions in export marketing literature

firm growth and liquidity constraints a dynamic analysis using a large unbalanced panel data set of portuguese manufacturing firms surviving over the period from 1990 to 2001 the purpose of this paper is to examine whether liquidity constraints faced by business firms affect firm growth we use a gmm system to estimate a dynamic panel data model of firm growth that incorporates cash flow as a measure of liquidity constraints and persistence of growth the model is estimated for all size classes including micro firms our findings reveal that smaller and younger firms have higher growth cash flow sensitivities than larger and more mature firms this is consistent with the suggestion that financial constraints on firm growth may be relatively more severe for small and young firms nevertheless the same finding can be interpreted in a different way if we consider the more recent literature which interpret the higher investment cash flow sensitivity of younger and smaller firm in absence of financial market imperfection as the outcome of these firms reaction to the fact that realisation of their cash flows reveals them the direction to go in presence of uncertainty of their growth prospect besides firms that were small and young at the beginning of the sample period exhibited more persistent growth than those that were large and old finally these results have significant policy implications

duration of firms in an infant industry the case of indian computer hardware abstract this study analyses survival of firms in an infant industry in a developing economy it is found that a entry size and the probability of exit are positively related which is the opposite of the result in most previous studies b similar to previous studies post entry size is negatively related to the hazard c firms with longer duration have a more volatile time path of size d the hazard declines with age at an increasing rate suggesting increasing returns to learning and e diversification of firms and public ownership have little effect on duration

the small the young and the productive determinants of manufacturing firm growth in ethiopia abstract this study examines the relationships between firm growth and firm size age and labor productivity using annual census based panel data on ethiopian manufacturing firms the study explicitly addresses the ongoing statistical concerns in firm growth models such as sample censoring regression to the mean and unobserved heterogeneity our empirical results indicate that firm growth decreases with size smaller firms have faster rates of growth than larger firms even after compensating for their higher attrition rates the negative relation between age and growth predicted by the learning model is found to apply only to younger firms labor productivity affects firm growth positively which indicates that there is a market selection process at work during the period of economic reforms in ethiopia

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

the impact of ethnic diversity on microenterprise start ups until recently factors determining the decisions made by microfinance institutions mfis to extend loans to business start ups had not been explored recent evidence shows that mfi performance wi

the relationship between firm growth size and age estimates for 100 manufacturing industries this study uses a sample of all firms operating in 100 manufacturing industries to examine some aspects of firm dynamics it finds that firm growth the variability of firm growth and the probability that a firm will fail decrease with firm age it also finds that firm growth decreases at a diminishing rate with firm size even after controlling for the exit of slow growing firms from the sample gibrat s law therefore fails although the severity of the failure decreases with firm size copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

is the growth of small firms constrained by internal finance this paper examines the long standing theory that the growth of small firms is often constrained by the quantity of internal finance under plausible assumptions when financing constraints are binding an additional dollar of internal finance should generate slightly more than an additional dollar of growth in assets this quantitative prediction should not hold for the relatively small number of firms which access external equity we test these predictions with a panel of more than 1 600 small firms and find that the growth of most firms is constrained by internal finance our results have implications for several different research literatures including models of firm growth

union influence in post socialist europe we examine enterprise level union influence in post socialist countries we hypothesise that calculative hrm is more strongly associated with low levels of union influence than collaborative hrm using the uk as a benchmark we find that calculative hrm is indeed more damaging to union influence than collaborative although to a much lesser extent than in the uk we find that union influence corresponds to enterprise union density and is most apparent when the business cycle is unfavourable we explain our findings by reference to east european members continued attachment to unionism for non bargaining reasons

the effect of entrepreneurial rhetoric on microlending investment an examination of the warm glow effect microlending provides a valuable alternative to traditional financing for entrepreneurs in impoverished countries drawing from theory on political rhetoric and the concept of warm glow giving we examine characteristics of entrepreneurial narratives that are related to how quickly entrepreneurs receive funding using a sample of 6051 narratives from entrepreneurs in developing countries we demonstrate that narratives higher in language indicating blame and present concern lead to more rapid funding while narratives higher in accomplishment tenacity and variety lead to slower funding our findings suggest that the presentation of investment profiles should be carefully managed to maximize funding likelihood

survival duration of plants evidence from the us petroleum refining industry abstract this paper presents a duration analysis on the survival of us petroleum refining plants for the 1981 1986 period when the industry as a whole declines in response to the decontrol of crude oil markets the purpose is to examine the duration dependence and determinants of post deregulation plant lifetimes the weibull model with the correction for unobserved individual heterogeneity provides a better fit to the data empirical results show that plant size age regulatory subsidies technology use and multiplant coordination are key determinants of refinery life duration after deregulation in addition major integrated oil companies tend to make timely restructuring via refinery closures and sales the interactive effects of size and technology use and of multiplant coordination and integrated organization are also important to the refinery survival

do small plants grow faster evidence from the taiwan electronics industry abstract the relationships between plant size age labor productivity and growth rates are examined for a sample of taiwan electronics plants plant growth is negatively related to both size and age and positively related to labor productivity

multifaceted aid for low income students and college outcomes evidence from north carolina we study the evolution of a campus based aid program for low income students that began with grant heavy financial aid and later added a suite of nonfinancial supports we find little to no evidence that program eligibility during the early years 2004 2006 in which students received additional institutional grant aid and few nonfinancial supports improved postsecondary progress performance or completion in contrast program eligible students in more recent cohorts 2007 2010 when the program supplemented grant heavy aid with an array of nonfinancial supports were more likely to meet credit accumulation benchmarks toward timely graduation and earned higher grade point averages than their barely ineligible counterparts jel i21 i23 i24 j08

technological regimes and the persistence of first mover advantages this article investigates first mover and early entrant advantages in terms of market share and its growth by analyzing a unique panel data set of korean manufacturing firms specifically this article examines the existence and persistence of first mover and early entrant advantages across different technological regimes we find that these advantages are influenced by characteristics of the firms as well as of the technological regimes under which they operate in general early entry into a market benefits a firm in terms of the size and growth rate of its market share early entrants including first movers have higher market shares except in regimes with high technological opportunity and low r d appropriability however first movers are disadvantaged in terms of market share growth except in regimes with low technological opportunities and high r d appropriability we also find that firm specific competences in r d and advertising help to maintain attenuate first mover and early entrant advantages disadvantages copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

does it pay to attend an elite private college cross cohort evidence on the effects of college type on earnings although a substantial and rising labor market premium is associated with college attendance in general little is known about how this premium varies across institutions of different types and across time in this paper we explicitly model high school students choice of college type characterized by selectivity and control based on individual and family characteristics including ability and parental economic status and an estimate of the net costs of attendance we estimate selectivity corrected outcome equations using data from both the national longitudinal study of the high school class of 1972 and high school and beyond which permit us to determine the effects of college quality on wages and earnings and how this effect varies across time even after controlling for selection effects strong evidence emerges of a significant economic return to attending an elite private institution and some evidence suggests this premium has increased over time

is lack of funds the main obstacle to growth ebrd s experience with small and medium sized businesses in central and eastern europe abstract small and medium sized enterprises smes potentially constitute the most dynamic firms in an emerging economy they are the ones most likely to move into areas of comparative advantage and high value added though they often face economic institutional and legal obstacles obstacles include limited access to working capital and long term credit legal and regulatory restrictions inadequate infrastructure high transaction costs and limited managerial and technical expertise despite the presence of multiple and often interrelated constraints however the widespread belief on which policies to support smes are based is that the lack of finance constitutes the main obstacle to the growth of smes enterprise survey work is the tool generally used to deepen our understanding of constraints affecting smes formation and growth the european bank for reconstruction and development ebrd is no exception in this respect during its early years it drew substantially on a set of enterprise surveys conducted by the world bank between 1991 and 1993 in hungary the czech and slovak federal republic csfr poland and russia investigating the obstacles faced by smes as the volume and geographical spread of its operations increased the ebrd felt the need to design and run its own surveys effectively addressing specific issues encountered in the context of its increasing lending and investment activity in central and eastern europe cee the findings of this analysis confirmed the belief that credit constraints constitute one of the main obstacles to growth of smes and encouraged the ebrd to tailor its financing instruments to the stage of transition of the country in question and the ability of the local financial system to assume key responsibilities this paper analyzes the way in which the ebrd strives to correct this capital market failure in the region in which it operates the fundamental principles on which ebrd policy is based are a preference for reaching the smes via local financial intermediaries a commercial approach to the provision of finance and finally a focus on development of the local financial system as a whole it is still too early to draw conclusions on ebrd activity in the field of smes financing based on other types of indicators than data on volume of signed commitments a large part of the loans is still in the grace period therefore investments are in an early phase and operation performance evaluation reports on this type of operations are still too few aggregate data on volume of ebrd financing through financial intermediaries paint an encouraging picture a 250 increase in the volume of such operations between 1994 and 1997 a nine fold increase in the number of subprojects between 1995 and 1997 and an ever widening geographical spread of activities and decreasing size of subprojects indicate that the experience of the ebrd in financing through financial intermediaries is on the whole positive financing provided to intermediaries is not necessarily always intended nor guaranteed to reach smes it is however guaranteed to create the appropriate financing channels which are necessary to ease the smes liquidity constraint this paper discusses the shortcomings of the financial system in the cee countries it outlines the ebrd policy to support smes and the various instruments employed so far and presents selected case studies to throw light on how good project design can help overcome difficult environments and lower the perception of risk connected to indigenous smes a summary of the findings of the survey work conducted by the ebrd in the region is also presented

the dynamics of industrial mark ups in two small open economies does national competition policy matter abstract in this paper we investigate the impact of competition policy on the level and the dynamics of firm price cost margins in two european countries belgium and the netherlands we study three questions i did the changes in the competition law and policy that took place in belgium in 1993 have an effect on the level and the evolution of the price cost margins of firms ii are price mark ups in the netherlands where there was no strict competition policy until recently higher than in belgium iii is openness import competition sufficient to discipline firm behaviour we find that the introduction of a new competition policy in belgium did not have any effect on the price mark ups in belgium we also find that mark ups in the netherlands are higher than those in belgium finally we find that import competition does not lead to lower price cost margins we offer a number of explanations and implications

the economics of financing higher education different arguments exist pro and contra tax financed subsidies in higher education it has been argued that private incentives to study are sufficiently high while the financing of those subsidies can be deemed regressive as they are co financed by relatively poorer non students alternatively several arguments have been put forward why higher tax financed subsidies are desirable such as externalities and credit constraints this study scrutinizes these different arguments and discusses the implications for the different ways in which higher education can be financed calculations of private returns across the oecd confirm that private incentives to invest in higher education are high however economic theory poses that it is the marginal social return that must guide policy which will reflect both equity and efficiency considerations we assess the potential regressivity of higher education subsidies using different perspectives and assess the different efficiency arguments for government intervention in higher education tax financed subsidies turn out to be regressive in most cases but depending on the perspective and the country under examination discussion of the efficiency arguments is focused on those that are most relevant in light of the empirical evidence and their relevance for the different financing modes externalities uninsurable risk credit constraints and misprediction we conclude that to deal with the more credible failures in higher education tax financed subsidies are blunt instruments for a large share of the countries under consideration shifting towards income contingent loans or graduate taxes appears more appropriate when taking into account both efficiency and equity considerations

a multi phase mathematical programming approach for effective supply chain design abstract a supply chain is an alliance of independent business processes such as supplier manufacturing and distribution processes that perform the critical functions in the order fulfillment process effective design and management of supply chains assists in production and delivery of a variety of products at low cost high quality and short lead times although the importance of supply chain design is emphasized in the literature few formal decision models have been proposed for this purpose this paper presents a multi phase mathematical programming approach for effective supply chain design more specifically the methodology develops and applies a combination of multi criteria efficiency models based on game theory concepts and linear and integer programming methods model application and insights are detailed through numerical illustrations

innovation firm size and growth in a centralized organization the optimal innovation firm size and growth are derived for a centrally controlled firm in which only the entrepreneur evaluates and restores current projects or evaluates and adopts new projects current projects are subject to failure due to entry and possible obsolescence while new projects may not be successful the optimal allocation of attention implies bounds on firm size and that the rate of innovation depends not only on monopoly profits firm size and technological opportunity but also on the probability of obsolescence the effects of monopoly power and firm size on innovation also depend on the degree of obsolescence

determination of paths to vendor market efficiency using parallel coordinates representation a negotiation tool for buyers abstract this study demonstrates the use of data envelopment analysis for measuring vendor performance and efficiency an algorithm by inselberg is employed for determining points of vendor efficiency on multiple criteria this study then demonstrates how parallel coordinates graphical representation can be used to display the efficiency of vendors on multiple criteria and in so doing visually identify benchmark values on these criteria for negotiating with inefficient vendors an example of a firm purchasing in a jit manufacturing environment is used to illustrate this approach the results of this approach point to its flexibility for use in vendor negotiations

student portfolios and the college admissions problem we develop a decentralized bayesian model of college admissions with two ranked colleges heterogeneous students and two realistic match frictions students find it costly to apply to college and college evaluations of their applications are uncertain students thus face a portfolio choice problem in their application decision while colleges choose admissions standards that act like market clearing prices enrollment at each college is affected by the standards at the other college through student portfolio reallocation in equilibrium student college sorting may fail weaker students sometimes apply more aggressively and the weaker college might impose higher standards applying our framework we analyse affirmative action showing how it induces minority applicants to construct their application portfolios as if they were majority students of higher caliber

ownership liquidity and investment this article documents a nonlinear relationship between insider shareholdings and the sensitivity of a firm s investment to its cash flow as insider holdings increase from zero investment cash flow sensitivities rise sharply this relationship weakens at higher levels of insider ownership and i find some evidence that investment cash flow sensitivities decrease slowly with insider holdings after a certain point i argue that these results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that free cash flow problems cause the widely noted sensitivity of investment to cash flow the results are consistent with the presence of asymmetric information problems in the capital markets that are heightened when managers have a strong incentive to maximize shareholder returns

cohort crowding how resources affect collegiate attainment abstract analyses of college attainment typically focus on factors affecting enrollment demand including the financial attractiveness of a college education and the availability of financial aid while implicitly assuming that resources available per student on the supply side of the market are elastically supplied the higher education market in the united states is dominated by public and non profit production and colleges and universities receive considerable subsidies from state federal and private sources because consumers pay only a fraction of the cost of production changes in demand are unlikely to be accommodated fully by colleges and universities without commensurate increases in non tuition revenue for this reason public investment in higher education plays a crucial role in determining the degrees produced and the supply of college educated workers to the labor market using data covering the last half of the twentieth century we find strong evidence that large cohorts within states have relatively low undergraduate degree attainment reflecting less than perfect elasticity of supply in the higher education market that large cohorts receive lower public subsidies per student in higher education explains this result indicating that resources have large effects on degree production our results suggest that reduced resources per student following from rising cohort size and lower state expenditures are likely to have significant negative effects on the supply of college educated workers entering the labor market

perceptions of institutional quality evidence of limited attention to higher education rankings abstract rankings of colleges and universities provide information about quality and potentially affect where prospective students send applications for admission we find evidence of limited attention to the popular u s news and world report rankings of america s best colleges we estimate that applications discontinuously drop by 2 6 when the rank moves from inside the top 50 to outside the top 50 whereas there is no evidence of a corresponding discontinuous drop in institutional quality notably the ranking of 50 corresponds to the first page cutoff of the printed u s news guides the choice of college is typically a one time decision with potentially large repercussions so students limited attention to rankings likely represents an irrational bias that negatively affects welfare

do labor tax rebates facilitate firm growth an empirical study on french establishments in the manufacturing industry 2004 2011 in order to reduce labor costs and stimulate job creation many governments implement a large set of devices mainly consisting in reduced rates of social contributions the evaluation of their effect is still controversial unlike previous research our purpose is to appraise to what extent firm growth reacts to a decrease in the cost of labor per employee we tackle this question using an unbalanced panel of french establishments operating in the manufacturing industry between 2004 and 2011 we run estimations using a 2 step estimator making it possible to estimate the impact of explanatory variables on job creation at any point of the distribution of establishments employment growth rate while also controlling for individual fixed effects component our results show that the effect of the decrease in the labor cost generated by tax rebates mainly benefits fast growing and large establishments indeed the change in the number of employees in other establishments is significantly less affected even though the effect remains positive by the reduction in social contributions this is particularly the case for smaller establishments as well as for those whose growth is stagnant or negative these results lead us to reconsider the relevance of large scale policies aiming at reducing labor costs in the same way for all establishments regardless of their size or financial health

small differences that matter mistakes in applying to college in 1997 the act increased the number of free score reports it provided to students from three to four maintaining a 6 marginal cost for each additional report in response to this 6 cost change act takers sent many more score reports and applications relative to sat takers they widened the range of colleges they sent scores to and low income act takers attended more selective colleges back of the envelope calculations suggest that the policy substantially increased low income students expected earnings this sizable behavioral change in response to such a small cost change suggests that in this setting small policy perturbations can have large effects on welfare

hardening the budget constraint the experience of the post socialist countries abstract the study surveys the typical manifestations of the softness of the budget constraint such as state subsidies soft taxation non performing loans the accumulation of trade arrears between firms and the build up of wage arrears in the various post socialist countries it was widely maintained at the outset of the post socialist transition that the holy trinity of liberalization privatization and stabilization would suffice to produce an efficient market economy since then it has become clear that hardening the budget constraint needs to be given equal priority with these unless this occurs the effects of privatization will fall short of expectations as they have in russia

the capital gap for small technology companies public venture capital to the rescue in this paper we analyze effectiveness of public intervention for fostering private venture capital market in spain we use a sample obtained from venturexpert database consisting of 755 investments made by 83 spanish public and private venture capitalists that closed at least one fund between 1997 and 2008 we compare the investments undertaken by private and public investors before and after public venture capital programs were started we found that spanish venture capital market has rapidly developed in the last 10 years and that this development coincides with the establishment of public policies for encouraging technology entrepreneurship we also found that other factors such as previous experience of investors and size have also contributed to fostering more high risk investments these results may encourage governments in other countries to start or keep working to promote private venture capital investments

the evolution of new industries and the determinants of market structure several empirical regularities concerning firm growth rates and industry firm size distributions have been developed by studying primarily mature industries the primary purpose of this article is to bring together and extend empirical regularities on the evolution of new industries and to use these regularities to gain further insight into the forces governing industry evolution to explain these regularities a model is constructed which emphasizes how factors governing the early evolution of industries may shape their market structure at maturity it stresses how chance events and exogenous factors that influence the number of potential entrants to the industry the growth rate of incumbents and the ease of imitation of industry leaders will influence the ultimate number and size distribution of firms in the industry

college choice and wages estimates using data on female twins the authors assess the impact of college quality on women s earnings and the influence of family and individual endowments on college choice using new data from a survey of identical and nonidentical twins born in minnesota the estimates reject models that ignore school choice the statistically preferred estimates suggest that ph d granting private universities with well paid senior faculty and smaller enrollments produce students who have significantly higher earnings later in life both the quantity of schooling and the quality of schooling resources are allocated to higher endowed individuals which exacerbates preexisting inequality in human capital and biases conventional estimates of school quality effects copyright 1996 by mit press

transition and enterprise restructuring the role of budget constraints and bankruptcy costs the focus of analysis is on the impact of financial leverage as a measure of bankruptcy costs on enterprise restructuring based on budget constraints in the economy data of bulgarian manufacturing firms allow comparison of firm behavior under soft and hard budget constraints as distinguished by the inception of a currency board in 1997 controlling for change in sales firm size and type of ownership statistically significant relationship between financial leverage and firm restructuring through labor adjustments is found to exist under hard budget constraints only

allocation of entrepreneurial attention abstract limited attention has been recognized by many economists as a scarce resource to be allocated among a given number of alternative uses however limited entrepreneurial attention is allocated between improving current operations and innovating new products which increases the number of current operations and perhaps the demands on the entrepreneur s attention the allocation of entrepreneurial attention thus endogenizes the number of uses to which attention can be allocated and the opportunity cost of attention this allocation has implications for the relationships between innovation firm size and monopoly profits between firm size and firm growth and the organization of the firm

small firms and economic transformation in bulgaria the pace of transition to a market economy has been slower in bulgaria than in some other east european countries in the 1990s output levels in the state owned sector which has not yet been subject to mass privatisation have fallen sharply and there has been a dramatic increase in unemployment there has however also been a rapid growth in the number of small firms and the ability of this sector to generate new jobs will be an important component of labour market dynamics in the future some of the main characteristics of this emergent sector are identified on the basis of a sample survey of nearly 400 small bulgarian firms covering competitiveness entrepreneurship innovation networking labour relations and business performance of the small firms key features of a subset of small firms with an orientation towards employment growth are identified

investment and financial constraints in transition economies micro evidence from poland the czech republic bulgaria and romania we investigate to what extent firm investment in transition countries is sensitive to internal finance we find that firms in bulgaria and romania are less sensitive to internal financing constraints in contrast to firms in poland and the czech republic a likely explanation is that bulgaria and romania experience a stronger persistence of soft budget constraints than the other two more advanced countries

a robust optimization model for cellular manufacturing system into supply chain management abstract in this paper a new mathematical model is presented for a cellular manufacturing system into supply chain design with labor assignment this paper considers important manufacturing features thoroughly such as multiple plant locations multi market allocations with production planning and various part mix the proposed model aims at minimizing the total cost of holding inter cell material handling external transportation fixed cost for producing each part in each plant machine and labor salaries it is assumed that the demands of products are uncertainty in three scenarios optimistic pessimistic and normal also a robust optimization approach is then developed to solve the proposed model and find the best solution the robustness and performance of the proposed model are explained in terms of an industrial case from a typical equipment manufacturer this case study provides the researchers and practitioners to better understand the importance of designing robust optimization and cell formation in the supply chain management from a practical point of view

university differences in the graduation of minorities in stem fields evidence from california the low number of college graduates with science degrees particularly among underrepresented minorities is of growing concern we examine differences across universities in graduating students in different fields using student level data on the university of california system during a period in which racial preferences were in place we show significant sorting into majors based on academic preparation with science majors at each campus having on average stronger credentials than their non science counterparts students with relatively weaker academic preparation are significantly more likely to leave the sciences and take longer to graduate at each campus we show the vast majority of minority students would be more likely to graduate with a science degree and graduate in less time had they attended a lower ranked university similar results do not apply for non minority students

does economic liberalisation endanger indigenous technological developments an analysis of the indian experience abstract india s recent economic liberalisation measures have raised concerns that enterprises will begin to neglect the development of indigenous technologies and will make increasing use of imported technologies and or of standardised technologies this paper argues that the comparative advantages of the different types of technologies will depend on certain enterprise level characteristics including age and size and consequently enterprises that use the technologies based on their in house r d efforts may perform well even under a liberalised regime empirical tests using data of enterprises in three major industry groups gave results consistent with these arguments over the period 1991 1998 the growth performance of enterprises that make products based on their in house r d efforts have compared favourably with those of other enterprises in two of the industries moreover the share of the r d based products in enterprises overall sales has been maintained in both the industries for which this test could be undertaken

investment irreversibility and financing constraints evidence from a panel of transition economies abstract focusing on a panel of unlisted firms from transition economies we observe that only firms facing low irreversibility exhibit high and significant investment cash flow sensitivities our findings provide a new explanation for why some financially constrained firms may exhibit low sensitivities

a theory of firm growth learning capability knowledge threshold and patterns of growth abstract this paper focuses on the dual role of r d knowledge generation and the technological competence enhancing effect of r d and its implication for the endogenous evolution of r d productivity and the pattern of firm growth in particular based on the evolution of firm specific r d productivity or technological competence this paper derives a simple r d based model of firm growth capable of explaining various aspects of firm growth the model proposes three prototype patterns of firm growth depending on both firm and industry specific characteristics the former includes firm specific technological competence enhancing capability and the initial level of technological knowledge and the latter includes industry specific r d appropriability specifically firms with low technological competence enhancing capability tend to follow a convergent growth pattern in which firm growth gradually declines while firms with high technological competence enhancing capability tend to exhibit either a sustained or a vicious growth pattern depending on the initial size of their technological knowledge stock an empirical analysis of unique data on firm growth and technological capability provides supportive evidence for the role of technological competence enhancing capability in conditioning the pattern of firm growth

investment cash flow sensitivities are useful a comment on kaplan and zingales arecent paper in this journal by kaplan and zingales reexamines a subset of erms from work of fazzari hubbard and petersen and criticizes the usefulness of investment cash eow sensitivities for detecting enancing constraints we show that the kaplan and zingales theoretical model fails to capture the approach employed in the literature and thus does not provide an effective critique moreover we describe why their empirical classiecation system is eawed in identifying both whether erms are constrained and the relative degree of constraints across erm groups we conclude that their results do not support their conclusions about the usefulness of investment cash eow sensitivities in a recent paper in this journal kaplan and zingales 1997 hereinafter kz argue that investment cash eow sensitivities do not provide useful evidence about the presence of enancing constraints because kz use a subset of the same erms and the same regressions as fazzari hubbard and petersen 1988 hereinafter fhp and claim page 176 that fhp can legitimately be considered the parent of all papers in this literature it is appropriate that we respond based on a simple theoretical model kz reach the provocative conclusion page 211 that the investment cash eow sensitivity criterion as a measure of enancial constraints is not well grounded in theory in section i we show that the kz model does not capture the theoretical approach employed in fhp and many subsequent studies most of the kz paper attempts to show that empirical investment cash eow sensitivities do not increase monotonically with the degree of enancing constraints within the 49 low dividend erms from the fhp sample in section ii we explain why the kz classiecation of the degree of constraints is eawed in identifying both whether or not erms are constrained absolute constraints as well as the relative degree of constraints across erms as a result we argue in section iii that there is no expected ex ante pattern for the

demand driven innovation and spatial competition over time the demand pull hypothesis regarding the process underlying innovation emphasizes a top down approach the initiation of an innovation is seen as coming from the firm s marketing or production people and the response as coming from the research staff the problem may be posed by members of the firm that deal directly with its customers or are involved with the manufacture of its products and a solution is provided by the research staff the alternative technology push hypothesis emphasizes a bottom up approach and has the research staff playing the active role of determining the nature of the innovation with the marketing and production staff playing a passive role it seems that neither hypothesis alone can account for the direction of innovative activity it is the interaction of technological opportunity and economic opportunity that is of ultimate importance moreover technological opportunity is judged to be responsible for the long run evolution of products while economic opportunity appears to account for more of the short run developments kamien and schwartz 1982

investment and financial constraints in hungarian agriculture we investigate credit market imperfections in hungarian agriculture farmers with low debts and using mainly rented land are liquidity constrained we find also evidence for the presence of soft budget constraint for high debt and corporate farms