learning from failure towards an evolutionary model of collaborative ventures this paper reports on a longitudinal case study of the interaction between two partners to a failed international joint venture we develop a model of the collaboration process in partnership and alliances based on earlier work by ring and van de ven 1994 and by doz 1996 we employ a series of events that occurred in the course of the relationship as the unit of analysis in order to trace the interactions between the partners and to explicate the impact that external shocks have on their perceptions of efficiency and equity the impact of these events as well as the responses they elicit on the quality of the relationship and vice versa are also considered we find that the partners assessments cause them to either engage in renegotiation of the terms of the contract or to modify their behavior unilaterally in an attempt to restore balance to the relationship the process feeds back until a new mutual understanding of equity is restored or else the relationship deteriorates gradually until a point when the venture is dissolved we conclude that positive feedback loops are critical in the evolutionary process that relationship quality is both an outcome and a mediating variable and that procedural issues are critical from the start in fostering a climate for positive reinforcement and the building of mutual trust and confidence in the relationship

towards an attention based view of the firm the central argument is that firm behavior is the result of how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision makers what decision makers do depends on what issues and answers they focus their attention on what issues and answers they focus on depends on the specific situation and on how the firm s rules resources and relationships distribute various issues answers and decision makers into specific communications and procedures the paper develops these theoretical principles into a model of firm behavior and presents its implications for explaining firm behavior and adaptation 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

premia for correlated default risk abstract using data on corporate default experience in the u s and market rates of cdx index and tranche swaps of various maturities we estimate reduced form models of correlated default timing in the cdx high yield and investment grade portfolios under actual and risk neutral probabilities the striking contrast between the estimated processes followed by the actual and risk neutral arrival intensities of defaults and between the parameters governing the actual and risk neutral dynamics of the risk neutral intensities indicates the presence of substantial default risk premia in cdx swap market rates the effects of risk premia on swap rates covary strongly across maturities and depend on general stock market volatility and several measures of credit spreads large moves in the effects of these premia on swap rates have natural interpretations in terms of economic and financial market developments during the sample period april 2004 to october 2007 our results suggest that a large portion of the movements in cdx swap market rates observed during the sample period may be caused by changing attitudes toward correlated default risk rather than changes in the economic factors affecting the actual risk of clustered defaults which ultimately governs swap payoffs

sectoral shocks and aggregate fluctuations abstract this paper presents a multisector dynamic general equilibrium model of business cycles with a distinctive feature aggregate fluctuations are driven by independent sectoral shocks the model hypothesizes that trade among sectors provides a strong synchronization mechanism for these shocks due to the limited but locally intense interaction that is characteristic of such input trade flows limited interaction characterized by a sparse intermediate input use matrix reduces substitution possibilities among intermediate inputs which strengthens comovement in sectoral value added and leads to a postponement of the law of large numbers in the variance of aggregate value added the chief virtue of this model is that reliance on implausible aggregate shocks is not necessary to capture the qualitative features of macroeconomic fluctuations building on horvath 1998 review of economic dynamics 1 781 808 which establishes the theoretical foundation for the relevance of limited interaction in the context of a stylized multisector model this paper specifies a more general multisector model calibrated to the us 2 digit standard industrial code economy simulations prove the model is able to match empirical reality as closely as standard one sector business cycle models without relying on aggregate shocks

bayesian analysis of structural credit risk models with microstructure noises in this paper a markov chain monte carlo mcmc technique is developed for the bayesian analysis of structural credit risk models with microstructure noises the technique is based on the general bayesian approach with posterior computations performed by gibbs sampling simulations from the markov chain whose stationary distribution converges to the posterior distribution enable exact finite sample inferences of model parameters the exact inferences can easily be extended to latent state variables and any nonlinear transformation of state variables and parameters facilitating practical credit risk applications in addition the comparison of alternative models can be based on deviance information criterion dic which is straightforwardly obtained from the mcmc output the method is implemented on the basic structural credit risk model with pure microstructure noises and some more general specifications using daily equity data from us and emerging markets we find empirical evidence that microstructure noises are positively correlated with the firm values in emerging markets

the changing technology of technological change general and abstract knowledge and the division of innovative labour abstract in the past most innovations have resulted from empiricist procedures the outcome of each trial yielding knowledge that could not be readily extended to other contexts while trial and error may remain the primary engine of innovation developments in many scientific disciplines along with progress in computational capabilities and instrumentation are encouraging a new approach to industrial research instead of relying purely on trial and error the attempt is also to understand the principles governing the behaviour of objects and structures the result is that relevant information whatever its source can now be cast in frameworks and categories that are more universal the greater universality makes it possible for the innovation process to be organised in new ways firms can specialise and focus upon producing new knowledge and the locus of innovation may be spread across both users and producers more generally the use of general and abstract knowledge in innovation opens up the possibility for a division of labour in inventive activity the division of innovative labour the implications for public policy especially that on intellectual property rights are discussed

credit risk and asymmetric information a simplified approach abstract we present a simple model for risky corporate debt debtholders and equityholders have incomplete information about the financial state of the debt issuing company information is incomplete because it is delayed for all agents and it is asymmetrically distributed between debtholders and equityholders we solve for the equityholders optimal default policy and for the credit spreads required by debtholders delayed information accelerates the equityholders optimal decision to default interestingly this effect is small implying only a small impact on credit spreads asymmetric information however has a major impact on credit spreads our model predicts high credit spreads for short term debt as observed empirically in credit markets

fishing upstream firm innovation strategy and university research alliances this paper examines how innovation strategy influences firms level of involvement with university based research our results suggest that firms with internal r d strategies more heavily weighted toward exploratory activities allocate a greater share of their r d resources to exploratory university research and develop deeper multifaceted relationships with their university research partners in addition firms with more centralized internal r d organizations spend a greater share of their r d dollars on exploratory research conducted at universities in contrast to other external partners we find evidence suggesting that universities are preferred when the firm perceives potential conflicts over intellectual property 2007 elsevier b v all rights reserved

do firms learn to create value the case of alliances we investigate whether firms learn to manage interfirm alliances as experience accumulates we use contract specific experience measures in a data set of over 2000 joint ventures and licensing agreements and value creation measures derived from the abnormal stock returns surrounding alliance announcements learning effects are identified from the effects of unobserved heterogeneity in alliance capabilities we find evidence of large learning effects in managing joint ventures but no such evidence for licensing contracts the effects of learning on value creation are strongest for research joint ventures and weakest for marketing joint ventures these results are consistent with the view that learning effects are more important in situations characterized by greater contractual ambiguity copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

optimal simple and implementable monetary and fiscal rules welfare maximizing monetary and fiscal policy rules are studied in a model with sticky prices money and distortionary taxation the ramsey optimal policy is used as a point of comparison the main findings are the size of the inflation coefficient in the interest rate rule plays a minor role for welfare it matters only insofar as it affects the determinacy of equilibrium optimal monetary policy features a muted response to output interest rate rules that feature a positive response to output can lead to significant welfare losses the welfare gains from interest rate smoothing are negligible optimal fiscal policy is passive the optimal monetary and fiscal rule combination attains virtually the same level of welfare as the ramsey optimal policy

the transmission of monetary policy in a multisector economy this article constructs and estimates a sticky price dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous production sectors firms in different sectors vary in their price rigidity production technology and the combination of material and investment inputs in particular firms buy inputs from all sectors using the actual input output matrix and capital flow table of the u s economy by relaxing the standard assumption of symmetry this model allows idiosyncratic sectoral dynamics in response to monetary policy shocks the model is estimated by the generalized method of moments using sectoral and aggregate u s time series

the dynamic implications of foreign aid and its variability abstract the paper examines the effects of aid and its volatility on consumption investment and the structure of production in the context of an intertemporal two sector general equilibrium model calibrated using data for aid dependent countries in africa a permanent flow of aid mainly finances consumption rather than investment consistent with the historical failure of aid inflows to translate into sustained growth large aid flows are associated with higher real exchange rates and smaller tradable sectors because aid is a substitute for tradable consumption aid volatility results in substantial welfare losses providing a motivation for recent discussions of aid architecture stressing the need for greater predictability of aid these results are also consistent with evidence from cross country regressions of manufactured exports presented later in the paper

cognition capabilities and incentives assessing firm response to the fiber optic revolution this study examines how ceo cognition organizational capabilities and organizational incentives interacted to shape firm strategy during the fiber optic revolution i tested for these factors as

how do asset encumbrance and debt regulations affect bank capital and bond risk abstract we study how optimal bank capital and bond risk are influenced by asset encumbrance depositor preference and bail in resolution frameworks due to changes in optimal capital structure the net effect on bond debt risk and valuation is small the effects on shareholder value and public sector liability value are significant a gap between optimal and required capital represents a cost to shareholders and increases the risk of regulatory arbitrage the features of bank debt financing we analyze here may explain the stable cross sectional variation in bank capital documented in literature based on a small sample of european banks we find support for the central model predictions

let s work it out or we ll see you in court litigation and private dispute resolution in vertical exchange relationships we examine how partners in vertical exchange relationships actually resolve disputes that are sufficiently serious to get lawyers involved reaching beyond the usual domain of organizational and management research we leverage findings from law and economics to offer a novel organizational perspective on litigation and private dispute resolution and we develop hypotheses about the likelihood of litigation in different exchange settings our empirical analysis generates three sets of new findings first counter to the received wisdom we see that the involvement of lawyers does not necessarily signal the bitter end of an exchange relationship because firms frequently manage to avoid litigation and resolve their disputes privately and they do so in a manner that accords with our theoretical predictions second we see that familiarity with exchange partners does not automatically lead to increased willingness to work things out rather our empirical results suggest that the impact of exchange duration on parties willingness to resolve disputes privately is contingent on the development of norms of cooperation in the event that such norms do not develop the probability of a litigated outcome actually increases over time finally we see that firms willingness to work things out privately is also influenced positively by the shadow of the future these findings are suggestive of a discriminating alignment between exchange characteristics and the choice of dispute resolution procedure and they thus inject important new evidence into ongoing discussions about the legal underpinnings of different governance forms

pricing derivatives on financial securities subject to credit risk this article provides a new methodology for pricing and hedging derivative securities involving credit risk two types of credit risks are considered the first is where the asset underlying the derivative security may default the second is where the writer of the derivative security may default we apply the foreign currency analogy of jarrow and turnbull 1991 to decompose the dollar payoff from a risky security into a certain payoff and a spot exchange rate arbitrage free valuation techniques are then employed this methodology can be applied to corporate debt and over the counter derivatives such as swaps and caps the purpose of this article is to provide a new theory for pricing and hedging derivative securities involving credit risk two sources of credit risk are identified and analyzed the first is where the asset underlying the derivative security may default paying off less than promised this is the case for example with imbedded options on corporate debt the second is the credit risk introduced by the writer of the derivative security who may also default examples include over the counter writers of options on eurodollar futures swaps and swaptions for pricing derivative securities involving credit risk there are currently two approaches the first views these derivatives as contingent claims not on the financial securities themselves but as compound options on the assets underlying the financial securities this is the case for example with the pricing of imbedded options on corporate debt see merton 1974 1977 black and cox 1976 ho and singer 1982 chance 1990 and kim ramaswamy and sundaresan 1993 or the pricing of vulnerable options see johnson and stulz 1987 in practice however this valuation methodology is difficult to use first the assets underlying the financial security are often not tradeable and therefore their values are not observable this makes application of the theory and estimation of the relevant parameters problematic second as in the case of corporate debt all of the other liabilities of the firm senior to the corporate debt must first and simultaneously be valued this generates significant computational difficulties as a result this approach has not

fixed capital stock depreciation in developing countries some evidence from firm level data previous growth accounting studies suggest severe capital underutilisation and mismeasurement of the stocks of capital in some developing countries using the firm level data sets from the world ba

riding the wave monetary responses to aid surges in low income countries abstract we focus on the management of highly persistent shocks to aid flows in the presence of currency substitution by the domestic private sector such shocks have beneficent long run effects but when currency substitution is high they can produce dramatic macroeconomic management problems in the short run what is the appropriate mix of money and exchange rate targeting in such cases and the role of temporary sterilization we analyze these and related issues in an intertemporal optimizing model that allows a portion of aid to be devoted to reducing the government s seigniorage requirement our results show that a managed float with little or no sterilization of increases in the monetary base supports the smooth absorption of the increased aid without incurring higher inflation higher real interest rates or overshooting of the real exchange rate

learning to contract evidence from the personal computer industry organizational forms involving more detailed contracts than are found in traditional spot market exchanges appear to be increasingly prevalent there has been relatively little analysis however of the extent to which firms learn how to use contracts to manage their interfirm relationships over time in this paper we conduct a detailed case study of a time series of 11 contracts concluded during 1989 1997 between the same two partners both of whom participate in the personal computer industry to explore whether and how firms learn to contract we find many changes to the structure of the contracts that cannot be fully explained by changes in the assets at risk in the relationship and evidence that these changes are largely the result of processes in which the firms were learning how to work together including learning how to contract with each other the nature of this learning appears to have been quite incremental and local that is not very far sighted we suggest how and when contracts might serve as repositories for knowledge about how to govern collaborations and suggest some boundary conditions for this phenomenon our findings also provide implications for the debate about whether contracts have a positive or negative effect on interorganizational trust we conclude with suggestions for future research

roads out of poverty assessing the links between aid public investment growth and poverty reduction the authors develop a macroeconomic framework that captures links between aid public investment growth and poverty public investment is disaggregated into education infrastructure and health and affects both aggregate supply and demand dutch disease effects are captured by accounting for changes in the relative price of domestic goods the authors assess the impact of policy shocks on poverty by linking the model to a household survey they calibrate the model for ethiopia and simulate the changes in the allocation of aid and public investment the authors also calculate the amount by which foreign aid should increase to reach the poverty targets of the millennium development goals

who i am and how i contract the effect of contractors roles on the evolution of contract structure in university industry research agreements in this exploratory study of university industry sponsored research agreements we investigate how organizational roles direct the relational learning of contracting personnel which subsequently influences contract evolution integrating theory with comments from field interviews we posit that as scientists gain contracting experience with an exchange partner their focus of attention on knowledge creation supports the establishment of a relationship based on technical competence behavioral experience and operational routines that cause the enforcement terms of subsequent contracts to become less detailed we also submit that contract administrators because of their focus on knowledge protection mitigating opportunism and enforcement primarily accumulate joint governance experience and establish administrative routines that cause the enforcement terms of subsequent contracts to become more detailed rich content analysis of monitoring and intellectual property terms of sponsored research agreements supports our theoretically grounded hypotheses

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

aid dutch disease and manufacturing growth abstract we examine the effects of aid on the growth of manufacturing using a methodology that exploits the variation within countries and across manufacturing sectors and corrects for possible reverse causality we find that aid inflows have systematic adverse effects on a country s competitiveness as reflected in the lower relative growth rate of exportable industries we provide some evidence suggesting that the channel for these effects is the real exchange rate appreciation caused by aid inflows we conjecture that this may explain in part why it is hard to find robust evidence that foreign aid helps countries grow

policy responses to aid surges in countries with limited international capital mobility the role of the exchange rate regime summary we study the role of the exchange rate regime reserve accumulation and sterilization policies in the macroeconomics of aid surges absent sterilization a peg allows for almost full aid absorption an increase in the current account deficit net of aid delivering the same effects as those of a flexible regime but with a necessary increase in inflation regardless of the regime policies that limit absorption and result in large accumulation of reserves are welfare reducing they help reduce the real appreciation and inflation under the peg but at the expense of reducing private consumption and investment and therefore medium term growth

foreign aid and economic growth the role of flexible labor supply this paper examines the link between foreign aid economic growth and welfare in a small open economy external transfers impinge on the recipient s macroeconomic performance by affecting resource allocation decisions and relative prices the endogeneity of the labor leisure choice plays a crucial role in the propagation of foreign aid shocks the efficacy of foreign aid also depends on externalities associated with the public good that it helps finance the impact of tied and untied aid on the recipient government s intertemporal fiscal balance is examined finally the transitional adjustment to a foreign aid shock is shown to be sensitive to the elasticity of substitution in production and the relative importance of the labor leisure choice in utility

analytical methods for hedging systematic credit risk with linear factor portfolios abstract multi factor credit portfolio models are used widely today for managing economic capital and pricing collateralized debt obligations cdos and asset backed securities commonly practitioners allocate capital to the portfolio components sub portfolios counterparties or transactions the hedging of credit risk is generally also focused on the deltas of underlying names we present analytical results for hedging portfolio credit risk with linear combinations of systematic factors based on the minimization of systematic variance of portfolio losses we solve these problems within a multi factor merton type credit portfolio model and apply them to hedge systematic credit default losses of loan portfolios and cdos

formal contracts in the presence of relational enforcement mechanisms evidence from technology development projects formal contracting addresses the moral hazard problems inherent in interfirm deals via explicit terms designed to achieve incentive alignment alternatively when firms expect to interact repeatedly relational mechanisms may achieve similar results without the associated costs however as we now know from a growing body of theoretical and empirical work the resulting intuition that relational mechanisms will be substituted for formal ones whenever possible does not generally hold the extent to which firms substitute relational mechanisms for formal ones in the presence of repeated interaction is an empirical question that forms the basis of this paper we study a sample of 52 joint technology development contracts in the telecommunications and microelectronics industries and devise a coding scheme to allow empirical comparison of contract terms counter to the above intuition but consistent with recent research we find that a firm s contracts are more detailed and more likely to include penalties when it engages in frequent deals whether with the same or different partners our results suggest complementarity between formal and relational contracts and have implications for optimal contracting particularly in high technology sectors

complementarity and evolution of contractual provisions an empirical study of it services contracts an increasing volume of business activity appears to be occurring via alliances or other interfirm arrangements in which complex contracts are featured yet there has been relatively little study of contract design in the strategy or management literatures the economics literature on contracting has been extensive but it has been less concerned with learning and evolution phenomena in which strategy and organization scholars are deeply interested in this paper we investigate the relationship between two types of contractual provisions that are important in high technology contracts or contracts for which environmental uncertainty or technological complexity are significant namely contingency planning and task description previous research suggests that contracts can vary significantly in the degree of detail with which such key provisions are written and that they are each subject to learning in this paper we find evidence from a sample of 386 contracts that contingency planning and task description behave as complements in contractual design we argue that this complementarity reflects patterns of learning to contract we also find that repeated exchange between two firms leads to greater effort at contingency planning in subsequent contracts a finding that is also consistent with learning effects but not with frequently made claims that contracts and trust are substitutes

fiscal inertia donor credibility and the monetary management of aid surges abstract donors cannot pre commit to support scaled up public spending programs on a continuing basis nor can governments credibly commit to curtail expenditure rapidly in the event that aid revenues contract an aid boom may therefore be accompanied by a credibility problem when this is the case the absorb and spend strategy recommended by the imf leads to capital flight higher inflation and large current account surpluses inclusive of aid the right policy package combines a critical minimum degree of fiscal restraint with reverse sterilization

aid and the supply side public investment export performance and dutch disease in low income countries contemporary policy debates on the macroeconomics of aid often concentrate on short run dutch disease effects ignoring the possible supply side impact of aid financed public expenditure in the simple model of aid and public expenditure presented here public infrastructure generates an inter temporal productivity spillover which may exhibit a sector specific bias the model also provides for a learning by doing externality through which total factor productivity in the tradable sector is an increasing function of past export volumes an extended computable version of this model is used to simulate the effect of a step increase in net aid flows the simulations show that beyond the short run when conventional demand side dutch disease effects are present the relationship between enhanced aid flows and real exchange rates output growth and welfare is less straightforward than simple models of aid suggest public infrastructure investment that generates a productivity bias in favor of non tradable production delivers the largest aggregate return to aid but at the cost of deterioration in the income distribution income gains accrue predominantly to skilled and unskilled urban households leaving the rural poor relatively worse off under plausible parameterizations of the model the rural poor may also be worse off in absolute terms