an econometric analysis of u s foreign direct investment this paper constructs a theoretical model of foreign direct investment and examines the extent to which the model can explain the level of outward direct investment by u s companies over the last two decades the authors find that market size and factor costs both labor and capital are important factors in the investment decision instrumental variable estimation is used to demonstrate that the expectation of short run fluctuations in the dollar also influences the timing of investment copyright 1996 by mit press

inventory investment and asymmetric adjustment some evidence for the uk abstract there is now a plethora of non linear time series models of output over the business cycle and considerable empirical evidence that there are key non linear poorly understood mechanisms at work though they account for a small part of the total flow of national income inventories play a disproportionately large role in fluctuations in output it would seem natural to try to determine what role inventories play in the non linear behaviour of the business cycle the first question is are there economic models of firm behaviour suggesting that the movement of inventories over the business cycle is non linear the second issue is whether we can detect such non linearity in the data in this paper we use data on the aggregate behaviour of uk manufacturing but disaggregated according to the stage of fabrication we find that the asymmetric adjustment of inventories varies with the stage of fabrication

determinants of u s direct investment in the e e c revisited abstract this paper expands upon an earlier work in this review concerning the specification of a model to identify the determinants of u s direct foreign investment dfi in the e e c compared to earlier studies a longer data series is used an improved tariff discrimination proxy is employed and predicted sales are estimated and used as the output variable in the empirical work a variable to capture the effect of the u s capital control programs is also included the findings reaffirm the importance of market size especially in the plant and equipment equations as being an important determinant of dfi strong support was also found for the growth hypothesis consistent statistical support was found for the tariff discrimination hypothesis in addition the findings imply that a variable to capture the effects of fluctuating exchange rates should be included in future studies

the locational determinants of direct investments among industrialized countries abstract market size and growth rate as well as tariff barriers have already been shown to influence u s direct investments in the eec the present paper enlarges the field of observation to all bilateral flows of direct investments among six industrialized countries the united states germany france the united kingdom the netherlands and belgium over the years 1969 1982 it also tests the impact of two other would be locational determinants of foreign direct investments namely unit labour costs and export flows moreover a new and alternative specification is put forward and tested which assumes that in the investment decision process foreign locations are in competition not only with each other but also with the home country of the investor

evaluating natural resource investments notwithstanding impressive advances in the theory of finance over the past 2 decades practical procedures for capital budgeting have evolved only slowly the standard technique which has remained unchanged in essentials since it was originally proposed see dean 1951 bierman and smidt 1960 derives from a simple adaptation of the fisher 1907 model of valuation under certainty under this technique expected cash flows from an investment project are discounted at a rate deemed appropriate to their risk and the resulting present value is compared with the cost of the project this standard textbook technique reflects modern theoretical developments only insofar as estimates of the discount rate may be obtained from crude application of single period asset pricing theory but see brennan 1973 bogue and roll 1974 turnbull 1977 constantinides 1978 the inadequacy of this approach to capital budgeting is widely acknowledged although not widely discussed its obvious deficiency is its the evaluation of mining and other natural resource projects is made particularly difficult by the high degree of uncertainty attaching to output prices it is shown that the techniques of continuous time arbitrage and stochastic control theory may be used not only to value such projects but also to determine the optimal policies for developing managing and abandoning them the approach may be adapted to a wide variety of contexts outside the natural resource sector where uncertainty about future project revenues is a paramount concern

non linear target adjustment in corporate liquidity management an endogenous thresholds approach we provide new empirical evidence on nonlinear liquidity management in dutch firms our results reveal that liquidity adjustment from below the target is significantly faster than from above we find no evidence for bands of inaction around the target

tacitness learning and international expansion a study of foreign direct investment in a knowledge intensive industry this paper examines the impact of knowledge tacitness on a firm s propensity to establish plants in foreign rather than domestic locations our predictions build on knowledge based internalization and evolutionary theories of foreign direct investment we argue that the tacitness of technology has an inverted u effect on the propensity to undertake foreign investment we also expect that as a firm learns about a technology it will become more likely to make foreign investments we examine two forms of learning that which accumulates as a function of the number of plants previously built by the firm transfer based learning and that which accumulates as a function of time since the firm started using a technology time based learning we investigate empirical effects in a sample of investments in the memory segment of the semiconductor industry our predictions about the curvilinear effect of tacitness are supported the results also suggest that learning is a matter of taking time to become acquainted with the use of the technology and of gaining experience through successive foreign plant investments the study adds to the understanding of the effects of knowledge on corporate expansion

costly monitoring financial intermediation and equilibrium credit rationing abstract this paper establishes a link between equilibrium credit rationing and financial intermediation in a model with asymmetrically informed lenders and borrowers costly monitoring and investment project indivisibilities intermediation is shown to dominate borrowing and lending between individuals and these financial intermediaries exhibit several of the important features of intermediaries as we know them equilibrium interest rates and the aggregate quantity of loans respond quite differently to changes in taste and technology parameters depending on whether or not there is rationing in equilibrium

trade restraints and japanese direct investment flows abstract this paper analyses the factors determining the scale and location of japanese foreign direct investment fdi over the 1980s we use a pooled cross section time series annual data set covering investment in the individual ec countries and the united states our results suggest that controlling for market size and relative labour costs investment was significantly influenced by trade protection measures and in particular by the level of anti dumping actions initiated in the last decade an additional effect from the cost of finance in japan is found suggesting that the tightening of monetary policy in japan in 1989 90 contributed significantly to the observed slowdown in fdi in the early 1990s

firm behaviour under the threat of liquidation abstract we study the optimal behaviour of a firm whose cash flow is determined by a diffusion process facing liquidation if internal cash balances fall below some threshold there is a conflict between the desire to pay dividends to satisfy shareholders and the need to retain cash as a barrier against possible liquidation stochastic optimal control characterises the value function and gives optimal decision rules for the firm the firm has a precautionary motive for retaining earnings the internal cost of funds and local risk aversion are both decreasing functions of cash held and in natural extensions to our model output and investment are both increasing functions of cash balances

foreign direct investment and factor demand elasticities abstract this paper argues that the liberalisation of foreign direct investment fdi has made labour costs more important to domestic investment and long run labour demand it provides evidence from british and german data that is consistent with this view first high unit labour costs increase fdi outflows and lower fdi inflows second the effect of unit labour costs on domestic manufacturing investment was more negative in the high fdi 1980s than in the low fdi 1970s and this change was concentrated in high fdi industries the estimates suggest that the long run labour demand elasticity may have risen substantially

foreign direct investment and country specific human capital i introduction the past three decades have witnessed an unprecedented increase in foreign direct investment fdi in the world annual fdi flows from and to organisation for economic cooperation and development oecd countries have increased more than 30 fold from 1982 to 2005 while the world trade merely quadrupled during the same period the ratio of gross private capital flows to gross domestic product gdp has risen from 10 3 in 1990 to 32 4 in 2005 the ratio of fdi flows to gdp has climbed up from 2 2 in the early 1990s to 4 4 in 2005 1 as fdi gained importance in the international movement of capital a variety of theoretical and empirical studies have investigated the factors that determine fdi 2 in this article we offer an important but under studied determinant of fdi foreign educated labor in fdi host countries specifically using international bilateral data on fdi and foreign education we present empirical evidence on the role of country specific foreign educated labor in an fdi host country as a determinant of foreign direct investments production involves the process of combining physical capital and the human capital of employees human capital includes the general skills of workers but it also includes their knowledge of firm specific technology managerial skills specific to the organization and efficient communication skills with co workers consequently the labor that possesses these firm specific skills which can be readily used by a firm can be more productive in that firm than in other firms when a firm invests in a foreign country through a subsidiary that shares the technology of the parent firm the labor force that has acquired various types of human capital specific to the parent firm and thus to the subsidiary can be more productive in the foreign subsidiary for instance the local managers of a foreign subsidiary who are able to speak the same language of the managers of their parent firm or who know thoroughly well how the parent firm and its subsidiaries are organized and operated can be more productively utilized in the subsidiary firm since human capital specific to a firm and its foreign subsidiaries can be acquired through education provided in the country of the parent firm the availability of workers in a potential fdi host country who studied in the parent firm country can be an important deciding factor for a firm in investing abroad through its foreign subsidiary 3 foreign training can provide various types of country specific human capital that would increase labor productivity more in the host country of training than in other countries country specific human capital includes language capital which has been shown by numerous papers such as chiswick and miller 1993 and lazear 1999 to have considerable importance in labor market performances knowledge on firm organization and social system is another example of country specific human capital that can be acquired through foreign training foreign education can also enhance the productivity of students in firms of the host country because it provides information about the ability and potential of students in a form that can be more easily processed by firms in the host country greater knowledge regarding employees allows firms to utilize manpower more efficiently and enhance workers productivity as pointed out by becker 1993 who discusses low worker mobility across countries as evidence of the importance of country specific training earlier theoretical models in international trade such as macdougall 1960 attribute international capital movement to the difference in factor endowment measured by physical capital per worker 4 empirical findings however show that the actual capital flows fall short of the theoretical prediction that capital moves from developed economies to developing economies to take advantage of the higher rates of returns to capital

the eclectic paradigm of international production a restatement and some possible extensions this article reviews some of the criticisms directed towards the eclectic paradigm of international production over the past decade and restates its main tenets the second part of the article considers a number of possible extensions of the paradigm and concludes by asserting that it remains a robust general framework for explaining and analysing not only the economic rationale of economic production but many organisational and impact issues in relation to mne activity as well

does equity ownership matter for corporate social responsibility a literature review of theories and recent empirical findings based on the concept of shareholder primacy many scholars have argued that it is more important for businesses to earn profits for their shareholders than to provide benefits to society at large corporate social responsibility csr is often regarded as an investment that comes at the expense of shareholders in contrast research analyzing the connections between the equity ownership structure of a company and its level of csr engagement suggests that csr offers benefits to shareholders that go beyond direct financial returns from investments this study provides a comprehensive review and systematic assessment of theoretical considerations and approaches regarding different forms of equity ownership and their relationships to csr and it discusses the relevant benefits and motivations of shareholders the perceived value of these csr benefits varies among different types of shareholders as they assign unequal values to short term financial or to rather long term csr benefits based on a literature sample of 146 publications this review demonstrates central problems inherent in previous analyses given the ambiguous and partially contradictory findings of prior research this study identifies potential moderating influences that help clarify empirical evidence a contingency approach is suggested in future research as this can help resolve the problem of contradictory empirical findings and theoretical arguments

u s foreign direct investment in latin america and the caribbean a case of remittances and market size abstractthis article investigates the effect of remittances on u s foreign direct investment fdi flows to latin america and the caribbean lac it covers 26 countries for the period 1983 2010 the results show a positive and significant impact of remittances on u s fdi flows however this effect depends upon the level of gross domestic product gdp per capita of the host country on average the results show that increasing remittances by one standard deviation increases u s fdi flows by 0 44 percent a year also host country demand positively affects u s fdi flows which supports the market size hypothesis

saving and liquidity constraints this paper is concerned with the theory of saving when consumers are not permitted to borrow and with the ability of such a theory to account for some of the stylized facts of saving behavior the models presented in the paper seem to account for important aspects of reality that are not explained by traditional life cycle models copyright 1991 by the econometric society

high performance computing for asset liability management financial institutions require sophisticated tools for risk management for companywide risk management both sides of the balance sheet should be considered resulting in an integrated asset liability management approach stochastic programming models suit these needs well and have already been applied in the field of asset liability management to improve financial operations and risk management the dynamic aspect of the financial planning problems inevitably leads to multiple decision stages trading dates in the stochastic program and results in an explosion of dimensionality in this paper we show that dedicated model generation specialized solution techniques based on decomposition and high performance computing are the essential elements to tackle these large scale financial planning problems it turns out that memory management is a major bottleneck when solving very large problems given an efficient solution approach and a parallel computing facility we report on the solution of an asset liability management model for an actual dutch pension fund with 4 826 809 scenarios 12 469 250 constraints and 24 938 502 variables which is the largest stochastic linear program ever solved a closer look at the optimal decisions reveals that the initial asset mix is more stable for larger models demonstrating the potential benefits of the high performance computing approach for alm

factor market barriers are trade barriers gains from trade in 1992 abstract this paper argues that some factor market barriers act as trade barriers consequently removal of such barriers can create gains from trade even in countries which already have free trade in goods the basic argument is simple for some types of goods international vertical integration is essential to efficient international trade that is to say for such goods it is cheaper to conduct trade on an intra firm basis rather than an inter firm basis for instance in the u s roughly half of all imports are intra firm in such industries those factor market barriers which raise the cost of foreign control of local assets have the effect of raising the cost of trade consequently removing such barriers can lead to gains from trade

too much investment a problem of asymmetric information this paper shows that under plausible assumptions the inability of lenders to discover all of the relevant characteristics of borrowers results in investment in excess of the socially efficient level raising the rate of interest above the free market level will restore optimality this conflicts with generally held views and is contrasted with the stiglitz weiss model it is shown that the assumptions which yield overinvestment support debt as the equilibrium method of finance however under the stiglitz weiss assumptions used to derive an underinvestment result equity is shown to be the equilibrium method of finance

does economic development impact the foreign direct investment trade relationship a gravity model approach the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between foreign direct investment fdi and trade in a bilateral context that is home source country s exports and fdi to a host recipient country are analyzed using a gravity model approach the fdi trade relationship has been a centerpiece of the international economics literature over the past decade the home country s primary concern here is on the possible loss of employment due to more fdi than trade lipsey of late there have been concerns on knowledge spillovers and the erosion of technological leadership market failure due to capital outflows for a host country the focus is on the effects of fdi on economic growth and development and technology transfer prior theoretical studies have used mostly imperfect competition models to identify the fdi trade relationship helpman and krugman markusen and venables a majority of the empirical studies has used regression techniques with one period lagged trade and fdi as an argument in current trade or fdi equations barrell and pain gopinath pick and vasavada egger aggregate firmlevel data and industry product specific data have been used in many of these studies blonigen lipsey and ramstetter some have used cointegration methods to infer on the long run association between trade and fdi pfaffermayr however few fdi trade

technology sourcing versus technology exploitation an analysis of us foreign direct investment flows the traditional paradigm of foreign direct investment fdi suggests that fdi is undertaken principally to exploit some firm specific advantage in a foreign country which provides a locational advantage to the investor however recent theoretical work suggests a model of fdi in which the motivation is not to exploit existing technological advantages in a foreign country but to access such technology and transfer it from the host economy to the investing multinational corporation via spillover effects this paper tests the technology sourcing versus technology exploiting hypotheses for a panel of sectoral fdi flows between the united states and major oecd nations over a 15 year period the research makes use of patel and vega s research policy 28 145 55 1999 taxonomy of sectors which are likely a priori to exhibit technology sourcing and exploiting behaviour respectively while there is evidence that fdi flows into the united states are attracted to r and d intensive sectors very little support is found for the technology sourcing hypothesis either for inward or outward fdi flows the results suggest that in aggregate firm specific ownership effects remain powerful determinants of fdi flows

the shadow costs of repos and bank liability structure making use of a structural model that allows for optimal liquidity management we study the role that repos play in a bank s financing structure in our model the bank s assets consist of illiquid loans and liquid reserves and are financed by a combination of repos long term debt deposits and equity repos are a cheap source of funding but they are subject to an exogenous rollover risk we show that the use of repos inflicts two types of indirect shadow costs on the bank s shareholders first it induces the bank to maintain higher liquid reserves in order to alleviate the additional default risk second it adds to the cost of long term debt financing these shadow costs limit the bank s appetite for cheap but unstable repo funding this effect is however weakened under poor returns on risky assets access to deposit funding and the depositor preference rule we also analyze the impact of a liquidity coverage ratio payout restrictions and a leverage ratio on the bank s financing choices and show that all these tools are able to curb the bank s reliance on repos

linking fdi motivation and host economy productivity effects conceptual and empirical analysis we develop a taxonomy that relates foreign direct investment fdi motivation technology and cost based to its anticipated effects on host countries domestic productivity we then empirically examine the effects of fdi into the united kingdom on domestic productivity and find that different types of fdi have markedly different productivity spillover effects which are consistent with the conceptual analysis the uk gains substantially only from inward fdi motivated by a strong technology based ownership advantage as theory predicts inward fdi motivated by technology sourcing considerations leads to no productivity spillovers

foreign direct investment in the uk evidence from a disaggregated panel of the uk food sector most empirical studies of foreign direct investment fdi typically use either a cross sectional capturing ownership specific and industry determinants or time series capturing the determinants of fdi over time approach panel data techniques however have the advantage of combining both aspects of the data using disaggregated panel data for the uk food sector a leading recipient of fdi in the uk the results in this paper highlight the predominance of ownership specific and industry characteristics in determining the presence of foreign owned firms in this sector while macro economic factors have a more marginal effect

multinational enterprises and wage costs vertical fdi revisited abstract this study explores how wage costs for high skilled and less skilled labor in host countries affect the level of affiliate activities conducted by foreign mnes we find support for vertical fdi in the sense that more fdi is conducted in countries where less skilled labor is relatively cheap in addition we find that skilled wage cost premia also affect fdi activities previously associated with horizontal fdi i e local affiliate sales consequently the potential effects of relative wage costs on mne activities are large rough calculations suggest that more than 20 percent of us affiliate sales in 1998 can be attributed to skilled wage cost premia

macro determinants of fdi inflows to japan an analysis of source country characteristics this paper examines the source country determinants of fdi into japan the paper highlights certain methodological and theoretical weaknesses in the previous literature and offers some explanations for hitherto ambiguous results specifically the paper highlights the importance of panel data analysis and the identification of fixed effects in the analysis rather than simply pooling the data indeed we argue that many of the results reported elsewhere are a feature of this mis specification to this end pooled fixed effects and random effects estimates are compared the results suggest that fdi into japan is inversely related to trade flows such that trade and fdi are substitutes moreover the results also suggest that fdi increases with home country political and economic stability the paper also shows that previously reported results regarding the importance of exchange rates relative borrowing costs and labour costs in explaining fdi flows are sensitive to the econometric specification and estimation approach the paper also discusses the importance of these results within a policy context in recent years japan has sought to attract fdi though many firms still complain of barriers to inward investment penetration in japan the results show that cultural and geographic distance are only of marginal importance in explaining fdi and that the results are consistent with the market seeking explanation of fdi as such the attitude to risk in the source country is strongly related to the size of fdi flows to japan 2007 the authors journal compilation 2007 blackwell publishing ltd

financial capacity and output fluctuations in an economy with multi period financial relationships this paper motivates a financial propagation mechanism in the context of an intertemporal production economy with asymmetric information and with borrowers and lenders who enter multi period financial relationships a key feature is that aggregate output and borrowers financial capacity the maximum overhang of past debt they may feasibly carry are determined jointly much in the spirit of gurley and shaw 1955 expectations of future economic conditions govern financial capacity which in turn may constrain current production especially in bad times a small but persistent shift in aggregate conditions may have a large impact on financial capacity making the framework capable of motivating large endogenous fluctuations in financial constraints understanding how small disturbances can induce large output fluctuations is an on going quest in macroeconomics this paper develops a simple framework in which shifts in aggregate economic fundamentals are amplified through their impact on financial conditions a distinguishing feature is that output and borrowers financial capacity the maximum overhang of past debt they may feasibly carry are determined jointly much in the spirit of gurley and shaw 1955 expectations of future economic conditions govern financial capacity and financial capacity may constrain current production especially in bad times a number of recent papers have resurrected the view that financial factors may play a part in propagating business fluctuations the underlying theories exploit the idea that with asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders agency costs may drive the price of uncollateralized external funds above the price of internal funds in this kind of setting a borrower s financial position is a key determinant of the terms of credit she faces in the aggregate swings in borrower balance sheets over the cycle amplify fluctuations in investment and output essentially by inducing counter cyclical movements in the required premium for external finance this simple mechanism is broadly consistent with informal descriptions of how financial and real variables interacted in the great depression bernanke 1983 and in the postwar business cycles eckstein and sinai 1986 in addition numerous recent panel data studies beginning with fazzari hubbard and peterson 1988 support the notion of a financial investment accelerator mechanism

industrial output and factor input determination in an econometric model of a small open economy abstract a correct approach to the modelling of the supply structure of the manufacturing sector of a small open economy soe represents the single most important aspect of any economy model to date much of the empirical modelling of output and factor inputs in soes has been ad hoc and a serious source of model instability we comment on how these issues have been treated in regional and soe models we outline a general production function framework for the analysis of capacity output and long run factor demands in a world consisting of soes in the special case where the factors of production of each country are homothetic in world output and weakly separable from the factors in all other countries then the complex general formulation can be decomposed into a series of simpler ones such restrictions are not unrealistic we show how this approach can be implemented in practice empirical results for the irish economy are presented

real exchange rate risk expectations and the level of direct investment four models of direct investment are analyzed assuming various relationships between foreign and domestic production the direct effect of risk adjusted expected real foreign currency appreciation is to lower foreign capital cost thus stimulating direct investment however when costs of other inputs are also affected induced productivity changes or output price changes may offset the direct effect reducing direct investment pooled estimation results for u s annual bilateral direct investment flows to five industrialized countries show significant reductions associated with expected appreciation of real foreign currency and significant increases associated with risk these results are consistent with the model where in response to risk the multinational firm reduces exports to the foreign country but offsets this somewhat by increasing foreign capital input and production

bank capital interbank contagion and bailout policy abstract this paper develops a theoretical framework in which asset linkages in a syndicated loan agreement can infect a healthy bank when its partner bank fails we investigate how capital constraints affect the choice of the healthy bank to takeover or liquidate the exposure held jointly with the failing bank and how the bank s ex ante optimal capital holding and possibility of contagion are affected by anticipation of bail out policy capital requirements and the joint exposure we identify a range of factors that strengthen or weaken the possibility of contagion and bailout recapitalization with common stock rather than preferred equity injection dilutes existing shareholder interests and gives the bank a greater incentive to hold capital to cope with potential contagion increasing the minimum regulatory capital does not necessarily reduce contagion while the requirement of holding conservation capital buffer could increase the bank s resilience to avoid contagion

determinants of foreign direct investment a tale of nine theoretical models abstract this paper presents a review of nine theoretical models of foreign direct investment fdi discussed are early studies of determinants of fdi 1 as well as determinants of fdi based on the neoclassical trade theory 2 ownership advantages 3 aggregate variables 4 the ownership location and internalization advantage framework 5 horizontal and vertical fdi models 6 the knowledge capital model 7 diversified fdi and risk diversification models 8 and policy variables 9 from each of the nine theories the relevant determinants of fdi are derived empirical studies indicate the importance of these determinants in the real world the paper shows that there is not one single theory of fdi but a variety of theoretical models attempting to explain fdi and the location decision of multinational firms therefore any analysis of determinants of fdi should not be based on a single theoretical model instead fdi should be explained more broadly by a combination of factors from a variety of theoretical models such as ownership advantages or agglomeration economics market size and characteristics cost factors transport costs protection risk factors and policy variables

dividends and leverage how to optimally exploit a non renewable investment in this paper we model the situation where a non renewable investment is given for instance a resource reservoir and show how to optimally trade off between dividends and leverage in order to maximize a performance indicator for shareholders up to the bankruptcy time we then study the way market risk the volatility of the market price of the resource impacts the optimal policies and the default risk of the company the moments when the policies are rebalanced are analyzed and we give a measure of the agency costs which appear between the shareholders and the debt holders

simulation based stress tests of banks regulatory capital adequacy abstract banks holding of reasonable capital buffers in excess of minimum requirements could alleviate the procyclicality problem potentially exacerbated by the rating sensitive capital charges of basel ii determining the sufficient buffer size is an important risk management task for banks which the basel committee suggests should be approached via stress testing we present here a simulation based approach to stress testing of regulatory capital adequacy where rating transitions are conditioned on business cycle phase and which takes into account business cycle dynamics our approach is an extension of a typical credit portfolio analysis in that we simulate actual bank capital and minimum capital requirements simultaneously actual bank capital absent mark to market accounting is driven by bank income and default losses whereas capital requirements within basel ii are driven by rating transitions the joint dynamics of these determine the necessary capital buffers given a confidence level for regulatory capital adequacy chosen by bank management we provide a tentative calibration of this confidence level to data on actual bank capital ratios which enables a ceteris paribus extrapolation of bank capital under the current regime to bank capital under basel ii

the dynamic effects of firm level borrowing constraints in this paper i develop a detailed dynamic model of firm behavior in order to see whether financial constraints and endogenous exit are important propagation mechanisms to do this i construct an economy where firms face financial constraints fixed costs and persistent idiosyncratic shocks using numerical methods i analyzehowa large collection of these firmsresponds to aggregate productivity shocks a common result is that financial constraints tend to dampen the economy s initial response to aggregate productivity shocks but equity accumulation and exit dynamics amplify the longer term response the relative sizes of these two effects however are sensitive to firms environments

unintended consequences of the market risk requirement in banking regulation abstract we analyze a bank that operates under the basel credit and market risk requirements and that maximizes its value through recapitalizations dividends and liquid asset investments according to our model the market risk requirement may postpone recapitalization and this way increase the bank s default probability we show that this is indeed the case if the expected return and volatility of the liquid asset portfolio are high i e then the market risk requirement raises the default probability of the bank in this sense the market risk requirement is inefficient

financial liberalization and banking crises in emerging economies abstract financial liberalization often leads to financial crises this link has usually been attributed to poorly designed banking systems an explanation that is largely static in this paper we develop a dynamic explanation by modelling the evolution of a newly liberalized bank s opportunities and incentives to take on risk over time the model reveals that even if a banking system is well designed in the sense of having good long run properties many countries will enjoy an initial period of rapid low risk growth and then enter a period with an elevated risk of banking crisis this transition emerges because of the way in which the degree of foreign competition the marginal product of capital and the bank s own net worth simultaneously evolve

precautionary saving in the small and in the large the theory of precautionary saving is shown to be isomorphic to the arrow pratt theory of risk aversion making possible the application of a large body of knowledge about risk aversion to precautionary saving and more generally to the theory of optimal choice under risk in particular a measure of the strength of the precautionary saving motive analogous to the arrow pratt measure of risk aversion is used to establish a number of new propositions about precautionary saving and to give a new interpretation of the dreze modigliani substitution effect copyright 1990 by the econometric society

analysing the determinants of us direct investment in mexico in this paper a simple model of foreign direct investment is developed and tested on investment flows from the usa to mexico between 1967 and 1994 using cointegration analysis domestic demand and relative factor costs are found to influence direct investment flows suggesting support for both the cheap labour and market size hypotheses the short run dynamics of the model indicate that exchange rate movements have an effect on the timing of the investment decision