when do high stock returns trigger equity issues abstract one of the most prominent stylized facts in corporate finance is that equity issues tend to follow periods of high stock returns we document that firms exhibit such timing behavior only in response to high returns that coincide with strong institutional investor demand when not accompanied by institutional purchases stock price increases have little impact on the likelihood of equity issuance the results highlight the importance of market reception for the timing of equity issues

a model of how discounting high priced brands affects the sales of low priced brands drawing on a consumer preference distribution structure postulated in analytical modeling research the author develops a separate effects model that separates the total discount effect of a compet

a probabilistic choice model for market segmentation and elasticity structure marketing scholars commonly characterize market structure by studying the patterns of substitution implied by brand switching though the approach is useful it typically ignores the destabilizing

r d management and corporate financial policy the hypothesis that firms simultaneously determine their research and development investment dividend and new debt policies generally is substantiated in the financial literature the determinants of research and development dividend investment and financing decisions of 140 firms are estimated econometrically during the 1978 1982 period management gains insights into the interactions of pursuing research and development expenditures paying dividends and undertaking investments

the debt equity choice when firms adjust their capital structures they tend to move toward a target debt ratio that is consistent with theories based on tradeoffs between the costs and benefits of debt in contrast to previous empirical work out tests explicitly account for the fact that firms may face impediments to movements toward their target ratio and that the target ratio may change over time as the firm s profitability and stock price change a separate analysis of the size of the issue and repurchase transactions suggests that the deviation between the actual and the target ratios plays a more important role in the repurchase decision than in the issuance decision

how does financial distress affect small firms financial structure this paper provides new evidence on the financial structure of small firms by emphasizing the role played by financial distress we specify a model of debt adjustments that allows us to investigate the specific nature of the adjustment process towards target debt levels in small firms which is then extended to account for the effect of financial distress on financial structure decisions our models were estimated by the generalized method of moments on a data panel of small portuguese firms during a period of recession in which a substantial proportion of the companies analyzed faced a financial distress situation we find that small firms do adjust their debt ratios towards target levels the speed of adjustment being faster in the shorter term our results also indicate that there are major differences in the determinants of long term and short term debt highlighting the role played by debt maturity in explaining a firm s financial structure finally random behavior is observed in financially distressed firms who seem to be disoriented when making their financial structure decisions

asymmetric and neighborhood cross price effects some empirical generalizations this paper provides some empirical generalizations regarding how the relative prices of competing brands affect the cross price effects among them particular focus is on the asymmetric price effect and the neighborhood price effect the asymmetric price effect states that a price promotion by a higher priced brand affects the market share of a lower priced brand more so than the reverse the neighborhood price effect states that brands that are closer to each other in price have larger cross price effects than brands that are priced farther apart the main objective of this paper is to test if these two effects are generalizable across product categories and to assess which of these two effects is stronger while the neighborhood price effect has not been rigorously tested in past research the asymmetric price effect has been validated by several researchers however these tests of asymmetric price effect have predominantly used elasticity as the measure of cross price effect the cross price elasticity measures the percentage change in market share or sales of a brand for 1 change in price of a competing brand we show that asymmetries in cross price elasticities tend to favor the higher priced brand simply because of scaling effects due to considering percentage changes furthermore several researchers have used logit models to infer asymmetric patterns we also show that inferring asymmetries from conventional logit models is incorrect to account for potential scaling effects we consider the absolute cross price effect defined as the change in market share percentage points of a target brand when a competing brand s price changes by one percent of the product category price the advantage of this measure is that it is dimensionless hence comparable across categories and it avoids scaling effects we show that in the logit model with arbitrary heterogeneity in brand preferences and price sensitivities the absolute cross price effect is symmetric we develop an econometric model for simultaneously estimating the asymmetric and neighborhood price effects and assess their relative strengths we also estimate two alternate models that address the following questions i if i were managing the ith highest priced brand which brand do i impact the most by discounting and which brand hurts me the most through price discounts ii who hurts whom in national brand vs store brand competition based on a meta analysis of 1 060 cross price effects on 280 brands from 19 different grocery product categories we provide the following empirical generalizations 1 the asymmetric price effect holds with cross price elasticities but tends to disappear with absolute cross price effects 2 the neighborhood price effect holds with both cross price elasticities and absolute cross price effects and is significantly stronger than the asymmetric price effect on both measures of cross price effects 3 a brand is affected the most by discounts of its immediately higher priced brand followed closely by discounts of its immediately lower priced brand 4 national brands impact store brands more so than the reverse when the cross effect is measured in elasticities but the asymmetric effect does not hold with absolute effects store brands hurt and are in turn hurt the most by the lower priced national brands that are adjacent in price to the store brands 5 cross price effects are greater when there are fewer competing brands in the product category and among brands in nonfood household products than among brands in food products the implications of these findings are discussed

are observed capital structures determined by equity market timing contrary to baker and wurgler 2002 i find that the importance of historical average market to book ratios in leverage regressions is not due to past equity market timing al though equity transactions may be timed to equity market conditions they do not have sig nificant long lasting effects on capital structure debt transactions exhibit timing patterns that are unlikely to induce a negative relation between market to book ratios and leverage i also find that historical average market to book ratios have significant effects on current financing and investment decisions implying that they contain information about growth opportunities not captured by current market to book ratios

using national statistics to increase transparency of large land acquisition evidence from ethiopia the 2007 08 commodity price boom triggered a rush for land in developing countries yet many affected countries lacked the regulatory infrastructure to cope with such demand and reliable data on investors performance this study uses the example of ethiopia to show how simple improvements in administrative data collection can help to address this by i allowing assessment of the productivity of land use and taking measures to increase it ii comparing productivity between large and small farms to identify spillovers and ways to improve these and iii setting in motion a process of continuing improvement implications for global investment in this area are drawn out

how important are dual economy effects for aggregate productivity this paper brings together development accounting techniques and the dual economy model to address the role that factor markets have in creating variation in aggregate total factor productivity tfp development accounting research has shown that much of the variation in income across countries can be attributed to differences in tfp the dual economy model suggests that aggregate productivity is depressed by having too many factors allocated to low productivity work in agriculture data show large differences in marginal products of similar factors within many developing countries offering prima facie evidence of this misallocation using a simple two sector decomposition of the economy this article estimates the role of these misallocations in accounting for the cross country income distribution a key contribution is the ability to bring sector specific data on human and physical capital stocks to the analysis variation across countries in the degree of misallocation is shown to account for 30 40 of the variation in income per capita and up to 80 of the variation in aggregate tfp

game theory and empirical generalizations concerning competitive promotions this paper offers the generalization that competitive promotions are mixed strategies first an empirical regularity is established that promotions are independent across competitors this regularity is then elaborated on in the context of a promotion game the promotion game is linked to observable outcomes and a classification of possible situations is developed in particular the classification includes the prisoners dilemma battle of the sexes and marketing models of promotion competition the evidence for the generalization comes from a variety of product markets spanning trade promotions retail price reductions and retail promotions such as advertised specials the product markets include coffee baby diapers toilet tissue saltines dishwashing fluid ketchup and detergents among others the data in some cases were from cooperating grocery chains and in others from iri scanner panels the evidence from extant research and from new analyses is presented each situation is identified as be

the economic performance of innovative small firms in the south east region and elsewhere in the uk thwaites a and wynarczyk p 1996 the economic performance of innovative small firms in the south east region and elsewhere in the uk reg studies 30 135 149 the paper explores the contribution of innovative small firms to local economic performance in different regional environments in the uk the empirical analysis is based on a sample of small independent firms listed on the spru innovation database 1975 83 it uses detailed financial and other data on each firm to examine their performance in different operational environments the results suggest that the average innovative sme exhibits many of the characteristics of a fast growth firm however the modus operandi of enterprise appears to differ between firms located in the south east region and other parts of the uk and these differences lead to variable outcomes in terms of employment asset and export growth thwaites a et wynarczyk p 1996 la performance economique des petites entreprises innovatrices situees dans la region sud est et d

investigating heterogeneity in brand preferences in logit models for panel data in analyzing panel data the issue of heterogeneity across households is an important consideration if heterogeneity is present but is ignored in the analysis it will result in biased and inconsi

quantifying spillover effects from large land based investment the case of mozambique summary almost a decade after a spike in land demand following the 2007 08 commodity boom evidence on impacts of this phenomenon remains limited and mostly case study based we show that information on location and start data of large farms combined with existing smallholder farm surveys allows to complement this with a difference in difference approach to systematically assess spillovers from large farm establishment illustrative application to mozambique suggests positive short term effects from newly established large farms on adoption of agricultural practices and input use by small farms less than 50 km from newly established large operations robustness checks for crop farms only also suggest job creation in the proximity of newly established crop but not livestock farms yet large farm establishment decreased perceived well being within a 25 km band and in the time horizon considered here did not lead to better access to output markets cultivation of larger areas or once other factors are controlled for higher yields this allows us to reject the notion of negative spillovers from large farm establishment but casts doubt on the wisdom of large unconditional subsidies to attract investors in addition to drawing policy conclusions for mozambique we highlight the methodology s wider applicability and scope for expansion

goal setting for effective corporate planning the hypothesis that firms simultaneously determine their research and development investment dividend and new debt policies generally is substantiated in the financial literature the strategic planning model advocated in this study offers an alternative to the generally accepted goals of maximizing the return on equity or growth in earnings per share

capital structure and small public firms abstract most analyses of capital structure from both a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint focus on large corporations as a result of data availability problems empirical studies deal with large corporations theoretical frameworks typically use illustrations and casual empirical evidence involving large firms only limited amounts of research focus on small growing entrepreneurial corporations and the factors affecting the capital structures of these firms much of current theory in capital structure deals with factors that are not easily and objectively quantified by outside researchers these factors include items such as expected bankruptcy costs information asymmetries between management and the financial marketplace agency costs of monitoring management and managerial risk preferences this paper reports on a survey sent to over 400 small high growth corporations questions on the survey were derived from various strands of the theoretical financial literature on capital structure over 27 of the surveys were completed and returned and give insight into the motivations and preferences of chief financial officers from over 100 small high growth corporations examination of the responses shows that contrary to financial theory factors dealing with bankruptcy costs agency costs and information asymmetries play little if any major role in affecting capital structure policy rather the responding financial officers seem to follow a pecking order in financing their firm s needs use internal cash as much as possible issue debt if necessary issue equity only as a last resort while being concerned with market conditions and their own preferences the following are implications of these findings first financial theory which is more and more focusing on micro factors while still theorizing efficient macro markets may be incorrectly ignoring the effect that management risk perceptions and preferences play in making capital structure decisions thus additional work is necessary to include the management in theories of capital structure second this survey allows outsiders to peer inside the managerial black box and gain insight into the factors that motivate and impact capital structure decisions it provides an empirical basis to help determine which influences are important third managers of entrepreneurial firms and investors in venture capital can compare their own beliefs perceptions and motivations against the mean results obtained from our sample of high growth firms

financing preferences evidence from the korean market we investigate the financing decisions of korean firms during the period of 1996 2015 korean firms follow a matching strategy for funding their cash needs cash inflows from investing activities a

land and power theory and evidence from chile many employment relationships concede rents to workers depending on the political institutions the presence of such rents allows employers to use the threat of withdrawing them to control their workers political behavior such as their votes in the absence of secret ballot we examine the effects of the introduction of the secret ballot in chile in 1958 on voting behavior before the reforms localities with more pervasive patron client relationships tended to exhibit a much stronger support for the right wing parties traditionally associ ated with the landed oligarchy after the reform however this difference across localities completely disappeared jel d72 n46 o13 o15 o17

price induced patterns of competition this research focuses on how price changes influence the observed pattern of brand competition the paper begins with a basic utility model formulation and examines the implications of three major classes of preference distributions on the expected patterns of competition a price tier model is proposed to operationalize the theory and to allow predictive testing the price tier model is estimated on 28 brands across four product categories the results show a specific asymmetric pattern of price competition higher price higher quality brands steal share from other brands in the same price quality tier as well as from brands in the tier below however lower price lower quality brands take sales from their own tier and the tier below brands but do not steal significant share from the tiers above the results are consistent with a bimodal preference distribution with the regular price indifference point being located toward the lower quality end of the preference distribution for the categories analyzed

comparing the information acquisition strategies of venture capital and commercial lenders a computer based experiment abstract owners and financial planners in new ventures prefer using internal sources of capital as much as possible because they are uncertain about how to obtain external financing and how the involvement of others will impact their ventures because undercapitalization and financial problems are at the center of nearly all business failures it would appear useful for owners and financial planners to reduce the uncertainty surrounding external financing obtaining information about one source of this uncertainty a lack of understanding of the decision processes followed by venture capitalists is the focus of research in this paper and a growing body of literature to further this line of study we investigate the differences in decision behavior of venture capitalists using bankers as a benchmark for comparison in cases in which debt and debt related financing are sought to the extent that venture capitalists have unique decision processes owners and financial planners might improve their ability to obtain financing through knowledge of the unique features of venture capitalists decision processes in addition venture capitalists might improve their decision effectiveness if made aware of systemic biases in their decision procedures using a computer software package to trace information acquisition processes we found that venture capitalists acquired less information and followed a pattern of acquisition that was deeper within categories of information than bankers in addition venture capitalists showed a stronger preference for strategic data and less interest in historical financial data both groups minimized the use of financial forecasts and followed decision processes persistently across different types of companies start up and well established the implications of this study for practice are two fold first if the owners or financial planners of a new or relatively new venture are seeking financing from external sources they should package the business plan and request in a manner that is consistent with the source of financing for example requests from venture capitalists should highlight strategic information such as descriptions of the product or process patentability prospects product market and management team less emphasis should be placed on financial information particularly financial projections in contrast requests for financing by banks should highlight historical financial information such differences between venture and bank financing may lead individuals who are seeking financing to conclude that because historical financial information is of primary importance to bankers bank financing should be sought after the business has developed a positive financial history and trend this would confirm intuition and research findings that venture financing is the primary source of external financing in the early stages of a new venture second bankers and venture capitalists like all decision makers who have developed a degree of expertise in a particular specialty should attempt to gain some insight into their decision processes the goal of obtaining this information would be to provide feedback on processes such as information acquisition which tend to become automatic over time with this knowledge bankers and venture capitalists could examine any biases in their behavior with the ultimate goal of improving performance this paper also has important implications for researchers in particular we have demonstrated that computer based approaches for studying decision behavior offer promise for interesting explorations into important issues such as how venture capitalists make decisions the computer minimizes researcher intrusion in the decision task and permits the collection of process data from samples large enough to permit statistical analyses in addition the subjects determine the length of the task and the direction of the search much as they would in practice which increases the external validity of the research method

semiparametric analysis to estimate the deal effect curve abstract the marketing literature suggests several phenomena that may contribute to the nature of the relationship between sales and price discounts these phenomena can produce complex nonlinearities and interactions in the deal effect curve that are best captured with a flexible approach because a fully nonparametric regression model suffers from the curse of dimensionality the authors propose a semiparametric regression model store level sales over time are modeled as a nonparametric function of own and cross item price discounts and a parametric function of other predictors the authors compare the predictive validity of the semiparametric model with that of two parametric benchmark models and obtain superior performance the results for three product categories indicate threshold and saturation effects for both ownand cross item temporary price cuts the authors also find that the nature of the own item curve depends on other items price discounts comparisons with restricted model specification

the rise of large farms in land abundant countries do they have a future increased levels and volatility of food prices has led to a surge of interest in large scale agriculture and land acquisition this creates challenges for policy makers aiming to establish a policy environment conducive to an agrarian structure to contribute to broad based development in the long term based on a historical review of episodes of growth of large farms and their impact this paper identifies factors underlying the dominance of owner operated farm structures and ways in which these may change with development the amount of land that could potentially be available for expansion and the level of productivity in exploiting available land resources are used to establish a country level typology the authors highlight that an assessment of the advantages of large operations together with information on endowments can provide input into strategy formulation at the country level a review of recent cases of land acquisition reinforces the importance of the policy framework in determining outcomes it suggests that transparency and contract enforcement recognition of local land rights and ways in which they can be exercised attention to employment effects and technical viability and mechanisms to re allocate land from unsuccessful ventures to more productive entrepreneurs are key areas warranting the attention of policy makers

the relationship between market characteristics and promotional price elasticities many empirical studies in marketing and economics have estimated brand price elasticities for specific products in markets their results indicate that price elasticities seem to differ across brands product categories retail outlets and regions however there has been very little research which examines the factors associated with these observed differences this paper focuses on the promotional price elasticities of established major brands in stable categories it identifies some characteristics of markets which may be associated with differences in price elasticities for frequently purchased nondurables a cross sectional model of the effect of these market characteristics on price elasticities is developed and estimated utilizing own price elasticity estimates for brands at twelve stores the results indicate market characteristics such as brand market share couponing activity display activity and feature activity explain a substantial amount of the variation in promotional price elasticities

target behavior and financing how conclusive is the evidence the notion that firms have a debt ratio target that is a primary determinant of financing behavior is influential in finance yet how definitive is the evidence we address this issue by generating samples where financing is unrelated to a firm s current debt ratio or a target we find that much of the available evidence in favor of target behavior based on leverage ratio changes can be reproduced for these samples taken together our findings suggest that a number of existing tests of target behavior have no power to reject alternatives

bootstrapping in small firms an empirical analysis of change over time abstract while bootstrapping is widely utilized as a strategic practice of small firms and has been regarded in the entrepreneurship literature as an important topic of study little has been done to link bootstrapping to organizational theory this paper presents hypotheses and an empirical study regarding bootstrapping and organizational development for small firms the results of the study indicate that different types of bootstrapping are utilized at different periods in the life of a small firm and that the methods utilized coincide to some extent with organizational theory predictions

capital structure decision making a model for family business abstract most theoretical and empirical studies of capital structure focus on public corporations only a limited number of studies on capital structure have been conducted on small to medium size enterprises smes and this deficiency is particularly evident in investigations into factors that influence funding decisions of family business owners theory indicates that there is a complex array of factors that influence sme owner managers financing decisions recent family business literature suggests that these processes are influenced by firm owners attitudes toward the utility of debt as a form of funding as moderated by external environmental conditions e g financial and market considerations a number of other factors have been shown to influence financing decisions including culture entrepreneurial characteristics entrepreneurs prior experiences in capital structure business goals business life cycle issues preferred ownership structures views regarding control debt equity ratios and short vs long term debt age and size of the firm sources of funding for growth attitudes toward debt financing issues relating to independence and control and perceived risk and attitudes toward personal risk although these factors have been identified until now there does not appear to have been any attempts to develop empirically based models that show relationships between these factors and family business owners financing decisions utilizing theories derived from divergent disciplines this study develops an empirically tested structural equation model of financing antecedents of family businesses participants of our study involved a random sample of 5000 business owners who were mailed a 250 item australian family and private business questionnaire developed specifically for this investigation notably our findings reveal that firm size family control business planning and business objectives are significantly associated with debt small family businesses and owners who do not have formal planning processes in place tend to rely on family loans as a source of finance however family businesses in the service industry e g retailers and wholesalers are less likely to use family loans as are those owners who are planning to achieve growth through new products or process development use of capital and retained profits is likely for family businesses planning to achieve growth through an increase in sales but less is likely for family businesses in the manufacturing sector and lifestyle firms in addition debt and family loans are negatively related to capital and retained profits equity is a consideration for owners of large businesses young firms and owners who plan to achieve growth through increasing profit margins however equity is less likely to be a consideration for older family business owners and owners who have a preference for retaining family control our findings suggest that the interplay between multiple social family and financial factors is complex in addition our findings indicate the importance of utilizing theories that also help to explain behavioral factors e g owners needs to be in control that affect financial structure decision making processes practitioners and researchers should consider the dynamic interplay among business characteristics e g size or industry behavioral aspects of business financing e g business objectives and financial factors e g gearing levels when working with and researching family enterprises

competitive promotional strategies this article analyzes the equilibrium pricing strategies of brands engaged in a pricing game each brand has a monopoly market loyal consumers and competes with others in a common market called brand switchers in the case of a duopoly it is shown that the behavior of the brand switchers characterizes the equilibrium behavior of the duopolists this article focuses on two key comparative statics namely the depth of discounts away from a regular high price and the probability of giving a deal or the frequency of deals how these properties vary with the size of the loyal markets and the behavior of the brand switching population is discussed copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

how did the notional interest deduction affect belgian smes capital structure the recently introduced risk capital allowance in belgium which allows a notional interest deduction to be denoted nid hereafter on a firm s adjusted equity for tax purposes has mitigated the tax discrepancy between equity and debt financing to our knowledge we provide the first empirical study of the extent to which this regulation has resulted in a strengthening of small and medium sized enterprises to be denoted smes hereafter solvency which was one of its most prominent objectives results from logit regressions reveal that the probability of adopting the nid is higher for lowly leveraged smes smes without experience with the tax exempt investment reserve and smes with a sound knowledge of the notional interest deduction regulation results on the impact of the nid on the capital structure of smes based on panel and first differences regressions reveal that this measure did not result in a significant change of smes leverage in view of the discussion regarding the optimal tax and legislative framework that governments should put in place poutziouris et al j small bus enterp dev 6 1 7 25 1999 these results cast doubt on the risk capital allowance as it stands now being the right government instrument to contribute at least in the short term to creating a pro enterprising tax and legislative climate for smes we conclude by providing some general suggestions for improving the effectiveness of the risk capital allowance

the role of target leverage in security issues and repurchases the paper examines whether security issues and repurchases adjust the capital structure toward the target the time series patterns of debt ratios imply that only debt reductions are initiated to offset the accumulated deviation from target leverage the importance of target leverage in earlier debt equity choice studies is driven by the subsample of equity issues accompanied by debt reductions unlike debt issues and reductions equity issues and repurchases have no significant lasting effect on capital structure therefore even firms that have target debt ratios can engage in timing the equity market

testing claims about large land deals in africa findings from a multi country study despite much research on large land deals for plantation agriculture in africa reliable data remain elusive partly because of limited access to information and practical and methodological challenges international debates are still shaped by misperceptions about how much land is being acquired where by whom how and with what consequences this article aims empirically to test some common perceptions through an analysis of findings from research conducted in three african countries ethiopia ghana and tanzania the article presents new evidence on the scale geography drivers and features of land deals relates findings to data from earlier research and international efforts to monitor land deals and outlines possible ways forward for ongoing monitoring of the deals

a nonparametric density estimation method for brand choice using scanner data nonparametric density estimation using a kernel method is proposed to model consumer brand choice recent availability of large scanner panel data allows the use of nonparametric approach which has few or at least fewer underlying assumptions and affords greater structural flexibility by removing as many assumptions as possible the author constructs the ultimate nonparametric model radically departing from the traditional approaches to highlight the differences in implementation and performance the proposed model does not involve either parameters that approximate certain distributions as in stochastic models or latent concepts such as utility as in utility maximization models the performance criteria include prediction of market response and brand choice share tracking and robustness under violation of various assumptions involved in parametric choice models such as correlated disturbance and misspecification the method is compared with a popular parametric counterpart the multinomial logit model on simulated and actual scanner panel data the paper emphasizes the conceptual importance of the nonparametric approach by discussing its advantages limitations and its complementary role in developing refining and diagnosing parametric models this perspective affords insight to modeling philosophy and suggests the possibility of a hybrid approach

decomposing the sales promotion bump with store data sales promotions generate substantial short term sales increases to determine whether the sales promotion bump is truly beneficial from a managerial perspective we propose a system of store level regression models that decomposes the sales promotion bump into three parts cross brand effects secondary demand cross period effects primary demand borrowed from other time periods and category expansion effects remaining primary demand across four store level scanner datasets we find that each of these three parts contribute about one third on average one extension we propose is the separation of the category expansion effect into cross store and market expansion effects another one is to split the cross item effect total across all other items into cannibalization and between brand effects we also allow for a flexible decomposition by allowing all effects to depend on the feature display support condition and on the magnitude of the price discount the latter dependence is achieved by local polynomial regression we find that feature supported price discounts are strongly associated with cross period effects while display only supported price discounts have especially strong category expansion effects while the role of the category expansion effect tends to increase with higher price discounts the roles of cross brand and cross period effects both tend to decrease

scarcity amidst abundance reassessing the potential for cropland expansion in africa abstract sub saharan africa is typically regarded as land abundant and previous efforts to estimate the true extent of potentially available cropland pac have largely affirmed this perception such efforts however have largely focused on production potential and have underemphasized economic profitability and other constraints to expansion this paper re estimates pac for africa in a more explicit economic framework that emphasizes the returns to agricultural production under a variety of assumptions using recent geospatial data existing pac estimates for africa are shown to be highly sensitive to assumptions about land productivity and market access and are moderately influenced by the use of alternative data sources the region s underutilized land resources are concentrated in relatively few countries many of which are fragile states between one half and two thirds of the region s surplus land is currently under forest cover conversion of forests to cropland would entail major environmental costs most of the continent s unexploited land resources are located far from input and output markets limiting their economic attractiveness in the long run improvements in infrastructure and agricultural productivity and the growth of hinterland towns will enhance the economic returns to cropland expansion in the short to medium term however the potential for profitable smallholder based cropland expansion in most african countries is likely to be much more limited than it is typically perceived to be

tax exempt debt and the capital structure of nonprofit organizations an application to hospitals the availability of tax exempt financing provides nonprofit np organizations with their own tax based incentives to issue debt in this article we develop a theoretical model in which nps gain an indirect arbitrage from tax exempt debt issuance constrained by 1 the requirement that fixed investment exceed tax exempt debt flows the project financing constraint and 2 the constraint against share issuance these constraints cause them to impute tax benefits to projects that afford access to the tax exempt bond market empirical tests indicate that np hospitals behave as if they have target levels of tax exempt debt debt targeting is constrained by the availability of capital projects while excess debt capacity stimulates investment financial theorists have generally been reluctant to apply the tenets of corporate finance to nonprofit institutions in particular there has been little or no follow up to the important work of fama and jensen on the relationships between agency contracting and ownership written over a decade ago current understanding of the financial basis and behaviors of nonprofit institutions is limited to three basic insights provided by their prior work 1 the attenuation of residual claims characteristic of nonprofit organizations addresses the agency problems associated with private donations fama and jensen 1983b 2 like other organizations nonprofits require decision systems that separate the processes of management and control fama and jensen 1983a and 3 given certain preconditions investment opportunities available to nonprofits can be evaluated with the net present value rule using discount rates defined by outside capital markets fama and jensen 1985 these observations comprise much of what is currently known about nonprofit corporate financial behavior foremost among the set of unresolved issues is the theory of debt issuance by nonprofits an area not explicitly addressed by the fama and jensen

corporate behavior in adjusting to capital structure and dividend targets an econometric study this study of financing decisions by u s corporations examines the issuance of long term debt issuance of short term debt maintenance of corporate liquidity issuance of new equity and payment of dividends given costs and imperfections inherent in markets a firm s financial behavior is characterized as partial adjustment to long run financial targets individual firm data are used so that speeds of adjustment are allowed to vary by company and over time the results suggest that financial decisions are interdependent and that firm size interest rate conditions and stock price levels affect speeds of adjustment this study of financing decisions by u s corporations examines the issuance of long term debt short term debt and equity the maintenance of corporate liquidity and the payment of dividends the firm s financial behavior is characterized as partial adjustment to long run financial targets and individual firm data 1966 1978 are used to estimate firm specific time varying speeds of adjustment the results suggest that financial decisions are interdependent and that firm size interest rate conditions and stock price levels affect speeds of adjustment also the estimated coefficients are more plausible than the very small taggart 28 or very large spies 26 values found in earlier studies section i of the paper introduces the general model in section ii a tractable empirical model is developed section iii presents the data to be used in the study and discusses econometric issues in section iv results and conclusions are offered

labour market effects of large scale agricultural investment conceptual considerations and estimated employment effects summary large scale agricultural investments lsais in general and their socio economic implications in particular have been heavily debated in recent years while some claim that lsais are an important catalyst for development in neglected rural areas others caution that they pose a risk to rural communities livelihoods the extent to which lsais provide benefits for local communities is hence still contested this paper sets out to conceptually understand what effects the establishment of a large scale farm has on the rural labor market in low and middle income countries in addition we empirically address the question of whether large scale farming as recorded in the land matrix creates or destroys employment we develop a transition matrix to identify several scenarios based on key determinants of the direct employment creation potential of lsais namely the former land use the crop type and the production model we empirically assess the actual importance of these scenarios and the employment creation to be expected from this sample of lsais based on labor intensities we further look into the net employment effects for land formerly used by smallholder farmers our analysis shows that lsais massively crowd out smallholder farmers which is only partially mitigated through the cultivation of labor intensive crops and the application of contract farming schemes this holds true for all regions targeted by lsais although regional differences are found in terms of magnitude the paper concludes that these effects tend to be large on the local scale i e in the immediate surroundings of the investment site but small in relation to total national employment in agriculture however indirect employment creation related to lsais which is discussed but not empirically addressed in this paper needs to be taken into account to have the full picture

commercial use of upc scanner data industry and academic perspectives the authors report the findings from an exploratory investigation of the use of upc scanner data in the consumer packaged goods industry in the u s the study examines the practitioner community s view of the use of scanner data and compares these views with academic research forty one executives from ten data suppliers packaged goods manufacturers and consulting firms participated in wide ranging in person interviews conducted by the authors the interviews sought to uncover key questions practitioners would like to answer with scanner data how scanner data is applied to these questions and the industry s perspective regarding the success that the use of scanner data has had in each area the authors then compare and contrast practitioners views regarding the resolution of each issue with academic research this produces a 2 2 classification of each question as resolved or unresolved from the perspectives of industry and academia along the diagonal of the 2 2 issues viewed as unresolved by both groups are important topics for future research issues deemed resolved by both groups are correspondingly of lower priority in the off diagonal cells industry and academics disagree these topics should be given priority for discussion information exchange and possible further research practitioners reported that scanner data analysis has had the most success and been most widely adopted for decision making in consumer promotions i e coupons trade promotions and pricing for example logit and regression models applied to scanner data have revealed very low average consumer response to coupons which has directly led to reduced couponing activity managers also reported high levels of comfort with and impact from analyses of trade promotions and price elasticities while industry views most of the issues in these areas to be resolved academic research raises concerns about a number of practices in common commercial use these include price threshold analysis and trade promotion evaluation using baseline and incremental sales in product strategy advertising and distribution management practitioners reported that the use of scanner data has had more limited development success and impact in the case of new product decisions scanner data use has been slow to develop due to the inherent limitations of historicaldata for these decisions and a heavy reliance on traditional primary research methods in advertising scanner data is widely analyzed with models but confusion among practitioners is very high due to controversies about methods e g what level of data aggregation is best and conflicting results in distribution and retail management scanner data use has tremendous potential but a mixed track record to date thus practitioners view the use of scanner data as unresolved for most issues in product strategy advertising and distribution this view is largely though not entirely consistent with academic research which has only begun to address many of the key questions raised by practitioners in light of the large number of unresolved issues and mixed record of scanner data use to date the authors offer aseries of specific recommendations for immediate and long term research priorities that are likely to have the greatest impact on commercial utilization of upc scanner data topics of immediate priority include price thresholds and gaps baseline and incremental sales base price elasticity competitive reactions measurement of advertising effects management of brand equity rationalization of product assortments and category management long term priorities include a greater emphasis on profitability versus sales or market share developing prescriptive models versus descriptive models and the need for industry standards

asymmetric competition in choice and the leveraging of competitive disadvantages studies of grocery sales show that consumers of store brands switch to price discounted national brands more than consumers of national brands switch to discounted store brands such asymmetric price competition can be explained with numerous mechanisms proposed here and elsewhere we report a choice experiment that replicates asymmetric price competition favoring higher quality competitors and demonstrates asymmetric quality competition favoring lower quality competitors also demonstrated are multiple mechanisms contributing to competitive asymmetries where dominance involving the otherwise preferred brand is particularly potent e g when a higher quality competitor matches the price of an otherwise preferred lower quality brand the findings implicate modifications to 1 theories of decision making when extended to repeat choice 2 empirical models of secondary purchase data and 3 strategies for positioning and attacking brands whereas improving competitive disadvantages often attracts consumers from competitors more than does improving competitive advantages this benefit must be weighed against the differentiation sacrificed by improving competitive disadvantages improving competitive advantages in contrast increases differentiation

on the adjustment speed of smes to their optimal capital structure the aim of this paper is to analyse the speed of adjustment of small and medium sized enterprises smes to the target leverage by applying a system gmm technique to spanish panel data collected during the period 1995 2005 we estimate a partial adjustment model in which both target leverage and speed of adjustment are simultaneously endogenized we provide empirical evidence on the determinants of target leverage and the speed of adjustment more specifically the rate of financial flexibility growth opportunities and size are positively related to the speed of adjustment whereas the distance to the optimal ratio of debt shows a negative impact our findings demonstrate that in terms of sample mean a high percentage of spanish smes adjust rationally to their target additionally the smes analysed appeared to be over levered and fairly motivated to adjust annual adjustment speed 26

is there a farm size productivity relationship in african agriculture evidence from rwanda whether the negative relationship between farm size and productivity that is confirmed in a large global literature holds in africa is of considerable policy relevance this paper revisits this issue and examines potential causes of the inverse productivity relationship in rwanda where policy makers consider land fragmentation and small farm sizes to be key bottlenecks for the growth of the agricultural sector nationwide plot level data from rwanda point toward a constant returns to scale crop production function and a strong negative relationship between farm size and output per hectare as well as intensity of labor use that is robust across specifications the inverse relationship continues to hold if profits with family labor valued at shadow wages are used but disappears if family labor is rather valued at village level market wage rates these findings imply that in rwanda labor market imperfections rather than other unobserved factors seem to be a key reason for the inverse farm size productivity relationship

pricing and promotions in asymmetric duopolies this paper develops a modeling framework for making promotions decisions in contrast to some of the prior research the framework explicitly models promotions its central feature is the view of promotions competition as a multistage game in which regular prices are chosen first followed by the choice of promotion depths and frequencies it is used to illustrate the nature of competition between a national brand and private label in equilibrium the national brand promotes to ensure that the private label does not try to attract consumers away from the national brand moreover the private label does not promote this equilibrium is also contrasted with varian s framework used by other researchers in which mixed strategy equilibrium prices are interpreted as promotions

the geographic and sectoral patterns of large scale farmland investments in sub saharan africa following the food and energy price crises of the mid 2000s sub saharan africa has become one of the largest recipients for large scale farmland investments while much has been written on the phenomenon scant reliable empirical evidence is available as to the precise geographic and sectoral patterns and underlying drivers employing strict data quality requirements this paper addresses these knowledge gaps by analyzing 563 farmland projects that have been established between 2005 and 2013 in sub saharan africa findings show that the investment intensity and associated risks are not geographically uniform moreover the study highlights a number of popular misconceptions regarding investor origin and their sectoral interests and motives

contemporary processes of large scale land acquisition in sub saharan africa legal deficiency or elite capture of the rule of law summary growth of emerging economies policy commitments to biofuels and volatility in commodity prices have contributed to a marked increase in the pace and scale of foreign direct investment in land based enterprises in the global south this paper explores the relationship between policy and practice associated with customary rights protections in the context of large scale land acquisitions through a document review and case study analyses from ghana mozambique tanzania and zambia findings point to the difficulty of safeguarding customary rights even in countries providing best practice legal protections and point to the fundamental role of human agency in shaping outcomes

deviations from optimal ceo ownership and firm value abstract the transaction cost theory of managerial ownership and firm value predicts that deviations from optimal managerial ownership reduce firm value this paper empirically tests the transaction cost theory by studying the relation between deviations on either side of optimal ceo ownership and firm value we find that both above optimal and below optimal deviations reduce firm value we find that a change in ceo ownership is associated with a higher lower abnormal return if it moves the ownership towards away from the optimal level these findings are consistent with the transaction cost theory of managerial ownership and firm value

similarities and differences in small and large corporation beliefs about capital structure policy theoretical researchers posit many factors that affect a firm s capital structure decisions theory also suggests that these influences will have different impacts on small and large firms however empiricists face difficulties in testing these hypotheses due to problems of quantifying the motivations expectations and preferences prevalent in the various theories

a comparison of census nsf r d data vs compustat r d data in a financial decision making model abstract this paper reports the results of a project in which r d data drawn from national science foundation and census bureau studies were substituted in several financial models for r d data drawn from the 1975 1982 compustat tapes the result using the compustat data did not differ significantly from that based on the nsf census data in the aggregate but significant differences were observed for certain industries and certain years the purpose of this paper is to discuss the financial models and determinants of corporate r d expenditures using the different databases and to suggest further questions for research financial support was provided by the center for innovation management studies at lehigh university and the national science foundation

the cross price effect on willingness to pay estimates in open ended contingent valuation abstract previous literature has shown that potential buyers use a reference price or product to form their opinion about the value of a new product therefore the pricing decision is an interactive process we investigate the two generalizations of the cross price effect the neighborhood price effect and the asymmetric price effect on consumer willingness to pay wtp for multiple similar products in an open ended contingent valuation context results show that the cross price effect on wtp is prominent with the neighborhood price effect holding in contingent valuation no conclusions are reached about the asymmetric price effect

financial structure of farm businesses under imperfect capital markets recent finance studies have considered whether gaps between a firm s costs of internal and external sources of investment funds arising from capital market imperfections influence its investment behavior and funding preferences this study tests the applicability of the pecking order and partial adjustment theories of financial structure to farm businesses by fitting a set of simultaneous financial equations with farm panel data from illinois model results indicate that illinois farms adjust to long run financial targets for equity debt and leasing but that additional financing needs follow a pecking order that is stronger for farms with greater asymmetric information problems copyright 2000 oxford university press