CONCENTRATION-PROFITS MONOPOLY VS. EFFICIENCY DEBATE: SOUTH AFRICAN EVIDENCE

Using the new official measures of concentration, this study finds a strong and highly significant correlation between concentration and industry profitability for South African manufacturing industries. This correlation is consistent with both the monopoly hypothesis of the traditional structure-conduct-performance paradigm and Demsetz's efficiency hypothesis that concentration of industry reflects the dominance of superior low-cost firms. Using the four-firm concentration ratio, this study applies Chappell and Cottle's extension of the Demsetz test to distinguish between the monopoly explanation of this correlation and the efficiency explanation. Using a conventional regression specification of the concentration-profits relationship with no control for efficiency, this study finds a statistically significant coefficient only for the industry and large size class regressions. Because small firms should do at least as well as large firms, under the price umbrella provided by large firms, this result is inconsistent with the monopoly hypothesis but consistent with the efficiency hypothesis. Specifying a variable that measures the efficiency of large plants relative to smaller plants—the cost advantage ratio—yields striking results. Similar to the results obtained by Chappell and Cottle for the United States, this study finds the efficiency variable to be highly significant in the industry and large size class regressions, while concentration becomes insignificant. Moreover, the efficiency variable is insignificant in the smaller size classes Both the statistical insignificance of concentration and the pattern of the efficiency variable coefficients suggest that including concentration in the regression specification without the efficiency variable simply highlights the effect of the efficiency variable. Coming as they do from an environment as different from the United States as the South Africa of the 1980s, these results strongly support the Demsetz efficiency hypothesis.     

Firms’ productivity growth and R&D spillovers: An analysis of alternative technological proximity measures

This paper aim at assessing the impact of R&D spillovers on firms’ economic performance as measured by productivity growth. The construction of R&D spillovers is based on Jaffe's methodology (1988, 1996) which associates econometrics and data analysis. The main objective of the paper is to extend Jaffe's methodology by examining alternative methods for measuring R&D spillovers and to test their impacts in terms of the robustness of results. In particular, the method used to classify firms into technological clusters as well as the metrics implemented to appreciate firms’ technological proximities which enter the construction of spillovers are further investigated. In addition to R&D spillovers, firms’ own R&D capital, labour and physical capital are estimated by means of a Cobb–Douglas production function. The data set consists of a representative sample of 625 worldwide R&D intensive firms over the period 1987–1994.     

Size structure,stability and performance of the largest British and EEC firms

This paper indicates that industrial as wel' as aggregate concentration of the largest European firms is increasing. Inside the group itself, the British firms show a marked decline of their size superiority over the EEC firms and a lower survival rate. At performance level, the actual increase in economic concentration does bring inferior results in terms of profit and growth rates along with it. The main consequence of a larger size is to reduce the firm's exposure to risk as expressed by the coefficient of profit variation. Comparing the two groups, the effect of a lower British survival rate is strengthened by the fact that the surviving British firms grow systematically more slowly than the continental firms. On the other hand, the British firms have a higher rate of profit and a lower coefficient of profit variation.     

Firm selection and industry evolution: the post-entry performance of new firms

A dynamic framework based on the process of firm selection and industry evolution is used to analyse the post-entry performance of new firms. In particular, it is hypothesized that, based on the stylized fact that virtually all new firms start at a very small scale of output, firm growth and survival are shaped by the need to attain an efficient level of output. The post-entry performance of more than 11,000 U.S. manufacturing firms established in 1976 is tracked throughout the subsequent tenyear period. Firm growth is found to be negatively influenced by firm size but positively related to the extent of scale economies, capital intensity, innovative activity, and market growth. By contrast, the likelihood of survival is identified as being positively influenced by firm size, market growth, and capital intensity, but negatively affected by the degree of scale economies in the industry. When viewed through the dynamic framework of firm selection and industry evolution, the empirical results shed considerable light on several paradoxes in the industrial organization literature, such as the continued persistence over time of an asymmetrical firm-size distribution consisting predominantely of suboptimal scale firms, and the failure of capital intensity and scale economies to substantially deter the entry and start-up of new firms.     

R&D expenditures and firm growth – is small beautiful?

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how efficiently different groups of firms use their R&D expenditures. To this end, it investigates how the empirical relationship between firms' R&D expenditures and their sales growth varies with different values of firm size, firm age, and the number of firms in the respective industry. Using panel data for Switzerland ranging from 1995 to 2012, the paper finds that smaller, more mature firms show a more positive relation between R&D expenditures and sales growth than both relatively larger or younger firms. The paper argues that, on the one hand, these firms can benefit from various small size advantages in the R&D process, such as more motivated researchers, caused by a stronger connection to the firm's fate. On the other hand, these firms can also benefit from a well-established R&D department that allows absorbing the latest technological developments. The paper further finds that industries consisting of many small firms show a more positive relation between R&D expenditures and sales growth than industries consisting of only a few large firms. The intuition behind this result is that industries consisting of many small firms imply more independent innovative trials, which then together result in a higher probability of discovering successful innovations. In sum, the paper finds that groups consisting of a large number of small, more mature firms spend their R&D in the most efficient way.     

Corporate governance in Germany: the role of banks and ownership concentration

The German system of corporate governance is often thought to be effective at addressing problems arising in large firms. In addition to the usual emphasis on the role of German banks, it is increasingly recognized that the German system also involves a high concentration of the ownership of large firms. We analyse the relative significance of these two features of the German system and conclude that high ownership concentration is more important. Although banks may influence corporate governance via their control of proxy votes, positions on supervisory boards, and provision of loan finance, in practice they do not play a role in the governance of large German firms which is distinct from that of other types of large shareholders. Any case for the superiority of German corporate governance of large firms must therefore be based on high ownership concentration rather than a special role of banks, and must consider the costs of ownership concentration as well as the benefits.     

Firm growth and liquidity constraints: evidence from the manufacturing and service sectors in Italy

We use a large firm-level panel data set to analyse the relevance of liquidity constraints on firm growth in Italy. In most European countries, mainstream financial institutions are scantly able to provide affordable credit facilities to small firms. Thus, these firms are forced to finance their growth almost exclusively through retained earnings. We estimate a dynamic version of Gibrat-law, incorporating cash flow as a measure of financial constraints, for two different size classes within small and medium size enterprises and for several industries in manufacturing and service sectors. The findings show that, in general, small manufacturing firms have higher growth-cash flow sensitivities with respect to medium firms. Conversely, our results highlight, for the services, a significant heterogeneity in the impact of liquidity constraints on firm growth. In particular, the sensitivity of growth rates to the cash flow appears relatively high for small firms belonging to Knowledge Intensive Business Services. Validation of Gibrat-law in the services suggests that an important group of industries, with a superior capacity of encouraging firm’s competitiveness, need more financial resources to promote their growth and that of the manufacturing sectors with whom they are connected.     

The largest European firms and their changing size structure: An entropy measure

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether size disparity among the 50 largest EEC and British industrial firms (in terms of assets) has changed from the period 1958 through 1969 and among the 100 largest firms from the period 1962 through 1969. The entropy measure has been selected because it can be decomposed into a within-group component and an among-group component. The main results of the study indicate that for the whole group,concentration has decreased over the period, but that a striking difference appears between the set of EEC firms characterized by a marked decline in relative concentration, and the set of British firms showing a relatively stable degree of concentration. Furthermore the differential growth of British and EEC firms appears clearly.     

A quantitative explanation of the low productivity in South–Eastern European economies: the role of misallocations

It is well known that southeast Europe is the least developed area in Europe. Using a methodology based on the idea of heterogeneous firms, this paper studies the degree to which firm heterogeneity and resource misallocation can explain the lower TFP in southeast Europe. The results show a significant degree of heterogeneity and resource misallocation, although the results are sensitive to the calibration used. There is evidence that firm-level productivity depends on firm size, while taxation negatively influences it. There is also some evidence that foreign-owned firms are more competitive, as are exporting firms. Results are generally robust across the various specifications used, but less so relative to the measure of productivity used. Additional evidence suggests that infrastructure-related obstacles as well as institutional instability drive the output distortion, while no factor is underlined as a significant driver of capital distortions, suggesting the need for better data sources for the latter.     

BANKING CONCENTRATION AND FIRM GROWTH: THE ROLE OF SIZE,LOCATION AND FINANCIAL CRISIS

Using conditional quantile regressions for a panel of listed firms from euro‐area countries in the 2005–11 period, we explore the impact of banking concentration on firm growth between smaller and larger firms; core and periphery countries; in pre‐crisis and post‐crisis years. Our findings reveal that increasing banking concentration favours high‐growth larger‐sized firms located in periphery countries pre‐crisis. By contrast in post‐crisis years increasing banking concentration impacts negatively on low‐growth smaller firms irrespective of location, revealing their vulnerability.     

Does the Effectiveness of Employment Incentive Programs Vary by Firm Size?

This article examines the impact of national employment incentive programs on employment growth of individual firms in the original fifteen member states of the European Union (EU-15). We investigate whether this impact differs among firms of different size classes, and whether the effectiveness of employment incentive programs depends on the business cycle. We find that expenditures on employment incentives have a positive impact on employment growth for firms of all sizes. However, this impact is significantly reduced for smaller firms, suggesting that employment incentive programs are less effective for small firms. We also find that the employment impact of incentive programs is stronger during recessionary periods, but only for firms without any employees (i.e., own-account workers).     

Entrepreneurial Structure Qualitative Analysis: The Case of Seville (Spain)

In the field of territorial economic growth, it is possible to identify important characteristics in the entrepreneurial structure, such as the structure of the size of firms, main activity sectors, or the degree of innovation. However, other lesser known characteristics are important also, such as functional dependency, which considers the relationship between small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and suppliers and clients belonging to any territorial field or productive dependency, which considers the level of concentration in terms of buying and selling in connection with the main suppliers and clients, respectively. In order to empirically contrast the importance of these entrepreneurial characteristics and try to relate them with territorial economic growth, a sample of 400 enterprises in the province of Seville (Spain) is used.      

Business Civilization in Decline

Technological change is modeled as endogenous in the sense that it is affected by economic, behavioral, and institutional variables. Technological change is especially affected by changes in relative input prices and their level, of which the price of labor is particularly important. Input prices are affected by institutional variables. Such prices also impact on the firm's efficiency, which in turn affects growth rates as well as the rate of technical change. As relative factor prices or their level increase, firms are induced to innovate or adopt extant technology to remain competitive or to maintain current profit rates. High wage firms can be expected to engage in such induced technological change, leading the growth process thereby yielding lower unit costs and increasing the level of material welfare. Relatively low wage economies can be locked into a state of economic inefficiency and laggard technological progress, especially in the long run.     

Directed search with multi-vacancy firms

I construct a directed search model in which firms decide whether to enter a market and how many positions to create. Within this framework, the number of firms and the size of each firm are determined endogenously, wages play an allocative role in the matching process, and the frictions inherent in this process derive from the equilibrium behavior of workers and firms. I characterize the (unique) equilibrium. Comparative statics generate testable implications for cross-sectional variation in matching efficiency, as well as the dynamic behavior of vacancies and unemployment. Moreover, allowing for ex-ante heterogeneity across firms, the model can easily and naturally generate the observed relationship between firm size, wages, profitability, and hiring.     

Impact of firm heterogeneity on direct and spillover effects of FDI: Micro-evidence from ten transition countries

This paper presents a comparative study of the importance of direct technology transfer and spillovers through FDI on a set of 10 transition countries, using a common methodology and appropriate methods to account for selection and simultaneity correction. This paper considers by far the largest firm level dataset (more than 90,000 firms) used by any study on the spillover effects of FDI. The main novelty of the paper is the explicit control for various sources of firm heterogeneity when accounting for different effects of FDI on firm performance. This work shows that the heterogeneity of firms in terms of absorptive capacity, size, productivity and technology levels affect the results. Controlling for these variables leads to some interesting results, which contrast with the previous empirical work in the field. We find that horizontal spillovers have become increasingly important over the last decade, and they may even become more important than vertical spillovers. Positive horizontal spillovers are equally distributed across size classes of firms, while negative horizontal spillovers seem to be more likely to accrue to smaller firms. Moreover, positive horizontal spillovers seem more likely to be present in medium or high productivity firms with higher absorptive capacities, while negative horizontal spillovers are more likely to affect low to medium productivity firms. These findings suggest that both direct effects from foreign ownership as well as the spillovers from foreign firms substantially depend on the absorptive capacity and productivity level of individual firms. In addition, these results show that foreign presence may also affect smaller firms to a larger extent than larger firms, but this impact may be in either direction.     

Determinants of corporate default risk in China: The role of financial constraints

Corporate default risk can affect financial stability and the macroeconomy. However, the determinants of corporate default risk in China are not well defined in the literature. We address this issue by using a rich credit event dataset of 981 Chinese listed firms over the period 1998–2013 and study the factors that affect default risk. We demonstrate that leverage, liquidity, firm size are the key firm-specific factors in determining default risk in China, along with macroeconomic factors like interest rate and stock return. Moreover, ‘Too big to fail’ only applies to non-SOEs, as default risk of SOEs is not affected by the firm size. We further find that high liquidity fails to reduce firms default risk, because small-sized firms which are financially constrained have limited cash to prevent financial distress, whereas large firms with greater cash holdings are able to mitigate their default risk as they are unconstrained.     

经济集聚中马歇尔外部性的识别-基于中国制造业数据的研究

本文提出了识别经济集聚中马歇尔外部性的方法,并将其应用于中国制造业数据。通过考察制造业集聚水平和产业间专业化分工的协同演进过程,本文一方面发现两者具有替代关系,验证了马歇尔外部性是经济活动空间集聚后果的理论假说;另一方面证实了马歇尔外部性是推动中国制造业空间不断集聚的基本因素。本文还发现市场化改革是实现马歇尔外部性的积极力量。本文的结论为我国企业选址、产业布局和城市发展政策提供了依据。     

R&D subsidies in a model of growth with dynamic market structure

This paper presents the effects of an R&D subsidy in a Schumpeterian general equilibrium model with rich industry dynamics. R&D subsidies raise the long-run growth rate, but they also raise the level of industry concentration. In the model firms compete for market share through process R&D endogenously determining the market structure within and across industries. Endogeneity of the market structure allows for analysis of changes in the moments of the firm size distribution in response to policy. R&D subsidies primarily benefit large incumbent firms who increase their innovation rates creating a greater technological barrier to entry. Concentration increases with fewer firms and a higher variance in the market shares. In general equilibrium, the greater distortions in the product market cause the wage rate to fall which leads to increased turnover rates. In addition, the analysis demonstrates that the model captures a large number of empirical regularities described in the industrial organization literature, but absent from most endogenous growth models. These features, such as entering firms are small relative to incumbents, the hazard rate of exit is negatively related to firm size, and large firms spend more on R&D than small firms play important roles in understanding the impact of R&D subsidies on the economy.     

Operating lease decision and the impact of capitalization in a bank-oriented country

This article explores the reasons why firms engage in operating leases and examines the potential impact of a change in the related accounting rules. We focus on the accounting advantage of off-balance financing, which does not affect the typical accounting-based covenants especially important in bank-oriented countries. However, we also consider other economically based arguments. Using manually collected operating lease data for Spanish listed firms, we use the constructive capitalization method to measure as-if liabilities. The results confirm that not only size and industry affect the decision but that firms closer to breaching their covenants are also more inclined to choose operating leases. Consequently, it is argued that such firms will be more affected by the accounting change; indeed, the inclusion of liabilities in the balance sheet might tighten financial covenants in loan agreements as evidenced in the paper. Not surprisingly, firms are strongly opposed to the accounting change.     

Post-privatization corporate governance and firm performance: The role of private ownership concentration,identity and board composition

We examine and analyze the post-privatization corporate governance of a sample of 52 newly privatized Egyptian firms over a period of 10 years, from 1995 to 2005. We look at the ownership structure that results from privatization and its evolution; the determinants of private ownership concentration; and the impact of private ownership concentration, identity and board composition on firm performance. We find that the state gives up control over time to the private sector, but still controls, on average, more than 35% of these firms. We also document a trend in private ownership concentration over time, mostly to the benefit of foreign investors. Firm size, sales growth, industry affiliation, and timing and method of privatization seem to play a key role in determining private ownership concentration. Ownership concentration and ownership identity, in particular foreign investors, prove to have a positive impact on firm performance, while employee ownership concentration has a negative one. The higher proportion of outside directors and the change in the board composition following privatization have a positive effect on firm performance. These results could have some important policy implications where private ownership by foreign investors seems to add more value to firms, while selling state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to employees is not recommended. Also, the state is highly advised to relinquish control and allow for changes in the board of directors following privatization as changing ownership, per se, might not have a positive impact on firm performance unless it is coupled with a new management style.