When does funding research by smaller firms bear fruit?: Evidence from the SBIR program*

This paper evaluates whether the relative concentration of funding for small, research-oriented firms in a small number of high-technology industries is related to differences across industries in the appropriability level facing small firms. We exploit a novel test based on the relationship between industry-level private venture financing and the performance of government-subsidized R&D projects. If industries differ in their appropriability level, then private funding and subsidized project performance should be positively correlated. Our principal finding is that subsidized project performance is higher in industrial segments with higher rates of private venture capital investment. Industrial sectors therefore seem to differ in the degree of appropriability and this variation helps explain why venture capital is concentrated. * The latest version of this paper is available at http://www.mbs.edu/home//jgans/research.htm     

Taxation and the stock market valuation of capital gains and dividends: Theory and emphirical results

Dividends seem to be more heavily taxed than capital gains. Why then do corporations pay dividends rather than repurchasing shares or retaining earnings? Either corporations are not acting in the interests of shareholders, or else shareholders desire dividends sufficiently for nontax reasons to offset the tax effect.In this paper, we measure the relative valuation of dividends and capital gains in the stock market, using a variant of the capital asset pricing model. We find that dividends are not valued differently systematically from capital gains. This finding is consistent with share price maximization by firms but inconsistent with the fact that most shareholderspay a heavier tax on dividends.We also show that the relative value of dividends provides an indirect measure of a marginal Tobin's q. The measured value of dividends relative to capital gains tends to be higher during prosperous periods, as is consistent with this interpretation. We hope that this time series on a marginal Tobin's q will prove to be useful in forecasting the rate of investment.     

可占有能力下竞合联盟知识演化策略

在竞合联盟中,成员专有知识共享和保护是理论界研究的热点问题,中国宽松的产权制度背景可能使得这一问题变得既复杂又具有特殊性。以可占有能力这一隐性传输壁垒为出发点,构建龙头企业和追随企业的异质性决策演化博弈模型,探寻可占有能力如何影响不同成员的知识演化策略。研究发现：①领导企业和追随企业的知识策略表现出一定差异,当可占有能力达到阈值后,领导企业一定会选择知识共享策略,而追随企业的知识策略并没有出现均衡状态,其中,成果可占有能力对策略演化的作用效果比知识可占有能力强;②当联盟成员均采取知识共享策略时,无论是知识可占有能力还是成果可占有能力,均与联盟研发投入正相关。当联盟成员均采取知识保护策略时,无论是领导企业还是追随企业,研发投入仅与知识可占有能力正相关,而与成果可占有能力不存在任何关系;③不论采取何种知识策略,联盟成员的期望收益始终与成果可占有能力正相关,而与知识可占有能力负相关,且当可占有能力达到阈值时,成果可占有能力对企业期望收益的作用效果显著强于知识可占有能力。因此,在当前产权制度背景下,可以从提高自身可占有能力这一途径维护竞合联盟稳定性,以此作为宽松产权制度下的一个有效补充。     

The socialist labor-managed firm and bank-financed investment: Some theoretical issues

Under a labor-managed system of the Yugoslav type of 1965–1971, the process of capital formation is subject to special difficulties, linked to the structure of property rights. Workers possess neither permanent nor transferable claims on capital assets but are, nevertheless, required by law to maintain the value of the firm's initial capital stock and of any additions to it. The law is intended to protect the nation's capital stock but is ill designed for this purpose. Its immediate effect is to reduce the collective's willingness to undertake bank-financed investment, and thus it promotes inefficient intertemporal allocation.     

The volatility of offshore investment

Offshore investment often bears the image of 'footloose' industry, with little to hinder movement to the most favorable environment. An effort to describe this particular segment of U.S. direct investment supports some elements of the colorful anecdotal portrait painted by critics in the Third World. Semiconductor assemblers are moderately sensitive to wage rates, and adjust quite rapidly in maintaining what they perceive as a diversified portfolio of 'risky' LDC production locations. On the other hand, this reaction is small enough to guarantee that modest increases in wages will not send all investment fleeing from an export platform. New methods of modelling direct foreign investment when risk diversification is important in explaining industrial location decisions are introduced in this paper.     

The Tyranny of Concepts: CUDIE (Cumulated, Depreciated, Investment Effort) Is Not Capital

The cost of public investment is not the increment to the value ofpublic capital. Unlike with private investors, there is no plausiblebehavioral model in which every dollar that the public sectorspends as ``investment' creates economically valuable ``capital.'While this simple analytic point is obvious, it has so far beenuniformly ignored in the empirical literature on economic growth,which uses—at best—cumulated, depreciated, investmenteffort (CUDIE) as a proxy for capital stocks. However, particularlyfor developing countries the difference between investment costand capital value is of first-order empirical importance: governmentinvestment is half of more of total investment, and calculationspresented here suggest that in many countries government investmentspending has created little useful capital. This has implicationsin three broad areas. First, none of the existing empirical estimatesof the impact of public spending has identified the productivityof public capital. Even where public capital has a potentiallylarge contribution to production, public-investment spendingmay have had a low impact. Second, it implies that all estimatesof total factor productivity in developing countries are deeplysuspect as there is no way to empirically distinguish betweenlow growth because of investments that create no factors andlow growth due to slow productivity growth. Third, multivariateregressions to date have not adequately controlled for capitalstock growth, which leads to erroneous interpretations of regressioncoefficients.     

Increasing returns to scale and the reverse flexible accelerator

We show that the flexible accelerator principle characterizes optimal investment behavior only when the firm's technology exhibits decreasing returns to scale throughout. When there are increasing returns we show that there is a range in which investment increases as the capital stock increases towards its long-run equilibrium level.     

Housing investment in urban China

What explains the rapidly increasing housing investment demand in China? To address this question, we develop an analytical framework featuring how expected capital gains impact households' housing investment decisions when subject to financial constraints. Housing demand in China takes place not only through households' owning multiple houses, but also through their owning a larger primary living residence if they are constrained from buying multiple houses. We show that households are more likely to own multiple houses when expecting higher capital gains. As expected capital gain increases, the primary housing demand of those households who are constrained from owning multiple houses increases, while those owing multiple housing units invest in extra ones instead of improving primary housing. Our empirical findings, based on 2010 and 2011 household survey data, are consistent with our theoretical predictions. We also find that the marginal effect of expected capital gains is higher for wealthier households. This links the booming housing market to widening income inequality which is a typical growth pain in a developing country like China. As an extension, we apply the analysis to derive implications of the institutional features (such as purchasing restriction policy and the existence of subsidized housing) for China’s housing markets.     

Unions, progressive taxes, and education subsidies

Progressive income taxes moderate distortionary wage demands by trade unions and thereby reduce unemployment, and at the same time underlie disincentives to acquire skills and decrease labour productivity. Governments can respond by combining progressive taxes with subsidies to investment in human capital. A system of generous education subsidies and steep progressive tax rates is more likely to emerge, the greater the market power of trade unions and the better the ability of governments to influence private education decisions. Empirical analysis for several OECD countries provides results consistent with these propositions. A policy mix of high education subsidies and relatively progressive income taxes is found in countries where union membership is significant.     

Sudden stops, banking crises and investment collapses in emerging markets

We evaluate whether financial openness leaves emerging market economies vulnerable to the adverse effects of capital reversals (“sudden stops”) on domestic investment. We investigate this claim in a broad sample of emerging markets during the period 1976–2002. If the banking sector does not experience a systemic crisis, sudden stop events fail to have a significant impact on investment. Bank crises, on the other hand, have a significant negative effect on investment even in the absence of a contemporaneous sudden stop crisis. We also find that openness to capital flows worsens the adverse impact of banking crises on investment. Our results provide statistical support for the policy view that a strong banking sector which can withstand the negative fallout of capital flight is essential for countries that open their economies to international financial flows.     

Factor substitution,ex ante and ex post

The amount of labor used per unit of capital stock (or investment) can be varied by any one of four quite different mechanisms. Two of these – changes in crew size and in capital utilization – are variable even ex post. These mechanisms are systemmatically related and all induce factor substitution in the same (neoclassical) direction with a change in relative factor prices. The conditions necessary to support the view that ‘factor prices don't matter’ are shown to be terribly stringent.     

Knowledge spillovers through FDI and trade: the moderating role of quality-adjusted human capital

The paper extends the findings of the Coe and Helpman (Eur Econ Rev 39(5):859-887, 1995) model of R&D spillovers by considering foreign direct investment (FDI) as a channel for knowledge spillovers in addition to imports. Deeper insights on the issue are provided by examining the inter-relationship between knowledge spillovers from imports and inward FDI. Furthermore, human capital is added to the discussion as one of the appropriability factors for knowledge spillovers, with special focus on its quality-content, using journal publications and patent applications. Applying cointegration estimation method on 20 European countries from 1995 to 2010, the direct effects of FDI-related as well as import-related spillovers on domestic productivity are confirmed. Furthermore, a strong complementary relationship is found between knowledge spillovers through the channels of imports and inward FDI. When considering quality-adjusted human capital, countries with better human capital are found to benefit not only from direct productivity effects, but also from absorption and transmission of international knowledge spillovers through imports and inward FDI. Finally, technological distance with the frontier does not appear to play a role in the absorption of import and FDI related knowledge spillovers.     

The existence of optimal consumption policies in optimal economic growth models with nonconvex technologies

An existence theorem for a class of continuous time infinite horizon optimal growth models is developed. The underlying technology set is not assumed to be convex, instead the “slices” of the technology set corresponding to a fixed capital stock vector are assumed convex and compact in the consumption and net investment variables. This allows consideration of the case of increasing returns to scale. Existence of an optimal capital stock and consumption policy is proved directly without consideration of the underlying Hamiltonian dynamical system that arises from applying Pontryagin's maximum principle.     

Shadow prices in intertemporal plans under constant returns to scale

It has been shown, in connection with Tobin's ‘q’ theory of investment, that, under constant returns to scale and for interior solutions, the market value of a firm is its capital valued at the shadow price of capital. This result is here generalized to cover many fixed (and variable) factors and non-interior solutions.     

The Marglin-McFadden-Mishan debate on public investment criteria: Some Clarifications

This paper reviews the post 1963 debate on public investment criteria stemming largely from Marglin's work. At issue here, are the two main propositions of Marglin, namely, that the social marginal rate of time preference is the appropriate social rate of discount (SRD) for public projects, and that the social opportunity cost (SOC) of capital raised to facilitate public investment is, in general, in excess of the money cost of such investment. Both supported and challenged by different writers, this debate does not provide any clear consensus as to the current status of these propositions. The central purpose of this paper is to put the series of apparent claims and counterclaims found in the literature to an analytical test, and draw the appropriate conclusions. This we do by explicitly considering the technology, fiscal policy and savings reinvestment behavior in a simple model of maximizing the present discounted value of the marginal net consumption stream generated by the public project. We argue that given Marglin's assumptions, the criterion that the marginal social rate of time preference be the SRD is valid as has already been demonstrated by Diamond (1968) and McFadden (1972). His other conclusion that the SOC should generally exceed unit v is seen to be correct only in special cases.     

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY? ICT,INTANGIBLE INVESTMENT,AND BRITAIN'S PRODUCTIVITY RECORD REVISITED

Despite the apparent importance of the "knowledge economy," U.K. macroeconomic performance appears unaffected: investment rates are flat, and productivity has slowed. We investigate whether measurement issues might account for this puzzle. The standard National Accounts treatment of most spending on "knowledge" or "intangible" assets is as intermediate consumption. Thus they do not count as either GDP or investment. We ask how treating such spending as investment affects some key macro variables, namely, market sector gross value added (MGVA), business investment, capital and labor shares, growth in labor and total factor productivity (TFP), and capital deepening. We find: (a) MGVA was understated by about 6 percent in 1970 and 13 percent in 2004; (b) instead of the business investment/MGVA ratio falling since 1970 it has been rising; (c) instead of the labor share being flat since 1970 it has been falling; (d) growth in labor productivity and capital deepening has been understated and growth in TFP overstated; and (e) TFP growth has not slowed since 1990 but has been accelerating.     

Tax policy,capital use,and investment incentives

In this paper, we investigate the effect of a corporate income tax on the utilization and maintenance of capital and on the demand for capital stock and services. We find that a tax that allows interest deductions is distortionary unless allowable depreciation depends on the firm's utilization and maintenance decisions. Also, we show that the usual demand equation for capital stock is misspecified if capital utilization is not a technological constant.     

Dividend taxes,corporate investment,and ‘Q’

Taxes on corporate distributions have traditionally been regarded as a ‘double tax’ on corporate income. This view implies that while the total effective tax rate on corporate source income affects real economic decisions, the distribution of this tax burden between the shareholders and the corporation is irrelevant. Recent research has suggested an alternative to this traditional view. One explanation of why firms in the United States pay dividends in spite of the heavy tax liabilities associated with this form of distribution is that the stock market capitalizes the tax payments associated with corporate distributions. This capitalization leaves investors indifferent at the margin between a corporation's decision to pay out dividends or to retain earnings. This alternative view holds that while changes in the dividend tax rate will affect shareholder wealth, they will have no impact on corporate investment decisions.This paper develops econometric tests which distinguish between these two views of dividend taxation. By extending Tobin's ‘q’ theory of investment to incorporate taxes at both the corporate and personal levels, the implications of each view for corporate investment decisions can be derived. The competing views may be tested by comparing the performance of investment equations estimated under each theory's predictions. British time series data are particularly appropriate for testing hypotheses about dividend taxes because of the substantial postwar variation in effective tax rates on corporate distributions. The econometric results suggest that dividend taxes have important effects on investment decisions.     

新兴市场合资企业R&D强度与企业绩效或有关系及调整

MNCs（跨国公司）通过组建合资企业进入新兴市场,由于其R&D活动面临着创新专用性风险,使其R&D强度与合资企业绩效之间表现为一种或有关系。使用厦门、长沙和重庆3地制造业样本检验验证了该理论假设。就市场战略而言,只有那些以国际市场战略为主的合资企业才能获得R&D对合资企业绩效的促进效应;进一步考虑合资企业不同的所有权结构——市场战略配置结构,发现只有在以国际市场战略——MNCs占绝对多数股权的合资企业中,R&D强度对企业绩效的促进效应才会显现,而其它任何类型的配置结构均没有发现这种促进效应。这些发现可为中国完善外资政策提供理论指导。     

A short-term analytical model of the Singapore economy

The rapid economic transformation of the ‘newly industrializing countries’ has aroused considerable interest in their economic structure and functioning. This paper contributes to the discussion by seeking to anatomise the Singapore economy. The economy's dynamism is reflected by the fact that, although our model is a short-term one, capital investment, both foreign and domestic, plays a central role in it. The model is also characterized by a novel specification of the export function, the inclusion of non-traded goods and of a sectorally segmented labor market, and a fairly comprehensive treatment of the financial system. The general equilibrium response of the model to various parameter shifts is investigated, and the factors responsible for the economy's rapid development thereby elucidated.