Comparisons of Foreign Multinationals and Local Firms in Asian Manufacturing over Time

This paper first shows that shares of foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) in the manufacturing sectors of five Asian host economies (Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan) were generally large in terms of exports, small in terms of employment and moderate in terms of production. Correspondingly, the average product of labour and export propensities were often significantly higher in foreign MNCs than in local firms. In addition, foreign MNCs tended to be relatively large and to have relatively high average capital productivity, capital intensity, skilled-labour intensity, R&D intensity, profit rates and import propensities, but relatively low shares of labour compensation in value added, and these differences were also statistically significant in many cases. Differences between wholly- or heavily-foreign plants and foreign plants with lower foreign ownership shares were also significant in many cases and generally in the same direction as the differences between MNCs and local plants noted above. Differences among MNCs by foreign source were generally small and insignificant in Hong Kong. In Singapore, European and US firms tended to be larger and characterized by relatively high average labour productivity, capital intensity, profitability and export propensities, but relatively low shares of labour compensation in value added compared to Japanese and other Asian firms.     

Productivity and technology in Nepal:: An analysis of foreign and domestic firms

This study uses plant level data from the census of manufacturing establishments to examine the production technology and labor productivity of foreign and domestic firms in Nepal. The results show that the capital intensity in foreign firms is higher than that in domestic firms. The statistical results also imply that foreign firms have higher labor productivity. A simultaneous equation model suggests that foreign firms are technically not more efficient than domestic firms. In fact, analysis indicates that foreign firms are technically less efficient. The foreign firms may have derived their competitiveness from capital intensive technology that is found to be one of the major factors to boost labor productivity.     

THE ECONOMICS OF IMPORT PARITY PRICING: A PEDAGOGICAL NOTE

This paper demonstrates that pricing to import parity is not necessarily prima facie evidence of the exercise of market power. It is shown that in the presence of imports both market structures, perfect competition and monopoly, can price to import parity. If markets can be segmented enabling the firm to discriminate between the export and domestic market it is shown that the imperfectly competitive firm can differentially price. Furthermore, as the number of domestic firms is increased, and if these firms are able to segment the market, the differential between domestic and foreign prices is reduced. The import parity price may or may not be charged in the domestic market. A measure of the exercise of market power is therefore the differential between export parity and the domestic price.     

Death of linkages in host countries? A firm‐level study on the channels of productivity spillovers in the Malaysian manufacturing sector

Productivity spillovers from multinational corporations (MNCs) to local firms have been an area of keen research interest in developing economics. Claims of positive spillovers in the form of technology transfers have been questionable, in part because of the many ambiguous conclusions obtained. The paper argues that the lack of focus in the mechanisms underpinning spillovers may be one of the reasons for the ambiguity. Using local input–output linkages as the mechanism for technology transfer, this study examines the presence and the enabling conditions for spillovers. Accounting for the variations in firms' characteristics, the findings show that skills‐oriented MNCs participating in international production networks transmit horizontal spillovers to local establishments. Vertical spillovers from MNCs are mostly relevant only to lower‐skilled establishments. For skilled and export‐oriented local establishments, technologies learned from producing for international production networks are more significant than forming linkages with MNCs in the domestic market.     

Resource allocation: A hayekian paradigm for maritime conglomerates

Conclusion This article provides a new synthesis between the strategic management literature and Austrian capital theory. The resource allocation process plays out in the context of differing subunit preferences, potentially resulting in tension and periodic conflict that may lead to dysfunctional relationships over time. Absent clearly understood and effective operational rules, the potential for heightened dysfunctional internal relationships will lead a conglomerate organization to have a diminished resource base for achieving its future strategic goals. This article presents a set of resource-allocation rules based on the Hayekian theory of production. By developing an effective resource-allocation paradigm based on economic theory, the organization can gain market share resulting in increased profitability and continued success in the marketplace. The Hayekian triangle offers firms an objective measure reflecting environmental shifts by tracking interest-rate changes that affect consumer and production demand. Organizations can gain “first-mover advantages” essential to provide the competitive advantage vis-à-vis their rivals while maintaining harmonious relationships among subunits. Entrepreneurial innovation can also be exercised by “second movers” who imitate the “first movers,” perhaps taking advantage of lessons learned. This kind of innovative imitation may well provide the greatest scope for entrepreneurial activity. The authors remain responsible for any errors or omissions.     

Does Audit Market Concentration Harm the Quality of Audited Earnings? Evidence from Audit Markets in 42 Countries*

Audit regulators around the world have expressed concern over market dominance by Big 4 accounting firms and the potential adverse effect it may have on the quality of audited financial statements. We use cross‐country variation in the audit market structure of 42 countries to examine two separate aspects of Big 4 dominance: (1) Big 4 market concentration as a group relative to non–Big 4 auditors; and (2) concentration within the Big 4 group in which one or more of the Big 4 firms is dominant relative to the other Big 4 firms. We find that in countries where the Big 4 (as a group) conduct more listed company audits, both Big 4 and non–Big 4 clients have higher quality audited earnings compared to clients in countries with smaller Big 4 market shares. In contrast, in countries where there is a greater concentration within the Big 4 group, we find that Big 4 clients have lower quality audited earnings compared to countries with more evenly distributed market shares among the Big 4. Thus concentration within the Big 4 group appears to be detrimental to audit quality in a country and of legitimate concern to regulators and policymakers. However, Big 4 dominance per se does not appear to harm audit quality and is in fact associated with higher earnings quality, after controlling for other country characteristics that potentially affect earnings quality.     

Market potential,firm exports and profit: Which market do the Chinese firms profit from?

This paper examines the effects of market potential on Chinese firms' exports and profit by using data from the Chinese industrial enterprise database and The China City Statistical Yearbooks during 1998–2007. We find that international market potential has positive effects on firm exports, but negative effects on firm profit, while domestic market potential has opposite impacts. This finding suggests that Chinese firms' profit mainly stems from the domestic market. Moreover, the adverse impact of international market potential on firm profit diminishes with the increase of firm productivity, and some firms with higher productivity may benefit from the expansion of foreign markets.     

Financial and profit performance of MNCs in developing countries: Some evidence from an Indian and Columbian sample

This paper presents detailed information on the financing patterns and profit performance of a sample of multinational and other manufacturing firms in India and Columbia. It finds that local borrowing patterns of MNCs do not differ significantly from those of other firms, that MNC affiliates tend to pay lower interest rates abroad, that multinationality as such does not exercise a significant influence on profitability, and that local advertising and borrowing patterns have some effects on profitability.     

Mandatory IFRS Adoption and Financial Statement Comparability

This study examines whether mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) leads to capital market benefits through enhanced financial statement comparability. U.K. domestic standards are considered very similar to IFRS, suggesting any capital market benefits observed for U.K.‐domiciled firms are more likely attributable to improvements in comparability (i.e., better precision of across‐firm information) than to changes in information quality specific to the firm (i.e., core information quality). If IFRS adoption improves financial statement comparability, we predict this should reduce insiders' ability to benefit from private information. Consistent with these expectations, we find that abnormal returns to insider purchases ― used to proxy for private information ― are reduced following IFRS adoption. Similar results obtain across numerous subsamples and proxies used to isolate IFRS effects attributable to comparability. Together, the findings are consistent with mandatory IFRS adoption improving comparability and thus leading to capital market benefits by reducing insiders' ability to exploit private information.     

The myths,facts, and theories of ethnic,small-scale enterprise financing

This article combines the results of three financial studies that examine capital issues affecting minority business development. The results are presented so as to explain or refute conventional wisdom regarding capital availability, cost of capital, credit market discrimination, sources of capital and differences in firm capital composition. Generally, Asian and Hispanic businesses more approximate nonminority businesses in the sources of capital, the cost of capital, total capital investment, and access to capital. Black firms, on the other hand, face credit discrimination from all sources of capital, which limits their access to capital, increases its cost, and affects firm profitability. Consequently, black firms have a smaller capital composition at startup and during operations. The only deviation from this pattern occurs where minority and nonminority financial institutions vie for black business patronage by reducing the cost of borrowing and increasing the availability of funds.     

零杠杆上市公司的股票长期收益趋势研究

与国际发达的资本市场类似,我国资本市场也存在企业零（低）杠杆现象。基于1992-2014年沪深两市全部A股上市公司的财务报表数据及股票收益数据,文章使用事件研究法与日历时间组合法,实证检验了零（低）杠杆公司的财务特征及股票长期收益情况。研究表明,我国A股市场中的零（低）杠杆现象呈现扩大化及增长趋势,且零（低）杠杆公司具有规模小、上市年限短、市账比高、投资水平低及盈利性好等共同特征。研究也发现相较非零（低）杠杆公司,连续三（五）年零（低）杠杆公司具有显著的长期超额收益,说明持续的极端财务保守政策对于股票收益具有重要的影响作用。     

The value-added tax reform and labor market outcomes: Firm-level evidence from China

The tax incentives designed to stimulate firm investment may have a large and unexpected impact on labor market outcomes. Using a comprehensive data set on Chinese manufacturing firms during the period 1998–2007 with a difference-in-differences approach, we examine the impact of the value-added tax reform in 2004 on the firm-level labor market outcomes. We find that firms in eligible industries and pilot regions (treated firms) enjoying lower costs of purchasing fixed assets under the reform tended to increase capital investment and reduce employment simultaneously relative to firms that did not have tax incentives (the control firms). Compared with the control firms, the treated firms became more capital intensive but had declines in labor share in value added and average wage. We also find that the employment adjustment is associated with increase in the share of skilled workers in terms of engineers and technicians, but not workers with a college degree or higher.     

上市公司的"壳"交易背后的资金配置效率

本文从已有文献出发,建立了一个两期企业生命周期模型来分析在存在金融压抑的情况下我国证券市场中的“买壳”现象,在证券市场有效的情况下,资本应该尽可能流向好企业,均衡状态下“好壳”背后总应是好企业,但给定当前信息难以判断好坏企业。模型和实证表明“买壳”所需股份的大小可以作为识别“壳”背后好坏企业比例的标志,买壳所需股份越多,“好壳”背后好企业的概率就越大。但由于种种原因,我们难以通过对“买壳”比例的限制来调节市场上资金的配置．比例的大小仅仅作为识别“壳”背后企业类型的标志。考虑到在国内证券市场中存在非流通股与流通股的现实,笔者又将模型拓展,得出目前适合我国证券市场的政策建议：从短期来看,要防止非流通股以过低的价格转让,尤其要避免仅以净资产拍卖国有股的不当行为。从长远来看,最终要实施非流通股的减持。     

Resource Allocation Effects of Price Reactions to Disclosures*

Capital market participants collectively may possess information about the valuation implications of a firm's change in strategy not known by the management of the firm proposing the change. We ask whether a firm's management can exploit the capital market's information in deciding either whether to proceed with a contemplated strategy change or whether to continue with a previously initiated strategy change. In the case of a proposed strategy change, we show that managers can extract the capital market's information by announcing a potential new strategy, and then conditioning the decision to implement the new strategy on the size of the market's price reaction to the announcement. Under this arrangement, we show that a necessary condition to implement all and only positive net present value strategy changes is that managers proceed to implement some strategies that garner negative price reactions upon their announcement. In the case of deciding whether to continue with a previously implemented strategy change, we show that it may be optimal for the firm to predicate its abandonment/continuation decision on the magnitude of the costs it has already incurred. Thus, what looks like “sunk‐cost” behavior may in fact be optimal. Both demonstrations show that, in addition to performing their usual role of anticipating future cash flows generated by a manager's actions, capital market prices can also be used to direct a manager's actions. It follows that, in contrast to the usual depiction of the information flows between capital markets and firms as being one way — from firms to the capital markets — information also flows from capital markets to firms.     

R&D Reporting Biases and Their Consequences*

The immediate expensing of research and development (R&D) expenditures is often justified by the conservatism principle. However, no accounting procedure consistently applied can be conservative throughout the firm's life. We therefore ask the following questions: (1) When is the expensing of R&D conservative and when is it aggressive, relative to R&D capitaliza‐tion? (2) What are the capital‐market implications of these reporting biases? To address these questions we construct a model of profitability biases (differences between reported profitability under R&D expensing and capitalization) and show that the key drivers of the reporting biases are the differences between R&D growth and earnings growth (momentum), and between R&D growth and return on equity (ROE). Companies with a high R&D growth rate relative to their profitability (typically early life‐cycle companies) report conservatively, while firms with a low R&D growth rate (mature companies) tend to report aggressively under current generally accepted accounting principles. Our empirical analysis, covering the period 1972‐2003, generally supports the analytical predictions. In the valuation analysis we find evidence consistent with investor fixation on the reported profitability measures: we detect undervaluation of conservatively reporting firms and overvaluation of aggressively reporting firms. These misvaluations appear to be corrected when the reporting biases reverse from conservative to aggressive and vice versa. This evidence is consistent with behavioral finance arguments about investor cognitive biases.     

R&D and market value of Japanese firms in the 1990s

There is a concern in Japan that the R&D profitability of its domestic firms fell significantly in the 1990s, following the US pattern in the 1980s. This paper finds, however, that the effect of R&D on the market value of a firm, relative to that of tangible assets, increased in the 1990s in terms of both within firm variations and cross section variations, even though the average market value itself significantly fell. More trade and higher foreign ownership significantly enhanced the market value of a firm, and so did more patents in sectors such as pharmaceuticals. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (2) (2006) 155–176.     

Performance and Capital Structure of Privatized Firms in Europe

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze whether there are differences in performance between private firms and recently privatized firms in the European Union, as well as to determine whether ownership (state-owned versus private) and regulation affect capital structure. Focusing on economic reasons that justify privatizations, we analyze whether there are differences between recently privatized state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms in their profitability, leverage and efficiency during the period 1999–2002. Also, we analyze the determinants of the capital structure of these firms. Contrary to previous studies, our results show that privatized firms are not less efficient than firms with private ownership.     

The micro-economic effects of financial market structure: evidence from 20th century North American steel firms

This paper analyzes the historical relationship between domestic financial institutions, firm level financing decisions, and average capital costs in a sample of US and Canadian firms from a large and economically important manufacturing industry—primary steel production. We find that national capital market characteristics and firm specific characteristics were important determinants of 20th century US and Canadian steel firms’ financing decisions. We also show that, despite source-specific price differences, average capital costs were approximately equal in the two countries, and the firms’ financing decisions were important determinants of these average capital costs. We conclude that firms structured their balance sheets in an effort to exploit the idiosyncratic features of their domestic financial institutions, and thereby, minimize their average capital costs.     

Non-multinational firms and transfer of technology to less developed countries

Importing technology from multinational corporations (MNCs) has certain disadvantages for the less developed countries (LDCs) and there is a need for such countries to seek alternative sources of technology. One such source might be non-multinational firms but little is known of the relative merits of non-multinationals. This paper describes a comparison of non-multinational with multinationals in 47 transfers of technology from the UK to India.For a number of important factors, we found little difference between the roles of MNCs and non-MNCs. It is suggested that this lack of difference may be due to the non-MNCs in the sample having some of the same advantages in negotiation as the MNCs — namely a high prestige in the Indian market and possession of some specialist technological expertise. In other words, the multinationality of MNCs may not be as important as is sometimes suggested. Other factors, such as prestige, may be of greater importance. This makes the search for alternative suppliers of technology more difficult since non-MNCs with no prestige are, almost by definition, not known to the LDC.     

Dynamics of Capital Structure: The Case of Korean Listed Manufacturing Companies*

In this paper, we develop a model of dynamic capital structure choice based on a sample of Korean manufacturing firms and estimate the unobservable optimal capital structure using a wide range of observable determinants. Unbalanced panel data of Korean listed firms for the period 1985–2002 is used. In addition to identifying and estimating the effects of the determinants of capital structure, we take into consideration some Korea‐specific features, such as the structural break before and after the financial crisis and firms’ affiliation to chaebol business groups. Our results indicate that the optimal capital structure has been affected by the financial crisis. Although the results suggest that chaebol‐affiliated firms have higher optimal level of leverage and adjust their capital structure faster than non‐chaebol firms, firms’ leverage might be associated with factors other than chaebol‐affiliation, such as size, profitability and growth opportunity.