Ownership, investment climate and firm performance

The importance of a country's ‘investment climate’ for economic growth has recently received much attention. In this paper we use a new survey of 1,500 Chinese enterprises in five cities to measure more precisely components of the investment climate and their effects on firm performance. Our firm‐level analysis reveals that both ownership and investment climate measures matter for investment, productivity and growth. In particular, firm performance is positively correlated with foreign and domestic private ownership, light regulatory burdens, limited corruption, technological infrastructure and labour market flexibility. In contrast, gains from improving banking access and physical infrastructure are quite limited.     

Investment and the soft budget constraint in China

This paper examines the incentive effects of the soft budget constraint on the investment behavior of firms in general and on the investment-cash flow sensitivity in particular. To this end, we develop a simple model of moral hazard that takes the soft budget constraint into account. Within this moral hazard environment, we show that investment is positively related to the amount of internal funds. We further show that the presence of the soft budget constraint deteriorates the moral hazard problem, thereby making the investment level less sensitive to the amount of internal funds. This is the case irrespective of whether the soft budget constraint renders the firm more or less liquidity constrained. To test the model's empirical implications, we employ data of China's listed companies for the period from 1997 to 2003. We use the share of state ownership as a proxy for the severity of the soft budget constraint. We find strong evidence that firms with larger shares of state ownership exhibit lower investment-cash flow sensitivities than firms with smaller shares of state ownership.     

Diminishing Returns: Carbon Market Crisis and the Future of Market-Dependent Climate Change Finance

The current and future costs of meeting climate change mitigation needs in the global South vastly exceed levels of available funding from public sources in the North. As a possible solution to this problem, policy-makers and various observers have pushed increasingly for the adoption of market-based carbon financing strategies, with the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) representing the most consistent application of this approach to date. Nevertheless, market-based carbon finance remains highly volatile given its heavy dependence on conditions in the broader global carbon market which remains in the throes of a devastating crisis, earning carbon the distinction of 2011s worst performing global commodity. By demonstrating that it is through carbon's market price that finance-generating investment in the CDM is largely derived, and which also determines the ex post value of CDM projects, this paper argues for the decoupling of climate change finance from carbon's market value. The need to do so is particularly pressing since, it is argued, the current crisis in the global carbon market reflects an embedded crisis tendency in that market, born in part from the political machinations through which it was born and which leaves it prone to persisting crises of oversupply.     

Environmental regulation and investment: Evidence from European industry data

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on the effects of environmental regulation on investment. In particular, we ask whether and how strongly an industry's investment responds to stringency in environmental regulation. Environmental regulation is measured as (i) an industry's total current expenditure on environmental protection, and (ii) a country-industry's revenue from environmental taxes. Focusing on European data of manufacturing industries between 1998 and 2007, we estimate the differential impact of environmental stringency on four types of investment: gross investment in tangible goods, in new buildings, in machinery, and in ‘productive’ investment (investment in tangible goods minus investment in abatement technologies). Both environmental variables enter positively, and their quadratic terms exhibit significantly negative parameter estimates. This, in turn, indicates a positive but diminishing impact of environmental regulation on investment.     

FDI Policy,Greenfield Investment and Cross‐border Mergers

This paper examines a multinational's choice between greenfield investment and cross‐border merger when it enters another country via foreign direct investment (FDI) and faces the host country's FDI policy. Greenfield investment incurs a fixed plant setup cost, whereas the foreign firm obtains only a share of the joint profit from a cross‐border merger under the restriction of the FDI policy. This trade‐off is affected by market demand, cost differential, and market competition, among other things. The host country's government chooses its FDI policy to affect (or alter) the multinational's entry mode to achieve the maximum social welfare for the domestic country. We characterize the conditions shaping the optimal FDI policy and offer intuitions on FDI patterns in developing and developed countries.     

政府资助对中小企业创新研发的影响

现阶段我国仍属于新兴市场经济国家,市场机制并不完善,中小企业的生存环境不容乐观.为提升中小企业市场竞争力,各级政府加大对其创新研发的资金和政策扶持力度对帮助其持续稳定发展有着十分重要的意义.本文从深市中小板上市企业中筛选出了471家企业在2014—2018年间的面板数据,利用回归模型进行实证检验,以探究政府资助政策对中小企业创新研发的影响.结果显示:政府的资助政策在整体上对科技研发投入产生了积极的作用,但对创新研发的产出没有直接影响;只有对科技研发人员进行投入才能给创新产出带来积极影响.因而,政府资助应该着重加强对科技人员的投入.     

A spillover‐based theory of credentialism

I propose a model in which credentials, such as diplomas, are instrumentally valuable to workers. The model avoids an important criticism of standard job market signalling models by tying a worker's wage to their output. A worker's productivity is influenced by the skills of their co‐workers, where such skills arise from an ability‐augmenting investment that is made prior to matching with co‐workers. Credentials allow workers to demonstrate their investment to the labour market, thereby allowing them to match with high‐skill co‐workers in equilibrium. Despite the positive externality associated with a worker's investment, I show how overinvestment is pervasive in equilibrium.     

Individuality and the economic order in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

This paper examines Hegel's perspective on the market economy, paying particular attention to how the market fits into his conception of freedom. Hegel's doctrine of freedom implies that market relations realize a distinctive form of freedom; however, due to the ontological deficiencies of this freedom, it must be subsumed under a superior freedom that is realized only within the state. The paper also explains why Hegel, although an economic liberal, does not accept the basic tenets of political liberalism, and why he does not regard economic science as a tool for public policy.     

Internet start-ups access to the bank loan market: evidence from Italy

The analysis of the bank sector's ability to efficiently fuel the birth of new Italian business ventures in Internet-related services is studied. In particular, through the specification and the estimate of a series of econometric models, this paper aims at investigating which characteristics of a large sample of Internet start-ups and their relative founders facilitate access to the loan market. More precisely, the role played by founders’ human capital as a possible significant signal used by banks to evaluate investment projects is addressed. Estimation results suggest that highly qualified human resources possessed by Internet founders do not represent an important driver for gaining access to bank credit and they do not affect the amount of the incurred debt.     

Competing mechanisms

The recent literature on competing mechanisms has devoted a lot of effort at understanding a very complex and abstract issue. In particular, an agent's type in a competitive environment is hard to conceptualize because it depends on information the agent has about what is going on in the rest of the market. This paper explains why this is such an important practical problem and illustrates how the literature has “solved” it.     

基于面板数据的中国资本配置效率研究

基于 Jeffrey Wurgler 的方法,本文提出了一种新的基于面板数据的资本配置效率模型。使用我国39个工业行业的数据度量了90年代资本配置效率,发现从1991年到1999年我国资本配置效率的年平均值为0.0311到0.0375之间,属于很低的水平。自发投资增长指数的大小与国家产业政策的倾斜、高新技术发展方针、产业调整与转移的方向、产业国际竞争力的态势以及市场供求情况基本一致。经济增长仍然是投资主导型的,属于外延扩张的阶段,金融市场应有的资本高效优化配置的机制没有建立起来。本文还分析了相应的金融现象。     

Where Do Australians Invest?

In this article, we analyse the geography of Australia's international portfolio investment using the International Monetary Fund's Co‐ordinated Portfolio Investment Survey dataset. Preliminary results suggest that Australia's external holdings of equity and debt as a percentage of national income almost doubled between 1997 and 2001. However, Australia's international investment position as a percentage of national income is one of the lowest amongst the major OECD countries. In 2001 approximately two‐thirds of Australia's total investments were in the United States and the United Kingdom. By contrast Australia's trade share (exports plus imports as a percentage of Australia's total world trade) with these countries was approximately 20 per cent in the same year. The major determinants of Australia's geographical allocation of portfolio investment indicate a broad correspondence between stock market capitalisation of destination countries and the allocation of Australian financial investments but with some deviations from that baseline, where the deviations are correlated with Australian trade patterns.     

The effects of abandonment options on operating leverage and investment timing

This paper examines how the presence of an abandonment option affects a firm's investment decision in general, and its operating leverage in particular. We show that the value of the abandonment option is a decreasing function of the firm's operating leverage. Upon the introduction of the abandonment option, the firm as such optimally lowers its operating leverage. We further show that there are direct and indirect effects of the abandonment option on the firm's optimal investment trigger, which act against each other. First, the ability to shut down production offers downside protection to the firm, thereby making the firm more eager to exercise the investment option. This is the negative direct effect that pushes down the investment trigger. Second, introducing the abandonment option to the firm induces the firm to lower its operating leverage, thereby making the firm more reluctant to exercise the investment option. This is the positive indirect effect that lifts up the investment trigger. We numerically verify that the overall effect of the abandonment option on the firm's optimal investment trigger is negative.     

Innovation Shortfalls

There is a common perception that low productivity or low growth is due to what can be called an “innovation shortfall,” usually identified as a low rate of investment in R&D. The problem with this analysis is that it fails to see that a low R&D investment rate may be appropriate given the economy's pattern of specialization, or may be just one manifestation of impediments to accumulation more generally. This paper first shows a simple way to estimate the R&D gap that can be explained by a country's specialization pattern, illustrating it for the case of Chile. Second, we show how a calibrated model can be used to determine the R&D gap that should be expected given a country's investment in physical and human capital. If the actual R&D gap is above this expected gap, then one can say that the country suffers from a true innovation shortfall.     

Sidgwick and Edgeworth on indeterminacy in the labour market

Commentators have underlined Sidgwick's influence on Edgeworth's thinking and more particularly on New and Old Methods of Ethics (1877). But have failed to notice that Sidgwick remained a major reference in Mathematical Psychics (1881). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to show that, in this book, Edgeworth wanted to refine upon the problem of wages addressed by Sidgwick in 1879. The thesis of the paper is that Sidgwick and Edgeworth's disagreement as to the role of open competition in the resolution of indeterminacy in the labour market stems from two different notions of competition. This latter can be seen as a differentiation process, as in Sidgwick's, or as a replication mechanism, as in Edgeworth's.     

MODELING AND MEASURING THE ECONOMIC ROLES OF TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE

Designing and managing an economy's technology infrastructure requires both accurate economic models and data to drive them. Previous models treat technology as a homogeneous entity, thereby precluding assessing investment barriers affecting infrastructure elements. The model presented overcomes this deficiency by disaggregating the knowledge production function into key elements of the typical industrial technology based on the distinctly different investment incentives associated with each element. Without such a model, the economist's ability to assess important market failures associated with investment in the major technology elements, including those with infrastructure (public-good) characteristics, is compromised. Unfortunately, even with the correct knowledge production function, the required data are difficult to collect. This forces government agencies, which fund a majority of technology infrastructure research, to use second-best approaches for economic analyses. The second half of this paper therefore presents an analytical framework that can be driven by more accessible data and provide reasonable impact assessments until better data become available.     

The Effects of Future Capital Investment and R&D Expenditures on Firms' Liquidity

The paper explores factors that lead to accumulation or decumulation of firms' cash reserves. In particular, the paper empirically examines whether additional future fixed capital and R&D investment expenditures induce firms to change their liquidity ratio while considering the role of market imperfections. Implementing a dynamic framework on a panel of US, UK, and German firms, it is found that firms in all three countries make larger adjustments to cash holdings when they plan additional future R&D rather than fixed capital investment expenditures. This behavior is particularly prevalent among financially constrained firms.     

Macroeconomic,institutional, and sectoral determinants of outward foreign direct investment: Evidence from Japan

This paper empirically explores the determinants of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Japanese manufacturing sector. We estimate a gravity model of FDI for 30 host countries covering the period 2005–2017, using Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood to tackle the issue of zero-value observations. The results indicate that Japanese overseas investments are not only driven by traditional factors, such as market size, the yen real exchange rate, trade openness, differences in perception of corruption, and financial instability, but also by industry characteristics. In particular, we find that low technological industries characterized by growing labour costs are more likely to be relocated abroad. Furthermore, we demonstrate nonlinearities in the determinants of Japanese overseas investments depending on the host country's development, the host country's region, and the category of FDI implemented (vertical vs horizontal).     

Consumption patterns,development and growth: Adam Smith,David Ricardo and Thomas Robert Malthus

In this paper we combine the classical analysis of luxury consumption with the classical theories of development and growth. We also focus on the role played, within classical economics, by institutional factors such as the structure of property rights and contractual arrangements in determining consumption patterns and investment in agriculture. In particular, we show that Ricardo's and Malthus' different views on the role of consumption expenditure in promoting growth depend on Ricardo's acceptance (Malthus' refusal) of Say's law of markets and on Ricardo's exclusion (Malthus' inclusion) of a non-commodity option such as leisure from (in) the range of available consumption alternatives.     

Capital as a commitment: Strategic investment to deter mobility

This paper analyzes how an early entrant in a market can exploit its head start by strategic investment. The analysis is based on Spence's paper, Investment strategy and growth in a new market, (Bell J. Econ., 10 (1979), 1–19). We frist study the investment game in the no-discounting case, which embodies the key features of mobility deterrence. We establish the existence of a set of perfect equilibria and suggest that one particular equilibrium is most reasonable. This equilibrium, also valid with discounting, involves the follower firm being forever deterred from investing to its steady-state reaction curve, in contrast to Spence's proposed solution.