Corporate financial soundness and its impact on firm performance: implications for corporate debt restructuring in Slovenia

This article studies the extent of corporate leverage and range of excessive debt of Slovenian firms during the recent financial crisis. Half of all firms (of those with some non-zero debt and at least one employee) are found to face an unsustainable debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio beyond 4, accounting for almost 80% of total outstanding debt. Moreover, a good quarter of all firms experience debt-to-EBITDA ratios exceeding 10 and hold almost half of total aggregate net debt. We then examine how this financial distress affects firm performance in terms of productivity, employment, exports, investment and survival. We find that, while less important during the good times (pre-recession period), lack of firms’ financial soundness during the period of financial distress becomes a critical factor constraining firm performance. The extent of financial leverage and ability to service the outstanding debt are shown to inhibit firms’ productivity growth as well as the dynamics of exports, employment and investment. Micro and small firms are found to suffer relatively more than larger firms from high leverage in terms of export and employment performance during the recession period.     

Duration of new firms: The role of startup financial conditions,industry and aggregate factors

This paper documents the relative importance of firm, industry and aggregate factors on the post-entry performance of new firms. This study utilizes a unique administrative dataset, T2LEAP, which contains employment and balance sheet information for all incorporated Canadian firms. The data allow us to include financial variables such as the debt-to-asset ratio (leverage) and document their impact on firm survival. We perform duration analysis on all the entrant manufacturing firms during the period 1985–1996. In addition to leverage, we find that: firm characteristics such as size and labour productivity; industry conditions, such as the real exchange rate, the difference in the US–Canada tariff rates, entry penetration, and the capital–labour ratio; and aggregate conditions in terms of the yield gap also play a role in the survival prospects of new firms.     

FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS, GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT, AND FIRM SURVIVAL IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: EVIDENCE FROM MICRO DATA

Financial constraints have been found to play an important role on various aspects of firm behavior. Yet, their effects on firm survival have been largely neglected. We use a panel of 61,496 UK firms over the period 1997–2002 to study the effects of financial variables on firms' failure probabilities, differentiating firms into globally engaged and purely domestic. Estimating a wide range of specifications, we find that lower collateral and higher leverage result in higher failure probabilities for purely domestic than for globally engaged firms. This can be seen as evidence that global engagement shields firms from financial constraints.     

Grant Assistance and Small Firm Development in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

Small business support is an important element of industrial development policy in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This paper examines the effect of grant support on small business performance from 1991–94. Around 50% of small businesses in Northern Ireland and 30% of small businesses in the Republic of Ireland received financial support over this period. In Northern Ireland, three clusters of assisted companies were identified who received support for marketing, training and capital investments. In the Republic of Ireland, two assisted clusters of firms were identified who received marketing and training grants. In each case, firms in the assisted clusters grew faster, tended to be more profitable, were more active in terms of sales and market development and adopted more ambitious strategic directions than those in the non‐assisted clusters. Selection models are used to explore whether these differences are due to differences in the characteristics of the assisted and non‐assisted groups or can be directly attributed to the effect of government financial support. In the Republic of Ireland there is no evidence of any effective targeting of assistance at better performing firms. In Northern Ireland, there is some evidence that assistance was targeted at firms with higher productivity growth. Grant aid had no effect on either the turnover growth or profitability of small businesses in either area. It did, however, boost employment growth. This is good‐news for job creation but has potentially worrying implications for firms' longer‐term competitive position through its negative effect on productivity.     

WELFARE COST OF AN OIL IMPORT FEE

This paper examines the impacts on the US. oil market of a $5-per-barrel tariff on imported crude oil. The analysis shows that the United States currently is a price taker in the world oil market. This means that "optimal tariff" arguments for an oil import fee have no validity. The author also argues that any economic losses that oil supply disruptions generate are better addressed with alternative policy tools. To forecast the effects of the tariff on US. production, the author uses a domestic oil supply model that she developed elsewhere. She calculates the resulting gains in producer surplus and then combines them with an estimate of consumer surplus losses and government revenues so as to yield an estimate of the tariff's welfare cost. This welfare cost amounts to approximately $17 billion (in present-value terms) over the 1988–1998 period.     

ENDOGENOUS PROTECTION IN A TRADE LIBERALIZING ECONOMY: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA

This article aims to establish the changes that occurred in the institutional structures governing trade policy in South Africa during the period 1990–1998. It also examines the forces that influenced the application of tariff policy by the major tariff-setting bodies by applying various theories of endogenous protection to their decisions. Using firm-level data on applications made to the Board on Tariffs and Trade, the study finds that when estimating a probit model, employment considerations rather than capital invested influenced the board's decisions to grant protection. In addition, the board is found to have granted protection even in the face of tariff lines having been bound under the Uruguay Round. The article argues that this should not be interpreted as a reversal of the trade liberalization but rather as an attempt by the board to cushion firms from the acceleration in the tariff rationalization process that occurred after the GATT offer. Finally, it is suggested that the board's response to changes in import penetration ratios between industries that were considered organized provides prima facie evidence of the superior lobbying ability of such industries.     

Trade Liberalization and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Industries

This paper examines the impact of tariff reduction following China's World Trade Organization (WTO) entry on the productivity of Chinese manufacturing firms using a firm‐level panel database that comprises all of China's manufacturing firms with an annual turnover above 5 million yuan and that spans the period of 2000–2006. An instrumental variable estimator is used to account for the endogeneity of the tariff reduction. The results indicate that China's trade liberalization in the five years following its WTO entry has led to a 0.94% annual increase in total factor productivity for Chinese manufacturing firms. However, the overall productivity gain from the tariff reduction is a net result of a productivity depressing effect of output tariff reduction and a productivity enhancing effect of input tariff reduction. Both effects have diminished in magnitude over the years after China joined the WTO. Firm heterogeneity and turnover plays an important role in generating gains from trade liberalization. The surviving firms have managed to cope with and take advantage of lower tariffs. The extent to which the tariff reduction affects Chinese firms' productivity is also dependent on the ownership structure of the firms with foreign‐invested firms being the clear winner.     

Accounting for Growth and Output Gaps: Evidence from New Zealand

We evaluate New Zealand's macroeconomic performance over the 1967–1996 period, which witnessed numerous economic reforms. Using both index–number and econometric techniques, we decompose nominal GDP growth and the output gap into contributions from price level changes, productivity growth and changes in factor utilisation. Changes in domestic prices accounted for four–fifths of the growth in nominal GDP, while capital accumulation and employment growth were the most important factors determining real–output growth. Deviations in the domestic price level around its long–run trend contributed most heavily to changes in the nominal output gap. The real gap was influenced in any year variously by deviations of the terms of trade and labour input from their long–run trends, as well as by productivity shocks.     

The impact of financial constraints on firm survival and growth

We propose a new approach for identifying and measuring the degree of financial constraint faced by firms and use it to investigate the effect of financial constraints on firm survival and development. Using panel data on French manufacturing firms over the 1996–2004 period, we find that (1) financial constraints significantly increase the probability of exiting the market, (2) access to external financial resources has a positive effect on the growth of firms in terms of sales, capital stock and employment, (3) financial constraints are positively related with productivity growth in the short-run. We interpret this last result as the sign that constrained firms need to cut costs in order to generate the resources they cannot raise on financial markets.     

DO STOCK MARKETS VALUE EFFICIENCY?

An empirical model determining the relationship between changes in firm-level productivity and changes in firm value is estimated using an unbalanced panel of 706 public limited companies observed over the period 1996–2002. We find a positive relationship between efficiency and the market value of manufacturing sector firms controlling for traditional accounting measures of performance such as earnings per share and the return on capital employed. This evidence is consistent with the stock market valuing the adoption of better management practices that lead to better resource utilisation. By contrast, we find no such evidence for service sector firms.     

融资约束与企业出口行为:基于工业企业数据的经验研究

采用2000—2007年的3万多家工业企业数据,本文构造了包括内源融资、商业信贷以及企业信用特征等变量的企业融资约束综合指标。基于Heckman选择模型的经验研究表明,企业融资状况的改善不仅能提高企业出口的概率,而且对其出口规模也有重要影响。研究还发现融资状况改善对外资企业出口影响最显著;与国有企业相比,民营企业虽受到更严重的融资约束,但其出口表现并未更差。此外,融资状况改善对那些高外源融资依赖度行业的企业出口具有更明显的促进作用。     

财务杠杆对公司成长性影响的实证研究

本文认为财务杠杆对公司成长性具有积极、消极双重影响.鉴于现有文献中财务杠杆对公司成长性的消极作用,本文选取1998-2001年深沪两市2798个混合样本作为研究对象,研究上市公司在不同经营业绩条件下财务杠杆对成长性的影响.研究结果表明,与国内外已有的研究结果不同,不同经营业绩下公司财务杠杆对成长性的影响作用存在差异.对于业绩优良的公司,财务杠杆具有积极作用,举债经营可以促进公司的成长,而且,随着公司业绩的增强,财务杠杆所起的积极作用更为显著;对于业绩较差的公司,财务杠杆具有消极作用,财务杠杆对成长性有一定的抑制作用.     

Profit tax and tariff under international oligopoly

A simple model of international duopoly is developed to examine the effects of tariff and corporate profit tax. It is shown that in an export-cum-on-site-production regime, a tariff continues to be an effective instrument for shifting net profit away from foreign to domestic firms. A corporate profit tax, on the other hand, could lower the domestic output and employment and decrease the net earnings of both domestic and foreign firms. Thus when the host government's ability to raise tariff is limited, it should seriously consider a corporate tax cut policy to achieve the dual purpose of creating more jobs and increasing corporate earning at home.     

The influence of international trade on labour productivity in services: The case of Brazil in the 1990s

In the developing world, services account for a rising share of domestic employment and international trade. Thus, it is important to know whether trade liberalization contributes to labour productivity in services. We explore this question, examining the 1990–2000 Brazilian trade liberalization. We find that growth of imports and exports strengthened labour productivity in services, but the contribution was smaller in subsectors with more college graduates, and this negative offset was larger in subsectors that received large foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Improved access to imported manufactured intermediate inputs raised downstream services' labour productivity and downstream manufacturing firms benefitting from tariff cuts enacted by trade partners generated spillovers that improved the labour productivity of upstream service subsectors. However, FDI inflows and investments in human and physical capital modified these downstream factors. We conclude that the Brazilian trade liberalization strengthened productivity in services, but unequally across subsectors.     

Who Benefits from Foreign Direct Investment in the UK?

The presumed higher productivity of foreign firms and resulting spillovers to domestic firms has led governments to offer financial incentives to foreign firms. We investigate if there is any productivity or wage gap between foreign and domestic firms in the UK and if the presence of foreign firms in a sector raises the productivity of domestic firms. Our results indicate that foreign firms do have higher productivity than domestic firms and they pay higher wages. We find no aggregate evidence of intra‐industry spillovers. However, firms with low productivity relative to the sector average, in low‐skill low foreign competition sectors gain less from foreign firms.     

Structural booms

The paper proposes a new interpretation of long swings in economic activity. Instead of deviations from a trend growth path explained by misperceptions, long swings are seen as detours in the path itself provoked by rare and deep changes in expectations of future productivity. And such changes are approximately captured by swings in stock markets. In a large sample of OECD countries, the paper finds long-term historical relationships between share prices and employment or the rate of unemployment. The results suggest that the recent strength of a nation's stock markets and the responsiveness of employment are related to its institutions. In particular, corporatist institutions are likely to impede or obstruct entrepreneurs from taking advantage of expected productivity improvements. In contrast, a well-developed stock market – in addition to a young, well-educated labour force – may help both in the creation of profit opportunities as well as in enabling and emboldening firms to increase hiring.
— Edmund Phelps and Gylfi Zoega     

The effects of prudential policies on bank leverage and insolvency risk in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper analyses the effects of prudential policies on leverage and insolvency risk in eleven Central and Eastern Europe banking systems in the 2005–2014 period. It explores the relationship between leverage, insolvency risk and regulation variables, and the temporal patterns of this relationship. It also examines whether the effects of prudential policies on leverage and insolvency risk are influenced by bank ownership structure and financial cycle. The paper finds a consistent link between prudential regulation and leverage, which varies over the sample period. Conversely, the insolvency risk shows a stronger relationship with macroprudential policies. The estimates reveal that prudential policies work better on leverage and z-score for foreign banks. Both leverage and insolvency risk are better mitigated over booms. Finally, prudential policies have similar effects on both domestic and foreign banks' stability in normal times, while the effects are opposite during turbulences. These dissimilarities are raising challenges to the conduct of prudential policies.     

The impact of domestic regulations on international trade in services: Evidence from firm-level data

In order to promote international trade in services, most bilateral and multilateral trade agreements aim at eliminating the discriminatory barriers. However, domestic regulations, which apply to all firms alike and do not intend to exclude foreign sellers, are often seen as serious obstacles to cross-border trade in services. This paper proposes an assessment of the impact of these regulations on international trade of professional services. Our empirical analysis combines OECD measures of domestic regulation and detailed French data on firm-level bilateral export of professional services. Results show a robust and a sizeable negative impact of domestic regulations on both the decision to export and the values exported by each firm. This impact does not vary with firms’ productivity, and remains significant when we focus on the European Union market, where French exporters do not face discriminatory barriers. We conduct a quantification exercise based on our estimates and find an average ad-valorem tariff equivalent of domestic regulations of 60% in 2007. The ad-valorem tariff equivalent ranges from 26% to 88%, depending on the country.     

Export Market Dynamics and Plant‐Level Productivity: Impact of Tariff Reductions and Exchange‐Rate Cycles*

In this paper, we examine how changes in tariff rates and industry‐specific real exchange rates affect the entry/exit process to export markets and productivity growth. Using the experience of the Canadian manufacturing sector over three decades, we find that firms in export markets enjoy faster productivity growth than non‐participants. The size of the growth advantage depends on whether real exchange rates are increasing or decreasing. The increase in the value of the Canadian dollar during the post‐2000 period almost completely offset the productivity growth advantages enjoyed by new exporters during this period.     

The effects of China’s split-share reform on firms’ capital structure choice

China’s split-share structure reform in 2005–2006 mitigates agency conflicts between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders and thus may bring substantial changes to corporate financing behaviour. This article examines the impact of that reform on the capital structure decisions of firms by applying a variety of trade-off and pecking-order models. Using data from 1176 non-financial Chinese listed firms during the period 2000–2012, we present empirical evidence indicating that equity tracks the financing deficit better than debt in Chinese firms, a finding which is not consistent with pecking-order theory. This phenomenon is more prominent after 2006 as share reform increases trading activity in the secondary stock market and improves the transparency of financial markets. In addition, Chinese firms have an optimal leverage ratio and they adjust below-target leverage ratios faster than above-target leverage ratios after the implementation of share structure reform, although they make symmetric adjustments towards the target leverage ratio before 2007. Finally, recent share reform has prompted Chinese firms to more quickly address the divergence of actual leverage ratios from long-term target levels, but has slowed their response to short-term target leverage divergence.