Capital Share Dynamics When Firms Insure Workers

Although the aggregate capital share of U.S. firms has increased, capital share at the firm‐level has decreased. This divergence is due to mega‐firms that produce a larger output share without a proportionate increase in labor compensation. We develop a model in which firms insure workers against firm‐specific shocks, with more productive firms allocating more rents to shareholders, while less productive firms endogenously exit. Increasing firm‐level risk delays exit and increases the measure of mega‐firms, raising (lowering) the aggregate (average) capital share. An increase in the level of rents magnifies this effect. We present evidence that supports this mechanism.     

Does easing access to foreign financing matter for firm performance?

The literature shows that rigid capital control policies adversely influence international trade, leading to external financial reforms in terms of greater cross-border access to financing, which, in turn, can stimulate aggregate productivity. However, the literature overlooks the relationships among access to external financing, firm-level productivity, and exporting performance. We fill this research gap by using a rich dataset of 11,612 Indian firms over the period 1988–2014 and study how a unique financial policy intervention affects firm performance. We establish a significant effect of capital-account liberalization through an export-oriented policy initiative on firms' productivity and, consequently, on their exporting activity. Finally, we find that the benefits of the policy reform are more pronounced for financially vulnerable firms characterized by either high debt or low liquidity.     

The Impact of Investment Opportunities and Free Cash Flow on Financial Liberalization:A Cross-Firm Analysis of Emerging Economies

This study undertakes firm-level analysis of investment opportunities and free cash flow in an attempt to explain the source of the wealth effect of financial liberalization for 14 emerging countries. We find that the market's responses to stock market liberalization announcements are more favorable for high-growth firms than for low-growth firms, a result that is consistent with the investment opportunities hypothesis. We also demonstrate that firms with high cash flow experience lower announcement-period returns associated with stock market liberalization than do firms with low cash flow. Our findings suggest that the free cash flow hypothesis dominates the corporate governance hypothesis in terms of the net effect of stock market liberalization on a firm's stock returns. We further document similar evidence with regard to banking liberalization. Finally, we demonstrate that stock market liberalization leads to the more efficient allocation of capital.     

Private and Public Merger Waves

We document that public firms participate more than private firms as buyers and sellers of assets in merger waves and their participation is affected more by credit spreads and aggregate market valuation. Public firm acquisitions realize higher gains in productivity, particularly for on‐the‐wave acquisitions and when the acquirer's stock is liquid and highly valued. Our results are not driven solely by public firms' better access to capital. Using productivity data from early in the firm's life, we find that better private firms subsequently select to become public. Initial size and productivity predict asset purchases and sales 10 and more years later.     

Conglomerate investment under various capital market conditions

This paper studies the investment of diversified and focused firms under various capital market conditions. When external capital becomes more costly at the aggregate level, investment declines in focused firms but remains unchanged in diversified firms. This investment advantage enjoyed by diversified firms could attribute to both their easy access to external capital and their ability to substitute internal capital markets for costly external markets. Consistent with the internal capital market argument, our findings show that the investment advantage exists for diversified firms even after we control for their easy access to external markets. We also find that the role of internal markets in financing investment is more important for diversified firms that are more financially constrained in external markets. Finally, we find that the segment-level investment becomes more efficient in conglomerates’ internal capital markets under depressed external capital market conditions. Overall, our findings suggest that internal capital allocation functions as a valuable and efficient substitute for diversified firms in a tightened external capital market.     

Capital and Labor Reallocation within Firms

We document how a positive shock to investment opportunities at one plant (“treated plant”) spills over to other plants within the same firm, but only if the firm is financially constrained. To provide the treated plant with resources, the firm's headquarters withdraws capital and labor from other plants, especially plants that are relatively less productive, not part of the firm's core industries, and located far away from headquarters. As a result of the resource reallocation, aggregate firm‐wide productivity increases. We do not find evidence of capital or labor spillovers among plants of financially unconstrained firms.     

Financial frictions on capital allocation: A transmission mechanism of TFP fluctuations

This paper provides a theory of financial frictions as a transmission mechanism for news shocks to drive aggregate TFP fluctuations. We show that in an economy calibrated to U.S. data, variations in financial frictions on capital allocation in response to news about future technology can generate aggregate TFP fluctuations and, thus, trigger business cycles before the actual technological change is realized. Using the COMPUSTAT dataset, we find that the relative capital productivity of financially constrained to unconstrained firms is highly countercyclical. Moreover, our VAR analysis shows that news shocks can account for a substantial fraction of the relative capital productivity fluctuations over business cycle frequencies.     

The impact of capital account liberalization measures

In this paper we analyze whether capital account liberalization leads to higher asset prices. Based on a sample of 242 non-financial firms listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand at the time of the announcement of the relaxation of capital control in Thailand on January 29, 2007, we find positive and significant abnormal returns on Day −2, Day 1, and Day 3 relative to the announcement day. Our findings suggest that capital account liberalization favorably affects stock prices of firms, though the effect varies across industries. From a public policy perspective, our results suggest that liberalizing capital account by relaxing capital control measures could improve firm value in the short-term, which may, in turn, boost the level of economic growth in the long run. In addition, the results show that there is a significant fall in the mean beta in the post-liberalization period, thereby implying the lower cost of capital.     

The Capital Budgeting Process: Incentives and Information

We study the capital allocation process within firms. Observed budgeting processes are explained as a response to decentralized information and incentive problems. It is shown that these imperfections can result in underinvestment when capital productivity is high and overinvestment when it is low. We also investigate how the budgeting process may be expected to vary with firm or division characteristics such as investment opportunities and the technology for information transfer.     

Firm Microstructure and Aggregate Productivity

Models of firm microstructure are becoming now a standard building block in macroeconomics, trade, and development. This literature builds on the recognition that firm heterogeneity and the allocation of resources across firms plays a key role in determining aggregate productivity and the gains from trade. Barriers to the efficient allocation of resources across firms have been recently recognized to play a key role in economic development. This paper focuses on this methodological contribution, the link between firm microstructure and economic aggregates.     

Capital structure,equity ownership and firm performance

This paper investigates the relationship between capital structure, ownership structure and firm performance using a sample of French manufacturing firms. We employ non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods to empirically construct the industry’s ‘best practice’ frontier and measure firm efficiency as the distance from that frontier. Using these performance measures we examine if more efficient firms choose more or less debt in their capital structure. We summarize the contrasting effects of efficiency on capital structure in terms of two competing hypotheses: the efficiency-risk and franchise-value hypotheses. Using quantile regressions we test the effect of efficiency on leverage and thus the empirical validity of the two competing hypotheses across different capital structure choices. We also test the direct relationship from leverage to efficiency stipulated by the Jensen and Meckling (1976) agency cost model. Throughout this analysis we consider the role of ownership structure and type on capital structure and firm performance.     

Does the Source of Capital Affect Capital Structure?

Prior work on leverage implicitly assumes capital availabilitydepends solely on firm characteristics. However, market frictionsthat make capital structure relevant may also be associatedwith a firm’s source of capital. Examining this intuition,we find firms that have access to the public bond markets, asmeasured by having a debt rating, have significantly more leverage.Although firms with a rating are fundamentally different, thesedifferences do not explain our findings. Even after controllingfor firm characteristics that determine observed capital structure,and instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of having a rating,firms with access have 35% more debt.     

Sources of Financing,Profitability and Productivity: First Evidence from Matched Firms

This paper contributes to the literature on capital structure and firm performance. Using firm‐level data covering over 11,000 firms from 47 countries over a recent period of 1997‐2007, we address the effect of different sources of financing on corporate performance, employing a matching process, which allows an adequate `like‐for‐like’ comparison between high and low level of financing by firms. Robust to different matching estimators, the main findings are consistent with the theories of capital structure, in that firms with high debt‐to‐equity ratio tend to have lower returns to shareholders (profitability) and lower internal efficiency (productivity). The results become more robust when we separate the firms into advanced and emerging country‐groups or countries with high/low levels of financial development. Given the lower level of leverage below 50% on average in emerging markets (or in countries with lower level of financial reforms), firms in these economies face lower risk of financial distress and thereby less adverse effect on firm profitability and productivity, relative to their counterparts in advanced economies. We also find that retained earnings and equity financing improve performance, while debt financing by firms particularly in the form of bank loans leads to lower performance, although not so in the case of debt raised through issuing bonds.     

Firm characteristics and the impact of emerging market liberalizations

We provide a firm level analysis of the impact of capital market liberalization in 18 emerging markets. Consistent with models of international asset pricing, we find that firms’ stock returns increase during liberalization and that a majority of firms have lower mean returns and lower dividend yields after liberalization. We also find that emerging market firms have increased exposure to the world market and decreased exposure to the home market following liberalization. These changes in returns and exposures support the predictions of theoretical international asset pricing models. We also test and find support for the importance of size, local risk, foreign exchange risk, and cross-listing status in explaining the cross-section of changes in returns.     

企业内部薪酬差距与人力资本结构调整

本文考察薪酬差距如何影响企业内部的人力资本结构变动。基于员工不同教育程度划分人力资本层次,本文研究发现:(1)薪酬差距的增加显著降低了大学学历员工的比例,同时提升了高中及以下学历员工的比例;(2)通过构造工具变量和基于全球性经济危机的场景设定,我们发现薪酬差距和人力资本结构之间存在显著的因果关系;(3)在薪酬差距水平较高的情况下,薪酬差距的增加显著吸引了更有可能进入企业中高层的高学历员工。在薪酬差距水平较低的情况下,扩大薪酬差距显著提升(降低)了高中及以下学历(大学学历)员工比例,一个可能原因在于不同学历员工的议价能力存在差异。(4)薪酬差距与人力资本结构变化之间的相关性主要体现在规模较大、管理者平均年龄较低的企业。(5)人力资本结构在薪酬差距影响创新的过程中发挥了显著的中介效应,薪酬差距提升了研究生和本科学历员工比例,促进了企业创新。     

The Bright Side of Internal Capital Markets

We examine capital expenditure decisions of discount firms in response to Wal-Mart's entry into their markets. Before Wal-Mart's entry, focused incumbents and discount divisions of diversified incumbents are similar in size, geographic dispersion, and firm debt levels. However, discount divisions of diversified firms are significantly more productive. After Wal-Mart's entry, diversified firms are quicker to either "exit" the discount business or "stay and fight." Also, their capital expenditures are more sensitive to the productivity of their discount business. Internal capital markets function well, as transfers are away from the worsening discount divisions. It appears diversified firms make better investment decisions.     

CEO inside debt and internal capital market efficiency

Agency theory argues that managerial equity-based incentives are more effective when firm solvency is likely while debt-based incentives are more effective when firms face a greater likelihood of bankruptcy. We examine the relation between chief executive officers' (CEOs') inside debt holdings and the internal capital market allocation of multi-segment firms. We find that CEO inside debt holdings are associated with conservative capital allocation to firm segments, with the result driven by financially distressed firms. Further analysis indicates that although CEO inside debt, on average, is negatively related to firm value, the relation is positive for financially distressed firms. Our evidence indicates that inside debt holdings align the interests of managers and external creditors, inducing managers to pursue conservative capital allocation strategies that appear to be optimal for firms facing insolvency.     

What Do We Know about Capital Structure? Some Evidence from International Data

We investigate the determinants of capital structure choice by analyzing the financing decisions of public firms in the major industrialized countries. At an aggregate level, firm leverage is fairly similar across the G-7 countries. We find that factors identified by previous studies as correlated in the cross-section with firm leverage in the United States, are similarly correlated in other countries as well. However, a deeper examination of the U.S. and foreign evidence suggests that the theoretical underpinnings of the observed correlations are still largely unresolved.     

Capital Allocation Using the Bootstrap

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of the bootstrap in capital allocation. In particular, for the distortion risk measure (DRM) class, we show that the exact bootstrap estimate is available in analytic form for the allocated capital. We then theoretically justify the bootstrap bias correction for the allocated capital induced from the concave DRM when the conditional mean function is strictly monotone. A numerical example shows a tradeoff exists between the bias reduction and variance increase in bootstrapping the allocated capital. However, unlike the aggregate capital case, the variance increase of the bias-corrected allocated capital estimate substantially outweighs the benefit of bias correction, making the bootstrap bias correction at the allocated capital level not as useful. Overall, the exact bootstrap without bias correction offers an efficient method for determining allocation over the ordinary resampling bootstrap estimate and the empirical counterpart.     

自由现金流量创造力与违约风险——来自A股公司的经验证据

本文基于我国A股上市公司数据,研究了企业自由现金流量创造力与违约风险之间的关系。研究发现:(1)企业自由现金流量创造力越强,其违约风险越低。经过一系列稳健性检验后,该结论依旧成立。(2)自由现金流量创造力越强的企业往往有更低的债务规模、更高的资产收益率和更低的股票波动,因而其违约风险更低。(3)自由现金流量创造力与违约风险的负相关关系,主要存在于货币政策紧缩时期以及外部信息环境较差的企业。本文发现意味着,监管部门和投资者应重视上市公司自由现金流量创造力不足所带来的潜在债务违约风险,通过不断提高公司自由现金流量创造力,助力我国宏观经济与微观企业高质量发展。