The effect of leverage on the cost of capital of US buyouts

This paper addresses the problem to assess the effect of leverage on the cost of capital for buyout performance analyses. It draws on a unique and proprietary set of data on 133 US buyouts between 1984 and 2004. For each of them, we determine a public market equivalent that matches it with respect to its timing and its systematic risk. We show that under realistic mimicking conditions, the average cost of capital is below the commonly used benchmark S&P 500. Thereby, we control for two important aspects: for the risks taken by lenders in the buyout transactions (which affects the sponsors’ risks), and for the corresponding cost of debt (which lowers the return of the public market equivalent). Only with borrowing and lending at the risk-free rate is the average cost of capital close to the average index return. This finding is particularly important as existing literature on that topic tends to rely on benchmarks without a proper risk-adjustment.     

Portfolio selection with mental accounts and delegation

Das et al. (2010) develop an elegant framework where an investor selects portfolios within mental accounts but ends up holding an aggregate portfolio on the mean-variance frontier. This investor directly allocates the wealth in each account among available assets. In practice, however, investors often delegate the task of allocating wealth among assets to portfolio managers who seek to beat certain benchmarks. Accordingly, we extend their framework to the case where the investor allocates the wealth in each account among portfolio managers. Our contribution is threefold. First, we provide an analytical characterization of the existence and composition of the optimal portfolios within accounts and the aggregate portfolio. Second, we present conditions under which such portfolios are not on the mean-variance frontier, and conditions under which they are. Third, we show that the aforementioned analytical characterization is also applicable within the framework of Das et al. and thus improves upon their numerical approach.     

Where has the rum gone? The impact of maritime piracy on trade and transport

Review of World Economics - Despite a general agreement that piracy poses a significant threat to maritime shipping, empirical evidence regarding its economic consequences remains scarce. This...     

Winning pays: High school football championships and property values

A large literature explores the effect of schooling characteristics on property values, but touches little on non-academic attributes of schools. This study demonstrates the capitalization of high school football championships into school district property values using a model that controls for a series of fixed effects. Winning a state football championship increases property values by 1.65% in the year following the championship, exerting its strongest effect immediately after the championship is won. The effect is biggest in the AA division; the largest and most competitive division.     

‘RESILIENCE’ IN ORGANIZATIONAL ACTORS AND REARTICULATING ‘VOICE’: Towards a humanistic critique of New Public Management

Assumptions of resilience are frequently made about organizational actors, both by scholars and practitioners. It is argued that resilience is unlikely to be the usual outcome from the trauma routinely confronted in organizational life. It is suggested that ‘assumptions’ of resilience stem from either a reification of what is perceived to be a highly desirable trait in organizational actors or a lack of acknowledgement of what, if recognized, would be regarded as an ‘unthinkable’ aspect of organizational life. Managers are unlikely to recognize and admit that the pain they inflict on others in the name of efficiency, organizational down-sizing and out-sourcing will contribute to long-term changes in organizational actors. It is also likely that, while coping skills and resources may be sufficient to equip individuals for the myriad problems they routinely face, even the ‘successful’ actor may not remain unscathed. Some of the negative organizational outcomes of this unthinking ‘assumption’ of resilience are canvassed and suggestions are made as to what strategies may ameliorate the situation. A rearticulation of actors' ‘voice’ in formal organization, at a time of a hegemonic dominance of economic rationalism, is especially overdue.     

Accounting change in Norway

During the last twenty years, a change from a continental towards what can broadly be characterized as an Anglo-Saxon perspective of accounting has taken place in Norway.

This paper discusses whether the new Norwegian Accounting Act of 1998 and the accounting standards issued by the Norwegian standard-setting body represent a further focus on the Anglo-Saxon perspective. Important parts of Norwegian accounting regulation, particularly the Norwegian Conceptual Framework, are highlighted and compared with the positions of European (EC Accounting Directives) and international (IASB) accounting.

The findings indicate that the Anglo-Saxon perspective of accounting appears to be strengthened by the new Norwegian law. Even if the findings indicate that the IAS solutions are generally accepted under the new regulation, the flexibility of the regulation seems to indicate that other solutions are accepted as well. These ‘specific Norwegian’ accounting solutions may generally lead to balance sheets which are less prudent than the balance sheets set up under IAS.

If one accepts that a characteristic of Anglo-Saxon accounting is that it is, historically, generally less prudent than continental European accounting, it can indeed be concluded that Norwegian financial reporting has become more Anglo-Saxon than Anglo-Saxon countries in general. One factor seems to weaken this conclusion: Norway does not allow the revaluation of fixed assets.     

Stability,pseudo-stability,information and pseudo-information

This paper takes issue with Kuhner (1997) on four main points:

? the implications of accounting conventions, principles and valuation conventions;

? the role of Notes to the accounts;

? the relationship between distributable profits and liquidity;

? the significance of the efficient markets hypothesis.

Kuhner's desire to make (page 749) ‘published data on companies as informative as possible’ is strongly supported, but we differ on what this may mean in practice.     

How does economic integration influence employment and wages in border regions? The case of the EU enlargement 2004 and Germany’s eastern border

This paper considers the (short-run) employment and wage effects of the 2004 EU enlargement on firms located close to Germany’s eastern border. We use a 50% sample of Germans plants and apply difference-in-differences estimators combined with a matching approach. We evaluate changes in total employment, the employment shares of low-skilled and East European workers and the wages for low-skilled, skilled and high-skilled workers in various sectors. Our results suggest basically no short-run employment effects of the EU enlargement except for firms active in wholesale and retail trade, hotels and restaurants. We also find some evidence for a stronger employment of East European workers in almost all border firms, although the effects are quantitatively small. Negative wage effects are only found for skilled workers in consulting, research and related activities.