The Market Perception of Convertible Debt Versus Straight Debt: some Empirical Evidence from U.S. Firms and Non-U.S. Firms Listed in the U.S.

Accounting for convertible debt has long been a source of controversy in the accounting profession in the U.S. Current U.S. accounting rules require classifying convertible debt at date of issuance as "entirely debt" until conversion, despite numerous studies that assert that convertible debt is not "entirely debt", but is a blend of debt and equity. Convertible debt has taken on international interest because of the issuance of International Accounting Standard (IAS) 32, Financial Instruments; Disclosure and Presentation, which prescribes reporting separate debt and equity components for convertible debt. This study examines convertible debt issued by U.S. firms and non-U.S. firms listed in the U.S. using a levels approach. Specifically, convertible debt is compared to straight debt and contrary to ex ante expectation, convertible debt was not found to be perceived as being significantly different than straight debt for U.S. firms for any years and is statistically different in only two of the six years tested for non-U.S. firms. The validity of this study's findings is underscored by its research design, which compares convertible debt and straight debt issued by the same firms. The findings suggest that investors regard reported amounts of convertible debt similar to straight debt in their assessment of firm value.     

Firm-specific cost savings and market power

Summary. We report a policy experiment that illustrates a potential problem of using historical pass-through rates as a means of predicting the competitive consequences of projected firm-specific cost savings in antitrust contexts, particularly in merger analysis. The effects of cost savings on welfare can vary vastly, depending on how the savings affect the industry supply schedule. In a capacity-constrained price-setting oligopoly, we observe that cost savings can overwhelm behaviorally salient market power incentives when the savings affect marginal (high cost) units. However, cost savings of the same magnitude on an infra-marginal unit leave market power unchanged.     

Representing interval orders by a single real-valued function

Let > be an interval order on a topological space X, and let $\text{x > 1 y}$ if and only if there exists x′ with $\text{x?x′>y}$. Then >1 is a preference relation with transitive indifference, which, under suitable conditions, can be represented by a utility function v of the usual sort. In that case, maximisation of v (subject to contraints) leads to a most preferred point relative to >. Following both the Debreu-Rader and the Arrow-Hahn approaches, we discuss the existence and continuity of such a function v.     

Nobody's business but my own: Self-employment and small enterprise in economic development

In most poor countries, small firms and self-employment are the dominant forms of business enterprise—even in the manufacturing sector. For rich countries, in contrast, self-employed people account for very small shares of manufacturing employment and output. This paper builds on Lucas [1978. On the size distribution of business firms. Bell Journal of Economics 9(2), 508-523] to ask whether structural changes of this kind are driven by productivity differences. A model, calibrated to Japanese time-series data, is shown to mimic key features of cross-country and time-series data. The results support the idea that changes in aggregate productivity account for much of the cross-country variation in establishment size and self-employment rates.     

How law,politics and transnational networks affect technology entrepreneurship: Explaining divergent venture capital investing strategies in China

This article identifies three distinct patterns of investment behavior by venture capital firms investing in technology sector start-ups in China. The first pattern is the service-oriented, technology-light investment behavior exhibited by the foreign venture capitalist firms not founded by ethnic Chinese. The second pattern is the technology creation investment pattern exhibited by foreign firms founded by ethnic Chinese and embedded in ethnic Chinese communities. The third pattern consists of local state-funded Chinese venture capital firms that choose either to invest in state-directed projects or opt out of investing in technology start-ups entirely. What explains the differences in behavior between the strictly foreign and the ethnic Chinese-embedded foreign firms are the different legal environments in which these firms honed their skills. The different learned experience gained from operating in different environments explains why the foreign firms avoid investing in technology-generating activities in China whereas the ethnic Chinese firms are willing to do so despite China’s notorious weak intellectual property rights regime. The political factors influencing the distribution of finance in China explain the behavior and essential failure of the local state-run venture capital firms. These findings demonstrate that several distinct, separate and non-clashing institutional arrangements are concurrently operating within China and shaping the behavior of venture capital firms there.