The Relationship Between Market Efficiency and Insider Ownership in Large and Small Firms

The study examines insider ownership in large and small firms in relation to market efficiency. Recent studies have found a positive and significant relation between inside ownership and stock market performance. Such a finding is predicated upon the idea that inside ownership minimizes agency costs caused by the conflict between hired managers and shareholders. It is argued here that semi-strong form market efficiency requires that all public information, including insider ownership, be quickly impounded into the price of a stock. If that is the case, the expected present value of a change in agency cost should be incorporated into the stock price shortly after any significant change in ownership. Hence, if the estimate is unbiased, the longer-term performance of firms should not be effected by such changes. The issue is examined for both large, well-known firms and for smaller, less-known firms. The hypothesis that markets are generally efficient with respect to insider ownership information is rejected.     

The new product development process for commercial financial services

The attention of senior executives in the financial services industry is increasingly being focused on how well the new product development process is working within their institutions. This focus on product development results from the combined pressures of increased competition, a rapidly changing marketplace, new technology, and new and pending legislative changes. All of these factors underscore the need to be able to design, develop, and launch, in a timely fashion, new products that are winners. A strong new product initiative is now considered an essential weapon in both offensive and defensive initiatives.To achieve their goals, executives are increasingly reexamining their organizations' approach to development and launch of new products to determine if the process can be redesigned for faster reaction time, better utilization of limited resources and improved success rates. This article examines the new product development process within the setting of corporate/commercial financial services. Its conclusions provide executives with some broad principles for their own new product processes to help them in their quest for competitive advantage through winning new products.     

Trade costs, firms and productivity

This paper examines the response of U.S. manufacturing industries and plants to changes in trade costs using a unique new dataset on industry-level tariff and transportation rates. Our results lend support to recent heterogeneous-firm models of international trade that predict a reallocation of economic activity towards high-productivity firms as trade costs fall. We find that industries experiencing relatively large declines in trade costs exhibit relatively strong productivity growth. We also find that low-productivity plants in industries with falling trade costs are more likely to die; that relatively high-productivity non-exporters are more likely to start exporting in response to falling trade costs; and that existing exporters increase their shipments abroad as trade costs fall. Finally, we provide evidence of productivity growth within firms in response to decreases in industry-level trade costs.     

The potential benefits of herbicide-resistant transgenic rice in Uruguay: Lessons for small developing countries

In many developing countries, the potential benefits from adopting a transgenic variety developed by a multinational corporation are limited by the crop’s small production base. This paper presents an ex-ante evaluation of the economic impact of herbicide resistant transgenic rice in a small developing country, Uruguay. To fully account for the multinational’s market power, the firm’s seed markup is assumed to affect the adoption rate for the variety. Stochastic simulation techniques are employed to understand how potential benefits may vary with changes in technology, yield, costs, and adoption parameters. The results indicate a $1.82 million mean net present value for producers from the development and utilization of transgenic rice in Uruguay and $0.55 million for the multinational. These relatively small multinational firm benefits suggest that a firm will not undertake significant efforts to develop transgenic varieties adapted to local conditions without either strategic partnerships with local institutions or access to wider regional markets.     

Small Business and the Value of Community Financial Institutions

This paper examines whether community banks have a niche in the production of soft information when lending to small firms. A composite measure of soft information production is created from owner ratings of bank performance characteristics using survey data from a national sample of U.S. small firms. These characteristics capture some important aspects of soft information such as the bank’s knowledge of the owner’s business. This composite measure is related to the size of the owner’s primary bank, a measure of the intensity of market competition and proxies for the strength of banking relationships. After controlling for several sources of endogeneity, this composite measure is found to be significantly higher if the owner currently banks at a CFI and experiences less loan officer turnover.     

Knowledge spillover from other assurance services

We argue that services which are complimentary and closer aligned to the annual report audit provide greater insight about risk and are more likely to exhibit the existence of economies of scope (knowledge spillover) through a positive association with audit fees. Specifically, we consider the potential for knowledge spillover from the auditing of triennial Long-Term Plans (LTP) to the annual report audit for a large sample of New Zealand municipals over the period 2005–2013. We find the LTP audit fees are positively related to municipal annual report audit fees and other fees (audit of for-profit subsidiaries, non-audit services) are not. This suggests that knowledge spillovers are dependent on the nature of the additional services. We also find evidence of higher fees for private sector auditors for both the annual report and the LTP audit. The LTP (forecast) audit fee is associated with municipal size, complexity, and political competition.     

Measuring rural consumers’ willingness to pay for quality labels using experimental auctions: the case of aflatoxin‐free maize in Kenya

Aflatoxins are a common health hazard in tropical countries, especially in rural areas. New methods to reduce aflatoxin levels in food staples, as well as cheaper test methods, are being developed, but consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for these improvements is unknown. A survey was conducted with a representative sample of rural consumers (1,344 in total, 63% women) in all major maize‐production zones of Kenya. The survey included an experimental auction with maize products of different qualities. The results showed that many rural consumers were aware of aflatoxins, but few understood their health risks. Respondents were willing to pay a premium for maize tested for aflatoxins and labeled, but asked a high discount for maize that was visibly contaminated with moldy grain. The premium was higher for respondents with education and in regions with aflatoxicosis outbreaks. Knowledge of aflatoxins substantially reduced the overall WTP, but did not increase the WTP for tested maize. Welfare analysis indicates that mandatory testing would result in substantial benefits if the cost of testing can be lowered to below the premium.     

What is extreme about Mises’s extreme apriorism?

There is something extreme about Ludwig von Mises’s methodological apriorism, namely, his epistemological justification of the a priori element(s) of economic theory. His critics have long recognized and attacked the extremeness of Mises’s epistemology of a priori knowledge. However, several of his defenders have neglected what is (and what has long been recognized by his critics to be) extreme about Mises’s apriorism. Thus, the argument is directed less against Mises than against those contributions to the secondary literature that assert his methodological moderation while overlooking what the most prominent critics have found extreme about Mises’s apriorism. Defending Mises as a merely moderate apriorist because he held only a narrow part of the foundation of economics to be a priori is a straw-man defense against criticisms of his apriorism as epistemologically extreme.     

Are school counselors an effective education input?

We exploit within-school variation in counselors and find that one additional counselor reduces student misbehavior and increases boys’ academic achievement by over one percentile point. These effects compare favorably with those of increased teacher quality and smaller class sizes.