Resources for business resilience in a COVID-19 world: A community-centric approach

COVID-19 has drawn renewed focus on the importance of resilience, both among practitioners and in academia, as companies struggle to cope with the rapid swings, changing patterns, and disruptions in supply and demand. This article identifies and delineates a way forward for companies to support resilience, particularly recognizing the wider communities they are nested in and the resources that exist there. To identify such productive resources, known as capitals, we provide a novel and actionable integrated capitals framework (ICF). ICF integrates 10 existing frameworks drawn from both practice and academia and is comprised of nine different forms of capital that businesses can leverage and contribute toward supporting resilience. We provide insights into how businesses can use this framework to achieve resilience through this useful, yet underutilized, path.     

Capital Flows to Latin America (2003–17): A Critical Survey from Prebisch’s Business Cycle Theory

ABSTRACT

The economic literature on capital flows to developing countries has shared two important commonalities since the 1990s. Published works (whether they focus on the external situation or stress the domestic determinants of capital flows) tend to assume a beneficial effect of capital inflows, which leads to an improvement of peripheral institutions, whose deficiencies are ostensibly the main cause of economic turmoil and/or failure in attracting capital flows, in continuity with New Institutional Economics. In doing so, mainstream economists deliberately overlook the asymmetric characteristics of the international monetary system and the persisting hegemony of dollar. Raul Prebisch’s pioneering work on business cycles in Latin America provide an alternative view, one capable of amending the existing mainstream literature. On the one hand, Prebisch stressed the destabilizing role of capital inflows on Latin American economies, particularly short-term speculative capital. On the other hand, Prebisch designed a set of counter cyclical monetary policies in order to contrast capital volatility, particularly during downturns. An analysis of stylized facts shows that, when correctly updated, Prebisch’s theory has remarkable explanatory potential when applied to Latin America’s current economic and financial situation.     

创新要素投入产出效率随机变动测度与结果分析

创新要素配置在投入产出两个环节中生成大量不完全技术信息，投入产出效率随机变动更加明显。从投入产出数据集合中提炼共同因子，与不可观测变量构成预测器，建立因子增广向量自回归模型(FAVAR)，分析随机变动方差构成，测度投入产出效率随机变动程度。随机变动效应包括水平效应、稳定性效应和规模效应。投入产出效率自回归扰动项表示随机变动程度，将其细分为共同因子，计算预测器方差及其与投入产出效率的协方差。基于669家上市公司月度、季度、半年度和年度技术研发数据，比较分析投入产出效率随机变动程度及形成原因，引入脉冲响应法分析变量方差构成与变动特征，提出相关政策建议。     

技术创业型企业孵化资本投入的风险管控——来自多案例对比

待孵化的技术创业型企业同时具有概念性技术向差异化产品转化的高风险与产品异质性被认同后溢价评估的高收益特点，导致其投资者多处于隔岸观火却欲罢不能的的孵化投资矛盾中。对孵化资本实施有效的风险管控，成为吸引外部资本投入的关键。基于此，选择在可创概念选育与技术创业孵化领域探索出高成功率路径的概念证明中心、YCombinator和创新工场为研究案例，分析其在创业项目筛选、孵化资金运营等关键环节的风险管控方式，以期完善我国孵化资本管控理论、助力我国商业孵化器提高资金风险管控能力、促进外部资本投入。     

Foreign investment regulation and firm productivity: Granular evidence from Indonesia

When regulating foreign direct investment (FDI), countries often face a trade-off between pursuing national policy interests and suffering efficiency losses due to FDI restrictions. We demonstrate the presence of this trade-off in the case of a protectionist FDI policy in Indonesia. Using a yearly census of Indonesian manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2015, we link product-level changes in binding FDI regulation due to major regulatory tightening to changes in firm-level productivity. Controlling for an extensive set of fixed effects as well as potential political economy drivers of regulation, we show that a tightening of the regulatory environment was successful in reducing foreign capital reliance among regulated firms, and led to increases in FDI among non-regulated firms producing the same product. Despite compensating increases in domestic capital, regulated firms experienced relative productivity losses. This points towards either a less efficient allocation of domestic capital or a general inferiority of domestic capital as compared to foreign investments.     

基于状态空间模型的政产学研资协同创新四螺旋影响因素实证研究

在三螺旋理论框架下，搭建政府、产业、大学、研究机构和资本部门四螺旋模型，运用文献归纳法选取多元主体协同创新6类影响因素，以主体间协同程度测度结果为因变量基础，利用状态空间模型动态分析这些因素影响方向、大小和趋势。实证结果表明，中国经济因素表现为促进作用持续提升；中国技术市场规模和创新产业规模表现为先抑制后促进，且促进作用不断提升；中国产品市场需求和创新投入表现为抑制作用持续提升；中国创新产出在时间上表现为促进作用先提升后下降并最终稳定的状态。最后，提出不同政策建议，以促进中国政产学研资协同创新体系后续发展。     

Farm Capital Investment and Deviations from the Optimal Path

We identify farms’ optimal investment path in capital assets and compare it with their actual investment to assess the direction and extent of deviation from the optimal investment. A probit model is further used to investigate the determinants of the probability that a farmer over‐ or under‐invests in capital assets. We use a panel dataset of Dutch dairy farms over the period 2003–2013, and find that most farms under‐invest in capital assets during the study period. Although the number of farms that had over‐invested in capital assets is relatively small, these farms account for the biggest share of total investment in capital assets. The probit results show that liquidity, agricultural support payments, age, land tenure and standard output size are important variables explaining the likelihood of over‐and under‐investment.     

Capital flows and economic growth revisited: evidence from five Sub-Saharan African countries

The study examines the differential effects of capital flows on economic growth in five Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1970–2014. Using the autoregressive distributed lag methodology, the findings show that in the long-run capital flows (i.e. foreign direct investment (FDI), aid, external debt, and remittances) have different effects on economic growth. FDI has a significant positive effect in Burkina Faso and negative effects in Gabon and Niger whereas the impact of debt is negative in all countries. Aid, however, promotes growth in Niger and Gabon whiles it deters growth in Ghana. Remittances, on the other hand, have a significant positive effect in Senegal. Finally, gross capital formation is significant in most of the countries and the impact of trade is mixed. These results suggest that the benefits of capital flows in SSA have been overemphasized.     

Central bank disclosure as a macroprudential tool for financial stability

The Basel Capital Accord (pillar 3) states that disclosure of information (transparency) is essential to financial stability. This study analyzes, through inflation reports, the disclosure of information from the Central Bank of Brazil concerning the credit market. We consider credit risk and capital buffers as measures of financial stability in this analysis. Furthermore, in order to measure the perception of the monetary authority on the credit market, we built two indices based on the central bank’s communication on credit development. We performed a panel data analysis based on a sample of 125 banks for the period from June 1999 to September 2014 (7000 observations). The findings suggest that central bank communication regarding expectations concerning the credit market contributes to financial stability. Therefore, this kind of communication of central banks (about credit development) may constitute an important macroprudential tool to improve financial stability.     

Total factor productivity convergence in German states since reunification: Evidence and explanations

A quarter-century after reunification, labor productivity in the states of eastern Germany continues to lag systematically behind the West. Persistent gaps in total factor productivity (TFP) are the proximate cause; conventional and capital-free measurements confirm a sharp slowdown in TFP growth after 1995. Strikingly, eastern capital intensity, especially in industry, exceeds values in the West, casting doubt on the embodied technology hypothesis. TFP growth is negatively associated with rates of investment expenditures. The stubborn East-West TFP gap is best explained by low concentration of managers, low startup intensity and the distribution of firm size in the East rather than R&D activities.