Factors That Distinguish Proactive Versus Reactive Exporters: Decisions by Export Firms in a Developing Country

This study explored factors that distinguish proactive versus reactive export marketing strategies of Zimbabwean export companies. It identified key variables that contributed most to the discrimination between proactive firms with high levels of adaptation of export marketing strategy against reactive exporters with low levels of adaptation of export marketing strategy. Data were collected through a structured multi-item questionnaire involving a randomly selected sample of 105 exporting organizations. The overseas experience of management and strategic orientation of the company, cultural values, and legislation were found as key variables that discriminated between reactive exporting firms using low adaptation of export marketing strategy from those proactive exporters with high adaptations.     

Forum-Shopping and Personal Bankruptcy

The dramatic increase in U.S. personal bankruptcy filings of the last fifteen years has focused attention on the wide disparities between different states' personal bankruptcy exemptions. These differences have been criticized both on the grounds of equity and also because they provide an incentive to move to a state with a higher exemption before declaring bankruptcy, that is to forum-shop. This paper focuses on the latter of these objections. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we estimate a Nested Logit model of the household migration decision. Our econometric approach specifically avoids the problem of endogenously induced bankruptcy filings by examining the effect of filing propensity, rather than the actual event of filing, on the tendency to migrate to a higher exemption state. We conclude that while there is indeed evidence that considerations of bankruptcy laws do influence interstate migration, the actual effect is relatively modest. We estimate that, in any given year, roughly one percent of moves to higher-exemption states are motivated by considerations of differences in bankruptcy laws; by way of comparison, this is roughly comparable to the magnitude of recent estimates of welfare-induced migration. This suggests that the emphasis on differences in exemptions which has been a feature of recent attempts to reform the bankruptcy code is somewhat exaggerated.     

Welfare-improving financial innovation with a single good

Summary. We show that at any equilibrium of almost every single-good incomplete markets economy, it is possible to find an asset which when introduced makes every agent better-off. Diamond (1967) has shown, however, that such economies are constrained suboptimal, so it is of course impossible to find a new asset which makes all agents worse-off. This contrasts with the case of multiple consumption goods, for which Cass and Citanna (1995) and Elul (1995) demonstrate that equilibrium utilities may be arbitrarily perturbed via financial innovation. Proving our result requires us to exploit not changes in equilibrium prices, but rather the gains to trading the new asset. In particular, we find an asset which when introduced does not change the existing asset prices even though it is traded by every agent – by a revealed preference argument it must therefore make everyone better-off. Received: May 28, 1997; revised version: July 1, 1997     

Owner-occupancy fraud and mortgage performance

We identify occupancy fraud—borrowers who misrepresent their occupancy status as owner-occupants rather than investors—in residential mortgage originations. Unlike previous work, we show that fraud was prevalent in originations not just during the housing bubble but also persists through more recent times. We also demonstrate that fraud is broad-based and appears in government-sponsored enterprise and bank portfolio loans, not just in private securitization; these fraudulent borrowers make up one third of the effective investor population. Occupancy frauds obtain credit at lower interest rates, suggesting a motivation for undertaking fraud. These fraudulent borrowers perform substantially worse than similar declared investors, defaulting at a 75% higher rate. We also provide evidence consistent with fraudulent borrowers’ defaults being more “strategic,” suggesting that this population poses a risk in the face of declining house prices.