Investment Committee,Corporate Cash Holdings and Corporate Life Cycle

We investigate the association between voluntary formation of board investment committee (IC) and corporate cash holdings of nonfinancial firms over the corporate life cycle stages for a large sample of Gulf Cooperation Council firms during 2005–2016. We find that IC increases corporate cash holdings in growth and maturity stages of firm, compared to introduction, shake‐out, and decline stages. These results have important implications for investors, policy makers, and regulators. Our findings are robust to various econometrics specifications.     

Big Data: An Institutional Perspective on Opportunities and Challenges

The data revolution is already reshaping how knowledge is produced, business conducted, humanitarian assistance handled, public officials elected, and governance enacted. Economists rely on data to describe, interpret, and forecast economic activity. Despite the rich tradition of using large datasets, institutional economics have shied away from big data. This article describes, reviews, and reflects on big data, with a particular focus on economic development. It illustrates the vast opportunities and challenges for big data as an important tool for the benefit of the public. It suggests that big data and data analytics, if used properly, can provide real-time actionable information that can be used to identify problems and needs, offer services, and provide feedback on the effectiveness of policy action.     

Deposit insurance scheme and banking crises: a special focus on less-developed countries

This study analyzes the effect of an explicit deposit insurance scheme (EDIS) on the probability of a banking crisis in a country while taking the country’s overall economic development into account. The panel data for the period of 1980–2003 include all the countries having the data on an EDIS. The major finding is that if the interaction between a country’s overall economic development and its use of an EDIS is not controlled for, the country’s use of the EDIS increases the probability of a banking crisis. This increase is greater the more inefficiently designed the EDIS is. However, once the interaction between the overall economic development and the use of the EDIS is controlled for, it is found that the EDIS itself is not a significant factor of a banking crisis. In that case, the less developed the country is that is using an EDIS, the higher the probability of a banking crisis.     

US National Security and Foreign Direct Investment

This article examines US foreign investment policy in the historical and current security contexts and provides an analytical discussion on the trends in foreign investment review on national security grounds. It finds that the concept of national security has been gradually broadened to include economic security, critical infrastructure, and homeland security as components of national security. This has allowed the foreign investment review process to become highly politicized. The article concludes that national security is far too important to be mixed with domestic political debates on economic and social concerns from foreign takeovers. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

OECD unbundled local loop pricing

This study examines OECD fully unbundled and line sharing monthly wholesale prices for 2002–2008. The results are informative with economic analysis appearing to inform regulator decision making. However, with the cost proxy (viz., copper-wage relative price, population density, urbanisation and business line penetration), regulator costing methods (long run incremental and fully allocated cost), and time trend arguments only explaining approximately 40% of the price variation there remains ample unexplained variation, and political and institutional variables may help reduce this. Finally, both price series are subject to increasingly rapid value declines, although the patterns are somewhat distinct. This suggests that initial prices are truly transitory.