Soaring corporate debt is a risk to global growth

• ▀ Corporate borrowing is accelerating as a result of the coronavirus crisis. In part, this is a healthy development as firms look to ride out a period of low or even zero sales. But it also brings potential risks to growth, especially in the longer term, including via lengthy balance sheet restructuring that hurts investment and productivity growth.
• ▀ In the advanced economies, we estimate the aggregate corporate debt/GDP ratio could rise as much as 10ppts in 2020, to 95% of GDP - well above the 2009 peak. Debt service ratios may also rise into risky territory despite low interest rates. Risks look especially elevated in France and Canada.
• ▀ Evidence for both advanced and emerging economies suggests high corporate debt levels can damage growth. Highly indebted firms tend to invest less in both the near and medium terms, and some estimates suggest the rise in aggregate debt this year could cut GDP growth by up to 0.2% per year.
• ▀ The coronavirus crisis may also crystallise some pre-existing risks in corporate debt. Despite government assistance, defaults by low-rated firms have started to rise and commercial real estate prices are falling.
• ▀ Sectoral concentrations of risk may also be intensified and new ones created in industries hit hard by the virus like energy and consumer discretionary sectors.
• ▀ Emerging market corporate debt is also on the rise - sharply in some cases. In some economies, this mostly reflects exchange rate effects. But negative balance sheet effects of this kind are also a risk to growth.

     

Corporate growth,corporate strategy,and the choice of capital structure

The interaction between a firm's strategic decisions and its financial policies has become an increasingly frequent topic in the managerial economics literature. We examine here a dimension of that interaction that has not previously been addressed, and suggest a new framework for defining the manner in which choices of strategy and choices of capital structure might be jointly determined, in an environment where upward pressures on factor costs and product prices are the norm.     

企业债务风险防范中的地方政府角色定位

针对企业债务风险,政府应本着以预防为主,以结构性去杠杆为思路,以市场化方式分步骤、有计划地加以防范和化解。应建立地方规模以上工业企业债务动态监测机制,以债务重组的方式化解企业债务困境,以创新发展提升企业盈利能力,通过市场化方式解决部分僵尸企业债务风险,适当释放无法处置的企业债务,让僵尸企业尽快退出市场,给新经济发展腾挪空间和资源,构建多层次资本市场体系,创新资本市场服务模式,拓宽企业融资渠道,加强企业债务风险防范的法治建设。     

Corporate social responsibility and corporate performance: a quantile regression approach

This paper investigates the impact of corporate social responsibility activities on corporate performance. In view of the inconsistent empirical findings in the literature, and the limitations of least squares regressions, we adopt a quantile regression method to fill this gap in the literature. An important finding is that the sensitivity of a company’s performance to its engagement in corporate social responsibility activities does not vary with the quantile location of the firm’s performance level, and the engagement in corporate social responsibility activities has a significant positive relation with corporate performance across all quantiles. This study argues that undertaking corporate social responsibility leads to greater financial returns than the related costs. Therefore, this study concludes that engaging in corporate social responsibility is beneficial for firms, and thus worth implementing.     

Corporate hyperlink network relationships in global corporate social responsibility system

This study analyzed the hyperlink (co-link) network structure among companies in global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) system. This study measured network variables such as density and centrality, including degree centrality, eigenvector centrality, closeness, and betweenness. The results indicated that European companies had relatively central roles in the global CSR system. In addition the higher performing companies are more active their CSR practices. Also, the results revealed that the industrial type of companies was not significantly associated with its CSR practices.     

Growth, debt and public infrastructure

This paper presents a closed economy model of endogenous growth driven by capital externalities arising from both private capital and public infrastructure. The model is calibrated to fit data for India, an approximately closed economy. Simulations suggest that fiscal policy certainly matters and the choice of the income taxation rate, the mix of government spending between infrastructure and public consumption goods, and the long-run government debt/GDP ratio can all significantly affect the long-run growth rate. Intertemporal aspects of fiscal policy are also important and the precommitment (time-inconsistent) and non-precommitment policies differ substantially.     

Large lot zoning, property taxes, and metropolitan area

The paper is a study in positive economics. Two- and three-sector models are used to determine the effects on urban land and housing markets of land use controls such as minimum lot size, maximum density, and maximum bulk requirements. The effects of these controls on rural-urban land conversion and on the effects of property taxes on urban land markets are also investigated. The land use requirements are found to accelerate rural-urban land conversion in some cases and affect the impact of property taxes on urban land and housing markets.     

Sovereign debt: Reputation, seizure and reputation

The interaction between a creditor and a sovereign debtor is described as a ‘one-shot’ game with discrete actions—total or no debt-repudiation and seizure of asset holding abroad. Possible Nash equilibria where each player chooses an action as to maximize his expected payoff given his beliefs about the other player’s action and the implications of those actions on the players’ trustworthy reputation are identified. However, if reputation losses rise convexly with the players’ relative hostility, partial repudiation and seizure can be the preferred strategies. The preferred repudiation and seizure rates are analyzed under asymmetric and symmetric information about the state of the world. (JEL classification F34)     

Prediction difficulty, financial strength and debt maturity

In order to have the optimal capital structure, the company with higher volatility of return adjusts the capital structure more frequently and has shorter debt maturity. Investors also have shorter investment cycle on these companies. Investment cycle is also affected by information asymmetry. The less asymmetric the information is, the more information investors get and the longer the investment cycle is. The adjustment frequency is also restricted by financial strength. This paper measures the debt maturity structure of the firm as the weighted average of debt maturity, and it is more precise than the ratio of long term debt to total debt. In empirical tests on debt maturity, the results show that financial strength, volatility of return and asymmetric information all have negative impacts on debt maturity.     

ESOPs, takeover protection, and corporate decision-making

ESOPs have the potential to align the interests of employees and owners and may increase firm value. However, employee ownership may also strengthen the position of entrenched management. The literature predicts that firms newly protected from takeover threat will tend to (1) increase long-term investment and (2) require additional external monitoring, and/or (3) may use leverage as part of an overall antitakeover strategy. We examined firms that have adopted ESOPs and find that firms raise the level of capital expenditures, research and development expenditures, and dividends. (JEF G320)     

BILL CLINTON'S BUDGET: taxes, spending, gimmicks and snake oil

Will President Clinton's budget help to maintain the recovery of the American economy? Daniel Mitchell, of the Heritage Foundation, argues that it is a recipe for bigger government, more debt and slower growth.     

The rise of environmentalism, pollution taxes and intra-industry trade

This paper develops a political-economy model to investigate to what extent a rise of environmentalism can successfully encourage higher pollution taxes and reduce pollution. The model focuses on special-interest group politics, intra-industry trade and a transnational environmental externality. The main finding is that a rise of environmentalism is not sufficient to protect the environment when pollution is relatively immobile and environmentalists are concerned with pollution in other countries than their own.Received: January 2004, Accepted: November 2004, JEL Classification: D72, Q28, F12I am grateful to Rolf Bommer, Jan Rose Skaksen, Per Fredriksson and Torsten Persson for comments and suggestions.     

Debt,lock-in assets and corporate restructuring

Why do some firms refuse to sell assets that are worth more to another firm? This paper shows that the presence of debt could cause an ex post overinvestment agency problem. In contrast to Myers' underinvestment problem, which is concerned with debt and growth assets, the model in this paper analyzes the role of debt and alternate users of assets in place. This type of agency problem is of interest because it is inherently related to the important recent corporate finance phenomenon of restructuring.     

Private debt, unused credit lines, and seasoned equity offerings

We study a sample of SEOs to examine the impact of private debt and unused credit lines on SEO underpricing and long-run stock and operating performance. We do not find significant effects of private debt financing on SEO underpricing and long-run stock underperformance. However, firms with more bank debt and unused lines of credit exhibit significantly better pre-issue operating performance. Changes in operating performance from the pre-issue year to the post-issue period are negatively related to the size of unused credit lines. Capital spending decreases with the size of unused credit lines in the year prior to SEOs, but increases following SEOs. Our overall evidence suggests that the post-issue operating performance we observed may be a result of overinvestment, which is enhanced by unused credit lines.     

企业成长性、CEO财务专长与企业价值

中国有一个成语叫"南橘北枳",意思是同一个物种在不同的生长环境下会表现出不同的性状.举一反三,企业管理者的才能是否也会因为组织环境的差异而发挥不同的作用?本文结合企业的成长性水平,从投资行为和成本管控的视角,系统分析与检验了CEO财务专长对企业价值的影响.研究结果显示,对于高成长性企业,财务出身的CEO会抑制企业的投资水平,易错失投资机会,有损企业价值;而对于低成长性企业,CEO的财务专长则有助于企业实现成本领先,提升企业价值.路径检验发现,对于高成长性企业,CEO的财务专长对企业价值的影响存在部分的投资水平路径;对于低成长性企业,CEO的财务专长对企业价值的影响存在部分的成本管控路径.进一步研究发现,CEO财务专长对企业投资水平、企业价值的抑制作用,只存在于具备高成长性的国有企业之中;成长性水平降低后,无论是国有企业还是民营企业,具有财务专长的CEO均能够显著提高企业成本管控水平,促进企业价值上升.     

Manager replacement,employee protest,and corporate control

When faced with the replacement threat, incumbent managers look for support from employees by investing in a non-contractible employee–friendly relationship. Enjoying the relationship, employees help managers preserve their job by protesting against shareholders. When the benefits from the good employee–manager relationship are large enough to cover the loss of managerial inefficiency, shareholders prefer to share the influential power at the firm with employees.     

Payroll taxes,wages and employment: Identification through policy changes

This paper investigates the effect of changes in payroll taxes on wages and employment in Argentina. The analysis, based on administrative data, focuses on the impact of a series of major changes in payroll taxes which varied across geographical areas. This setup offers two main advantages over previous studies. First, using longitudinal data, the variation in tax rates across space and time provides a plausible source of identification of their effects on employment and wages. Second, the use of legal tax rates for each area at each point in time provides a remedy for the measurement error bias raised by the use of empirical rates constructed from observed tax and wage bills. Once this bias is accounted for, the results indicate that changes in payroll tax rates are only partially shifted onto wages, and they point to the absence of any significant effect on employment.