What Do Changes in Corporate Ownership in Indonesia Tell Us?

This article documents the pattern of corporate ownership in Indonesia before and after the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis. We draw on an original dataset that identifies ultimate owners of the country’s 200 largest publicly listed corporations in 1996 and 2008, and supplement these data with additional information about unlisted firms. Corporate ownership and business–government relations in this period exhibited continuities as well as notable changes. Although family ownership remained the most prevalent form of ownership, there was considerable churning in the identities of the most powerful family owners. Listed state-owned corporations were more prominent after the crisis than before it, and foreign governments (particularly Singapore and Malaysia) substantially increased their ownership stakes in many of Indonesia’s largest corporations.     

Do Capital Inflows Matter to Asset Prices? The Case of Korea*

In the present paper, we investigate whether capital flows induce domestic asset price hikes in the case of Korea. This issue is relevant for crisis‐hit economies trying to prevent a boom–bust cycle as well as in the formulation of macroeconomic policy objectives in emerging market economies. Korea has recently experienced large capital inflows, in particular a surge in portfolio inflows. Furthermore, asset prices, including stock prices, land prices and nominal and real exchange rates, have also appreciated. The empirical results, obtained using a vector autoregression model, suggest that capital inflow shocks have caused stock prices but not land prices to increase. The effects on the nominal and real exchange rates have been limited, which relates to the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves.     

Do Analysts Matter for Corporate Tax Planning? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

We exploit an exogenous shock to analyst coverage as a result of brokerage house mergers and closures to examine whether financial analysts influence the tax‐planning activities of the firms they cover. Using a difference‐in‐differences design, we find that, on average, firms affected by broker mergers and/or closures experience a reduction in their GAAP (cash) effective tax rates (ETR) of 2.5 percent (2.6 percent), relative to control firms, translating into average tax expense (cash tax) savings of $34 ($35) million. The treatment effect is more pronounced among firms with lower pre‐event analyst coverage. To explore how analysts affect tax planning, we further document that the treatment effect is greater among firms that lose an analyst who provided an implied ETR forecast in the past, suggesting that analysts influence tax planning via their tax‐specific research efforts. In addition, we find that after merger/closure, weakly governed firms increase their use of aggressive tax strategies, and financially distressed firms experience a larger reduction of cash effective tax rates, relative to control firms. Overall, we provide evidence that a shock to analyst coverage sufficiently changes the cost‐benefit trade‐off of tax planning.     

How does a Change in the Excise Tax on Beer Impact Beer Retail Prices in South Africa?

This article uses price data, collected by Statistics South Africa, to estimate the effect of a change in the excise tax on the retail price of beer. We find strong evidence that the excise tax on beer is overshifted to consumers. The pass‐through coefficient is estimated at 4.83 (95% CI: 4.02; 5.64) for lager, and at 4.77 (95% CI: 4.04; 5.50) for all beer (which includes dark beer). This implies that for every R1/unit increase in the excise tax, the retail price increases by about R4.80/unit. Of the 23 brand‐packaging combinations considered, the pass‐through coefficients vary between 2.39 and 10.05 (median = 5.30). The majority of the price change in response to a tax change occurs immediately, and prices have fully adjusted two months after the excise tax increase becomes effective. Pass‐through differs substantially across packaging types. The pass‐through coefficient on 750 ml bottles is substantially lower than that of 330 ml (or 340 ml) cans and 6 × 330 ml (or 6 × 340 ml) “six‐packs.” The overshifting of the excise tax has positive implications for public health policy, since they increase the effectiveness of alcohol taxes as a tool to reduce the (excessive) consumption of beer.     

Will Corporate Income Taxation Survive?

Summary This paper explores the future of corporate income taxation, with special reference to the Netherlands. We review the empirical literature on a variety of distortions and arbitrage opportunities and pay due attention to effect sizes. An attempt is made to compare the size of various distortions in terms of the ex-post revenue impact of a corporate tax reduction. Thus, we learn which distortions impose the most serious threat to government revenue. This integrative approach allows us to understand recent developments in corporate tax regimes in the EU. Erasmus University Rotterdam, CPB, CESifo and Tinbergen Institute. Corresponding address: P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, e-mail: demooij@few.eur.nl. I thank Leon Bettendorf, Joeri I thank Leon Bettendorf, Joeri Gorter and Gerbert Romijn for their support and discussion in constructing Table 3 and Sijbren Cnossen and two anonymous referees for useful comments.     

Do Interest Rate Liberalization and Fintech Mix? Impact on Shadow Deposits in China

In this paper we attempt to characterize the stability of shadow deposits in China with interest rate liberalization and fintech developments. We emphasize that shadow banks provide higher but riskier returns and such characteristics affect the stability of shadow deposits. In our setting, the stability of shadow deposits is influenced by two offsetting effects, namely: the patience effect, which makes investors more willing to wait because of the potentially higher returns; and the uncertainty effect, which makes investors more likely to withdraw as a result of higher risk. Under liberalized interest rates, the patience effect will erode and the uncertainty effect will be heightened because the post‐liberalization higher return of traditional banks undermines the importance of the extra return of shadow deposits to depositors, while preserving the importance of the risk aspect. Fintech development is modeled as a reduction in the withdrawal cost that facilitates runs. This affects the stability of shadow deposits because of their wider fintech reliance. Regulators should be cautious in pushing interest rate liberalization and fintech application alongside building a safety net for shadow banking.     

Are House Prices Responsible for Unemployment Persistence?

The paper analyses the ambiguous role of house prices and housing investment for unemployment dynamics. Whereas traditional models see an increase in house prices as a dynamic multiplier that contributes positively to business cycle swings, the paper considers additional transmission mechanisms via the competitiveness channel (wages) and productivity. As house prices rise, wages tend to follow in order to make up for the loss in real disposable income, which limits employment creation. In addition, with rising house prices, the relative size of the construction sector – a low-productivity industry – tends to increase, lowering aggregate productivity growth, further dampening competitiveness. The paper estimates a stylised dynamic general equilibrium model with unemployment flows. Introducing different transmission mechanisms through which the housing market influences labour and macroeconomic dynamics, the size and direction of the housing market channel is being analysed. The estimation results show that housing shocks can have long-lasting negative effects on employment even though a housing boom can generate a short-lived stimulus on growth and employment. The paper also offers some policy advice simulating housing shocks under different types of structural reforms and macro-prudential regulation.     

Bold Stock Recommendations: Informative or Worthless?

We select a small set of recommendations that lie in the upper and lower tail of the empirical distribution of divergences between a recommendation, and the consensus over the window (−30, −1) days prior to that recommendation. We classify these extremely divergent recommendations as bold, and then subdivide them into informative bold recommendations that lead other analysts (leading-bold) and those that are ignored by other analysts (contra-bold) based on the consensus change in the 30 days after the announcement. We focus on the information conveyed to the market by these bold, leading-bold, and contra-bold recommendations through their effects on cumulative abnormal returns (CAR). We find that bold recommendations are not anticipated by market participants (CARs are negative before a bold buy and positive before a bold sell). The next finding is that the market responds strongly to both leading and contra-bold recommendations over the (0, +4)-day window and that these reactions are stronger than that to nonbold recommendations. In contrast, over the longer (0, +30)-day window, leading-bold recommendations earn additional returns whereas contra-bold ones reverse significantly due to lack of confirmation. The overall pattern is one of rational market reaction both in the short and long windows. We support the rationality of the market reaction by showing that the percentage of leading-bold recommendations exceeds that of contra-bold recommendations, and that these two types of recommendations cannot be separated using observable analyst characteristics such as experience or brokerage size.     

The Social Impact of the Asian Crisis: What Do We Know Two Years On?

Following the dramatic economic crisis of 1997–98, governments felt compelled to act even though it was far from clear who, and where, the worst affected people were, and what, if anything, could or should be done to alleviate their plight. This paper summarises what is known about the social impact of the crisis, and examines the policy debates up to the latter part of 1999.     

The Impact of Capital Inflows on Asset Prices in Emerging Asian Economies: Is Too Much Money Chasing Too Little Good?

In recent years, emerging Asian economies have experienced (i) large capital inflows, especially a surge in portfolio inflows, and (ii) an appreciation of asset prices such as stocks, land, and nominal and real exchange rates. We empirically investigate the effects of capital inflows on asset prices by employing a panel VAR model. The empirical results suggest that capital inflows indeed have contributed to asset price appreciation in the region, although capital inflow shocks explain a relatively small part of asset price fluctuations.     

Can Employee Stock Options Contribute to Less Risk-Taking?

The executive compensation literature presumes that shareholders offer risk-averse managers stock options to entice them to take on more risk, resulting in riskier investment decisions and thus a greater return on investment. However, recent empirical work challenges this assumption, and theoretical research even argues that high levels of option-based compensation for generally under-diversified managers may actually lead to greater risk aversion. We evaluate the incentive structure of employee stock options by examining the level of R&D investment and the return on that investment conditional on the portfolio “vega,” which captures the sensitivity of option value to stock price volatility. Our results suggest that both investment in R&D and the return on R&D, as measured by future earnings and patent awards, varies concavely with vega. That is, low to moderate levels of vega correspond to increasing investment in and returns on R&D, consistent with vega inducing more profitable investments, but marginal returns decline as vega increases. Collectively, these results, bolstered by several supplemental analyses, suggest that this surprising relation between vega and risky investment is driven by greater risk aversion at higher levels of vega. Overall, our results imply that employee stock options may not always align the incentives of managers and shareholders.     

Did Georgia’s Post-Pipeline-Hack Gasoline-Tax Suspension Lower Prices?

Atlantic Economic Journal -     

Corporate key labs: Breakthrough or white elephant?

Based on manually collected data from Chinese listed firms' key laboratories at the state and provincial levels, this study shows that key laboratories improve firms' innovation output. Corporations with key laboratories at the state or provincial level produce more patents and citations than their counterparts. A series of endogenous treatment effects, including the Heckman two-step sample selection model, instrumental variable estimation, policy shock analysis, and propensity score matching, indicate that this study's main conclusion is robust and consistent. We also observe that key laboratories' beneficial impact on innovation output becomes more prominent for firms belonging to high-tech industries, those led by an inventor or scientist CEO, and those located in cities that enforce the protection of intellectual property. Further, key laboratories foster innovation mainly by developing scientific research capacity, increasing human capital, and improving R&D subsidies. Our findings demonstrate that key laboratories can benefit firms, their stakeholders, and the public in an emerging market such as China.     

Do quits cause under-training?

A recent finding in the training literature is that there willbe under-investment in skills if there is a positive quit rate,training is at least partially transferable, and there is imperfectcompetition in the labour market. We explore the conditionsunder which this under-investment result might be reversed.In economies characterised by uncertainty about future productivity,we show that a higher quit rate may increase the number of workerstrained, by making firms wait less for information about futureproductivity before training new workers. At low quit rates,this offsets all of the under-investment effect.     

Do NBFCs propagate real shocks?

Notwithstanding a smaller share of total loans vis-à-vis commercial banks, we investigate a possible role of Non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) in propagating a real shock to the rest of the economy. Our two-sector model captures emerging economy characteristics such as NBFC borrowings from commercial banks, heterogeneities in financial constraints, and labour market friction faced by firms. Our theoretical and simulation results, using Indian parameters, indicate that an idiosyncratic shock (i.e., higher realization of the failed firms) and a sectoral productivity shock (in the sector financed by NBFCs) increase the interest rate charged by the banks, and the unemployment rate while reducing the real wages and per capita capital formation. However, the reverse happens given a structural shock, assumed as an increase in the average number of failed firms. Early detection of such shocks and quick policy intervention are required to provide a cushion for capital formation and job creation.     

Stock repurchases in Japan: A solution to excessive corporate saving?

Since the 1990 s profitable Japanese companies have faced lower domestic growth opportunities; they have invested less, yet most have not increased their payout. This has resulted in a substantial deleveraging of their balance sheets. The popular term for this phenomenon is “corporate saving.” Corporate saving by Japanese companies is now at the highest level in history. Dividends and stock repurchases are two potential ways to resolve excessive corporate saving. Stock repurchases in particular offer a fast, flexible and very public method to solve the problem of excessive corporate savings. This research is an investigation of stock repurchases by Japanese companies from 2000 to 2009. Companies repurchase their stock to return excess cash to investors, resolve governance issues, adjust capital structure and send signals. This paper uses accounting and stock market information to explain this behavior. Contrary to recent research on American firms, we find that replacement of dividends does not appear to explain stock repurchase behavior in Japan. We find evidence that repurchase behavior in Japan is linked to excessive corporate savings. However, repurchases are also closely linked to the ownership structure of the firm. Firms whose dominant owners are other members of the firm's industrial group are less likely to repurchase. Bank ownership has mixed implications for repurchases. Firms having foreign and individual ownership are more likely to repurchase stock. Foreign and individual ownership appears to improve governance and thus may be a partial solution to excessive corporate savings.