The competitive firm and the role of information about uncertain factor prices

This paper studies the role of information about uncertain input prices for a competitive firm. The production decision has to be taken when the price of an input factor is perceived as random. However, a signal is observable in advance, conveying some information about the future factor price. Transparency is linked to the informational content of this signal. The impact of a higher level of transparency is analyzed from an ex ante perspective, i.e. before the information signal is observed. The change of factor use, production amount and cost are determined by comparing the strength of the curvatures of total and marginal product. By contrast, ex ante profit always increases, independently of the shape of the production function.     

Systemic financial distress and auction-based bankruptcy reorganization

Most bankruptcy procedures try to reorganize a financially-distressed firm's debts to a serviceable level through negotiations overseen by courts. Markets are an alternative to such negotiations. This paper develops a market-based approach that is appropriate if claimants are severely cash-constrained and there is merit in having existing owners-managers remain in control.This approach was developed in response to the 1997 Asian Crisis, where the sheer numbers of over-indebted firms, creditors with poor incentives, and inexperienced courts stymied negotiated resolution. The scheme, however, can be applied to other crisis settings that exhibit particular characteristics. One such setting could be the resolution of external sovereign debts, a situation where creditors obviously cannot take possession of a country.The scheme arranges creditors in a queue to be serviced in sequence from the firm's operating cash flows. Creditors bid for their position in this queue, and those accepting a greater proportionate reduction in the face value of their claims are placed ahead of the others. Any existing hierarchy of claims is honored by having claimants bid for their positions within the relevant segment of the queue. No one in the queue (including owners who are last) is paid anything until the (reduced) debts of the first in line are fully discharged using the firm's operating cash surpluses. The queue then moves up and the next claimant in line is serviced.The paper shows that, in equilibrium, the aggregate debts of the firm are reduced enough to provide a positive expected residual return to the owner-managers, which improves their incentives to efficiently operate the firm and can result in an outcome that is Pareto superior to other bankruptcy procedures. We discuss the efficiency properties of this scheme and its appropriateness to situations of systemic financial distress.     

The relationship between the costs and prices of a multi-product monopoly: The role of price-cap regulation

This paper examines the role of price-cap regulation in influencing the relationship between the costs and prices of a multi-product monopoly. Based on a simple model of mark-up pricing, a combination of analytical and numerical analysis is used to show how cost increases among the firm's products can cause a divergence of prices from the Ramsey structure if the cost increases are non-uniform or if the demand elasticities for the products are non-uniform. However, in the absence of additional cost changes, profit-maximising prices which are subject to a price-cap constraint converge to the Ramsey structure if the previous period's quantities are used as weights in the firm's price-cap constraint. Consequently, given this formulation of the firm's price-cap constraint, only in situations of recurring cost changes are prices likely to show on-going divergence from the Ramsey structure.This paper reports on research funded by the Australian Electricity Supply Industry Research Board. I am grateful to two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on previous versions.     

对《财务管理》内部转移价格的再认识

集团化下的大企业,各个责任主体分权管理,责任核算。相互之间提供劳务或转换产品以及责任结转时,为了明确各责任中心的责与权,不可避免要引入内部转移价格。在制定内部转移价格时,应明确有关内部转移价格制定的原则。诸如：为何要有内部转移价格、内部转移价格制定方法以及内部转移结算方式等问题。     

Renewable resource and capital with a joy-of-giving resource bequest motive

In this article we ask whether a privately owned natural renewable resource can be conserved and managed efficiently when households have a joy-of-giving resource bequest motive. We model an overlapping generations economy in which firms have access to a CES production technology combining the natural resource, physical capital and labor. Our results shed light on the interplay between the resource bequest motive and the substitutability/complementarity relationship between capital and the natural resource in the determination of the equilibrium propensity to use the resource. The mere existence of the bequest motive does not guarantee that the resource will be conserved in the long run. When the resource is highly substitutable with capital, the equilibrium actually never exhausts the resource stock whatever the intensity of the bequest motive. When the resource is a poor substitute for capital, the equilibrium preserves the resource only if the taste for bequeathing is strong enough. Be the economy in over-accumulation or in under-accumulation of the natural resource, it always increases aggregate consumption to run the stock of capital at a level lower than the efficiency level.     

Trade policy with asset markets: The role of financial structure for time consistency

The present study uses a two-country, two-good, stochastic general equilibrium trade model to analyze the implications of optimal trade policy under uncertainty in the presence of financial markets. Using such a framework, I demonstrate that the policy-active home government, acting to maximize domestic welfare, will always have incentive to revise the previously announced import tariff policy once an asset position is taken by the representative agent in each country engaged in trade. The resulting time-consistent solution will be sensitive to the composition of asset income. Since the fiancial contracts can be combined in an infinite number of ways to yield the same optimal level of asset income, there will exist multiple time-consistent solutions, one for each financial structure. Using a specific log utility function, I also show that for certain financial structures, precommitment solutions will be replicated by time-consistent solutions, a result which marks a significant departure from the standard deterministic framework.     

Liquidity risk and financial competition: Implications for asset prices and monetary policy

This paper studies the implications of banking competition for capital markets and monetary policy. In particular, I develop a two-sector monetary growth model in which a group of agents is exposed to liquidity shocks and money is essential. Banks insure depositors against such risk and invest in the economy's assets. In this setting, I compare an economy with a perfectly competitive banking sector to an economy with a fully concentrated financial sector. Unlike previous work, banks can have market power in both deposits and capital markets. Compared to a perfectly competitive financial sector, I demonstrate that a monopolistic banking system can have substantial adverse consequences on capital formation, assets prices, and the degree of risk sharing. Furthermore, multiple steady-states can emerge and the economy becomes subject to poverty traps. More importantly, market power in financial markets may overturn the Tobin effect present under a perfectly competitive financial sector. This necessarily happens in economies with high degrees of liquidity risk and low levels of capital formation.     

The set of sunspot equilibria in economies with incomplete financial markets: variable asset prices

Summary. I consider the set of equilibria of two-period economies with S extrinsic states of nature in the second period and I assets with linearly independent nominal payoffs. Asset prices are variable. If the number of agents is greater than (S-I), the payoff matrix is in general position and S 2I, the set of equilibrium allocations generically (in utility function space) contains a smooth manifold of dimension (S-1). Moreover, the map from states o f nature to equilibrium allocations (restricted to this manifold) is one-to-one at each equilibrium. Received: February 23, 1998; revised version: June 1, 2000     

Renewable resource management with environmental prediction: the importance of structural specification

Environmental variability can substantially influence renewable resource growth, and as the ability to forecast environmental conditions improves, opportunities for adaptive management emerge. Using a stochastic stock‐recruitment model, Costello, et al. ( 2001 ) show the optimal management response to a prediction of favourable growth conditions is to reduce current harvests. We find this result may be reversed when environmental variability and stock are substitutes in growth, a possibility that has been ignored by resource economists. As an example, we analyze the South Carolina white shrimp fishery, finding the optimal response to a prediction of favourable overwinter conditions is to increase fall harvests.     

上市公司财务呈报管制:一个理论分析框架

本文在扩展Stigler的“捕获”理论的基础上,解释了内生财务呈报管制的形成机理,指出只有“被管制者寻求的管制”才有可能是有效的管制。在此基础上分析了构建有效的财务呈报管制的制度安排所需要的基础条件以及应遵循的原则,并讨论了测度财务呈报管制效果的规范和实证方法,从而初步构建了关于上市公司财务呈报管制研究的一个理论分析框架、     

Evaluation periods and asset prices: Myopic loss aversion at the financial marketplace

Examining myopic loss aversion (MLA [Benartzi, S., Thaler, R., 1995. Myopic loss aversion and the equity premium puzzle. Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, 73–92]) in real financial markets has several merits: in repeated situations investors may learn from each other, aggregate market prices may eliminate individual violations of expected utility, and individuals may decide differently in real situations than in laboratories. We utilize a special feature at the Tel Aviv stock exchange (TASE): occasional shifts of securities from daily to weekly trading. If investors’ decisions are influenced by trading frequency manipulation, then returns should be predictably affected. MLA results in a negative relation between risk aversion and the length of the evaluation period. Thus, the longer the evaluation period is, the lower the expected return is. This intuition also suggests reduced sensitivity to economic events in longer evaluation periods. We find strong support for MLA in the marketplace when testing expected return, as well as return sensitivity.     

Directed credit,financial development and financial structure: theory and evidence

The recent initiative of the RBI in reviving the policy of directed credit allocation in a period dominated by the neoliberal philosophy necessitates reconsideration of the role of policy-directed credit allocation process on financial development and financial structure of firms. Introducing certain policy parameters, the paper attempts to model how financial development-financial structure interlinkage is influenced by the liberalization policies of the government. The theoretical construct is empirically verified using both aggregated and disaggregated (firm-level) data comprising a panel of 932 Indian manufacturing firms. Findings reveal that following the liberalization measures in the early 1990s, there has been a structural shift in the debt–equity ratio of firms, with equity market activities assuming prominence over time. As regards financial development, it has been observed that the withdrawal of DFIs specialized in term-lending activities in the early 2000s led to a significant increase in the degree of financing constraints faced by the manufacturing firms. This contradicts the basic premise of financial liberalization. The paper argues that under certain conditions, government intervention in the form of directed credit programmes would not only act as an effective instrument in ushering financial development, but also provide important guidelines in ensuring sustainability of institutions.     

Information structure and equilibrium asset prices

In a continuous trading economy, it is shown that if information is revealed continuously and if agents' preferences are continuous in a certain topology, then equilibrium asset price processes must have continuous sample paths. Except for uninteresting cases, the sample paths of price processes will be of unbounded variation. In particular, if the information is generated by a Brownian motion,then equilibrium asset price processes are Ito integrals. When information is not revealed continuously, the times (which may be random) at which prices can have jumps are identified.     

政府管制与房价持续上升

本文认为房价持续上升的原因是政府对房地产市场的资本进入限制。消费者对住房的需求旺盛。拉高了房价，房地产公司的利润丰厚。问题是房地产公司为什么能一直保持丰厚的利润？其原因就是政府对房地产市场的资本进入限制所造成的房地产市场的垄断。本文比较了都存在信息不对称性的家庭装修市场和房地产市场不同的市场结构，不同的发展结果。最终得出结论：只有房地产市场的激励竞争才能解决房价持续上涨的根本问题．所以在强化政府这只看得见的手的作用的同时，不要抑制了市场这只看不见的手的作用。     

政府管制与房价持续上升

本文认为房价持续上升的原因是政府对房地产市场的资本进入限制.消费者对住房的需求旺盛,拉高了房价,房地产公司的利润丰厚.问题是房地产公司为什么能一直保持丰厚的利润?其原因就是政府对房地产市场的资本进入限制所造成的房地产市场的垄断.本文比较了都存在信息不对称性的家庭装修市场和房地产市场不同的市场结构,不同的发展结果.最终得出结论:只有房地产市场的激励竞争才能解决房价持续上涨的根本问题,所以在强化政府这只看得见的手的作用的同时,不要抑制了市场这只看不见的手的作用.     

SME performance in transition economies: The financial regulation and firm-level corruption nexus

Using a general equilibrium endogenous growth model we explain underperformance in the small and medium enterprise sector as an effect of corruption and non-competitive banking. Limited competition in the banking sector causes a high loan-deposit spread, worsens the initial effect of corruption, and depresses growth. Fostering bank competition, for instance, by allowing foreign bank entry, would be a simple solution to this problem, but frequently, authorities choose to hamper bank competition. Therefore, we explain the persistence of non-competitive banking as a result of governments’ regulatory choice. If the government has a stake in the banking sector there exists a trade-off between current benefits from bank profits and future growth. Firm-level corruption affects intertemporal optimization and distorts the government’s choice towards more restrictive regulation, i.e., less bank competition, even if the deciding institution itself is not corrupt. These results show that the two prominent problems for small and medium enterprises, corruption and finance, are mutually reinforcing.     

The relationship between regulation and prices in the workers' compensation insurance market

This study examined the effect of different state regulatory policies on the price of workers' compensation insurance. Using a time series of state cross section data for the years 1980–1987, estimates were obtained for models that differed according to how price was measured and whether the regulatory variables were treated as endogenous. When the regulatory variables were treated as exogenous, the results show that price is lower in deregulated states compared to states with prior approval regulation. Results for models with endogenous regulatory variables indicate that price tends to be lower in deregulated states, although the estimates are not statistically significant.