The effect of foreign bank presence on firm entry and exit in transition economies

This study investigates the impact of foreign bank penetration on firm entry in Central and Eastern Europe. Acquisition of domestic banks by foreign investors has lowered rates of firm creation, decreased the average size of entrants, and increased firm exit in industries with greater informational opacity, while entry of greenfield foreign banks appears to have spurred firm creation and exit. We modify the view in earlier studies that informational opacity equates with firm size, defining opacity in terms of technological characteristics for a given industry. We find the economic significance of foreign bank entry is larger for opaque industries than industries with large shares of small firms. The study provides evidence of increased credit constraints for start-ups in Central and Eastern Europe which is consistent with the theoretical proposition that the presence of foreign banks exacerbates informational asymmetries.     

The deep-pocket effect of internal capital markets

We provide evidence that incumbent and entrant firms' access to business group deep pockets affects the entry patterns in product markets. Relying on a unique French data set on business groups, our paper shows that entry into manufacturing industries is negatively related to the cash hoarded by incumbent affiliated groups and positively related to entrant groups' cash. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that the impact of group cash holdingson entry is more important in environments where financial constraints are pronounced. The cash holdings of incumbent and entrant groups also affect the survival rate of entrants in the three- to five-year post-entry window. Overall, our findings suggest that internal capital markets operate within corporate groups and affect the product market behavior of affiliated firms by mitigating financial constraints.     

Can Unemployment Insurance Spur Entrepreneurial Activity? Evidence from France

We evaluate the effect of downside insurance on self-employment. We exploit a large-scale reform of French unemployment benefits that insured unemployed workers starting businesses. The reform significantly increased firm creation without decreasing the quality of new entrants. Firms started postreform were initially smaller, but their employment growth, productivity, and survival rates are similar to those prereform. New entrepreneurs' characteristics and expectations are also similar. Finally, jobs created by new entrants crowd out employment in incumbent firms almost one-for-one, but have a higher productivity than incumbents. These results highlight the benefits of encouraging experimentation by lowering barriers to entry.     

Incumbents and protectionism: The political economy of foreign entry liberalization

This paper investigates the influence of incumbent firms on the decision to allow foreign direct investment into an industry. Using data from India's economic reforms, the results show that firms in concentrated industries are more successful at preventing foreign entry, state-owned firms are more successful at stopping foreign entry than privately-owned firms, and profitable state-owned firms are more successful at stopping foreign entry than unprofitable state-owned firms. The pattern of foreign entry liberalization supports the private interest view of policy implementation and suggests that it may be necessary to reduce the influence of state-owned firms to optimally enact reforms.     

On the strategic role of high leverage in entry deterrence

This paper examines the strategic role of high levels of debt and bankruptcy threats in deterring entry into monopolistic markets. In the context of an infinite horizon entry game, we show that if a potential entrant has access to debt financing with limited liability, the unique sub-game perfect equilibrium involves the entrant successfully issuing a high level of debt, entering the market and being met with cooperation. If, in addition to the entrant, the incumbent also has access to debt with limited liability, it will be highly levered and will completely pre-empt any entry in equilibrium. Finally, if the incumbent faces a variety of potential entrants with differing abilities to capture market shares, its optimal capital structure will help pre-empt the entry of the tougher entrants, while allowing the weaker ones to share the market. The results of extreme leverage are also shown to hold in an alternative formulation analyzed by Kreps and Wilson (1982) and Milgrom and Roberts (1982), and thus are robust to model specifications. The empirical implications and possible application to high leverage industries are briefly discussed.     

Entry,exit, and the determinants of market structure

This article estimates a dynamic, structural model of entry and exit for two US service industries: dentists and chiropractors. Entry costs faced by potential entrants, fixed costs faced by incumbent producers, and the toughness of short‐run price competition are important determinants of long‐run firm values, firm turnover, and market structure. In the dentist industry entry costs were subsidized in geographic markets designated as Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSA) and the estimated mean entry cost is 11 percent lower in these markets. Using simulations, we find that entry cost subsidies are less expensive per additional firm than fixed cost subsidies.     

Who works for startups? The relation between firm age,employee age,and growth

Young firms disproportionately employ and hire young workers. On average, young employees in young firms earn higher wages than young employees in older firms. Young employees disproportionately join young firms with greater innovation potential and that exhibit higher growth, conditional on survival. We argue that the skills, risk tolerance, and joint dynamics of young workers contribute to their disproportionate share of employment in young firms. Moreover, an increase in the supply of young workers is positively related to new firm creation in high-tech industries, supporting a causal link between the supply of young workers and new firm creation.     

Entry deterrence through credible commitment to transfer pricing at direct cost

This paper examines the choice between direct and absorption costing in a cost-based transfer pricing system for duopolistic firms competing with product market prices. Existing literature has shown that the adoption of an absorption costing system, which drives up the intrafirm transfer price, strategically dominates direct costing for the two firms, regardless of whether the transfer price is publicly observable, thereby constituting a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE). However, we demonstrate that direct costing can strategically dominate absorption costing when one of the two firms is an incumbent, whereas the other is a potential entrant. Stated differently, the well-known result in the strategic cost allocation problem reverses if we consider entry threats. More specifically, we show that if the incumbent credibly commits to an observable transfer price, the upfront adoption of a direct costing system enables the incumbent to deter the entry of the potential rival in the SPNE. As a commitment device for the observable price, we consider the regulation of transfer prices that usually exists in oligopolistic network industries. We show that a regulator that pursues social welfare maximization approves direct costing but not absorption costing. Therefore, the firms and the regulator can share a mutual interest in the adoption of a direct costing system, a state thus sustained as the SPNE. This result yields managerial accounting implications for a divisionalized firm facing the threat of potential competitors entering the market in that the firm can use this accounting system to help monopolize the market.     

Corporate risk management,product market competition,and disclosure

This paper studies the effects of hedge disclosure requirements on corporate risk management and product market competition. The analysis is based on a model of market entry and shows that to prevent entry incumbent firms engage in risk management when these activities remain unobserved by outsiders. In the resulting equilibrium, financial markets are well informed and entry is efficient. However, potential attempts for more transparency by additional disclosure requirements introduce a commitment device that provides incumbents with incentives to distort risk management activities thereby influencing entrant beliefs. In equilibrium, firms engage in significant risk-taking. This behavior limits entry and adversely affects the nature of competition in industries.     

Public entrants,public equity finance and creative destruction

We explore the importance of new public firms and public equity finance for R&D and creative destruction in the US high-tech sector. Over 1900 new public firms enter high-tech manufacturing between 1970 and 2004; they are increasingly R&D intensive and rely extensively on public equity finance in the 1980s and 1990s. We estimate dynamic R&D models and find a strong link between public equity finance and R&D for new entrants, but not established entrants or incumbents. Further, recent cohorts of public entrants have a substantial economic impact: by 2000, recent public entrants account for almost half of high-tech sales and more than half of R&D. Variation in the availability of public equity finance has a marked impact on entrant R&D and the rate at which entrants take market share from incumbents. Our findings identify a key channel through which public equity markets facilitate the process of creative destruction.     

Venture capital and new business creation

Using a comprehensive database of firms from 21 European countries over the period 1998–2008, we find that venture capital investment has a positive effect on the rate of new business creation. This is especially true in countries with higher entry costs, higher protection of intellectual property rights, and lower taxes on capital gains. Our results suggest that, controlling for country and industry characteristics, venture capital is beneficial to bringing new ideas to the marketplace in the shape of new companies.     

The effect of entry on R&D networks

We investigate the effect of potential entry on the formation and stability of R&D networks considering farsighted firms. The presence of a potential entrant often alters the incentives of incumbents to collaborate. Incumbent firms may form an otherwise undesirable collaboration to deter entry of a new firm. Moreover, an incumbent may refrain from establishing an otherwise desirable collaboration, expecting to form a more profitable link with the entrant. Finally, potential entry may lead an inefficient incumbent to exit the market. Welfare analysis shows market and social incentives to be often misaligned. We propose a subsidy scheme that encourages welfare‐improving entry.     

Competition and subsidies in the deregulated US local telephone industry

The 1996 Telecommunications Act opened the monopolistic US local telephone industry to new entrants. However, substantial entry costs have prevented some markets from becoming competitive. We study various subsidy policies designed to encourage entry. We estimate a dynamic entry game using data on potential and actual entrants, allowing for heterogeneous option values of waiting. We find that subsidies to smaller markets are more cost effective in reducing monopoly markets, but subsidies to only lower‐cost firms are less cost effective than a nondiscriminatory policy. Subsidies in only early periods reduce the option value of waiting and accelerate the arrival of competition.     

Spinoffs and clustering

Geographic clustering of innovative industries is associated with the entry and success of spinoff firms. We develop a model to explain the multiple empirical patterns regarding cluster growth and spinoff formation and performance, without relying on agglomeration externalities. Clustering naturally follows from spinoffs locating near their parents. In our model, firms grow and spinoffs form through the discovery of new submarkets based on innovation. Rapid and successful innovation creates more opportunities for spinoff entry and drives a region's growth. Our model provides baseline estimates of levels of agglomeration that can be attributed to this process of innovation and spinoff formation.     

银行业竞争、创新资源配置和企业创新产出——基于中国工业企业的经验证据

本文利用城市级商业银行分支机构数据,结合中国工业企业数据和企业专利数据,实证分析银行业竞争对中国企业创新产出的影响。研究发现,竞争性的银行业市场结构显著促进了企业创新产出,对非国有企业和中小企业尤为显著。进一步地,本文基于资源配置角度,从新进入企业和在位企业双重视角探讨银行业竞争影响企业创新产出的作用途径。检验发现,银行业竞争提高条件下,更多的高效率企业进入创新部门,更多的高效率在位企业增加创新投入,且上述影响在非国有企业和中小企业中更为明显。本文检验结果显示,银行业竞争能提高银行对高效率企业的信贷支持,优化企业之间创新资源配置,并通过引导高效率非国有企业和中小企业增加创新投入而推动整体层面的创新产出。本文拓展了银行业竞争对企业创新的微观影响研究,为制定基于创新驱动的金融发展政策提供新思路。     

Industrial Organization of Financial Systems and Strategic Use of Relationship Banking

Using standard Industrial Organization tools, we analyze the relation between competition in arm's length financial markets and the prevalence of close bank-firms ties. We show how the degree of competition between financial intermediaries affects the intensity of relationships between banks and client firms, and explore the idea that investment in bank-firm relationships can be used strategically by incumbent multi-product (universal) banks to limit competition in arm's length markets. The analysis implies that reforms designed to facilitate entry of new intermediaries may actually induce incumbent banks to increase investment in relationship banking, so that regulatory entry barriers are replaced by entry barriers created endogenously, namely, there is ``path dependence' in the market structure of financial systems. This result suggests that increased (potential) competition in the financial services industry will not always destroy bank-firm relationships but, on the contrary, may actually strengthen them.     

Discretionary disclosure in the presence of dual distribution channels

A prevailing view in the disclosure literature is that firms who learn favorable market information are reluctant to disclose it, fearing it will attract new rivals. In this paper, we demonstrate that the presence of dual distribution arrangements, wherein consumers can purchase products either from traditional retail firms or directly from suppliers, can notably alter disclosure incentives. As under prevailing views, a retailer disclosing positive news risks entry by competitors. However, entry shifts the incumbent supplier–retailer relationship: the presence of new competitors leads the supplier to treat its retailer more as a strategic partner, translating into lower wholesale prices. This, in turn, can lead the retailer to willingly share favorable news, since such disclosure invites entry precisely when the retailer stands to benefit most from price concessions. Our results suggest that as dual distribution continues to increase in prominence, firms may be more willing to voluntarily disclose sensitive financial information particularly that which points to high demand for its products.     

Disruption and Credit Markets

We show that over the past half-century, innovative disruptions were central to understanding corporate defaults. In a given year, industries experiencing abnormally high venture capital or initial public offering activity subsequently see higher default rates, higher segment exits by conglomerates, and higher yields on bonds issued by the firms in these industries. Overall, we find that disruption is a broad phenomenon, negatively affecting incumbent firms across the spectrum of age, valuation, and levers, with the exception of very large and low-leverage firms, in line with our central hypothesis.     

Mimicking repurchases

We study the tendency of firms to mimic the repurchase announcements of their industry counterparts. We argue that a firm, by repurchasing its shares, sends a positive signal about itself and a negative one about its competitors. This induces the competing firms to mimic the behavior of the repurchasing firm by repurchasing themselves. Using a broad sample of US firms from the period 1984–2002, we show that, in concentrated industries, a repurchase announcement lowers the stock price of the other firms in the same industry. The other firms react by repurchasing themselves to undo these negative effects. Repurchases are chosen as a strategic reaction to other firms’ repurchase decisions and are not motivated by the desire to time the market, i.e., to take advantage of a significantly undervalued stock price. Therefore, repurchasing firms in more concentrated industries experience a lower increase in value in comparison with their counterparts in less concentrated industries in the post-announcement era. Alternative methodologies used to estimate long-term performance confirm that it is only the repurchasing firms in low concentration industries that outperform the market, their non-repurchasing peers, and their counterparts in more concentrated industries by amounts that are economically and statistically significant.     

21 years of international M&As and joint ventures by Italian medium-sized listed firms: Value creation or value destruction?

This study provides evidence of the value creation of different equity entry modes in a sample of international investments performed by all Italian medium-sized listed firms in the period 1986-2006. Our research shows a positive and significant market reaction to announcements of internationalization strategies. The results are largely affected by high-equity entry modes carried out in advanced economies. Low-equity entry modes and international operations performed in emerging countries show no significant market reaction. We also find that the relative size of the deal, the firm age, the country risk, and the evolution of information disclosure regulation, matter in explaining the outcomes.