Investment in Africa's Manufacturing Sector: A Four Country Panel Data Analysis

Firm level data for the manufacturing sector in Africa, presented in this paper, shows very low levels of investment. The importance of profit effects on investment is investigated using a flexible accelerator, a specification based on the Euler equation and a simple generalisation of these specificiations. There are controls for firm fixed effects. It is shown that the profit effect is very similar for both the accelerator and Euler equation specifications. A comparison with other studies shows that, for small firms, the effect is much smaller in Africa than for other countries. Reasons for the relative insensitivity of investment to profits in African firms are suggested. For the most general specification tested there are no significant differences in the size of the profit effect across the four countries in the study.     

Bankruptcy and firm finance

This paper analyzes how an enforcement mechanism that resembles a court affects firm finance. The court is described by two parameters that correspond to enforcement costs and the amount of creditor/debtor protection. We provide a theoretical and quantitative characterization of the effect of these enforcement parameters on the contract loan rate, the default probability and welfare. We analyze agents’ incentive to default and pursue bankruptcy and show that when the constraints that govern these decisions bind, the enforcement parameters can have a sharply non-linear effect on finance. We also compute the welfare losses of “poor institutions” and show that they are non-trivial. The results provide guidance on when models which abstract from enforcement provide good approximations and when they do not.      

Reconfiguration of the conceptual landscape: a tribute to the service logic of Richard Normann

This article is a tribute to the late Richard Normann, whose call for a “service logic” (Normann, Reframing Business: When the Map Changes the Landscape, Wiley, Chichester, p. 99, 2001) both parallels and enriches service-dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch, J. Mark, 68:1–17, 2004a). Like Vargo and Lusch, Normann shifted the focus of the offering from an output to a process of value creation and perceived the firm as an organizer of this process, with the customer as a co-producer, rather than a receiver of value. He also argued that offerings are “frozen knowledge,” similar to Vargo and Lusch’s contention that the basis of exchange is applied operant resources (service) and suggested that the ‘dematerialization’ of resources increases their ‘liquidity’, which allows increased “density” for value creation. Thus, he suggested that firms need to “reframe business”—rethink the logic of value creation—to reveal opportunities in reconfiguring the value constellations of which they are part. This tribute explores these and other similarities and differences between Normann’s work and the evolving S-D logic.     

A generalization of Panjer’s recursion and numerically stable risk aggregation

Portfolio credit risk models as well as models for operational risk can often be treated analogously to the collective risk model coming from insurance. Applying the classical Panjer recursion in the collective risk model can lead to numerical instabilities, for instance if the claim number distribution is extended negative binomial or extended logarithmic. We present a generalization of Panjer’s recursion that leads to numerically stable algorithms. The algorithm can be applied to the collective risk model, where the claim number follows, for example, a Poisson distribution mixed over a generalized tempered stable distribution with exponent in (0,1). De Pril’s recursion can be generalized in the same vein. We also present an analogue of our method for the collective model with a severity distribution having mixed support.     

Investment timing,liquidity, and agency costs of debt

This paper examines the effect of debt and liquidity on corporate investment in a continuous-time framework. We show that stockholder–bondholder agency conflicts cause investment thresholds to be U-shaped in leverage and decreasing in liquidity. In the absence of tax effects, we derive the optimal level of liquid funds that eliminates agency costs by implementing the first-best investment policy for a given capital structure. In a second step we generalize the framework by introducing a tax advantage of debt, and we show that an interior solution for liquidity and capital structure optimally trades off tax benefits and agency costs of debt.     

Income Inequality, Competitive Balance and the Attractiveness of Team Sports: Some Evidence and a Natural Experiment from English Soccer

This paper examines the relationship between financial inequality, competitive balance and attendance at English professional league soccer. It shows that while financial inequality among the clubs has increased, competitive balance has remained relatively stable and match attendance appears unrelated to competitive balance. A clearer test of the relationship is suggested by comparison with FA Cup matches. Because income inequality is primarily driven by inter- rather than intra-divisional inequality, the FA Cup has been a much more unbalanced competition than the divisional championships. Attendance at FA Cup matches relative to the corresponding league matches has fallen over the last twenty years.     

Der Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Betriebswirtschaftslehre und Controlling an der Philipps-Universität Marburg

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