Merger Waves and Firm Growth: Contemporary Historical Evidence

This article presents the outcomes of an evaluation of the impact of the series of mergers of the local exchange companies that have taken place between 1988 and 2001 on an important measure of performance of the firms undergoing the mergers. The analysis reveals that after firms have undertaken one merger they experience little or no growth after such mergers, but the impact of second mergers on firm growth have been negative. If an important motive in undertaking mergers has been to enhance firm growth, then the merger waves that have been approved and consummated have led to performance declines. The impacts of the merger wave on the growth of the telecommunications sector firms have been negative.     

Was the recent downturn in US real GDP predictable?

This article uses a small set of variables – real GDP, the inflation rate and the short-term interest rate – and a rich set of models – atheoretical (time series) and theoretical (structural), linear and nonlinear, as well as classical and Bayesian models – to consider whether we could have predicted the recent downturn of the US real GDP. Comparing the performance of the models to the benchmark random-walk model by root mean-square errors, the two structural (theoretical) models, especially the nonlinear model, perform well on average across all forecast horizons in our ex post, out-of-sample forecasts, although at specific forecast horizons certain nonlinear atheoretical models perform the best. The nonlinear theoretical model also dominates in our ex ante, out-of-sample forecast of the Great Recession, suggesting that developing forward-looking, microfounded, nonlinear, dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models of the economy may prove crucial in forecasting turning points.     

Forecasting US real house price returns over 1831–2013: evidence from copula models

Given the existence of nonnormality and nonlinearity in the data generating process of real house price returns over the period of 1831–2013, this article compares the ability of various univariate copula models, relative to standard benchmarks (naive and autoregressive models) in forecasting real US house price over the annual out-of-sample period of 1874–2013, based on an in-sample of 1831–1873. Overall, our results provide overwhelming evidence in favour of the copula models (Normal, Student’s t, Clayton, Frank, Gumbel, Joe and Ali-Mikhail-Huq) relative to linear benchmarks, and especially for the Student’s t-copula, which outperforms all other models both in terms of in-sample and out-of-sample predictability results. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for nonnormality and nonlinearity in the data generating process of real house price returns for the US economy for nearly two centuries of data.     

On characterizing the probability of survival in a large competitive economy

We consider a Walrasian exchange economy in which an agent is characterized by a utility function, a random endowment vector, and a function that specifies the minimum expenditure necessary for survival at a given price system. If at any equilibrium price system, the income of the agent is no more than the minimum expenditure for survival, it is ruined. The main results characterize the probability of ruin when the number of agents is large. The implications of stochastic dependence among agents are explored.     

Equilibrium prices in a random exchange economy with dependent agents

Summary. This paper presents a model of a Walrasian exchange economy in which the preferences and endowments of the agents are random. Stochastic interaction among the agents is formally described in terms of dependency neighborhoods. The main result is a characterization of the distribution of market-clearing prices in a large economy. Received: April 23, 1999; revised version: May 6, 1999     

Mergers and synergy: Lessons from contemporary telecommunications history

Using contemporary historical data, the analysis reported in this article has evaluated the impact of the various mergers of the local exchange companies that took place between 1988 and 2001 on financial performance. Performance was measured using an important metric normally used to measure synergies of firms undergoing mergers. The analysis has revealed that the relative cash flow variable for firms worsened after mergers. If the synergy motive had been primary in influencing merger decisions, and also approvals, then the past mergers approved led to decreased performance levels and corresponding welfare losses for American consumers; thus, the mergers of communications common carriers were not in the interest of the public, the shareholders and customers. On the other hand, given the negative outcomes, views that the quiet life, hubris or a quest for possible market power motivated the mergers could be discarded. The lessons of such contemporary historical analysis have suggested that antitrust oppositions to contemporary telecommunications sector mergers may have basis in fact and salient evidence.     

Random iterates of monotone maps

In this paper we prove the existence, uniqueness and stability of the invariant distribution of a random dynamical system in which the admissible family of laws of motion consists of monotone maps from a closed subset of a finite dimensional Euclidean space into itself.     

Trade under temporary equilibrium: Evolution in a loglinear world

The paper develops a model of a competitive world in which several countries are engaged in the production, consumption, and exchange of many commodities over time. Each agent produces a single good, and trades it for the required inputs and consumption goods. The plans of the agents are based on an optimization exercise involving a constrained maximization of a discounted sum of one period utilities. All the relevant functional relationships are assumed to be loglinear. The principal results deal with the existence and characterization of the sequence of temporary equilibria.