Static or Dynamic Efficiency: Horizontal Merger Effects in the Wireless Telecommunications Industry

Review of Industrial Organization - This paper studies five mergers in the European wireless telecommunication industry and analyzes their impact on prices and capital expenditures of both merging...     

Corporate Governance and Globalization

This survey gives an overview of the current state of knowledgeon the question of whether corporate-governance structures worldwideare determinants of differences in economic performance. Welook at the identities of owners, monitoring boards, and legalsystems and find that some, though not all, corporate-governancestructures give rise to differences in performance. The paperends with a tentative look at the prospects of corporate-governancestructures converging worldwide.     

The determinants of merger waves: An international perspective

One of the most conspicuous features of mergers is that they come in waves that are correlated with increases in share prices and price/earnings ratios. We use a natural way to discriminate between pure stock market influences on firm decisions and other influences by examining merger patterns for both listed and unlisted firms. If “real” changes in the economy drive merger waves, as some neoclassical theories of mergers predict, both listed and unlisted firms should experience waves. We find significant differences between listed and unlisted firms as predicted by behavioral theories of merger waves.     

Are there demonstration-related spillovers from FDI?: Evidence from Switzerland

This paper examines whether there are signs of demonstration-related spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI). It hypothesizes that the size and the extent of such benefits vary according to the level of the absorptive capacity of local firms. Using detailed firm data from Swiss manufacturing and services/construction, we find strong evidence for demonstration-related spillovers when (a) local firms are not far behind the technological frontier of the industry with a technological gap slightly greater than one, and (b) local firms demonstrate high investment in the absorptive capacity. The results are found to be more consistent in manufacturing than services/construction.     

The persistence of profits in banking: an international comparison

This article examines the dynamics of bank profitability in the USA, Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy and Switzerland over the period 1993–2014. We find long-run bank profit persistence in all six countries in the period before the financial crisis in 2008. Banks with large capital ratios are persistently more profitable, and there is little evidence of a link between bank size and the persistence of bank profits. Commercial (saving) banks are persistently more (less) profitable in four of the six countries. The effects of the financial crisis in 2008 differed dramatically across countries as well as across ownership types. While US banks experienced dramatic declines in the immediate aftermath of the crisis, they recovered much faster than their European counterparts and essentially retain their long run profit potential by the year 2014.     

Corporate Ownership Structure in Austria

This paper aims to add to the knowledge about ownership structure in Austria. It assesses ownership concentration and the relative importance of the investor categories banks, the state, families, and domestic and foreign firms on the basis of a sample of 600 of the largest non-financial corporations. Balance sheet data, internal rates of return calculations and regression estimates show that not only ownership concentration, but also the identity of the large controlling shareholder is relevant to efficient governance of corporations. While foreign control increases profitability, particularly state control is detrimental to shareholder wealth maximization. Likewise, profit margin equation estimates cannot reject the entrenchment hypothesis and/or expropriation of minority shareholders.     

Corporate Social Responsibility for Developing Country Multinational Corporations: Lost War in Pertaining Global Competitiveness?

This article explores the conceptual and practical gap existing between the developed and developing countries in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR), or the North-South ‘CSR Divide’, through the analysis of possible impact on the competitiveness of developing countries’ and economies’ SMEs and MNEs in globalization. To do so, this article first reviewed the traditional wisdom on the concept of strategic CSR developed in the North and the role that CSR engagement can play in corporate competitiveness, and compare with the impact on the competitive advantage of the South through the supply chains. It points out that among the many factors that could explain the ‘CSR Divide’, the negative impact of CSR on comparative advantage is the final resort where developing countries are reluctant and defensive toward western-style CSR. It did point out that developing countries are changing their approaches to make CSR work in favor of their competitive position in global trade, such as China who has started to adopt proactive approach by becoming CSR standards-setter. This article concludes with two policy proposals that aim to bridge the CSR gap, the first is to improve CSR standard-setting participation from both sides, and the second to search for solutions in the international investment legal framework which will define corporate obligations in relating to CSR in a more explicit way.