International cooperation in a fractured global order

This article takes a fresh look at the context for international cooperation in science and technology. It sketches out some key changes that have taken place in the international scene over the last few years, speculates about what is likely to happen during the next decade, and derives some implications for international cooperation in science and technology.     

Executive Compensation： Pay-for-Performance in High-Technology Firms

This study examines the relationship between corporate performance and the Chief Executive Officer （CEO） compensation in high-technology firms in the S＆P 500. The total short- and long-term CEO compensation in high-technology was compared with other industrial sectors from standard classification codes and tested in terms of corporate performance. The ExecuComp database was used to find the variables and to create a sample of firms between 2004 and 2010. Important corporate performance variables are used in this work, such as assets, employees, sales, net income, and earnings per share （EPS）, as reported by the firms for each year. A panel data GLS with a fixed effect model for time is estimated that describes total compensation for the period between 2004 and 2010. The result was aligned with the theory of executive compensations to address agency problems and to examine CEO pay-for-performance. The main objective of this paper is to consistently demonstrate that the performance is determined for the total CEO compensation for short- and long-term periods and to examine whether the total remunergttion paid to CEOs in high-technology firms in the S＆P 500 is related to corporate finance. This work provides a better understanding of the relationship between compensation and performance in high-technology firms. Results suggest that high-tech firms tend to use more sophisticated performance measurements to determine CEO compensation.     

Disclosure Strategies and Cost of Capital

Theoretically, companies disclosing more voluntary information will benefit from a lower cost of capital, although empirical research provides inconclusive results. Our study aims to analyze the influence of the disclosure of forward‐looking information on the cost of capital, because this information is extremely useful for investors. Results show that only specific information on actions, programs, decisions, and/or quantitative financial information helps toward the reduction of cost of capital. This evidence has direct economic implications, because it enables regulators and managers to focus on those disclosure strategies that are effective in the reduction of cost of capital. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evidence of Differences in the Effectiveness of Safety-Net Management in European Union Countries

European Union (EU) financial safety nets are social contracts that assign uncertain benefits and burdens to taxpayers in different member countries. To help national officials to assess their taxpayers’ exposures to loss from partner countries, this paper develops a way to estimate how well markets and regulators in 14 of the EU-15 countries have controlled deposit-institution risk-shifting in recent years. Our method traverses two steps. The first step estimates leverage, return volatility, and safety-net benefits for individual EU financial institutions. For stockholder-owned banks, input data feature 1993–2004 data on stock-market capitalization. Parallel accounting values are used to calculate enterprise value (albeit less precisely) for mutual savings institutions. The second step uses the output from the first step as input into regression models of safety-net benefits and interprets the results. Parameters of the second-step models express differences in the magnitude of safety-net subsidies and in the ability of financial markets and regulators in member countries to restrain the flow of safety-net subsidies to commercial banks and savings institutions. We conclude by showing that banks from high-subsidy and low-restraint countries have initiated and received the lion’s share of cross-border M&A activity. The efficiency, stabilization, and distributional effects of allowing banks to and from differently subsidized environments to expand their operations in partner countries pose policy issues that the EU ought to address.     

Local inequality and project choice: Theory and evidence from Ecuador

This paper provides evidence consistent with elite capture of Social Fund investment projects in Ecuador. Exploiting a unique combination of data sets on village-level income distributions, Social Fund project administration, and province-level electoral results, we test a simple model of project choice when local political power is unequally distributed. In accordance with the predictions of the model, poorer villages are more likely to receive projects that provide excludable (private) goods to the poor, such as latrines. Controlling for poverty, more unequal communities are less likely to receive such projects. Consistent with the hypothesis of elite capture, these results are sensitive to the specific measures of inequality and elite power used in the empirical analysis, and are strongest for expenditure shares at the top of the distribution.     

Purchasing power parity and uncovered interest parity: The Spanish case

This paper examines whether the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis holds in the long run when traded and non-traded goods are distinguished. Moreover, this hypothesis is analyzed jointly with the uncovered interest parity (UIP). The period from January 1986 to December 1995 was studied using monthly data corresponding to the consumer price index, short- and long-term interest rates, and spot exchange rates for Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, and Great Britain with each relative to Spain. Using Johansen's multi-equational cointegration technique, it was found that PPP does not hold even with the explicit consideration of the distinction between traded and non-traded goods as well as the difference between domestic and foreign interest rates. Furthermore, these two factors generate a systematic deviation between exchange rates and PPP.     

Note on global dynamics and imbalance effects in the Lucas–Uzawa model

In the traditional literature on the Lucas–Uzawa model, it is proved that in the so‐called normal parametric case, human capital stock grows at a rate greater than its long‐run counterpart in the neighbourhood of the long‐run balanced growth path. We first prove that the claim is true outside the neighborhood of balanced growth paths. More importantly, we identify a crucial asymmetry: whatever the parametric case considered, physical capital stock always grows at a rate lower than its long‐run counterpart when the ratio of physical to human capital is above its long‐run value.     

PUBLIC CAPITAL, PRODUCTIVE EFFICIENCY AND CONVERGENCE IN THE SPANISH REGIONS (1964–93)

This paper analyses the behaviour of productive efficiency in the Spanish regions for the period 1964–93. From a growth accounting approach, it describes the regional evolution of total factor productivity (TFP'), based on a private inputs production function. A stricter measure of efficiency is then quantified, which is not equivalent to Solow's residual, since public capital is included in the production function and constant returns to scale are not imposed. Finally, on the basis of the measures of total factor productivity and efficiency, the study discusses the existence of technological convergence among Spanish regions and the role played in it by public capital. The renewed interest in the analysis of the process of growth reflected in economic literature in recent years has also occurred in the case of the Spanish economy, with some peculiarities which are worth mentioning. In the 1980s, two important institutional changes took place: a profound political and administrative decentralization, the regions now being autonomous in many decisions on public expenditure, and the incorporation of Spain into the European Community, which as it is well known has a powerful regional policy. Both changes have meant that the analysis of regional economies, and especially their growth paths, have received much more attention from politicians and economists, and even from the population in general. In particular, intense discussion has taken place regarding the effects of development policies and on criteria for geographical distribution of infrastructures. In both cases, much attention has been paid to discussing their capacity to contribute to convergence among the different regions. As a consequence of this greater interest in the analysis of growth from a regional perspective, efforts have also been made to improve the relevant statistical information. In particular, statistical series have been drawn up for investment and accumulated capital stock in each region, both private and public.' This information, only recently available and the first of its kind, as far as we know, in the European regions, substantially broadens the possibilities of research into the Spanish case in this field, where before not even the simplest exercises in growth accounting could be attempted. Further-more, since the series now available allow the time dimension of growth analysis to be combined with the regional dimension, it is possible to work with a panel of data and apply the corresponding techniques. This article analyses the growth of the Spanish economy over the period 1964–93, during which it can be observed that the per capita income levels of the Spanish regions converged. The objective of the study is to evaluate this process of convergence in income from the perspective of the productive efficiency of the regions, in three different ways. First, Section I considers the importance of the contributions of the private factors of production and of improvements in total factor productivity to the growth of output. Secondly, section II studies the existing relationship between the standard measure of efficiency (Solow's residual or TFP') and a stricter measure when the endowments of public capital are considered. Section III analyses whether or not the convergence in per capita income