Capital Structure and Investment Financing of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Vietnam

Insufficient sources of internal financing and inaccessibility of external financing are acknowledged as crucial constraints on new investment for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study examines how capital structure is related to investment decision for SMEs in Vietnam. In particular, we investigate the effect of capital structure on the decision to seek new investment as well as the choice of its financing sources. The main results reveal that SMEs with high financial leverage tend to engage more in seeking new investment. Moreover, empirical results demonstrate that among SMEs seeking new investment, those with higher financial leverage are more likely to choose external financing rather than internal financing. These results confirm the dynamic feature of the pecking order theory in the context of SMEs’ capital structure in Vietnam.     

结构性困境中的日本经济

日本经济自2002年开始复苏,但复苏的国际环境充满不确定性,同时内部经济仍面临结构性困境。日本从20世纪80年代初起为了减少国家财政赤字而实施的新自由主义政策持续地遭遇失败,未偿公债不减反增,而政府每年的公共支出又很难降下来,加上日本向老龄化社会的快速转化使得福利政策的总体预算很难削减,以致国家财政危机不断加深。另外,劳动者工作条件和社会生活条件的恶化以及人口下降的威胁,使得新自由主义在其框架内难以解决日本面临的结构性问题,因而有必要对于马克思关于资本主义的学说进行再思考。     

Endogenous price leadership and technological differences

This study constructs a two-stage game of price leadership in a duopolistic market for a homogeneous product. In the first period, the two firms determine a price leader; they set a price for the product in the second period. It is demonstrated in the present study that the technologically superior firm tends to become a price leader. This result reveals that price leadership is determined by the interaction of "competitive force", which prevents the price leader from choosing too high a price (like the joint profit maximizing price or the cartel price), and "collusive force", which prevents a price from falling to a Bertrand price.     

LIQUIDITY CONSTRAINTS IN A MONETARY ECONOMY*

This article presents a microfounded model of money with a consumption and an investment market. We consider an economy in which only part of the investment returns can be pledged. A liquidity constraint arises when the pledgeable part of the returns are not enough to pay for investment costs. We show that when the liquidity constraint is binding, agents may make a cash downpayment and money can perform two roles—as a provider of liquidity services and exchange services. The liquidity constraint constitutes a channel though which underinvestment occurs even at low inflation rates.     

Stability and Turnpike Theorems in Dynamic Competitive Equilibrium

This study reviews the main results in the literature on the integration of competitive equilibrium theory and optimal growth theory, in particular those concerning the convergence of an equilibrium path to a stationary state (stability theorems).
JEL Classification Numbers: C6, D9.     

On the equivalence of weak dominance and sequential best response

In this paper, we identify the conditions under which a strategy is weakly dominated if and only if it is not sequential best response. In addition, we explore the implication for extensive form rationalizability.     

Fertility,Intra‐Generational Redistribution,and Social Security Sustainability

Incorporating heterogeneity in preference to having children into an overlapping generations model of a small open economy, we examine the effects of changes in the size of pay‐as‐you‐go (PAYG) social security on fertility choices of individuals and population growth of the economy. It is shown that PAYG social security will raise population growth by increasing the number of individuals who have children and the number of children parents have if the system involves redistribution between retirees with different contributions, whereas, if it has no redistribution, PAYG social security does not affect the fertility decisions of individuals.     

Energy‐Related Environmental Policy and Its Impacts on Energy Use in Asia

Economic growth in Asia has increased in the past three decades and has heightened energy demand, resulting in rising greenhouse gas emissions and severe air pollution. To tackle these issues, fuel switching and the deployment of renewables are essential. In the present paper, we discuss the environmental regulations, mainly carbon pricing, implemented in Asia and discuss their achievements. Empirical studies using microdata have shown that carbon pricing in Asia can reduce carbon emissions by promoting energy efficiency. At the macro level, we observe some evidence of fuel switching from coal to natural gas among major emitters. However, more carbon pricing is necessary in Asia if we aim for the decarbonization of the economy.     

A model of merchants

I propose a simple model of merchants who are specialized in buying and selling a homogeneous good. Facing the same frictions as in the buyer-seller direct trades, merchants can make profits with an ability to buy and sell many units of the good. They set the price to compete in the market and provide buyers with a strong likelihood of obtaining the good. This paper establishes a turnover equilibrium where some agents choose to become merchants endogenously. An interesting multiplicity can emerge.     

Ergodic chaos in optimal growth models with low discount rates

Summary We show that for every discount factor(0,1) one can find infinitely many strictly concave discrete-time optimal growth models in reduced form which have optimal policy functions exhibiting ergodic chaos. These reduced form models are interpreted in a two-sector optimal growth setting with utility functions depending on consumption as well as on capital.We thank Luigi Montrucchio for pointing out an error in a previous version of the paper.