Trustee reputation in securitization: When does it matter?

We consider the role of trustees–who are nominated to protect the interests of investors–in securitization pricing and whether investors rely on them to mitigate risks. In particular, we examine the effect of trustee reputation on initial yield spreads of European mortgage‐backed security (MBS) issuances between 1999 and the first half of 2007. We find that engaging reputable trustees led to lower spreads during the credit boom period prior to the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Our findings suggest that trustees’ reputation was considered by investors to be more important when risk assessment became more challenging.     

Dynamics of analysts' coverage and the firms' information environment

The main goal of this paper is to study analysts' coverage of stocks. Through a series of ordered probit regressions the paper studies the relationship between changes in coverage and the information environment of a firm.Coverage decreases on average with higher errors in estimation. The data also shows that coverage is less likely to decrease for physically large firms, but more likely to decrease for firms with high lagged market value. Higher past revisions to the predictions also decrease coverage, showing a real cost of uncertainty.     

Commercial Property Rent Dynamics in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: An Examination of Office, Industrial, Flex and Retail Space

This paper is concerned with the market rental rate for space offered by commercial property and how that rental rate evolves over time. Rental rates reflect the value of the services provided by the property and can have a significant impact on the ability of its owners to make monthly debt obligations. We investigate commercial property rent dynamics for 34 large metropolitan areas in the U.S. The dynamics are studied from the second quarter of 1990 through the second quarter of 2009 and the results are compared across four property types or uses (office, industrial, flex, and retail). There is substantial heterogeneity in both the long and short run responses to changing demand and supply conditions. In general, the office market is the slowest to adjust back towards equilibrium while industrial and flex markets adjust back to the long run equilibrium very quickly. For industrial and office types, the speed of adjustment is substantially faster within quality segments and is strongest for grade A properties.     

A Recursive Protocol for Negotiating Contracts Under Non-monotonic Preference Structures

Negotiating contracts with multiple interdependent issues may yield non-monotonic preference spaces for the participating agents. These negotiations are specially challenging because of the complexity and dimension of the search space. Automated negotiation mechanisms designed and proven useful for monotonic utility spaces may fail in these negotiation scenarios. This paper presents a novel solution to the problem of automated multi-issue negotiations in the context of complex utility spaces. We seek to address the challenge of intractably large contract spaces and utility functions with multiple local optima in automated negotiation scenarios. A protocol for automated bilateral multi-attribute negotiation processes is proposed, in which the individual agents??preferences can be non-monotonic and discontinuous. The protocol is based on a recursive non-mediated bargaining mechanism, which involves two agents who simultaneously exchange proposals defined as regions within the negotiation space. An agreement on a region implies a new bargaining which is restricted to that region. This recursive process is governed by a set of rules which modulate the joint exploration of the negotiation space until an agreement is found or a deadline expires. The protocol is experimentally evaluated under monotonic and non-monotonic preference scenarios, confirming that the protocol is able to produce outcomes close to the Pareto frontier in acceptable negotiation time, outperforming previous approaches.     

Next Generation External Venturing Practices in Family Owned Businesses

Drawing on an Entrepreneurship as Practice (EaP) approach, this article examines how next generation members in family owned businesses (FOBs) engage in external venturing. Our study builds on longitudinal qualitative research in two Mexican FOBs where the next generation launched ten ventures. It reveals five different practices of external venturing used by next generation family members: ‘obtaining family approval’, ‘bypassing family’, ‘family venture mimicking’, ‘jockeying in family’, and ‘jockeying around family’. The five practices are combined into three routes for external venturing: ‘imitating the family business’, ‘splitting the family business’, and ‘surpassing the family business’. Building on notions from Michel de Certeau’s practice theory, this study contributes to theorizing the five practices as ways of operating and the routes as modes of sensing to better understand how next generation family members deal with settings featured by dominant orders within the family and the FOB in their attempts to originate and launch their new ventures.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FISCAL DEFICITS: A SURVEY

Abstract This paper surveys recent literature, both theoretical and empirical, regarding political explanations for fiscal deficits. Political economy suggests conflicts of interest may lie behind the emergence of deficits: (1) Opportunistic politicians generate deficits to win elections, even in conflict with general welfare; (2) Conflicts of interests between politicians’ partisan preferences create incentives for (at least some) incumbents to run deficits and (3) Conflicts of interest between different social groups or regions generate tensions in the allocation of government resources leading to overspending. This paper reviews these different strands of the literature. It also covers contributions that highlight the crucial role of budget institutions in determining the extent to which the political motivations to generate deficits are indeed translated into poor fiscal outcomes. Promising avenues for future research are highlighted.     

Services innovation and the transformation of work: the case of UK telecommunications

Current transformations in technologies and industrial structure of UK telecommunications have important implications for skills and work organisation. This is examined in different divisions of a large UK telecommunications firm: call centres, customer service centres, engineering sectors and the R&D department. The effect of these transformations on the development of firm competences is discussed.     

Does the UK have a ‘comparative institutional advantage’ that is supportive of the IT services sector?

This paper applies a ‘sector‐in‐country’ approach to examine the institutional conditions associated with the recent expansion of the information technology services sector in the UK. The findings reveal both synergies and tensions between the business and employment conditions of the sector and the wider institutional characteristics of the UK employment model.