Inflation and firm growth: A reassessment

Investigations into the impact of inflation on firm growth have resulted in ambiguous conclusions within the economic growth and financial management literature. This paper will attempt to clarify this situation and describe conditions under which firm growth will be helped or hindered by inflaction. This is accomplished by constructing a financial modelling framework which incorporates the findings of earlier research and allows the various effects to be contrasted and cumulatively assessed. Our findings suggest that conditions under which inflation may be beneficial to firm growth do exist but are realistically improbable.     

Yardstick Competition and Investment Incentives

This paper analyzes how firms' investment incentives are affected by yardstick competition in a situation in which the regulator is unable to commit himself to the regulatory contract before firms invest. Despite its rent-extracting property, yardstick competition does not necessarily reduce efficiency-improving investment. Considering firm-specific investment, yardstick competition is shown to increase investment incentives over individual regulation affirms. In this case, therefore, yardstick competition both reduces the regulator's informational problem ex post and strengthens the firms' investment incentives ex ante. If instead investment is industry-specific, incentives to invest are lowered by yardstick competition.     

Spare the Young Fish: Optimal Harvesting Policies for North-East Arctic Cod

The North-East Arctic cod (Gadus morhua) fishery, as most other commercial fisheries, is wasting the larger part of its potential. Examining a detailed multi-cohort, multi-gear bioeconomic model, we show that the cause is rather a too small mesh size than excessive effort. Although internationally and nationally managed by quota allocations and regulations, the current exploitation pattern implies that essentially the wrong fish are targeted. Catching older and heavier fish could double the fishery’s Net-Present-Value. This increases harvested biomass while it reduces the number of fish removed from the ocean, highlighting the importance of age- and gear-specific modeling. Moreover, optimal harvesting policies would also lead to a much more robust and abundant cod stock.     

Idiosyncratic risk and debt maturity dispersion

We investigate the relation between idiosyncratic asset risk and debt maturity dispersion. Idiosyncratic asset volatility represents significant risk, which can impede the ability to obtain or maintain external debt financing necessary for business operations, and is difficult to control given its unpredictable nature. We find that this risk is managed through the maturity structure of debt: firms with higher idiosyncratic asset volatility also have more dispersed maturity structures. Consistent with active management of rollover risk, this relation is weaker for younger firms and stronger for firms without significant credit lines.