Rescue packages and bank lending

This paper examines whether the rescue measures adopted during the global financial crisis helped to sustain the supply of bank lending. The analysis proposes a setup that allows testing for structural shifts in the bank lending equation, and employs a novel dataset covering large international banks headquartered in 14 major advanced economies for the period 1995–2010. While stronger capitalisation sustains loan growth in normal times, banks during a crisis can turn additional capital into greater lending only once their capitalisation exceeds a critical threshold. This suggests that recapitalisations may not translate into greater credit supply until bank balance sheets are sufficiently strengthened.     

Deep-water ports for Germany

The world-wide trend in bulk shipping towards larger-sized vessels has in recent years evoked a discussion in the Federal Republic of Germany about the advisability of providing technical facilities for handling giant ships on the German coast. Such facilities do not yet exist. The issue retains great topical interest because more and more mass carriers drawing too much water to enter German ports with a full load are coming into use or are under construction.     

Positional rigidity: low performance and resource acquisition in large and small firms

Past research has given contradictory answers to the question of how strategic change is linked to firm size and performance. This paper resolves the contradictory predictions of performance feedback theory and threat rigidity theory by positing that small and large firms have distinct responses to performance because of differences in risk aversion and internal rigidity. To examine these differences, it is necessary to distinguish risk taking from rigidity in the strategic position, which is accomplished by separate analysis of the amount of resource acquisition and the difference of acquired and existing resources. Analysis of data from the shipping industry supports the predicted interactions of firm size and performance. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distress Selling and Asset Market Feedback

This paper examines the process of distress selling and asset market feedback. It splits this process into several stages, in order to analyze what triggers distress selling, why asset prices fall, and how falling prices generate additional rounds of selling. This framework enables us to understand and compare models relevant to distress selling from diverse literatures. The paper also considers what policy options are available at each stage to mitigate the adverse economic consequences of distress selling and asset market feedback.     

GESTO—A network organized company?

Despite its growing popularity, the concept of network organization is often used with different meanings and no empirical support. This paper attempts to fill these two gaps. To fill the theoretical gap, we discuss the content and applicability of network concepts inside a firm by presenting 10 footnotes toward a possible operational definition. The footnotes contain structural and process properties of network organizations. In the second section, we analyze through a case-study methodology GESTO, an Italian service company, and we show how its profile and operation approximate a network-like organization. Finally, we discuss future possible research on organizational forms.     

Impacts of tenancy arrangements on investment and efficiency: evidence from Pakistan

In this article, we use farm‐level data from the Punjab Province in Pakistan to analyze the impact of three tenancy contracts on investment in soil‐improving and productivity‐enhancing measures and farm productivity. A multivariate tobit model that accounts for potential substitutability and complementarity of investment options, as well as endogeneity of tenure arrangements was employed in the empirical analysis. Our empirical results indicate that land tenure arrangements influence farmers’ decisions to invest in soil‐improving and productivity‐enhancing measures. In particular, owner‐cultivators with secured tenancy arrangements were found to be more likely to invest in soil‐improving and productivity‐enhancing measures, compared to those on leased contracts. We also find that output per hectare was highest on land cultivated by owners and lowest on land under sharecropping tenancy, lending support to the Marshallian inefficiency hypothesis.     

The EU entry price system for fresh fruits and vegetables – Paper tiger or powerful market barrier?

The EU protects EU growers of 15 kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables against international competition by the entry price system (EPS), which is designed to restrict imports below the product-specific, politically designated entry price level. This study investigates the relevance of the EPS per product and country of origin. We develop two indicators for the effectiveness of the EPS, which serve as variables in a cluster analysis identifying four classes differing in the relevance of the EPS. The relevance of the EPS is found to be heterogeneous among products as well as countries of origin. It is highest for artichokes, courgettes, cucumbers, lemons, plums and tomatoes. The influence of the EPS on apples, clementines and pears is significantly lower, and of least relevance for apricots, mandarins, oranges, peaches and nectarines and table grapes. The EPS has the greatest effect on countries which neighbour the EU, whereas it is of minor importance for exports from far-away countries with the exception of China and South Africa.