Active Investors, LBOs, and the Privatization of Bankruptcy

In this testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee on February 1, 1989 (when LBOs and other highly leveraged transactions were under fierce attack by politicians and the media), the author identified “LBO associations” such as KKR and Forstmann Little as a valuable innovation in organizational form—a new model of management and governance that was competing directly with the headquarters of large public corporations, especially conglomerates. In the author's words, LBOs “substitute incentives provided by compensation and ownership plans for the direct monitoring and often centralized decision-making in the typical corporate bureaucracy.” In illustrating his point, the author noted that whereas the CEOs of U.S. companies during the '70s and '80s saw their personal wealth go up by only about $3 for every $1,000 increase in firm value, the average CEO in an LBO experienced a change of $64 per $1,000—and for the partners of the LBO firm, the closest equivalent to a conglomerate CEO, the change was about $200 per $1,000. Based on the performance of the first wave of LBOs to return to public ownership, such dramatic concentrations of equity ownership appear to have produced large gains in operating efficiency. (And since the author's testimony, these findings have been confirmed by subsequent studies of later periods and in other countries.) The heavy debt loads in these transactions, besides making possible the concentration of equity ownership, also perform an important control function, intensifying the search for efficiencies and discouraging reinvestment in low-return projects. For those LBOs that have trouble servicing their debt loads, the author argues that the costs of insolvency should turn out to be significantly lower than for traditional public companies because LBOs provide strong incentives to keep the process of reorganizing troubled companies out of the bankruptcy court (a prediction that, although proving wrong in the early‘90s, has turned out to be true of the most recent wave of private equity deals).     

Heuristic Approximation to Cramér-von Mises Type Statistics

We derive a formal expansion for a distribution in terms of another distribution. As a particular case we get the formal Edgeworth expansion. The heuristic procedure that we present is used to obtain approximations for distribution functions of the Cramér-von Mises and Watson goodness-of-fit statistics. Finally we compare our results with some obtained in the literature.     

INEQUALITY AND THE MEASUREMENT OF RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION BY INCOME IN AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOODS

American metropolitan areas have experienced rising residential segregation by income since 1970. One potential explanation for this change is growing income inequality. However, measures of residential sorting are typically mechanically related to the income distribution, making it difficult to identify the impact of inequality on residential choice. This paper presents a measure of residential segregation by income, the Centile Gap Index (CGI), which is based on income percentiles. Using the CGI, I find that a one standard deviation increase in income inequality raises residential income segregation by 0.4–0.9 standard deviations. Inequality at the top of the distribution is associated with more segregation of the rich, while inequality at the bottom and declines in labor demand for less-skilled men are associated with residential isolation of the poor. Inequality can fully explain the rise in income segregation between 1970 and 2000.     

体制转轨时期政府失灵的原因与对策浅探

通过分析和研究转轨时期政府失灵的原因，提出矫正政府失灵的措施，目的在于使人们更好地认识体制转轨中市场调节和政府调节的关系，把握好政府干预的范围、方式和力度等，以减少或减轻政府失灵，提高政府干预经济的效率。     

INTANGIBLE INVESTMENT IN JAPAN: MEASUREMENT AND CONTRIBUTION TO ECONOMIC GROWTH

Following the approach of Corrado, Hulten, and Sichel (2005, 2006 ), we measure intangible investment and examine the contribution of intangible capital to economic growth in Japan. We find that the ratio of intangible investment to GDP in Japan has risen during the past 20 years and now stands at 11.1 percent, which is lower than the ratio estimated for the U.S. in the early 2000s. The ratio of intangible to tangible investment in Japan is also lower than equivalent values estimated for the U.S. In addition, we find that, in stark contrast to the U.S., where intangible capital grew rapidly in the late 1990s, the growth rate of intangible capital in Japan declined from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Our conclusions regarding intangible investment in Japan remain largely unchanged even if, using data with respect to firm-specific resources, we take on-the-job training into account.     

MEASURING THE STOCK OF CONSUMER DURABLES AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR EURO AREA SAVINGS RATIOS

The purpose of this article is to estimate the impact of capitalizing durable goods on the euro area household saving ratios and disposable incomes for the first time. The reason for this exercise is twofold. Firstly, it is generally accepted that individual households regard consumer durables as assets even though they are not treated as such in the System of National Accounts 1993 . Secondly, the issue is related to the definition of household saving ratios. For instance, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board publishes three household saving measures. The main difference between these saving ratios is that one is derived by treating expenditure on consumer durables as investments while the other two are compiled by considering them to be household final consumption expenditure. We find that the effect of capitalizing consumer durables on EA saving ratios is moderate. The impact is lower than it is in the U.S.     

TEMPORARY AND PERSISTENT POVERTY AMONG ETHNIC MINORITIES AND THE MAJORITY IN RURAL CHINA

Poverty among ethnic minorities and the majority in rural China for the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 is investigated, taking a dynamic view and using a large sample covering 22 provinces. Based on the National Bureau of Statistics' low income line, almost one-third of the ethnic minorities experienced poverty during the three years studied while the corresponding proportion among the ethnic majority was only about half as high. Still, by far most of the poor in rural China belong to the ethnic majority. The relatively high poverty rates for ethnic minorities in rural China are found to be due to higher rates of entry than for the majority, while differences in exit rates across ethnicities are few. To a large extent, ethnic poverty differences can be attributed to differences in location, together with temporary and persistent poverty in rural China having a very clear spatial character. Poverty is concentrated in the western region and villages with low average income. Determinants of persistent and temporary poverty in rural China differ due to location as well as household characteristics.     

Bargaining Credibility and the Limits to Within‐firm Pensions

Abstract ** ** Résumé en fin d’article; Zusammenfassung am Ende des Artikels; resúmen al fin del artículo. : A simple bargaining model highlights the role of commitment to a low‐risk investment policy for firms which offer within‐house pension and health insurance schemes. The roles of this commitment level plus bargaining power, and the ability of a failing firm to misappropriate pensions funds, are studied and their influence on the equilibrium pension determined.