From certainty to uncertainty: Thought, theory and action in a postmodern world

The progress of human thought in recent centuries has brought not only new knowledge but also new (and sometimes disturbing) questions that tug at the foundations of knowledge itself. The opening years of the twentieth century were marked by optimistic expectations of ever-increasing certainty and scientific and technological progress. Yet the century turned out to be an age of growing cracks in the facade of classical certainty, as relativity, quantum physics and chaos theory each deepened our understanding of the universe yet raised fundamental challenges to ideas about knowledge. Today, although reductionist and mechanistic ways of thinking still prevail in much contemporary thinking about economics, global security and environmental problems, we can nevertheless contemplate an “end of objectivity” in which we realize that we do not stand outside of the systems we study.     

中国负债知多少？

【美国《华尔街日报》7月23日】中国的隐性债务可能成为一大麻烦。     

The Effects of Screening and Monitoring on Credit Rationing of SMEs

In this paper, we seek to empirically assess which determinants of the capability and incentives of banks to screen and monitor firms are significant in explaining credit rationing to Italian SMEs. After testing for the presence of non‐random selection bias and the potential endogeneity of some determinants of interest, the probit model results we obtain suggest that the average banking size and the multiple banking relationship phenomenon are statistically significant factors affecting credit rationing, presumably through their impact on the aforementioned banks' capability and incentives. Other potential determinants of banks' incentives to monitor and screen, such as local banking competition and firm' capacity to collateralize, are never significant. However, when we split the sample according to the level of competition in credit markets, we find that the estimated marginal effects of all significant determinants of interest are larger in absolute value than those obtained when using the whole sample.     

A flight to Q? Firm investment and financing in Korea before and after the 1997 financial crisis

We examine investment behavior among exchange-listed Korean manufacturing firms before and after the 1997 financial crisis using firm-level panel data. Starting with the standard Q-theory of investment, we augment it by allowing for a sales accelerator and the possibility of cash constraints, categorizing firms based on their age, size and affiliation to an industrial conglomerate (i.e., chaebol). We find that Tobin’s Q is a robust determinant of investment in a pooled sample for 1992–2001, but that it became more important for small firms and less important for chaebol-affiliated firms after the crisis. Investment by chaebol firms also became more sensitive to the availability of internal cash balances after the crisis. We interpret this as reflecting a shift in the Korean economy to a stronger market orientation after the crisis and to a business climate in which the quality of potential projects became more important relative to capital market imperfections in determining the destination of investment funds.     

Network neutrality and the nature of competition between network operators

The neutral architecture of the Internet is being challenged by various parties, such as network operators providing the connections to end-users, who are interested in gaining control of the information exchanged over the Internet. What are the effects on competition and welfare of such practices? Currently, there exists very little economic theory on network neutrality. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of the type of economic modeling that can address network neutrality, as well as of the type of results that can be expected.     

Innovation-oriented transformation of industry in Ukraine and Russia

This paper presents an expert assessment of the present state of cooperation of Ukraine and Russia in the innovation sphere, outlines its main stages and analyzes the quality of the process of formation of legislative framework in state regulation of innovation-oriented transformations in the economy of the two countries. A comparative study is made and a quantitative estimate of the level of innovation activities in industrial production and the degree of innovation shifts in the technological structure of manufacturing in Russia and Ukraine is given.     

MEASURING THE OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN NAMIBIA

This paper examines the efficiency of commercial banks in Namibia using the standard econometric frontier approach. Although two aspects of efficiency (scale and scope) receive our attention, the emphasis is on the latter which pertains to whether a firm produces as efficiently as it possibly can, given its size. Our results indicate that substantial economies of scale exist in commercial banking in Namibia. This will tend to suggest that commercial banks in Namibia can increase their efficiency by increasing their current scale of operation. The results for scope economies show that the current level of input combination does not make for maximum efficiency as sufficient scope exists for a more efficient combination of inputs. We believe this will reduce operating costs in the industry and stimulate efficiency.