A theory of acquisition markets: mergers versus tender offers, and golden parachutes

We develop a model of the acquisition market in which the acquirerhas a choice between two takeover mechanisms: mergers and tenderoffers. A merger is modeled as a bargaining game between theacquiring and target firms; whereas a tender offer is modeledas an auction in which bidders arrive sequentially an competefor the target. At any stage of the bargaining game the acquiringfirm can stop negotiating and make a tender offer. In equilibrium,there is a unique level of synergy gains below which the acquiringfirm makes only a merger attempt as it expects to lose in thecompetition resulting from a tender offer. For synergy gainsabove this level, tender offers can occur. However, to get tenderoffers, target shareholders must give their managers gold parachutesthat give higher payoffs in tender offers than in mergers.     

Market distortions and export performance: India’s exports of manufactures in the 1970s

Zusammenfassung Marktst?rungen und die Exporte eines Landes: Indiens Industriegüterexporte in den siebziger Jahren. — Aus einem Heckscher-Ohlin-Modell mit mehreren L?ndern und mehreren Gütern werden Vorstellungen darüber abgeleitet, wie sich Verzerrungen der Güter- und Faktorm?rkte auf die Kapitalintensit?t von Industrien, auf die Zusammensetzung der Warenexporte und auf die Exportt?tigkeit auswirken. Diese Modellvorstellungen werden mit Erfolg benutzt, um die indische Situation zu erkl?ren. Die Verzerrungen der Faktorm?rkte in Indien haben eine gr?Βere Kapitalintensit?t seiner Industrien bewirkt; Verzerrungen der Güterm?rkte haben zu einer Umkehr in der Exportt?tigkeit geführt: Einige subventionierte kapitalintensive Industrien sind auf den Weltm?rkten leistungsf?higer als seine arbeitsintensiven Industrien.

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Résumé Distorsions de marché et la performance exportatrice: les exportations manufacturières de l’Inde dans les années soixante-dix. — Avec succès l’auteur explique la situation indienne gráce aux propositions qui sont dérivées d’un multi-pays et multi-biens cadre du type Heckscher-Ohlin pour analyser les effets des distorsions sur le marché des biens et des facteurs á l’intensité capitalistique des industries, á la composition des biens exportés et á la performance exportatrice. Les distorsions sur les marchés des facteurs aux Indes ont augmenté l’intensité capitalistique de ses industries; les distorsions sur les marchés des biens ont conduit aux inversions de la performance exportatrice de ses industries — quelques industries intensives á capital et subventionées révèlent une meilleure performance exportatrice sur les marchés mondiaux que des industries intensives á main-d’∁uvre.

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Resumen Distorsiones de mercado y comportamiento de exportación: las exportaciones de manufacturas de la India en los afios 1970. — Se utilizan exitosamente proposiciones derivadas de un marco multi-paises y multi-productos de Heckscher-Ohlin acerca del impacto de distorsiones en los mercados de bienes y factures sobre la intensidad de capital de las industrias, la composición de productos de las exportaciones y el comportamiento de las exportaciones para explicar la situaci?n de la India. Distorsiones en el mercado de factures en la India han resultado en una mayor intensidad de capital de sus industrias; distorsiones en el mercado de bienes en la India han llevado a reversiones en el comportamiento de exportation de sus industrias — algunas industrias intensivas en capital subsidiadas tienen un comportamiento mejor en los mercados mundiales que sus industrias intensivas en mano de obra.

     

Strategies that fit emerging markets

It's no easy task to identify strategies for entering new international markets or to decide which countries to do business with. Many firms simply go with what they know-and fall far short of their goals. Part of the problem is that emerging markets have "institutional voids": They lack specialized intermediaries, regulatory systems, and contract-enforcing methods. These gaps have made it difficult for multinationals to succeed in developing nations; thus, many companies have resisted investing there. That may be a mistake. If Western companies don't come up with good strategies for engaging with emerging markets, they are unlikely to remain competitive. Many firms choose their markets and strategies for the wrong reasons, relying on everything from senior managers' gut feelings to the behaviors of rivals. Corporations also depend on composite indexes for help making decisions. But these analyses can be misleading; they don't account for vital information about the soft infrastructures in developing nations. A better approach is to understand institutional variations between countries. The best way to do this, the authors have found, is by using the five contexts framework. The five contexts are a country's political and social systems, its degree of openness, its product markets, its labor markets, and its capital markets. By asking a series of questions that pertain to each ofthe five areas, executives can map the institutional contexts of any nation. When companies match their strategies to each country's contexts, they can take advantage of a location's unique strengths. But first firms should weigh the benefits against the costs. If they find that the risks of adaptation are too great, they should try to change the contexts in which they operate or simply stay away.     

Designing an Enterprise Risk Management Curriculum for Business Studies: Insights From a Pilot Program

The latest financial crises have highlighted the centrality of managing risks across organizations. Internationally, Basel II/III, The Volcker Rule of the Dodd–Frank Act, and Vickers’ Ring‐Fence all propose stronger management of risk across banks and greater oversight of executive compensation to mitigate generic risk. Given this situation, it might be assumed that academia would also view risk as a central concern for its business programs. It seems not. There is a little evidence that academic curricula are being specifically designed to address this issue. This article examines an Enterprise Risk Management curriculum delivered to graduate student cohorts over 3 consecutive years. Four criteria were used to develop the new curriculum. First, it should take a holistic view of risk; second, the theories related to risk needed to be transformed from individual to group level; third, the dynamics of risk due to market factors needed to be understood; and finally, the way firms respond to crises needed to be observed and embedded in the curriculum.     

Estimating the performance effects of business groups in emerging markets

Business groups—confederations of legally independent firms—are ubiquitous in emerging economies, yet very little is known about their effects on the performance of affiliated firms. We conceive of business groups as responses to market failures and high transaction costs. In doing so, we develop hypotheses about the effects of group affiliation on firm profitability: affiliation could either boost or depress firm profitability, and members of a group are likely to earn rates of return similar to other members of the same group. Using a unique data set compiled largely from local sources, we test for these effects in 14 emerging markets: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, India, Indonesia, Israel, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Turkey. We find evidence that business groups indeed affect the broad patterns of economic performance in 12 of the markets we examine. Group affiliation appears to have as profound an effect on profitability as does industry membership, yet strategy scholars have a much clearer grasp of industries than of groups. Moreover, membership in a group raises the profitability of the average group member in several of the markets we examine. This runs contrary to the wisdom, conventional in advanced economies, that unrelated diversification depresses profitability. Overall, our findings suggest that the roots of sustained differences in profitability may vary across institutional contexts; conclusions drawn in one context may well not apply to another. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of third party certification on voluntary self-regulation of accidents in the U.S. chemical industry

We explore whether the introduction of mandatory third party certification in 2005 under the Responsible Care program has reduced the probability and severity of accidents in participating facilities in the U.S. chemical industry. Using a sample of 10,315 observations from 1136 facilities owned by 566 RC and non-RC firms between 1996 and 2010, we estimate the average treatment effect of third party certification. We find that the difference-in-difference estimate of the average treatment effect is statistically insignificant. This result is robust to various model specifications including the potential endogeniety of third party certification due to a firm’s self-selection into RC.     

Inducing the adoption of emerging technologies for sustainable intensification of food and renewable energy production: insights from applied economics*

Emerging advances in sustainable intensification technologies have the potential to transform land use and crop management approaches in ways that can increase resource productivity and reduce adverse environmental impacts of agricultural production. This paper describes emerging technologies that can sustainably intensify food and renewable energy production. We apply the findings from studies examining the adoption of technologies with similar stylized features to provide insights about the incentives and barriers for the adoption of these emerging technologies. We also present a landscape-based systems approach, based on welfare economics, to go beyond relying on a positive approach to explain observed adoption decisions to examining normative questions about the optimal mix, level, and location of adoption of these technologies to achieve desired societal outcomes. We conclude with a discussion of the insights from applied economics for the design of policy incentives to achieve these outcomes.     

Savings that hurt: Production rationalization and its effect on prices

Postmerger scenarios often lead to a reallocation of resources and production across the merged entity. Production rationalization, the process of reallocating production across facilities so as to reduce total costs, results in firms equating marginal costs across markets. This results in marginal costs, and hence prices, being higher in some markets and lower in others than otherwise would be without production rationalization. This paper proposes a model of competition that elicits these effects and the resulting consequences on consumer and producer surplus. The paper also presents empirical evidence to show that production rationalization, in the form of fleet reoptimization, affected prices following the US Airways/American Airlines merger. Prices of the merged firm increased 10% on routes typically served by US Airways relative to routes typically served by American Airlines, and by 12% relative to US Airways’ rivals’ prices. Price‐cost regressions confirm such price hikes were likely due to fleet reoptimization.     

Individualism,Uncertainty Avoidance,and Earnings Momentum in International Markets

This study examines whether cultural dimensions such as individualism and uncertainty avoidance can explain the variation in the profitability of the earnings momentum strategies in international markets. Using the time‐varying cultural indices of Tang and Koveos (2008) for 30,383 firms from 41 countries over the period 1995–2008, we show that the level of individualism in a country is positively associated and the level of uncertainty avoidance is negatively associated with earnings momentum profits. Our findings are robust to the inclusion of a comprehensive set of control variables and alternative cultural metrics. The central message is that we emphasize the necessity to go beyond the assumption of perfect rationality and to account for innate differences among international investors to explain how accounting information is incorporated into stock prices. We recommend that cultural dimensions be included in cross‐country research to account for innate differences among international investors.     

The economic significance of conditional skewness in index option markets

This study examines whether conditional skewness forecasts of the underlying asset returns can be used to trade profitably in the index options market. The results indicate that a more general skewness‐based option‐pricing model can generate better trading performance for strip and strap trades. The results show that conditional skewness model forecasts, when combined with forward‐looking option implied volatilities, can significantly improve the performance of skewness‐based trades but trading costs considerably weaken the profitability of index option strategies. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 30:378–406, 2010