Investor protection and the Coasian view

The corporate charters of a sample of Mexican firms show that private firms often significantly enhance the legal protection offered to investors, but public firms rarely do so. We construct a model that endogenizes the degree of investor protection that firms provide, using as a springboard the assumption that legal regimes differ in their ability to enforce precisely filtering contracts that provide protection only in those cases where expropriation can occur. Our model generates predictions about the types of contracts that would be employed and the levels of investor protection that would prevail across different legal regimes in both private and public firms.     

Optimal Timing of Climate Change Policy: Interaction Between Carbon Taxes and Innovation Externalities

This paper addresses the impact of endogenous technology through research and development (R&D) on the timing of climate change policy. We develop a model with a stock pollutant (carbon dioxide) and abatement technological change through R&D, and we use the model to study the interaction between carbon taxes and innovation externalities. Our analysis shows that the timing of optimal emission reduction policy strongly depends on the set of policy instruments available. When climate-specific R&D targeting instruments are available, policy has to use these to step up early innovation. When these instruments are not available, policy has to steer innovation through creating demand for emission saving technologies. That is, carbon taxes should be high compared to the Pigouvian levels when the abatement industry is developing. Finally, we calibrate the model in order to explore the magnitude of the theoretical findings within the context of climate change policy.      

The Economic Impact of SFAS NO. 157

Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 157, “Fair Value Measurements,” (SFAS 157) defines fair value, establishes a three tiered framework for measuring fair value and expands the required disclosures about fair value measurements. The objective of this study is to examine and evaluate the benefits of the information disclosed by SFAS 157. The results of our study indicated that a large majority of the inputs are observable in that 93.5% of the sample financial assets and 93.1% of the sample financial liabilities were measured by level 1 or 2 criteria. However, we found a mismatch between assets and liabilities subject to the three tiers of fair value measurements. The companies in our sample disclosed $18.8 trillion in total assets, with 51%, or $18.8 trillion in total assets, with 51%, or 9.5 trillion reported at fair value. Whereas, sample company liabilities totaled 16.1 trillion with only16.1 trillion with only 3.7 trillion or 23% reported at fair value.     

“Thirlwall’s Law” reconsidered

Thirlwall’s Law is found to be the necessary but not sufficient condition for balanced long-run growth. A simple equation is considered whose empirical analysis could confirm—or reject—the validity of the Law. The analysis, conducted by means of econometric co-integration using the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares method applied to data for 59 countries covering the years 1960–2012, suggests that Thirlwall’s Law may not hold for the decisive majority of countries.     

Foreign direct investment and its impact on the Thai economy: the role of financial development

This paper examines the roles of foreign direct investment and financial development in the process of economic development using Thailand as the case study. We argue that better developed financial systems allow an economy to exploit the benefits of foreign direct investment more efficiently. The estimation draws upon an unrestricted error-correction model to avoid omitted lagged variable bias, and an instrumental variable estimator to correct for endogeneity bias. Using annual time series data from 1970 to 2004, the results show that financial development stimulates economic development whereas foreign direct investment impacts negatively on output expansion in the long run. However, an increased level of financial development enables Thailand to gain more from foreign direct investment, suggesting that the impact of foreign direct investment on output growth can be enhanced through financial development. The results are robust to different measures of financial development.      

与德里达关于消化力的局限的对话

90年代早期,在准备《如黄鼠狼吞蛋:一篇关于忧郁及同类相食的文章》一书时我们与晚年的德里达有过一些书信往来。那时他正研究在诠释学与德国唯心论中他所谓的同类相食的比喻。他很感激我们提供给他的一些诺瓦利斯残篇。