Hedge-Fonds: Risiken für die internationalen Finanzmärkte?

Die Ungleichgewichte auf den internationalen Finanzm?rkten werden von den Finanzministern und Notenbankchefs der Industriel?nder mit zunehmendem Unbehagen betrachtet. In Hinblick auf Hedge-Fonds soll bis zum G-8-Gipfel im Juni dieses Jahres ein Verhaltenskodex erarbeitet werden. Inwieweit k?nnen Hedge-Fonds zur Instabilit?t der Finanzm?rkte beitragen? Welche Strategien zur Krisenvermeidung sollten verfolgt werden? Welche Institutionen sollten aktiv werden? Die Autoren unseres Zeitgespr?chs: Prof. Dr. Ralf-M. Marquardt, 45, lehrt Volkswirtschaftslehre und quantitative Methoden an der FH-Gelsenkirchen, Abteilung Recklinghausen. Prof. Dr. Carsten Hefeker, 43, lehrt Volkswirtschaftslehre, insbesondere Europ?ische Wirtschaftspolitik an der Universit?t Siegen. Prof. Dr. Gunther Schnabl, 40, ist Direktor des Instituts für Wirtschaftspolitik an der Universit?t Leipzig; Andreas Hoffmann, 26, Dipl.-Volkswirt, ist dort wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter.     

Small firms and the merger mania

Empirical research has found an average or even superior performance of small firms. This seems to be at variance with the secular concentration process and the recurrent merger waves. This paper tries to integrate size and merger research. Higher profitability of small firms is explained by their incentive structure and shorter decision lags but also by lower wages and higher individual risk (premia). Their faster growth in the eighties was, in addition, fostered by diversification of demand, miniaturization of technology, and a need for flexibility under uncertainty. The merger wave on the other hand does not necessarily prove that large firms are superior. Managers and shareholders may be seduced by stockmarket optimism, a sizeable industry of banks, agents and lawyers have their own interests in mergers, mergers may be important in declining markets and for the acquisition of technology. On average, mergers do not improve efficiency, profits or internal growth. Small and large firms serve different purposes. Performance depends on the market, incentives and technology. The establishment, growth and closure of small firms as well as mergers are attempts to find the optimal organization for utility maximization in a world of severe uncertainty and diverse needs.     

Reply to Professor Yongding Yu

We are indebted to Professor Yu for his careful reading of our paper, and are pleased that he sympathizes with our argument that controls on purely financial capital inflows should not be relaxed so long as world interest rates remain unduly low. We agree that direct ＂real＂ investments into, and increasingly out of, China＇s economy need not be limited. These direct investment flows are now more or less balanced, without threatening a loss of monetary control by the People＇s Bank of China （PBC）.     

Monetary policy,inequality and political instability

Voters in the industrialised countries are increasingly expressing dissatisfaction by dissenting from the established political parties and candidates. Based on the concepts of justice by Hayek, Rawls and Buchanan, we argue that the growing dissatisfaction is rooted in the asymmetric pattern of monetary policies since the mid‐1980s for two reasons. First, the structurally declining interest rates and the unconventional monetary policy measures have granted privileges to specific groups. Second, the increasingly expansionary monetary policies have negative growth effects, which have reduced the scope for compensation of the ones excluded from the privileges. As a result, the acceptance of the prevailing economic and political order is undermined and political instability increases.     

Einige absorptionstheoretische Überlegungen zum österreichischen Leistungsbilanzdefizit

Summary The study explains the Austrian current account deficit in terms of a modified and disaggregated absorption approach. In small integrated countries absorption depends not an internal demand alone but on the difference of capacity utilisation at home and abroad. Disaggregation suggests that in years of increasing current account deficits households normally increase their net—saving while entrepreneus increase their net—indebtedness less than proportionally. It is the government which as a rule has high absorption during current account deficits. Since the government demands only few foreign goods, this correlation must be explained indirectly. Four mechanisms are suggested: First that budget deficits increase overall domestic capacity utilisation relative to that of the trade partners and so stimulate imports and restrain exports; secondly: The budget deficit may sustain full employment even if the economy has lost its international competitiveness; thirdly: An oversized public demand diverts capacities from the export industry, or fourthly: The foreign financing of budget deficits leads to a real transfer within a short time. A brief discussion of the Austrian situation attaches most weight to mechanisms one and two, a little less to point four.

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Überarbeitete Fassung eines Referates im Rahmen des Workshop Zahlungsbilanz im Österreichischen Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung am 14. Juni 1977. Der Autor dankt den Teilnehmern des Workshop, insbesonders Dr.H. Handler, Professor Dr.K. Rothschild und Professor Dkim.H. Seidel für wertvolle Anregungen.     

Zur Bestimmung einer internationalen Liquiditätsfunktion

Ohne ZusammenfassungAls dieses Manuskript schon gesetzt war, entdeckte ich, daß etliche Gedanken in dem jüngsten Buch von F. Machlup: International Payments, Debts and Gold, New York 1964, vorweggenommen wurden (Kapitel XII: The Fuzzy Concepts of Liquidity, International and Domestic; Kapitel XIII: Further Reflections on the Demand for Foreign Reserves). Beide wurden zwar schon 1962 in dem Bulletin der belgischen Notenbank auszugsweise veröffentlicht, blieben mir aber leider unbekannt. Ihre Berücksichtigung war zu diesem späten Zeitpunkt nicht mehr möglich.     

What Do We Know about Success and Failure of Mergers?—Rejoinder

Responding to the comments of Coscelli, Lyons and Weston, I argue: (1) The aim of my paper was not primarily to discuss recent competition policy, but to extract stylized facts and compare them to theory; (2) utilizing all empirical merger studies published in refereed journals, instead of only the sound ones, does not appear to influence the results; (3) economies to scale—and consequently endogenous merger motives—are of less importance for mergers dealt with by the competition authorities; (4) a post-merger number of competitors of less than four to five steeply raises the likelihood of tacit collusion and conscious parallelism; (5) concentration is already high and still increasing in quite a number of markets; (6) mergers in network sectors are more dangerous than in manufacturing, as the number of potential competitors is small in most cases; (7) I agree with my critics that strictly banning the critical categories of mergers may be too harsh; I still hold, however, that competition authorities should take account of these critical types in a more formal way (e.g. by merger rules).     

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