Shadow Banking,Risk Transfer,and Financial Stability

Shadow banking is the process by which banks raise funds from and transfer risks to entities outside the traditional commercial banking system. Many observers blamed the sudden expansion in 2007 of U.S. sub‐prime mortgage market disruptions into a global financial crisis on a “liquidity run” that originated in the shadow banking system and spread to commercial banks. In response, national and international regulators have called for tighter and new regulations on shadow banking products and participants. Preferring the term “market‐based finance” to the term “shadow banking,” the authors explore the primary financial instruments and participants that comprise the shadow banking system. The authors review the 2007–2009 period and explain how runs on shadow banks resulted in a liquidity crisis that spilled over to commercial banks, but also emphasize that the economic purpose of shadow banking is to enable commercial banks to raise funds from and transfer risks to non‐bank institutions. In that sense, the shadow banking system is a shock absorber for risks that arise within the commercial banking system and are transferred to a more diverse pool of non‐bank capital instead of remaining concentrated among commercial banks. The article also reviews post‐crisis regulatory initiatives aimed at shadow banking and concludes that most such regulations could result in a less stable financial system to the extent that higher regulatory costs on shadow banks like insurance companies and asset managers could discourage them from participating in shadow banking. And the net effect of this regulation, by limiting the amount of market‐based capital available for non‐bank risk transfer, may well be to increase the concentrations of risk in the banking and overall financial system.     

Public Debt,Economic Growth and Inflation in African Economies

We analyse the relationship between public debt, economic growth and inflation in a group of 52 African economies between 1950 and 2012. The results indicate that the limits of public debt are negatively related to economic growth and exhibit, from a given level of debt, an inverted U behaviour regarding the relationship between economic growth and public debt. Briefly, the high levels of public debt are coincident with reduced rates of economic growth and rising levels of inflation. Our results for three specific geographical areas resemble those of the overall analysis, despite some differences. In North African countries, the growth rates of the gross domestic product (GDP) and inflation also show an inverted U behaviour as the ratio of public debt/GDP increases. The highest rate of economic growth is recorded when the ratio of public debt/GDP is below 30% of GDP and corresponds to an average inflation rate of 5.33%. An identical behaviour of the GDP growth rates and inflation also appears in Sub‐Saharan countries until the third interval (60–90%). However, the highest growth rate of the GDP and GDP per capita is registered when the public debt/GDP ratio is in the second interval (30–60%). For the countries of the Southern Africa Development Community, the highest average rate of economic growth (6.8%) is similar to North African countries, when the ratio public debt/GDP is below 30% of GDP, with an average inflation rate of 11%. A number of robustness analyses were performed and the great majority of them confirm the general analysis.     

R&D Subsidies and Foreign Direct Investment

We devise a model in which domestic firms do applied R&D, which can be subsidized by the government, and foreign firms with superior technology can enter in the domestic market. Foreign Direct Investment can act as a substitute of subsidies to improve domestic R&D, the share of domestic leading firms and consumption. Relatively closed economies may benefit from R&D subsidization while relatively open economies may not. For relatively low growth of the technological frontier, it is optimal to subsidize R&D and close the economy to foreign investment but the opposite happens for relatively high growth. Numerical simulations show the economy dynamics after policy experiments.     

A local maximum likelihood estimator for Poisson regression

A local maximum likelihood estimator based on Poisson regression is presented as well as its bias, variance and asymptotic distribution. This semiparametric estimator is intended to be an alternative to the Poisson, negative binomial and zero-inflated Poisson regression models that does not depend on regularity conditions and model specification accuracy. Some simulation results are presented. The use of the local maximum likelihood procedure is illustrated on one example from the literature. This procedure is found to perform well. This research was partially supported by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and PRODEP III.     

Education public financing and economic growth: an endogenous growth model versus evidence

Using an Endogenous Growth Model with physical and human capital and unemployment (Mauro and Carmeci in J Macroecon 25:123–137, 2003), we study the effects of subsidies to education in economic growth. According to the model, we conclude that government subsidies to education only enhance economic growth conditional on unemployment and that this relationship is negatively influenced by unemployment. We provide evidence from a broad panel data of countries that confirms the importance of unemployment in the relationship between subsidies to education and economic growth but dismiss its importance as a direct determinant of economic growth.      

Persistent voting decisions in shareholder meetings

This study examined the determinants of voting decisions in shareholder meetings, with a special focus on voting persistence. The data captured votes on managerial proposals in shareholder meetings held by U.S. banks between 2003 and 2013. The dynamic panel data were analyzed using robust two‐step system generalized method of moments estimation (GMM) with orthogonal deviations. The lagged voting decision was a significant factor in explaining subsequent voting decisions. This finding provides evidence of voting persistence. Although persistence is a prominent topic in behavioral economics, studies have tended to focus on buying, consumption, and investment decisions. Persistence in voting decisions at the corporate level has been underexplored, so this article contributes to the behavioral economics literature.     

Academic spin-off creation: barriers and how to overcome them

The aim of this study is to analyze the process of academic spin-off creation, identifying the barriers to suggest how to overcome them. For this purpose, a case study method was adopted, and as data-collecting instruments, several in-depth interviews and documentary analysis were used from three academic spin-offs. The empirical evidence captures the different views of the founding researchers of the academic spin-offs, the researching lecturers in the department creating the spin-offs and the manager of the technology transfer office at the Portuguese university studied here. The results show that the different perceptions of barriers are seen to be solved through an internal strategy within the university. The findings also show that applied research should be valued in assessing lecturers, as it contributes, not only to the link with industry, and therefore to regional development, but also to universities' sustainability, overcoming the lack of financial support as a result of constant budget cuts. The contact networks resulting from universities' links with the different stakeholders will benefit the spin-offs themselves, facilitating their survival in the first years of their life.     

Exponential discounting bias

We address intertemporal utility maximization under a general discount function that nests the exponential discounting and the quasi-hyperbolic discounting cases as particular specifications. Under the suggested framework, the representative agent adopts, at some initial date, an optimal behavior that shapes her consumption trajectory over time. This agent desires to take a constant discount rate to approach the optimization problem, but bounded rationality, under the form of a present bias, deviates the individual from the intended goal. As a result, decreasing impatience will end up dominating the agent’s behavior. The individual will not be aware of her own time inconsistency and, therefore, she will not revise her plans as time elapses, what makes the problem relatively simple to address from a computational point of view. The general discounting framework is used to approach a standard optimal growth model in discrete time. Transitional dynamics and stability properties of the corresponding dynamic setup are studied. An extension of the standard utility maximization model to the case of habit persistence is also considered.     

A High‐Growth Firm Contingency Test of the Formalization‐Performance Relationship

The effect of formalization in high‐growth firms' performance is still unclear. We propose that formal commitment‐based human resource practices contribute positively to the financial performance of established high‐growth firms but have little effect on emergent ones. Using a sample of 101 Portuguese high‐growth firms (2006–2009 period), we tested the effect of formal HR practices during the high‐growth period in their financial results two years later (2011). Our results suggest that adopting a formal performance appraisal and a formal R&D function contributed positively for the performance of only established firms, while adopting a formal training activity negatively affected the performance of only emergent firms.