New Technology and The Small Firm

This paper examines how and why the role of small business has become more important over time. A special focus is placed on the role of small business in the New Economy.     

SHAKEOUTS AND MARKET CRASHES*

This article provides a microfoundation for the rise in optimism that seems to precede market crashes. Small, young markets are more likely to experience stock‐price run‐ups and crashes. We use a Zeira–Rob type of model in which demand size is uncertain. Optimism then grows rationally if traders' prior distribution over market size has a decreasing hazard. Such prior beliefs are appropriate if most new markets are duds and only a few reach a large size. The crash occurs when capacity outstrips demand. As an illustration, for the period 1971–2001 we fit the model to the Telecom sector.     

Investment in vintage capital

We study an economy in which firms use labor and various vintages of capital in a CES production function for the final good. We explicitly solve for the investment in capital of a given vintage as a function of its age, and for the resulting stocks of capital. We show that for reasonable parameter values, inverted-U-shaped dynamics of investment and S-shaped dynamics for capital arise in equilibrium. We view the model as an explanation of intra-firm adoption lags, i.e., the observation that firms adopt innovations over time and not instantaneously.     

Firm formation with heterogeneous management and labor skills

When both management skills and labor skills differ in the population, the nature of firm formation can differ radically from the equilibrium we are used to dealing with: The best potential managers could end up as wage workers. This happens when managerial skills are positively correlated with working skills, and there is some empirical evidence that this is indeed the case.     

Occupational choice and development

The rise in world trade since 1970 has been accompanied by a rise in the geographic span of control of management and, hence, also a rise in the effective international mobility of labor services. We study the effect of such a globalization of the world?s labor markets. The world?s welfare gains depend positively on the skill-heterogeneity of the world?s labor force. We find that when people can choose between wage work and managerial work, the worldwide labor market raises output by more in the rich and the poor countries, and by less in the middle-income countries. This is because the middle-income countries experience the smallest change in the factor-price ratio, and where the option to choose between wage work and managerial work has the least value in the integrated economy. Our theory also establishes that after economic integration, the high skill countries see a disproportionate increase in managerial occupations. Using aggregate data on GDP, openness and occupations from 115 countries, we find evidence for these patterns of occupational choice.     

Institutional investors in Bulgarian corporate governance reform: obstacles or facilitators?

Institutional investors can play a special role in corporate governance reform given their dual status as both objects and subjects of corporate governance. In transition economies these investors can turn into an obstacle to good governance practices because of inconsistency of their strategy with the reform goals, internal mechanisms of corporate control precluding equitable treatment of shareholders, and serious problems with transparency and disclosure. The expected positive role of institutional investors as subjects of corporate governance may be problematic if they adopt a strategy of accommodation with the anti-reform status quo.     

生态旅游在我国国家公园中的定位及效益研究

聚焦于生态旅游,通过讨论其在建立国家公园体制中的意义和作用,总结得出生态旅游是国家公园实现绿色可持续发展的必经之路和最重要的方式。生态旅游发挥的价值和效益,促使国家公园在保护自然生态系统原真性、完整性的同时,也确保了区域经济的可持续增长,提高了一定范围内社区居民的生活水平及质量。最后,从坚持保护第一、丰富体验方式、创新经营管理、提升服务能力、协调全域旅游以及健全法律法规等六个方面建议了国家公园开展生态旅游的实现路径,以期为推进国家公园体制建设、实现游憩利用这一重要功能提供理论依据。     

Entry and exit echoes

While aggregate data do not show the investment echoes predicted by vintage-capital models, echoes arise in rates of entry and exit of firms at the industry level. Moreover, industries where prices decline rapidly experience early ‘shakeouts’. The relation emerges naturally in a vintage-capital model in which exit of firms sometimes accompanies the replacement of their capital, and in which a shakeout is the first replacement ‘echo’ of the capital created when the industry is born.     

公司治理、不确定性与现金价值

本文构建公司治理综合性指标体系,系统研究投资者对企业现金价值的评价问题.研究证实综合治理水平与不确定性对现金价值影响显著;高治理效率公司的现金价值高于低治理效率公司的现金价值,投资者愿为治理良好的公司支付流动性溢价;企业持有现金的投资缓冲功能使得受融资约束公司比不受融资约束公司的现金价值高.经验分析表明,优化企业治理机制、畅通融资渠道有利于减少现金占用,提高企业在不确定环境中的风险应对能力.