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The increasingly service-based U.S. economy relies on innovation. While there is considerable research on the importance of certain innovative activities, such as patents, less attention has been paid to unpatented innovation, about which there is naturally less publicly available information. Our study exploits disclosure on the fair value of acquired innovation to show that unpatented innovation plays an important, though often ignored, role in merger value creation. We detail the importance of unpatented technology and show that traditional approaches that rely only on R&D expenditures and patents lead to both misclassification of merger types and underestimates of the impact of innovation in value creation. Our evidence suggests that, on average, unpatented innovation accounts for a larger portion of synergies. We further show that higher (lower) gains accrue to the acquirer (the target) in relation to unpatented innovation, consistent with limited publicly available information about unpatented innovation reducing the target’s bargaining power. more...

In Chapter 6, Muysken and Meijers look at the increase in total assets of the financial sector in the Netherlands over the past 25 years from 600% of GDP in 1995 to over 1400% in 2020. There are specific features of the Dutch economy that caused the financial sector to continue to grow strongly even after the financial crisis. Two outstanding features are the continued growth of net trade surplus and the presence of a funded pension system with defined benefits. The authors analyse the growth of the financial sector in more detail using balance sheet data from the national account statistics. The explicit role of balance sheets and portfolios of financial assets of the various sectors in the model, together with the detailed impact of wealth effects on expenditure, makes it possible to identify the impact of financial sector operations in detail. In the present chapter, the authors employ the insights from their earlier analyses and the work of Meijers, Muysken and Sleijpen to construct a coherent data set from the national account data and to use these data to analyse the growth of the financial sector in the Netherlands over the past 25 years in a descriptive way. more...

Deregulation and globalization since the early 1990s caused a boom in the current global financial cycle, which cumulated in the financial crisis in 2007. Austerity fiscal policies after the financial crisis induced Central Banks all over the world to intervene by stimulating ‘unconventional’ monetary policies. In earlier papers, we developed several stock flow consistent models for an open Euro Area economy to investigate various aspects of the impact of these developments, with special attention to the role of the Central Bank with low interest policy and quantitative easing. We analysed the influence on mortgage growth and house prices, the growing amount of funded pension savings held abroad and the destabilising impact of low interest rates on pension claims, and the phenomenon that firms more and more use their savings for share buy-backs and (speculative) investments abroad – see Muysken and Meijers (2022) for an overview. However, we did not pay explicit attention to the distributional consequences these developments might have. The social and economic impact of the COVID crisis since early 2020 stimulated the awareness in the literature and the policy debate that the increase in house prices and asset prices invigorated wealth inequality. These developments create social tensions and therefore can have severe economic consequences. In the present paper, we bring all our earlier models together in one stock-flow consistent model, which we estimate and simulate for the Netherlands. The model is based on a stock-flow consistent set of macroeconomic data, which we collected for the Netherlands. In line with our previous research we argue that these phenomena can be captured very well by a stock flow consistent model in the tradition of Godley and Lavoie, which we estimate and simulate for the Netherlands. From simulations with our model we show that both housing price bubbles and asset price bubbles occur due to low interest rates and riskier bank behaviour, induced by a central bank policy of Quantitative Easing. The intended aim of this central bank policy – enhancing economic growth – is not reached, because the monetary stimulus is absorbed by the financial sector. Moreover, a presumably unintended consequence of Quantitative Easing in the Netherlands is an increase in wealth inequality. more...

Deregulation and globalization since the early 1990s caused a boom in the current global financial cycle, which cumulated in the financial crisis in 2007. Austerity fiscal policies after the financial crisis induced Central Banks all over the world to intervene by stimulating ‘unconventional’ monetary policies. In earlier papers, we developed several stock flow consistent models for an open Euro Area economy to investigate various aspects of the impact of these developments, with special attention to the role of the Central Bank with low interest policy and quantitative easing. We analysed the influence on mortgage growth and house prices, the growing amount of funded pension savings held abroad and the destabilising impact of low interest rates on pension claims, and the phenomenon that firms more and more use their savings for share buy-backs and (speculative) investments abroad – see Muysken and Meijers (2022) for an overview. However, we did not pay explicit attention to the distributional consequences these developments might have.The social and economic impact of the COVID crisis since early 2020 stimulated the awareness in the literature and the policy debate that the increase in house prices and asset prices invigorated wealth inequality. These developments create social tensions and therefore can have severe economic consequences.In the present paper, we bring all our earlier models together in one stock-flow consistent model, which we estimate and simulate for the Netherlands. The model is based on a stock-flow consistent set of macroeconomic data, which we collected for the Netherlands. From simulations with our model we show (a) why housing price bubbles occur (due to riskier bank behaviour); (b) why asset price bubbles occur (also due to speculation by firms); (c) the destabilising impact of low interest rates on pension claims; (d) how these developments have contributed to an increasing wealth inequality and income inequality. We also show how inequality reacts to various shocks, for instance in the interest rate, the wage rate, the risk appetite of banks and firms and the fall in world trade. more...

Deregulation and globalization since the early 1990s caused a boom in the current global financial cycle, which cumulated in the financial crisis in 2007. Austerity fiscal policies after the financial crisis induced Central Banks all over the world to intervene with stimulating ‘unconventional’ monetary policies. In earlier papers we developed several stock flow consistent models for an open Euro Area economy to investigate various aspects of the impact of these developments, with special attention to the role of the Central Bank with low interest policy and quantitative easing. We analysed the influence on mortgage growth and house prices, the growing amount of funded pension savings held abroad and the destabilising impact of low interest rates on pension claims, and the phenomenon that firms more and more use their savings for share buy-backs and (speculative) investments abroad – see Muysken and Meijers (2022) for an overview. However, we did not pay explicit attention to the distributional consequences these developments might have.The social and economic impact of the COVID crisis since early 2020 stimulated the awareness in the literature and the policy debate that the increase in house prices and asset prices invigorated wealth inequality. This inequality was strengthened in countries with funded pension systems, because low interest rates strongly increased pension claims, which implies higher mandatory pension contributions for employees with different implications for young and old workers. Finally, there is a more evasive impact related to the attitude that rules that held prior to the financial crises should no longer be followed too close – the lenience allowed to enable individual banks to survive and to enable central banks to influence the economy directly since the low interest rate policy is no longer effective and has a demoralising impact on society. These developments create social tensions and therefore can have severe economic consequences.In the present paper we bring all our earlier models together in one stock-flow consistent model, which we estimate and calibrate for the Netherlands. The model is based on a stock-flow consistent set of macroeconomic data, which we collected for the Netherlands. From simulations with our model we show (a) why housing price bubbles occur (due to riskier bank behaviour); (b) why asset price bubbles occur (also due to speculation by firms); (c) the destabilising impact of low interest rates on pension claims; (d) how these developments have contributed to an increasing wealth inequality and income inequality. We also show how inequality reacts to various shocks, for instance in the interest rate, the wage rate, the risk appetite of banks and firms and the fall in world trade.JEL Code: E44, B5, E6, F45, G21, G32Key words: financialisation, wealth distribution, income distribution, stock-flow consistent modelling more...

Do banks charge an environmental premium when lending to publicly listed firms? Using a unique and comprehensive database on carbon emissions, we find that higher carbon emissions are associated with higher loan spreads. This effect exists for loans arranged by all lenders suggesting that spread premia are driven by environmental risks rather than investor preferences. Consistent with ex-post risk, companies without appropriate board-level responsibility pay higher spreads. While countries might introduce effective legislation to mitigate the effects of climate change, our results indicate that there is scope for a market-based solution to complement explicit environmental regulation. more...

Beyond their importance from a regulatory policy point of view, Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) play an important role in risk management, portfolio allocation, capital level requirements, trading systems, and hedging strategies. Unfortunately, due to the curse of dimensionality, their accurate estimation in large portfolios is quite a challenge. To tackle this problem, we propose a filtered historical simulation method in which high-dimensional conditional covariance matrices are estimated via a general dynamic factor model with infinite-dimensional factor space and conditionally heteroscedastic factors. The procedure is applied to a panel with concentration ratio close to one. Back-testing and scoring results indicate that both VaR and ES are accurately estimated under our method, which outperforms alternative approaches available in the literature., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

This research examines how potential backers form mental representations of products in reward- based crowdfunding campaigns, and how these representations affect funding decisions and campaign performance. To test our framework, we conducted four experiments and also drew on a sample of 961 Kickstarter campaigns. Our results show that two campaign characteristics – the product’s development stage and the indicated time to product delivery – determine the psychological distance that supporters experience in response to a campaign, and that psychological distance, in turn, inhibits individual campaign contributions and cumulative campaign success. Furthermore, we find that encouraging supporters to imagine the benefits of product usage is an effective means to increase support for campaigns that elicit high psychological distance. more...

International audience; Approaching the institutional environment through its regulative component, we distinguish between shareholder‐oriented and stakeholder‐oriented countries. Identifying first this classification with the distinction between common law versus civil law countries and using a large sample of 5,716 firm‐year observations that represents 1,169 individual firms in 25 countries between 2001 and 2011, we show that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) significantly reduces firms’ idiosyncratic risk in civil law countries but not in common law countries. Using then a more direct classification based on shareholder and employee protection scores, our findings suggest that CSR negatively affects firms’ idiosyncratic and systematic risks only in less shareholder‐oriented and more stakeholder‐oriented countries, respectively. These findings are similar in the different components of CSR with two notable exceptions: a high score in corporate governance reduces firm risk only in common law countries, and community involvement increases idiosyncratic risk in more shareholder‐oriented and less stakeholder‐oriented countries, respectively. Taken together, our results strongly support the view that the relationship between CSR and financial risk is moderated by the institutional context of the firm. more...

With zero capital structure rebalancing costs, dynamic trade-off theory predicts that firms stay at their leverage targets with more profitable firms staying at higher leverage. This prediction is rejected by the robustly negative correlation between leverage and profitability. When rebalancing costs are added to this theory, it predicts a positive leverage–profitability correlation only in periods where companies pay these costs and actively rebalance their capital structures. However, we show that the correlation is negative when firms issue debt and distribute the proceeds to shareholders—precisely the case where the theory predicts it should be positive. Our results thus resurrect the leverage–profitability puzzle. more...

This paper analyzes the quantitative impact of the growing role of non-traditional financial actors, in particular institutional investors, in the financing structure and consumer pricing of regulated private utilities. The focus is on the water sector in England and Wales, where the effect of the firms’ corporate financing strategies on key outcome variables may have been underestimated. The analysis is based on a staggered difference-in-differences estimation of the impacts of the evolution of the ownership of the assets, namely an increased participation of institutional investors, on leveraging and water pricing decisions. It shows a statistically significant positive impact on leverage levels and average consumer prices., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

This article is the introductory chapter of the book A Research Agenda for Financial Inclusion and Microfinance, edited by Marek Hudon, Marc Labie and Ariane Szafarz, and forthcoming in 2019 with Elgar Research Publishing. This introductive article written by the editors explains how research in microfinance and financial inclusion evolved together with field practices. It identifies the four periods in the life of the microfinance sector that match four steps in research development: genesis, childhood, adolescence, and maturity. The article discusses whether this evolution could lead to a decline. Finally, it presents the monograph, which is organized along thematic groups of chapters. The titles of the four parts of the book are: “Framing research on microfinance and financial inclusion,” “Social, environmental and financial performance,” “Targets for financial inclusion,” and “Institutional and technological design.” Each chapter is written by scholars whose expertise on financial inclusion and microfinance is recognized internationally., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

Much has been learnt in microfinance over the last ten years. But there is yet so much to discover on how to improve financial inclusion and development. This paper offers an—evidently subjective—microfinance alphabet, hoping to so provide the microfinance scientific community with an opportunity to “read together” both where we stand and where we are heading., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

We examine how banks finance R&D intensive firms, focusing on the role of patents in overcoming information asymmetry in bank lending. Consistent with moral hazard in due diligence and monitoring, we find that lead arrangers retain a larger share of syndicated loans when lending to R&D intensive firms. Patents can partly overcome moral hazard problems, as banks retain a smaller share of R&D intensive firms’ loans if these firms have patents as a signal of the quality of their inventions. Our results are robust to alternative explanatory variable definitions and syndicate structure measures, different samples and subperiods, and difference-in-difference estimations. more...

We study mission drift in social enterprises by examining whether these organizations stick to the actual mission enshrined in their mission statements. We use data from microfinance organizations (MFOs), a homogeneous group of social enterprises which have been scrutinized—and sometimes criticized—for mission drift. We focus on three publicly recognized and non-mutually-exclusive microfinance social missions identified by previous studies: poverty alleviation, women's empowerment, and rural financial inclusion. Based on hand-collected data from 199 MFOs worldwide, our results suggest strong coherence between social missions and actual practices. Hence, we argue that, with respect to MFOs’ own stated social missions, mission drift is no serious concern. The trustworthiness of social mission statements makes them suitable evaluation tools for social enterprises., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

This paper investigates whether product market power affects trade credit decisions. We exploit the 2007-08 credit crisis in the U.S. as a source of variation in the importance of product market power for trade credit. We find that a one standard deviation increase in market power is associated to a decrease in payables of approximately four days during the crisis, showing that high market power firms alleviate financial constraints from their suppliers to avoid the loss of monopoly rents. Our inferences are robust to structural and non-structural measures of market power, both at the firm and at the industry levels, and the inclusion of controls to address potential confounding effects deriving from other firm features, including financial constraints, industry specific shocks and macroeconomic effects., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

In earlier work Meijers, Muysken (and Sleijpen) have developed an open economy stock-flow consistent (SFC) macroeconomic model of the Dutch economy with an elaborated financial sector. This model has been used to analyse several stylised facts of the Dutch economy, such as the deposit financing gap, the excessive trade surplus, the impact of firms accumulating financial assets and the impact of quantitative easing. However, the stylised facts were collected in an ad hoc way and the parameters used in the model were taken from the international literature, without proper reference to Dutch data. In the present paper we develop a stock flow consistent data set for the Dutch economy 1995 - 2015 in order to stimulate further research in the SFC tradition using actual data, and to enhance our understanding of the Dutch economy. The data set is based on data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) for most sectors - these are consistent with the AMECO data published by Eurostat. However, for the financial sector we show that the CBS-data are incomplete and also use data provided by the Dutch Central Bank (DNB). We distinguish between households, firms, government, a foreign sector and within the financial sector between a central bank, banks and pension funds. For each sector we provide a somewhat simplified balance sheet and consistent flows, which can be used in the model. more...

The commons are alternative social and economic practices for fostering community development and regeneration. While the role of finance is increasingly criticized as a trigger for individualism, community currencies (CCs) are one of the financial initiatives that aim to reorganize finance in the collective interest. We analyze to what extent these alternative systems allow finance to constitute common goods, or ‘commons’. To this end, we investigate the commoning practices through which resources are created, distributed and consumed in a way that promotes new collectives. We analyze the extent to which CCs can be considered as commons. Our findings suggest that, although these monetary services are privately used and consumed, they have strong collective attributes such as community-building as well as the insertion of solidarity and cooperative values in money. Finally, we inquire into the limits and ambiguities of these alternatives relative to the capitalist system., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

La littérature académique en gouvernance d’entreprise étudie en particulier la séparation entre propriété et contrôle au sein de l’actionnariat des entreprises privées. Cet article propose une synthèse critique et des illustrations internationales des résultats les plus récents en la matière. En particulier, il détaille les mécanismes permettant aux actionnaires dominants d’accroître leur contrôle d’une société, parmi lesquels : les structures pyramidales, les participations croisées et les actions à droits de vote multiples, qui offrent la possibilité de découpler le contrôle de la part effectivement détenue dans le capital de l’entreprise. Ces phénomènes, plus ou moins présents dans les différentes régions du monde, jouent un rôle fondamental puisqu’ils contribuent à l’accroissement des asymétries entre actionnaires d’une même entreprise et engendrent des opportunités de bénéfices privés en faveur de certains d’entre eux. Leur impact s’étend bien au-delà de la sphère de l’entreprise concernée et peut affecter le fonctionnement même des marchés financiers. La quantification du niveau de contrôle au sein d’un empire industriel peut être obtenue à l’aide de diverses méthodes. Les développements récents en la matière sont résumés et l’application à des cas internationaux réels est discutée., The academic literature on corporate governance has taken a particular interest in the separation of property and control within bodies of corporate shareholders. This article provides a critical synthesis and international examples of the most recent results in this area. More particularly, it outlines the mechanisms through which controlling shareholders increase their control over a corporation (including pyramid structures), cross-shareholding, and shares with multiple voting rights. All of these mechanisms potentially provide the means of divorcing control from the proportion of corporate capital stock effectively held. These phenomena, present to a lesser or greater degree across the planet, play a fundamental role as they increasingly skew the relationship among shareholders of the same corporation while also creating opportunities for private benefits for some. Their impact extends well beyond the sphere of the corporation itself and may even affect the operation of financial markets. There are several ways of quantifying the level of control within an industrial empire. Recent developments in this field are summarized, and their application to true international cases is discussed. more...

How does inflation affect the investment decisions of financially constrained firms in the presence of corporate taxation? Inflation interacts with corporate taxation via the deductibility of i) capital expenditures and ii) interest payments on debt. Through the first channel, inflation increases firms’ taxable profits and further distorts their investment decisions. Through the second, expected inflation affects the effective real interest rate and stimulates investment. When debt is collateralized, the second effect dominates. Therefore, present a tax-advantage to debt financing, positive long-run inflation enhances welfare by mitigating or even eliminating the investment distortion., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

This study examines the relationships between the origin of chief executive officers (CEOs), and the performance and risk-taking levels of their companies. It is based on a sample of 353 microfinance institutions (MFIs) from 76 countries, with data covering the period 1996-2011. We use return on assets and operational costs as performance metrics, and the standard deviation of return on assets and operational costs as measures of risk. The results suggest that MFIs with an internally-recruited CEO achieve a significantly higher performance than MFIs with an externally-recruited CEO. More specifically, MFIs with an ‘insider CEO’ have a positive association with return on assets, but a negative association with operational costs. Moreover, internally-recruited CEOs appear to be associated with a lower level of risk. We believe that these results are important and have clear policy implications, in particular for an industry with such a thin labour market for CEOs and lack of managerial capacity. Our findings are consistent with the view that insider CEOs have firm-specific skills, experience and network resources that result in an enhanced MFIs performance and low-risk., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

Treball Final de Grau en Finances i Comptabilitat. Codi: FC1049. Curs: 2015/2016 This work makes a study about ceramic industry. First of all, it will do an analysis of this industry at global level. Secondly, it will do an analysis about Spanish situation. In the case of the latter it will focus on two geographical regions: Castellón de la Plana and Community of Madrid. Thirdly, this work makes an economic-financial study of the thirty sampled companies chosen. It is divided into fifteen of Castellón and fifteen of Madrid because this work wants to check the indebtedness levels difference between the regions, and to determine the financial ratios which affect these levels in every geographical area. Finally, with the results obtained, it will make the determination of the companies that have failed by their indebtedness levels. more...

Microfinance, which pledges to provide financial services to people without access to banking, is chiefly run by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Little is known about the extent to which the transformation of these NGOs into shareholder-owned and, most often, regulated firms affects the way microfinance institutions (MFIs) conduct their business. By applying the event study methodology to 66 MFIs that have transformed, we quantify the effect that transformation has on the MFIs’ business models. Our results suggest that portfolio yield is driven down by 3.9 percentage points due to transformation, indicating that clients get more favorable interest rates. At the same time, MFIs are able to significantly cut down their operational expenses, of which 1.1 percentage points can be attributed to transformation. Other findings include a steep increase in commercial debt leverage and deposits, a significant decrease in the fluctuation of funding costs and a sharp rise in average loan size. Profitability goes down in the short and medium term, while return on equity is driven up in the medium to long run. By exploiting within-MFI data, our approach goes beyond previous studies that mainly relied on between-MFI data. Overall, the results suggest that transformed MFIs become an attractive environment for investors, potentially encouraging a more profit-seeking behavior among transformed MFIs., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

This paper investigates the effect of ownership and competition on Indian bank productivity since the 1991 reforms. We find that Indian private banks dominate the public and foreign banks both in terms of productivity levels and productivity growth, with the new Indian private banks leading the charge. Competition has a positive impact on productivity for the old Indian private banks, and all the other banks are hurt by competition — the worst hit being new Indian private banks. A similar picture emerges on the productivity growth side, with the new Indian private bank productivity growth being the worst affected as competition increases. An analysis of the pre- and post-1998 periods shows that the latter period displays a much higher productivity gap between the Indian private banks and the public and foreign banks. Indian private bank productivity and productivity growth suffer due to increasing competition in the post-1998 period. more...

Using data on more than 56,000 enterprises in 90 countries, this paper finds that objective conditions in the business environment vary substantially across firms of different sizes and that there are important non-linearities in their impact on employment growth. The paper focuses on four areas: access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and infrastructure. The results, particularly on the impacts of finance and corruption on growth, depend on whether and how the analysis accounts for the possible endogeneity of the business environment. Controlling for endogeneity revises the finding that small firms benefit most from access to finance, particularly for sources of finance associated with investment and growth. The findings are also sensitive to how “small” is defined. Differentiating micro (less than 10 employees) from other small firms shows that, while small firms can be disadvantaged in such an environment, micro firms tend to be proportionally less affected by a weak business climate – and, on occasion, it can help them to grow. Overall, allowing different size classifications provides insights into the impact of the business environment that are lost in more aggregate analyses. more...

This paper provides evidence of the presence and relevance of the credit chain propagation and amplification mechanism described by Kiyotaki and Moore (1997) by looking at its implications for the correlation of industries. In particular, it tests the hypothesis that an increase in the use of trade credit, along the input-output chain linking two industries, results in an increase in their output correlation using detailed data on the correlations and input-output relations of 378 manufacturing industry pairs across 43 countries with different degrees of use of trade credit. The results provide strong support for this hypothesis and indicate that the mechanism is quantitatively relevant. (c) 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. more...

Many cross-country enterprise surveys have recently become widely available. They are the basis of rankings of dimensions of the business environment in emerging markets and developing economies. Although the literature is concerned about “perception bias”, there has been little effort at analyzing whether subjective appraisals of credit market constraints correspond to objectively measurable indicators. This note assesses a predominantly used subjective measure of “access to finance” and relates it to indicators of financial development and credit availability and costs. It finds a significant relationship between subjective and objective indexes of financing constraint but the relationship varies substantially across indicators. more...

This paper presents data on 76 partial credit guarantee schemes across 46 developed and developing countries. Based on theory, the authors discuss different organizational features of credit guarantee schemes and their variation across countries. They focus on the respective role of government and the private sector and different pricing and risk reduction tools and how they are correlated across countries. The findings show that government has an important role to play in funding and management, but less so in risk assessment and recovery. There is a surprisingly low use of risk-based pricing and limited use of risk management mechanisms. more...

China is often mentioned as a counterexample to the findings in the finance and growth literature since, despite the weaknesses in its banking system, it is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The fast growth of Chinese private sector firms is taken as evidence that it is alternative financing and governance mechanisms that support China's growth. This paper takes a closer look at firm financing patterns and growth using a database of 2,400 Chinese firms. The authors find that a relatively small percentage of firms in the sample utilize formal bank finance with a much greater reliance on informal sources. However, the results suggest that despite its weaknesses, financing from the formal financial system is associated with faster firm growth, whereas fund raising from alternative channels is not. Using a selection model, the authors find no evidence that these results arise because of the selection of firms that have access to the formal financial system. Although firms report bank corruption, there is no evidence that it significantly affects the allocation of credit or the performance of firms that receive the credit. The findings suggest that the role of reputation and relationship based financing and governance mechanisms in financing the fastest growing firms in China is likely to be overestimated. more...

We present insolvency practitioners from 88 countries with an identical case of a hotel about to default on its debt, and ask them to describe in detail how debt enforcement against this hotel will proceed in their countries. We use the data on time, cost, and the likely disposition of the assets (preservation as a going concern versus piecemeal sale) to construct a measure of the efficiency of debt enforcement in each country. We identify several characteristics of debt enforcement procedures, such as the structure of appeals and availability of floating charge finance, that influence efficiency. Our measure of efficiency of debt enforcement is strongly correlated with per capita income and legal origin and predicts debt market development across countries. Interestingly, it is also highly correlated with measures of the quality of contract enforcement and public regulation obtained in other studies. more...

Although it is widely accepted that financial development is associated with higher growth, the evidence on the channels through which credit affects growth on the micro-level is scant. Using data from a cross section of Bulgarian firms, the authors estimate the impact of access to credit (as proxied by indicators of whether firms have access to a credit or overdraft facility) on productivity. To overcome potential omitted variable bias of OLS estimates, they use information on firms' past growth to instrument for access to credit. The authors find credit to be positively and strongly associated with total factor productivity. These results are robust to a wide range of robustness checks. more...

By documenting the evolution of Tobin's q before, during, and after firms internationalize, the authors provide evidence on the bonding, segmentation, and market timing theories of internationalization. Using new data on 9,096 firms across 74 countries over the period 1989-2000, they find that Tobin's q does not rise after internationalization, even relative to firms that do not internationalize. Instead, q rises significantly before internationalization and during the internationalization year. But then q falls sharply in the year after internationalization, quickly relinquishing the increases of the previous years. To account for these dynamics, the authors show that market capitalization rises before internationalization and remains high, while corporate assets increase during internationalization. The evidence supports models stressing that financial internationalization facilitates corporate expansion, but challenges models stressing that internationalization produces an enduring effect on q by bonding firms to a better corporate governance system. more...

By artificially inflating capital and creating own shares, cross-ownership can be a key device for managerial entrenchment. This paper proposes a game-theoretical method to measure the extent of shareholder expropriation through cross-ownership. By properly accounting for cross-ownership linkages, we show how managers can seize indirect voting rights, and so insulate their firms from outside control. Significant examples of cross-ownership are found not only in civil law countries, but also in the U.S. mutual fund industry. We apply our method to Germany’s Allianz Group. This paper paves the way to better regulatory appraisal of management entrenchment through cross-ownership., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

Recent evidence shows that the poor desperately need access to savings products. But despite this general consensus, microfinance institutions (MFIs) offering savings products are still under-studied. Using random-effect probit estimation on a dataset of 722 MFIs active over the 2005-2010 period, we try to identify the characteristics of those that collect voluntary savings. Our results suggest that these MFIs have received fewer subsidies than their credit-only counterparts. In other words, subsidies would crowd out micro-savings products, suggesting that donors generate negative externalities on product diversification., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

Firms depend heavily on trade credit. This paper introduces a trade credit network into a structural model of the economy. In an empirical analysis of the model, we find that trade credit is an elusive insurance: as long as a firm is financially unconstrained and times are good, more trade credit enhances sales stability and insures against shocks to the firm’s suppliers. However, if a firm becomes financially constrained or times are bad, trade credit fails to insure against supplier shocks. Moreover, if the firm is low on cash, trade credit propagates shocks from a supplier to its customer. more...

We propose a market-based framework that exploits time-varying parameter vector autoregressions to estimate the dynamic network of financial spillover effects. We apply it to financials in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and estimate interconnectedness at the sectoral and institutional levels. At the sectoral level, we uncover two main events in terms of interconnectedness: the Long-Term Capital Management crisis and the 2008 financial crisis. After these crisis events, we find a gradual decrease in interconnectedness, not observable using the classical rolling-window approach. At the institutional level, our framework delivers more stable interconnectedness rankings than other comparable market-based measures. more...

This article develops a theoretical framework to analyze options for financing infrastructurein developing countries. We build a basic model that gives motivations for usinga combination of public finance, private debt and private equity. The model is thenextended in a number of ways to examine a variety of factors that are important fordeveloping countries when considering financing choices. We focus in particular on keyinstitutional weaknesses that are often important for infrastructure investment. Overall,we show that such weaknesses can be key in determining financing choices, but that theydo not all push in the same direction. Financing schemes must therefore be adapted toconsider the institutional limitations that are most pertinent in any given context., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

In the Netherlands firms' savings, i.e. retained profits, exceed investment at a national level. The resulting net savings are mainly held abroad. Moreover, there is a striking resemblance in the development of net savings of firms' on the one hand and the surplus on the current account on the balance of payments on the other. Both have increased to almost 10% of GDP in recent years. Next to that, the housing boom household net-savings have decreased prior to 2007 following the housing boom, accompanied by an increase in government net-savings. These trends reversed thereafter due to the bursting of the housing bubble.We present a stock-flow consistent model of the firm to explain firms' excess savings, inspired by Hein (2012), and embed that in an open economy model with a banking sector which we have developed earlier. This enables us to model the preference of firms to invest in financial assets abroad and to analyse the close link between firms' excess savings and the current account surplus. As a consequence we also explain the close link between net household savings and government budget deficit. We present simulation results to illustrate the working of our model. more...

This paper uses worldwide firm-level data to scrutinize the governance factors that favor gender diversity in leadership positions. Our results reveal that the gender of the dominant shareholder is key. The chief executive of firms with a female dominant shareholder has a significantly higher probability of being a woman than in other firms. The effect is even more pronounced when the female shareholder holds a higher share of the capital and when the firm is foreign-owned. Our results suggest that “old boys’ club” ownership structures are a major impediment to the empowerment of female talent in developing countries., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

This study investigates a longitudinal dataset consisting of financial and operational data from 37 listed companies listed on Vietnamese stock market, covering the period 2004-13. By performing three main types of regression analysis - pooled OLS, fixed-effect and random-effect regressions - the investigation finds mixed results on the relationships between operational scales, sources of finance and firms' performance, depending on the choice of analytical model and use of independent/dependent variables. In most situation, fixed-effect models appear to be preferable, providing for reasonably consistent results. Toward the end, the paper offers some further explanation about the obtained insights, which reflect the nature of a business environment of a transition economy and an emerging market., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

Cash holdings have often been presumed to help resolve the inherent uncertainty of assessing banks. Nonetheless, extant empirical evidence is inconclusive. The present paper adopts a novel approach to assessing the level of stockholder uncertainty associated with the cash holdings reported by European banks before, during, and after the financial crisis of 2007-2009. The paper finds that stockholder uncertainty may be significant when cash holdings exceed or fall short of the levels warranted to meet depositor demands. It concludes that investors monitor bank cash holdings in relation to short-term liabilities. Cash holdings may thus contribute to making banks more opaque., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

In countries with weak institutions board governance becomes more important. This study uses a unique dataset from listed Sub-Saharan African companies to examine the relationship between ownership composition and board compensation. It further analyses the association between board compensation and company performance. The findings indicate that board ownership and CEO ownership are positively associated while state ownership and concentrated ownership are negatively associated with board compensation. There is no evidence of a significant association between chairperson ownership or foreign ownership and board compensation. Finally, there is a negative but not significantly relationship between board compensation and company performance., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...

Current study aims to provide new and first empirical evidence on the impact of debt oncorporate profitability of French service sector. This impact can be explained by three essentialtheories: signaling theory, tax theory and the agency cost theory. Using panel data sample of2240 French non listed companies of service sector during 1999-2006. By utilizing generalizedmethod of moments (GMM) econometric technique on three measures of profitability ratio(PROF1, PROF2 and ROA), we show that debt ratio has no effect on corporate profitability,regardless of the size of company (VSEs, SMEs or LEs)., info:eu-repo/semantics/published more...