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This paper evaluates an approach to shed light on capital markets using grain prices, since stored grain incurs interest costs as part of the storage costs. Though this storage cost approach has been applied in McCloskey and Nash (1984) and has potentially wide applicability in situations where interest rate data is not available, this paper provides the first analysis of how well the storage cost approach captures actual capital market developments. Using matched data on bank interest rates and grain prices for early 19th century U.S. regions, we find that the storage cost approach is useful for quantifying the performance of capital markets. While the estimation of region- and year-specific interest rates can be challenging, the approach grain price approach accurately reflects differences in capital market development. Furthermore, the approach is robust to employing time series filtering techniques as well as dealing with unavailable information on harvest times, outliers, and a range of other factors., Support by the National Science Foundation (SES grant #1124426) is gratefully acknowledged (Keller and Shiue).

Ausgehend von der Dualität zwischen Punkt- und Geradeninformation in der projektiven Geometrie werden die Schwere- und Geometrieinfomationen in geodätischen Randwertproblemen gegeneinander ausgetauscht, so dass das freie geodätische Randwertproblem in ein Problem mit festem Rand überführt werden kann.

This paper studies international joint ventures, where foreign direct investment is performed by a foreign and a domestic firm that together set up a new firm, the joint venture. Employing administrative data on all international joint ventures in China from 1998 to 2007—roughly a quarter of all international joint ventures in the world—we find, first, that Chinese firms chosen to be partners of foreign investors tend to be larger, more productive, and more likely subsidized than other Chinese firms. Second, there is substantial international technology transfer not only to the joint venture itself but also to the Chinese joint venture partner firm. Third, with technology spillovers typically outweighing negative competition effects, joint ventures generate net positive externalities to other Chinese firms in the same industry. Joint venture externalities are large, perhaps twice the size of wholly-owned FDI spillovers, and it is R&D-intensive firms, including the joint ventures themselves, that benefit most from these externalities. Furthermore, the positive external joint venture effect is larger if the foreign firm is from the U.S. rather than from Japan or Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, while this effect is virtually absent in broad sectors that include economic activities for which China’s FDI policy has prohibited joint ventures.

This paper identifies globalization as a factor behind the rapid increase in executive compensation and inequality over the last few decades. Employing comprehensive data on top executives at major U.S. companies, we show that compensation is higher at more global firms. We find that pay responds not only to firm size and technology but also to exports conditional on other firm characteristics. Export shocks that are not related to the executive’s talent and actions also increase executive compensation, indicating that globalization is influencing compensation through pay-for-non-performance. Furthermore, this effect is asymmetric, with executive compensation increasing due to positive export shocks but not decreasing due to negative shocks. Finally, export shocks primarily affect discretionary forms of compensation of more powerful executives at firms with poor corporate governance, as one would expect if globalization has enhanced rent-capture opportunities. Overall, these results indicate that globalization has played a more central role in the rapid growth of executive compensation and U.S. inequality than previously thought, and that both higher returns to top talent and rent-capture are important parts of this story.