The convergence of geophysical and economic forces that continuously influence environmental quality in the coastal zone presents a grand challenge for resource and environmental economists. To inform climate adaptation policy and identify pathways to sustainability, economists must draw from different lines of inquiry, including nonmarket valuation, quasi-experimental analyses, common-pool resource theory, and spatial-dynamic modeling of coupled coastal-economic systems. Theoretical and empirical contributions in valuing coastal amenities and risks help examine the economic impact of climate change on coastal communities and provide a key input to inform policy analysis. Co-evolution of community demographics, adaptation decisions, and the physical coastline can result in unintended consequences, like climate-induced migration, that impacts community composition after natural disasters. Positive and normative models of coupled coastline systems conceptualize the feedbacks between physical coastline dynamics and local community decisions as a dynamic geoeconomic resource management problem. There is a pressing need for interdisciplinary research across natural and social sciences to better understand climate adaptation and coastal resilience.
41-60 of 379 Results
Article
Climate Change and Coastal Vulnerability
Xiaoyu Li and Sathya Gopalakrishnan
Article
Cliometrics: Past, Present, and Future
Claude Diebolt and Michael Haupert
Cliometrics is the application of economic theory and quantitative methods to the study of economic history. The methodology rose to favor in economics departments in the 1960s. It grew to dominate the discipline over the next two decades, culminating in the awarding of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics to two of its pioneers, Robert Fogel and Douglass North. Cliometrics has always had its share of critics, and some have blamed it for the diminished role that economic history has had in economics programs in the 21st century.
Article
The Cointegrated VAR Methodology
Katarina Juselius
The cointegrated VAR approach combines differences of variables with cointegration among them and by doing so allows the user to study both long-run and short-run effects in the same model. The CVAR describes an economic system where variables have been pushed away from long-run equilibria by exogenous shocks (the pushing forces) and where short-run adjustments forces pull them back toward long-run equilibria (the pulling forces). In this model framework, basic assumptions underlying a theory model can be translated into testable hypotheses on the order of integration and cointegration of key variables and their relationships. The set of hypotheses describes the empirical regularities we would expect to see in the data if the long-run properties of a theory model are empirically relevant.
Article
Commodity Market Integration
Giovanni Federico
The literature on market integration explores the development of the commodity market with data on prices, which is a useful complement to analysis of trade and the only feasible approach when data on trade are not available. Data on prices and quantity can help in understanding when markets developed, why, and the degree to which their development increased welfare and economic growth. Integration progressed slowly throughout the early modern period, with significant acceleration in the first half of the 19th century. Causes of integration include development of transportation infrastructure, changes in barriers to trade, and short-term shocks, such as wars. Literature on the effects of market integration is limited and strategies for estimating the effects of market integration are must be developed.
Article
Comparative Advantage in Contemporary Trade Models
Peter M. Morrow
Models of comparative advantage in international trade explain specialization using differences in autarky relative prices. This literature has traditionally focused on the Heckscher–Ohlin and Ricardian models. The former emphasizes differences in factor abundance across countries and in factor intensity across goods; the latter focuses on relative productivity differences across countries and goods. However, unrealistic assumptions and stark assumptions have hindered empirical assessment of these models. Contemporary models now allow researchers to overcome these hurdles. New models of Ricardian comparative advantage incorporate realistic geography and multiple countries. Similar advances have freed the Heckscher–Ohlin model from some of its theoretical straightjackets. In addition, researchers have started to provide microfoundations for the Ricardian model and to formalize how institutions and factor market distortions might generate patterns of comparative advantage. Trade economists have also started to think about magnitudes in a different way; that is, through general equilibrium counterfactual experiments.
Article
Competition and Quality in Healthcare
Peter Sivey and Yijuan Chen
Quality competition between alternative providers is an increasingly important topic in the health economics literature. This literature includes theoretical and empirical studies that have been developed in parallel to 21st-century policies to increase competition between doctors or hospitals. Theoretical studies have clarified how competitive markets can give healthcare providers the incentive to improve quality. Broadly speaking, if providers have an incentive to attract more patients and patients value quality, providers will raise quality until the costs of raising quality are equal to the additional revenue from patients attracted by the rise in quality. The theoretical literature has also investigated how institutional and policy parameters determine quality levels in equilibrium. Important parameters in models of quality competition include the degree of horizontal differentiation, the level of information about provider quality, the costs of switching between providers, and the time-horizon of quality investment decisions.
Empirical studies have focused on the prerequisites of quality competition (e.g., do patients choose higher quality providers?) and the impact of pro-competition policies on quality levels. The most influential studies have used modern econometric approaches, including difference-in differences and instrumental variables, to identify plausibly causal effects. The evidence suggests that in most contexts, quality is a determinant of patient choice of provider, especially after greater patient choice is made available or information is published about provider quality.
The evidence that increases in competition improve quality in healthcare is less clear cut. Perhaps reflecting the economic theory of quality competition, showing that different parameter combinations or assumptions can produce different outcomes, empirical results are also mixed. While a series of high-quality studies in the United Kingdom appear to show strong improvements in quality in more competitive areas following pro-competition reforms introducing more choice and competition, other studies showed that these quality improvements do not extend to all types of healthcare or alternative measures of quality.
The most promising areas for future research include investigating the “black box” of quality improvement under competition, and behavioral studies investigating financial and nonfinancial motivations for quality improvements in competitive markets.
Article
Considering Health-Systems Constraints in Economic Evaluation in Low- and Middle-Income Settings
Anna Vassall, Fiammetta Bozzani, and Kara Hanson
In order to secure effective service access, coverage, and impact, it is increasingly recognized that the introduction of novel health technologies such as diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines may require additional investment to address the constraints under which many health systems operate. Health-system constraints include a shortage of health workers, ineffective supply chains, or inadequate information systems, or organizational constraints such as weak incentives and poor service integration. Decision makers may be faced with the question of whether to invest in a new technology, including the specific health system strengthening needed to ensure effective implementation; or they may be seeking to optimize resource allocation across a range of interventions including investment in broad health system functions or platforms. Investment in measures to address health-system constraints therefore increasingly need to undergo economic evaluation, but this poses several methodological challenges for health economists, particularly in the context of low- and middle-income countries.
Designing the appropriate analysis to inform investment decisions concerning new technologies incorporating health systems investment can be broken down into several steps. First, the analysis needs to comprehensively outline the interface between the new intervention and the system through which it is to be delivered, in order to identify the relevant constraints and the measures needed to relax them. Second, the analysis needs to be rooted in a theoretical approach to appropriately characterize constraints and consider joint investment in the health system and technology. Third, the analysis needs to consider how the overarching priority- setting process influences the scope and output of the analysis informing the way in which complex evidence is used to support the decision, including how to represent and manage system wide trade-offs. Finally, there are several ways in which decision analytical models can be structured, and parameterized, in a context of data scarcity around constraints. This article draws together current approaches to health system thinking with the emerging literature on analytical approaches to integrating health-system constraints into economic evaluation to guide economists through these four issues. It aims to contribute to a more health-system-informed approach to both appraising the cost-effectiveness of new technologies and setting priorities across a range of program activities.
Article
Consumer Debt and Default: A Macro Perspective
Florian Exler and Michèle Tertilt
Consumer debt is an important means for consumption smoothing. In the United States, 70% of households own a credit card, and 40% borrow on it. When borrowers cannot (or do not want to) repay their debts, they can declare bankruptcy, which provides additional insurance in tough times. Since the 2000s, up to 1.5% of households declared bankruptcy per year. Clearly, the option to default affects borrowing interest rates in equilibrium. Consequently, when assessing (welfare) consequences of different bankruptcy regimes or providing policy recommendations, structural models with equilibrium default and endogenous interest rates are needed. At the same time, many questions are quantitative in nature: the benefits of a certain bankruptcy regime critically depend on the nature and amount of risk that households bear. Hence, models for normative or positive analysis should quantitatively match some important data moments.
Four important empirical patterns are identified: First, since 1950, consumer debt has risen constantly, and it amounted to 25% of disposable income by 2016. Defaults have risen since the 1980s. Interestingly, interest rates remained roughly constant over the same time period. Second, borrowing and default clearly depend on age: both measures exhibit a distinct hump, peaking around 50 years of age. Third, ownership of credit cards and borrowing clearly depend on income: high-income households are more likely to own a credit card and to use it for borrowing. However, this pattern was stronger in the 1980s than in the 2010s. Finally, interest rates became more dispersed over time: the number of observed interest rates more than quadrupled between 1983 and 2016.
These data have clear implications for theory: First, considering the importance of age, life cycle models seem most appropriate when modeling consumer debt and default. Second, bankruptcy must be costly to support any debt in equilibrium. While many types of costs are theoretically possible, only partial repayment requirements are able to quantitatively match the data on filings, debt levels, and interest rates simultaneously. Third, to account for the long-run trends in debts, defaults, and interest rates, several quantitative theory models identify a credit expansion along the intensive and extensive margin as the most likely source. This expansion is a consequence of technological advancements.
Many of the quantitative macroeconomic models in this literature assess welfare effects of proposed reforms or of granting bankruptcy at all. These welfare consequences critically hinge on the types of risk that households face—because households incur unforeseen expenditures, not-too-stringent bankruptcy laws are typically found to be welfare superior to banning bankruptcy (or making it extremely costly) but also to extremely lax bankruptcy rules.
There are very promising opportunities for future research related to consumer debt and default. Newly available data in the United States and internationally, more powerful computational resources allowing for more complex modeling of household balance sheets, and new loan products are just some of many promising avenues.
Article
Contemporary Views on Economics of Patents
Shubha Ghosh
A patent is a legal right to exclude granted by the state to the inventor of a novel and useful invention. Much legal ink has been spilled on the meaning of these terms. “Novel” means that the invention has not been anticipated in the art prior to its creation by the inventor. “Useful” means that the invention has a practical application. The words “inventor” and “invention” are also legal terms of art. An invention is a work that advances a particular field, moving practitioners forward not simply through accretions of knowledge but through concrete implementations. An inventor is someone who contributes to an invention either as an individual or as part of a team. The exclusive right, finally, is not granted gratuitously. The inventor must apply and go through a review process for the invention. Furthermore, a price for the patent being granted is full, clear disclosure by the inventor of how to practice the invention. The public can use this disclosure once the patent expires or through a license during the duration of the patent.
These institutional details are common features of all patent systems. What is interesting is the economic justification for patents. As a property right, a patent resolves certain externality problems that arise in markets for knowledge. The establishment of property rights allows for trade in the invention and the dissemination of knowledge. However, the economic case for property rights is made complex because of the institutional need to apply for a patent. While in theory, patent grants could be automatic, inventions must meet certain standards for the grant to be justified. These procedural hurdles create possibilities for gamesmanship in how property rights are allocated.
Furthermore, even if granted correctly, property rights can become murky because of the problems of enforcement through litigation. Courts must determine when an invention has been used, made, or sold without permission by a third party in violation of the rights of the patent owner. This legal process can lead to gamesmanship as patent owners try to force settlements from alleged infringers. Meanwhile, third parties may act opportunistically to take advantage of the uncertain boundaries of patent rights and engage in undetectable infringement. Exacerbating these tendencies are the difficulties in determining damages and the possibility of injunctive relief.
Some caution against these criticisms through the observation that most patents are not enforced. In fact, most granted patents turn out to be worthless, when gauged in commercial value. But worthless patents still have potential litigation value. While a patent owner might view a worthless patent as a sunk cost, there is incentive to recoup investment through the sale of worthless patents to parties willing to assume the risk of litigation. Hence the phenomenon of “trolling,” or the rise of non-practicing entities, troubles the patent landscape. This phenomenon gives rise to concerns with the anticompetitive uses of patents, demonstrating the need for some limitations on patent enforcement.
With all the policy concerns arising from patents, it is no surprise that patent law has been ripe for reform. Economic analysis can inform these reform efforts by identifying ways in which patents fail to create a vibrant market for inventions. Appreciation of the political economy of patents invites a rich academic and policy debate over the direction of patent law.
Article
Contests: Theory and Topics
Qiang Fu and Zenan Wu
Competitive situations resembling contests are ubiquitous in modern economic landscape. In a contest, economic agents expend costly effort to vie for limited prizes, and they are rewarded for “getting ahead” of their opponents instead of their absolute performance metrics. Many social, economic, and business phenomena exemplify such competitive schemes, ranging from college admissions, political campaigns, advertising, and organizational hierarchies, to warfare. The economics literature has long recognized contest/tournament as a convenient and efficient incentive scheme to remedy the moral hazard problem, especially when the production process is subject to random perturbation or the measurement of input/output is imprecise or costly. An enormous amount of scholarly effort has been devoted to developing tractable theoretical models, unveiling the fundamentals of the strategic interactions that underlie such competitions, and exploring the optimal design of contest rules. This voluminous literature has enriched basic contest/tournament models by introducing different variations to the modeling, such as dynamic structure, incomplete and asymmetric information, multi-battle confrontations, sorting and entry, endogenous prize allocation, competitions in groups, contestants with alternative risk attitude, among other things.
Article
Contracts and Working Conditions in Medicine
Helen Hayes and Matt Sutton
Contracts and working conditions are important influences on the medical workforce that must be carefully constructed and considered by policymakers. Contracts involve an enforceable agreement of the rights and responsibilities of both employer and employee. The principal–agent relationship and presence of asymmetric information in healthcare means that contracts must be incentive compatible and create sufficient incentive for doctors to act in the payer’s best interests. Within medicine, there are special characteristics that are believed to be particularly pertinent to doctors, who act as agents to both the patient and the payer. These include intrinsic motivation, professionalism, altruism, and multitasking, and they influence the success of these contracts. The three most popular methods of payment are fee-for-service, capitation, and salaries. In most contexts a blend of each of these three payment methods is used; however, guidance on the most appropriate blend is unclear and the evidence on the special nature of doctors is insubstantial. The role of skill mix and teamwork in a healthcare setting is an important consideration as it impacts the success of incentives and payment systems and the efficiency of workers. Additionally, with increasing demand for healthcare, changing skill mix is one response to problems with recruitment and retention in health services. Health systems in many settings depend on a large proportion of foreign-born workers and so migration is a key consideration in retention and recruitment of health workers. Finally, forms of external regulation such as accreditation, inspection, and revalidation are widely used in healthcare systems; however, robust evidence of their effectiveness is lacking.
Article
The Contribution of New Economic Geography
Pascal Mossay and Pierre M. Picard
New Economic Geography (NEG) provides microeconomic foundations for explaining the spatial concentration of economic activities across regions, cities, and urban areas. The origins of the NEG literature trace back to trade, location, and urbans economics theories. In NEG, agglomeration and dispersion forces explain the existence of spatial agglomerations. A NEG model usually incorporates a combination of such forces. In particular, firm proximity to large markets and the importance of linkages along a supply chain are typical agglomeration forces. Equilibria properties derived from NEG models are very specific to NEG as they involve multiple equilibria and have a very high dependence on changes in parameters. This phenomenon has important implications for the emergence of nations, regions, and cities. In particular, high transport costs imply the dispersion of economic activities, while low transport costs lead to their spatial concentration. The same forces that shape inequalities and disparities between regions also shape the internal structure of cities. Firms concentrate in urban centers to gain greater access to larger demand. The empirical literature has developed several approaches that shed light on spatial agglomeration and estimate the role and impact of transport costs on market access. A key empirical research question is whether observed patterns could be explained by location amenities or agglomeration forces as put forward by NEG. Quasi-experimental methodology is frequently used for such a purpose. NEG theory is supported by empirical evidence, demonstrating the role of market access.
Article
The Contribution of Vocational Education and Training to Innovation and Growth
Uschi Backes-Gellner and Patrick Lehnert
Despite the common view that innovation requires academically educated workers, some countries that strongly emphasize vocational education and training (VET) in their education systems—such as Switzerland and Germany—are highly competitive internationally in terms of innovation. These countries have dual VET programs, that is, upper-secondary-level apprenticeship programs, that combine about three quarters of workplace training with about one quarter of vocational schooling, and design them in such a way that their graduates (i.e., dual apprenticeship-graduates) play crucial roles in innovation processes. Regular updates of VET curricula incorporate the latest technological developments into these curricula, thereby ensuring that dual apprenticeship-graduates possess up-to-date, high-level skills in their chosen occupation. This process allows these graduates to contribute to innovation in firms. Moreover, these graduates acquire broad sets of technical and soft skills that enhance their job mobility and flexibility. Therefore, conventional wisdom notwithstanding, dual apprenticeship-graduates in such countries not only have broad skill sets that accelerate innovation in firms, but also willingly participate in innovation because of their high flexibility and employability.
Moreover, Switzerland and Germany have tertiary-level VET institutions that foster innovation. These are universities of applied sciences (UASs), which teach and conduct applied research, thereby helping build a bridge between different types of knowledge (vocational and academic). UAS students have prior vocational knowledge through their dual apprenticeship and acquire applied research skills from UAS professors who usually have both work experience and a doctoral degree from an academic university. Thus UAS graduates combine sound occupational knowledge with applied research knowledge inspired by input from the academic research frontier and from practical research and development (R & D) in firms. Firms employ UAS graduates with their knowledge combination as an important input for R & D. Consequently, regions with a UAS have higher levels of innovation than regions without one. This effect is particularly strong for regions outside major innovation centers and for regions with larger percentages of smaller firms.
Article
Corporate Credit Derivatives
George Batta and Fan Yu
Corporate credit derivatives are over-the-counter (OTC) contracts whose payoffs are determined by a single corporate credit event or a portfolio of such events. Credit derivatives became popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a way for financial institutions to reduce their regulatory capital requirement, and early research treated them as redundant securities whose pricing is tied to the underlying corporate bonds and equities, with liquidity and counterparty risk factors playing supplementary roles. Research in the 2010s and beyond, however, increasingly focused on the effects of market frictions on the pricing of CDSs, how CDS trading has impacted corporate behaviors and outcomes as well as the price efficiency and liquidity of other related markets, and the microstructure of the CDS market itself. This was made possible by the availability of market statistics and more granular trade and quote data as a result of the broad movement of the OTC derivatives market toward central clearing.
Article
Corporate Governance and Enterprise Governance
Brett McDonnell
Corporate governance includes legal, contractual, and market mechanisms that structure decision-making within business corporations. Most attention has focused on corporate governance in large U.S. public corporations with dispersed shareholding. The separation of ownership from control in those corporations creates a unique problem, as shareholders typically have weak individual incentive to monitor managers. Mechanisms that have been developed to address this agency problem include independent directors, fiduciary duty, securities law disclosure, executive compensation, various professional gatekeepers, the market for corporate control, and shareholder activism. In most countries outside the United States, there are few companies with dispersed shareholding. Instead, most companies have a controlling shareholder or group. These companies face a different agency problem, the possibility that controlling shareholders may use their power to gain at the expense of minority shareholders.
Enterprise governance refers to mechanisms aimed at related agency problems that occur in closely held companies without publicly traded equity interests. Here too the agency problem typically encountered is the potential conflict between controllers and minority investors, with the added twist that share illiquidity removes an important protection for the minority. Closely held companies have adopted a variety of contractual mechanisms to address these concerns. Other than the important but special cases of venture capital and private equity fund investments, there is less empirical evidence on governance in closely held companies because information is generally much harder to find.
Article
Corporate Governance Implications of the Growth in Indexing
Alon Brav, Andrey Malenko, and Nadya Malenko
Passively managed (index) funds have grown to become among the largest shareholders in many publicly traded companies. Their large ownership stakes and voting power have attracted the attention of market participants, academics, and regulators and have sparked an active debate about their corporate governance role. While many studies explore the governance implications of passive fund growth, they often come to conflicting conclusions.
To understand how the growth in indexing can affect governance, it is important to understand fund managers’ incentives to be engaged shareholders. These incentives depend on fund managers’ compensation contracts, ownership stakes, assets under management, and costs of engagement. Major passive asset managers, such as the Big Three (BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard), may have incentives to be engaged even though they track the indices and their engagement efforts benefit all other funds that track the same indices. This is because such funds’ substantial ownership stakes in multiple firms can both increase the effectiveness of their engagement and create relatively large financial benefits from engagement despite the low fees they collect. However, there is a difference between large and small index fund families: the incentives of the latter are likely to be substantially smaller, and the empirical evidence appears to be consistent with this distinction.
The governance effects of passive fund growth also depend on where flows to passive funds come from, which investors are replaced by passive funds in firms’ ownership structures, how passive funds interact with other shareholders, and how their growth affects other asset managers’ compensation structures. Considering such aggregate effects and interactions can help reconcile the seemingly conflicting findings in the empirical literature. It also suggests that policymakers should be careful in using the existing studies to understand the aggregate governance effects of passive fund growth over the past decades.
Overall, the literature has made important progress in understanding and quantifying passive funds’ incentives to engage, their monitoring activities and voting practices, and their interactions with other shareholders. Based on the findings in the literature, there is yet no clear answer to whether passive fund growth has been beneficial or detrimental for governance, and there are many open questions remaining. These open questions suggest several important directions for future research in this area.
Article
Corporate Leverage: Insights From International Data
Özde Öztekin
Capital structure theories offer a framework to understand how firms determine their mix of debt and equity financing. These theories, such as the trade-off theory, pecking order theory, market timing theory, agency theory, and theories of corporate control and input/output market interactions, provide insights into the roles of internal company characteristics and external economic conditions for corporate financing decisions. They explain firms’ preferences for and access to different financing sources based on factors like tax benefits, bankruptcy costs, agency costs, information asymmetry costs, and market conditions. Internationally, these theories take on additional dimensions due to differences in tax regimes, legal and institutional environments, and market structures. For example, the trade-off theory, which balances the tax advantages of debt against the costs associated with financial distress, varies significantly across countries because of differing bankruptcy and tax laws. Similarly, the pecking order theory, which suggests firms prefer internal financing over external debt, and external debt over equity, is influenced by the development of financial markets and the level of information sharing in different countries. The market timing theory posits that firms capitalize on market conditions by timing their financing decisions based on market valuations of debt and equity, with its applicability differing internationally due to variations in economic cycles and investor sentiment across markets. Agency theory and theories of corporate control delve into how conflicts between managers, shareholders, and debt holders shape financial strategies, with variations arising from different corporate governance structures and enforcement levels globally. The input/output market interactions theory asserts that firms determine their capital structure based on their market position, which can vary significantly due to differing international market demands and competitive landscapes. Empirical research provides insights into how these diverse factors play out across different legal, regulatory, economic, and cultural environments. International studies have shown that leverage determinants like corporate and personal tax rates, corporate governance and ownership structure, market conditions, and institutional frameworks significantly impact capital structure decisions globally. Moreover, cultural differences also play a crucial role in shaping financial decisions, influencing managerial attitudes toward risk. These insights are critical for multinational corporations and policymakers, as they highlight the necessity of considering a broad array of factors, including tax considerations, market conditions, legal and social frameworks, corporate governance and ownership structure, investor behavior, and institutional and regulatory environments, when making decisions about capital structure in an international context. This comprehensive understanding helps in creating conducive environments for effective corporate financing choices on a global scale.
Article
Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Finance
Hao Liang and Luc Renneboog
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to the incorporation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations into corporate management, financial decision-making, and investors’ portfolio decisions. Socially responsible firms are expected to internalize the externalities they create (e.g., pollution) and be accountable to shareholders and other stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, etc.). Rating agencies have developed firm-level measures of ESG performance that are widely used in the literature. However, these ratings show inconsistencies that result from the rating agencies’ preferences, weights of the constituting factors, and rating methodology.
CSR also deals with sustainable, responsible, and impact investing. The return implications of investing in the stocks of socially responsible firms include the search for an EGS factor and the performance of SRI funds. SRI funds apply negative screening (exclusion of “sin” industries), positive screening, and activism through engagement or proxy voting. In this context, one wonders whether responsible investors are willing to trade off financial returns with a “moral” dividend (the return given up in exchange for an increase in utility driven by the knowledge that an investment is ethical). Related to the analysis of externalities and the ethical dimension of corporate decisions is the literature on green financing (the financing of environmentally friendly investment projects by means of green bonds) and on how to foster economic decarbonization as climate change affects financial markets and investor behavior.
Article
Corporate Takeovers and Non-Financial Stakeholders
Daniel Greene, Omesh Kini, Mo Shen, and Jaideep Shenoy
A large body of work has examined the impact of corporate takeovers on the financial stakeholders (shareholders and bondholders) of the merging firms. Since the late 2000s, empirical research has increasingly highlighted the crucial role played by the non-financial stakeholders (labor, suppliers, customers, government, and communities) in these transactions. It is, therefore, important to understand the interplay between corporate takeovers and the non-financial stakeholders of the firm.
Financial economists have long viewed the firm as a nexus of contracts between various stakeholders connected to the firm. Corporate takeovers not only play an important role in redefining the broad boundaries of the firm but also result in major changes to corporate ownership and structure. In the process, takeovers can significantly alter the contractual relationships with non-financial stakeholders. Because the firm’s relationships with these stakeholders are governed by implicit and explicit contracts, circumstances can arise that allow acquiring firms to fully or partially abrogate these contracts and extract rents from non-financial stakeholders after deal completion. In contrast, non-financial stakeholders can also potentially benefit from a takeover if they get to share in any efficiency gains that are generated in the deal.
Given this framework, the ex-ante importance of these contractual relationships can have a bearing on the efficacy of takeovers. The ability to alter contractual relationships ex post can affect the propensity of a takeover and merging firms’ shareholders and, in turn, impact non-financial stakeholders. Non-financial stakeholders will be more vested in post-takeover success if they can trust the acquiring firm to not take actions that are detrimental to them. The big picture that emerges from the surveyed literature is that non-financial stakeholder considerations affect takeover decisions and post-takeover outcomes. Moreover, takeovers also have an impact on non-financial stakeholders. The directions of all these effects, however, depend on the economic environment in which the merging firms operate.
Article
Corruption and Development: A Reappraisal
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Till Hartmann
Corruption and development are two mutually related concepts equally shifting in meaning across time. The predominant 21st-century view of government that regards corruption as inacceptable has its theoretical roots in ancient Western thought, as well as Eastern thought. This condemning view of corruption coexisted at all times with a more morally indifferent or neutral approach that found its expression most notably in development scholars of the 1960s and 1970s who viewed corruption as an enabler of development rather than an obstacle. Research on the nexus between corruption and development has identified mechanisms that enable corruption and offered theories of change, which have informed practical development policies. Interventions adopting a principal agent approach fit better the advanced economies, where corruption is an exception, rather than the emerging economies, where the opposite of corruption, the norm of ethical universalism, has yet to be built. In such contexts corruption is better approached from a collective action perspective. Reviewing cross-national data for the period 1996–2017, it becomes apparent that the control of corruption stagnated in most countries and only a few exceptions exist. For a lasting improvement of the control of corruption, societies need to reduce the resources for corruption while simultaneously increasing constraints. The evolution of a governance regime requires a multiple stakeholder endeavor reaching beyond the sphere of government involving the press, business, and a strong and activist civil society.
