Corporate Financing and Product Market Competition: An Overview

This paper offers an overview of the main interactions between corporate financing decisions and product market competition. Financial policy may affect the market game in several ways. It can make a firm more or less vulnerable to predation, commit the firm to a particular market strategy, or convey signals to the firm's competitors. Financial policy matters also in that the decision to resort to a common lender can facilitate collusion among competing firms. Finally, an appropriate design of financial claims can commit the lender not to provide potential entrants with funding or expertise

Insurance Between Firms: The Role of Internal Labor Markets

We investigate how Internal Labor Markets (ILMs) allow organizations to accommodate shocks calling for costly labor adjustments. Using data on workers' mobility within French business groups, we find that adverse shocks affecting affiliated firms boost the proportion of workers redeployed to other group units rather than external firms. This effect is stronger when labor regulations are stricter and destination-firms are more efficient or enjoy better growth opportunities. Affiliated firms hit by positive shocks rely on the ILM for new hires, especially high-skilled workers. Overall, ILMs emerge as a co-insurance mechanism within organizations, providing job stability to employees as a by-product

The deep-pocket effect of internal capital markets

We provide evidence that incumbent and entrant firms' access to business group deep pockets affects entry patterns in product markets. Relying on a unique French data set on business groups, our paper shows that entry in manufacturing industries is negatively related to the cash hoarded by incumbent-affiliated groups, and positively related to entrant groups' cash. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that the impact on entry of group cash holdings is more important in environments where financial constraints are pronounced and in more financially dependent sectors. The cash holdings of incumbent and entrant groups also affect the survival rate of entrants in the 3 to 5 year post-entry window. Overall, our findings suggest that internal capital markets operate within corporate groups and affect the product market behavior of affiliated firms by mitigating financial constraints

mycosis fungoides in childhood description and study of two siblings

Primary cutaneous T-cell lymphomas are exceedingly rare in children and adolescents. However, mycosis fungoides (MF) is the most frequent primary cutaneous lymphoma diagnosed in childhood. Two cases of MF in siblings (a 14-year-old boy and his 10-year-old sister) are reported. On the basis of clinical features (histopathological and immunophenotypical findings) a diagnosis of MF patch lesions was made in both siblings. Since recent data in the literature have underlined a high frequency of the HLA-DQB1*03 allele in patients with familial MF (including child patients), the HLA profile of the patients was analysed, indicating the presence of a haplotype (HLA-DQB1*03,*03 in the girl, HLA-DQB1*02,*03 in the boy) corresponding with that described in recent literature. Two rare and exceptional cases of MF in siblings are reported, highlighting the presence of a peculiar haplotype

Managerial Entrenchment and Corporate Social Responsibility

CEPR Discussion Papers 464

La conservazione di interi nuclei documentali. Un diverso approccio alla conservazione e al restauro. Il caso della Biblioteca di scienze sociali di Firenze : Il caso della Biblioteca di scienze sociali di Firenze

In 2012, the bindings of the books of the ancient fund of the Library of social sciences showed the first signs of deterioration, due to the heavy changes in temperature and humidity of the conservation environment. While the University worked at implementing a new air conditioning system, the Tuscany Region and the officials of the National Central Library of Florence developed a project for the safety of the entire fund, to slow down the process of deterioration and prevent or stabilize the damage already present. The innovative method implemented in the Library was illustrated in a seminar held on November 24, 2016 at the Polo di Scienze Sociali of the University of Florence and this volume collects the speeches of the participants.Nel 2012 i libri del fondo antico della Biblioteca di scienze sociali di Firenze presentano i primi segnali di deterioramento delle legature, a causa delle forti escursioni di temperatura e umidit\ue0 dell’ambiente di conservazione. Mentre l’Ateneo realizza un nuovo impianto di climatizzazione, la Regione Toscana e i funzionari della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze elaborano un progetto per la messa in sicurezza dell’intero fondo, per rallentare il processo di deterioramento dei materiali e prevenire o stabilizzare i danni gi\ue0 presenti. L’innovativa metodica messa in atto nella Biblioteca \ue8 stata illustrata in un seminario tenuto il 24 novembre 2016 presso il Polo di scienze sociali dell’Universit\ue0 di Firenze e il presente volume raccoglie gli interventi dei partecipanti

Anti-Competitive Financial Contracting: the Design of Financial Claims.

In this paper we show that the "Coase problem" of the private oversupply of inputs applies equally to investors supplying capital to firms. Investors would like to commit to supplying only the monopoly amount of capital to an industry, but ex-post may be tempted to fund a second firm, devaluing the investment of the first entrepreneur.CAPITAL ; COMPETITION ; BUSINESS FINANCING

Innovation and Competition with Asymmetric Information

We investigate the relationship between R&D incentives and product market competition in a model where neither competitors nor contractual parties (e.g., suppliers) are able to observe the exact value of a firm's innovation. The intensity of R&D activity thus affects the rival's perception of the firm's strength, as well as its contractual relationship with third parties. We show that the latter "contractual" effect neutralizes any strategic value of R&D, implying that more intense competition invariably stifles innovation incentives in asymmetric information environments. We also compare the firm and the supplier's attitude towards innovation and find that dissonant preferences over R&D intensity arise when R&D generates positive spillovers on rivals and product market competition is intense. Our results raise the issue of how governance factors (monitoring, control of R&D) interact with product market competition in shaping innovation incentives