Scale effects, time-varying markups and cyclical behavior of primal and dual productivity

This paper presents estimates of the degree of returns to scale using nonparametric measures of primal and dual productivity for 2-digit US manufacturing industries. As part of the analysis, the cyclical behaviour of primal and dual productivity measures are considered, time-varying markups are allowed for, and the small sample properties of the instrumental variables estimator used to derive the estimates from the primal and dual relations examined. Both the primal and dual estimates indicate the existence of increasing returns to scale for the durable goods industries. The simulation results indicate there is a slight tendency for the dual equation estimates to overestimate the degree of returns to scale. However, small sample bias appears to be most severe for the non-durable goods industries

Bank Lending with Imperfect Competition and Spillover Effects

We examine bank lending decisions in an economy with spillover effects in the creation of new investment opportunities and asymmetric information in credit markets. We examine pricesetting equilibria with horizontally differentiated banks. If bank lending takes place under a weak corporate governance mechanism and is fraught with agency problems and ineffective bank monitoring, then an equilibrium emerges in which loan supply is strategically restricted. In this equilibrium, the loan restriction, the “under-lending?strategy, provides an advantage to one bank by increasing its market share and sustaining monopoly interest rates. The bank’s incentives for doing so increase under conditions of increased volatility of lending capacities of banks, more severe borrower-side moral hazard, and lower returns on the investment projects. Although this equilibrium is not always unique, with poor bank monitoring and corporate governance, a more intense banking competition renders the bad equilibrium the unique outcome.Bank lending, threshold effects, underlending equilibria, interest rate competition.

Search Frictions, Financial Frictions and Labor Market Fluctuations in Emerging Economies

This paper examines the role of the extensive and intensive margins of work in the context of business cycles in emerging markets with a financial friction. The earlier literature analyzed the role of search frictions with only an extensive margin of work and showed that such a framework can address the distinguishable business-cycle characteristics of emerging markets such as highly volatile consumption, countercyclical net exports, highly volatile wages and pro-cyclical wages. One of our contributions is to show that in the presence of an endogenous hours choice, search frictions fail to predict not only these characteristics but also the positive co-movement of hours worked per worker and employment with output. This occurs due to the strong income effect on hours worked. On the other hand, introducing a financial friction, namely working capital, significantly increases the performance of the model and suggests frictions in both labor markets and financial markets are necessary for explaining emerging market business cycles.search frictions, emerging markets, business cycles, working capital

The Role of Lender behavior in International Project Finance

A sovereign borrower seeks to raise funds internationally to finance a fixed-size project, which no single lender can finance alone. Lenders cannot lend more than their endowments, which are private information. A coordination failure arises therefore, some socially desirable projects may not be financed, even if ex post feasible. There are multiple equilibria, and a conflict exists between lenders about which equilibrium to coordinate on. When endowments are volatile, some lenders prefer an equilibrium in which the project is financed with probability p

The Impact of Tax Risk and Persistence on Investment Decisions

There is evidence that tax rates have varied considerably through time. In the postwar years, changes in business taxation in the U.S. have occurred at a pace of approximately every three years. The purpose of this research is to examine the implications of tax risk and persistence on irreversible investment decisions.

Time to build and aggregate fluctuations: some new evidence

This paper presents maximum likelihood estimates of a real business cycle model very similar to one Kydland and Prescott [1982] suggested. The results of the paper conflict with Kydland and Prescott’s. The model leaves unexplained much of the variance of two key investment series, namely, structures and equipment. Also, much of the variation in the differences of per capita hours can be generated assuming that past leisure choices do not affect current utility.