Dynamic Adjustment of Corporate Leverage: Is there a lesson to learn from the Recent Asian Crisis?

Much of the macro literature on the recent Asian crisis argues that a major cause was over borrowing and over investment encouraged by poor supervision and the resulting moral hazard problem. Surprisingly however there is little firm-level evidence to corroborate this. The present paper examines the extent to which firms in these countries had deviated from their optimal levels of leverage and also the determinants of their ability to adjust their capital structure. Results obtained using the Worldscope firm-level panel data for the four of the worst affected countries suggest that higher quality firms had lower optimal leverage while firms with excess capital stock had higher optimal leverage required to finance this capital expenditire. Further, there are signs of corporate inertia in the worst affected countries exhibiting very slow adjustment processes in their capital structure. This result holds even for those firms potentially better placed to control their levels of leverage. These results seem to strengthen the moral hazard argument of bad loans in poorly regulated and supervised East Asian economies.Moral hazard, Optimum leverage, Dynamic model, Speed of adjustment

How Ownership Structure Affects Capital Structure and Firm Performance? Recent Evidence from East Asia

Despite the seminal work of Claessens et al. (2002), role of ownership structure on capital structure and firm performance in East Asian corporattions remains much unexplored. Within the framework of Bajaj et al. (1998), the present paper empirically examines the effects of a controlling manager and degree of monitoring (a measure of moral hazard) on capital structure and firm performance among a sample of Korean and Indonesian firms. In doing so, we not only allow for simultaneity between capital structure and firm performance (a la Berger and di Patti, 2003), but also the non-linearity in these relationships. Our empirical results in essence depend on whether a firm is run by a family and also whether there is a manager who is also a controlling owner. There is evidence that family ownership could mitigate the problem of moral hazard though it could exacerbate the problem of over-lending in our samples. Also the effects of ownership structure on firm performance cannot be delineated from its effects on leverage. As such, the results presented here confirm and extend the essential findings of Claessens et al. (2002) and Bajaj et al. (1998).Asian Crisis, Corporate Governance, Capital structure, Firm performance, Expropriation of minority shareholders, 3SLS estimates, Simultaneity bias, Non-linearity.

How Ownership Structure Affects Capital Structure and Firm Performance? Recent Evidence from East Asia

Despite the seminal work of Claessens et al. (2002), who highlighted the role of ownership structure on firm performance in East Asia, the relationship between capital structure and ownership remains much unexplored. This is important, given recent empirical and theoretical work linking capital structure and performance. The novelty of the present paper is that in examining the effects of ownership concentration on capital structure and firm performance, it not only allows for simultaneity between capital structure and firm performance, but also controls for one possible source of moral hazard related to the higher voting rights relative to cash flow rights. The paper clearly establishes that results are rather country-specific and the effects of ownership structure on firm performance cannot be delineated from its effects on leverage. More interestingly, these results highlight that higher voting rights could pose some moral hazard problem if there is a controlling manager shareholder called Cronyman in our analysis. Evidently family ownership could mitigate some of these moral hazard problems, though it could exacerbate the problem of over-lending. As such, the results presented here confirm and extend the essential findings of Claessens et al. (2002), though illustrate the importance of allowing for simultaneity between capital structure and firm performance.

Dynamic Adjustment of Corporate Leverage: Is there a lesson to learn from the Recent Asian Crisis?

While the aggregate macroeconomic analysis of the recent Asian Crisis highlights the moral hazard problem of bad loans in poorly supervised and regulated East Asian economies, there is very little firm-level analysis to characterize it. The present paper attempts to fill in this gap of the literature and focuses on the process of dynamic adjustment of the actual leverage towards the optimum. Our results based on the Worldscope firm-level panel data indicate a close correspondence between excess leverage and excess capital stock and also reveal signs of corporate inertia. This inertia has been evident not only among firms with excess capital stock, but also among those with larger share of short-term debt in the worst affected countries, especially during the pre-crisis and crisis periods; the adjustment process was however speeded up in the post-crisis period. One possible way out of this problem of bad loans would be to develop the equity market and induce the firms to rely more on equity finance.Moral hazard, Over-lending and over-investment, Speed of adjustment, Inertia, Generalised Methods of Moments

How Ownership Structure Affects Capital Structure and Firm Performance? Recent Evidence from East Asia

Despite the seminal work of Claessens et al. (2002), who highlighted the role of ownership structure on firm performance in East Asia, the relationship between capital structure and ownership remains much unexplored. This is important, given recent empirical and theoretical work linking capital structure and performance. The novelty of the present paper is that in examining the effects of ownership concentration on capital structure and firm performance, it not only allows for simultaneity between capital structure and firm performance, but also controls for one possible source of moral hazard related to the higher voting rights relative to cash flow rights. The paper clearly establishes that results are rather country-specific and the effects of ownership structure on firm performance cannot be delineated from its effects on leverage. More interestingly, these results highlight that higher voting rights could pose some moral hazard problem if there is a controlling manager shareholder called Cronyman in our analysis. Evidently family ownership could mitigate some of these moral hazard problems, though it could exacerbate the problem of over-lending. As such, the results presented here confirm and extend the essential findings of Claessens et al. (2002).Asian Crisis, Corporate Governance, Capital structure, Firm performance, Expropriation of minority shareholders, Moral hazard, 3SLS estimates, Simultaneity bias, Non-linearity.

Economic reforms in India Impact on savings and productivity of the manufacturing sector

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN065361 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Dynamics of inflation in India: does the new inflation bias hypothesis provide an explanation?

In this paper we estimate the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) policy response to supply shocks. In particular, we exploit an important strand of the recent literature (the new inflation bias hypothesis) to understand why the two frequently cited measures of inflation in India have persistently diverged in recent years. Specifically, it is argued that the difference in coverage and weighting pattern between the indices interacting with policies pursued by the RBI to control its preferred inflation measure WPI turned out to be inappropriate with respect to stabilizing expected CPI-IW inflation. This in turn provides an explanation for the persistent divergence between the two measures of inflation.supply shocks, monetary policy, inflation divergence,

Preference asymmetry and international reserve accretion in India

Reduced-form estimates of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) first-order condition indicate that its preferences have been asymmetric with respect to exchange-rate management, with the response to the rate of rupee appreciation being relatively larger than to the rate of rupee depreciation of the same magnitude. This behaviour is shown to account for a sizable fraction of reserve accretion in recent years.