The Formation of Firms and the Prior Experience of New Entrepreneurs

We use a simple model to analyze the founding stage of new firms. Our goal is to characterize the directional causality between the expected rewards from entrepreneurship and the length of prior labor market experience that entrepreneurs possess. We test predictions about the timing of the formation of new firms on a sample of Italian entrepreneurs who founded new firms in the period 1992-2004. We obtain three main results. First, the timing of the foundation of new firms is determined primarily by the expectation of higher income and not so much by the perception of risk. Second, earlier experience of entrepreneurs in full time employment has a positive impact on the size of newly founded firms. Third, when we separate founders who work alone from founders who work with family partners, we find that the latter establish and control larger firms.

Liquidity and Issue Costs in the Eurobond Market: the Effects of Market Integration.

We investigate and compare the issuance costs of Eurobonds before and after the completion of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 2002, and find that the introduction of the euro has significantly reduced the issue cost of euro-denominated bonds compared with bonds denominated in the legacy currencies. The reduction in issue cost was not due to a decrease in underwriter compensation, but rather to the elimination of underpricing (the difference between the market price after trading commences and the offering price). Underwriter fee has declined substantially after the EMU, but that decline was offset by an increase in the underwriter spread (the difference between the offering price and the guaranteed price to the issuer), leaving total underwriter compensation unchanged. The EMU is also associated with significant reductions in bond maturity and syndicate size, consistent with its expected effects on liquidity and issue costs in the Eurobond market.

Debt issue costs and issue characteristics in the Eurobond market.

This paper analyzes the issue costs and initial pricing of bonds in the international market. In particular, we investigate the determinants of three components of issue costs: underwriter fee, underwriter spread (the difference between the offering price and the guaranteed price to the issuer), and underpricing (the difference between the market price and the offering price). Total underwriter compensation increases with the bonds’ credit risk and maturity, but it is insignificantly related to issue size. Interestingly, underwriters appear to price some issue characteristics directly (by adjusting the fee) and other characteristics indirectly (by setting the guaranteed price). The two compensation components (fee and spread) are negatively related to each other. We provide evidence that this trade-off is consistent with income tax considerations, as well as with two-tier pricing by underwriters. We find no evidence of underpricing.International bonds; Issue costs; Underwriter compensation

The Institutional Structure and the Cost of Bank Loans: an International Comparison

In recent years international comparisons emphasized the importance of institutional and legal factors in capital market development and the performance of private firms. Here that approach is applied to the pricing of bank loans. Loan rates depend on contract parameters such as risk, the existence of covenants and loan size. Syndicate structure and the number of lenders also determine the cost of borrowing. Loan prices are also negatively impacted if the lending banks operate as part of larger conglomerates. Loan prices are also shown to depend on a number of institutional factors, such as the quality of protection of creditor rights and the quality of law enforcement. Curiously, we find that contracts with customers in "French tradition" countries were priced lower, as if having lower risk, than others, other things held equal. This is not in line with other segments of the literature on international capital market differences and institutional factors. It suggests that differences across legal traditions are more complicated than previously understood

Relationships and the availability of credit to New Small Firms

We analyze the loans that startup firms obtain from banks by testing our predictions on a set of small, young Italian companies founded during the 1992-2004 period. According to our investigation, the amount of borrowing is determined by (1) the size of the firm, (2), the ability to offer collateral (3) perceived risk. Contrary to expectations, however, the length of the relationship with the lender has a weak influence.

Relative Market Share, Leadership and Competition in Concentrated Banking Markets.

For many years IO economists devoted attention to the size distributions’ of firms in a given industry. Most studies showed that the size distribution of firms in oligopolistic markets is highly skewed. There are many small firms and a few large firms. There is also a consensus that relative market shares are important and that large firms are, in general, more profitable and durable than small firms. Relative size is also important as a determinant of the structure of the industry. The concept is also central in strategic analysis of business firms and in the formulation of government (regulatory) policy. In this paper we propose to use an empirical measure of market leadership. The measure relies on the assumption that the degree of competition critically depends on how dominant the leading firm is in a given industry. The measure also takes into account the number of “significant” competitors in the market and how close they are to the leading firm in terms of size. The measure is simple to use and easy to interpret. It also yields a critical value that facilitates comparisons between different markets.

Loan Commitments and Monetary Policy

The impact of loan commitment agreements on the way in which changes in monetary policy affects the economy is examined. In particular, the empirical relevance of quantity credit rationing in the transmission of monetary policy is studied with VAR models. We find evidence of a differential impact of monetary policy on loans under commitment and not under commitment. Our conclusion is that credit rationing for bank loans does occur, although loan commitments effectively protect borrowers from credit rationing. Thus, loan commitments which insulate borrowers from the effects of quantity rationing force monetary policy to work exclusively through interest rate channels.

Early Work Experience and the Transition into Entrepreneurship

We use a simple model to analyze the founding stage of new firms. Our goal is to characterize the directional causality between the expected rewards from entrepreneurship and the length of prior labor market experience that entrepreneurs possess. We test predictions about the timing of the formation of new firms on a sample of Italian entrepreneurs. We obtain three main results. First, the timing of the foundation of new firms is determined primarily by the expectation of higher income and not so much by the perception of risk. Second, earlier experience of entrepreneurs in full time employment has a positive impact on the size of newly founded firms. Third, founders who work with family partners establish and control larger firms

Determinants of the Development of Corporate Bond Markets in Argentina: One Size Does Not Fit All

Conventional theory leads to expect bonds to be a financing vehicle for large firms because of economies of scale and contracting costs. We find both in our econometric evidence for firms quoted on Latin American stock exchanges, and in our survey results for Argentina, that size of assets is a robust determinant of the use of bond finance. This result, together with the fact that there are few firms that are large in terms of market value, can help understand why Argentina, as well as Latin America, has small bond markets in terms of the ratio of the stock of bonds to GDP. Since firm value represents the present value of the cash flows against which the firm borrows, the outstanding stock of corporate bonds is as small as the size of Argentine firms