Corporate governance, competition, the new international financial architecture and large corporations in emerging markets

This paper examines from the developing countries perspective important analytical and policy issues arising from: a) the current international discussions about corporate governance in relation to the New International Financial Architecture; b) changes in the international competitive environment being caused by the enormous international merger movement in advanced countries. The paper's main conclusions include: the thesis that the deeper causes of the Asian crisis were the flawed systems of corporate governance and a poor competitive environment in the affected countries is not supported by the evidence; emerging markets, as well as European countries, have successful records of fast long-term growth with different governance systems, indeed superior to those of Anglo-Saxon countries; corporate financing patterns in emerging markets in the 1990s continue to be anomalous, as they were in the 1980s; and the claim that developing country conglomerates are inefficient and financially precarious is not supported by evidence or analysis.Corporate governance, competition, emerging markets.

Corporate Governance, Competetion, The new International Financial Architecture and Large Corporations in Emerging Markets

This paper examines from the developing countries perspective important analytical and policy issues arising from: a) the current international discussions about corporate governance in relation to the New International Financial Architecture; b) changes in the international competitive environment being caused by the enormous international merger movement in advanced countries. The background to a) above is the emergence of corporate governance as a key issue in the current G7 proposals for the New International Financial Architecture. The G7 emphasis on corporate governance can be traced back to the thesis that the ‘deeper’ reasons for the Asian crisis lay in the microeconomic behaviour of corporations and businesses in the affected countries. The failings of the corporate governance mechanisms and distortions in the competitive process have received special scrutiny in such analyses. With respect to b) above, the context is that the largest corporations in advanced countries are currently in the process of potentially cartelising the world market place through a spate of cross-border mergers and take-overs. This huge merger movement raises serious policy concerns for developing countries. The paper's main conclusions are: 1. The thesis that the deeper causes of the Asian crisis were the flawed systems of corporate governance and a poor competitive environment in the affected countries is not supported by evidence. 2. The Anglo-Saxon model of widely held corporations with dispersed share ownership is by far the exception in developing countries and in much of continental Europe. Empirical evidence suggests that emerging markets, as well as European countries such as Italy, Sweden or Germany have successful records of fast long-term growth with different governance systems, indeed superior to those of Anglo-Saxon countries. 3. Empirical evidence does not support the view that the Asian crisis 1997 to 1999 was caused by crony capitalism. 4. Corporate financing patterns in emerging markets in the 1990s were broadly similar to those observed in the 1980s. Unlike their counterparts in advanced countries, large developing countries firms continued to rely overwhelmingly on external sources to finance their growth of total assets. 5. The analysis of this paper does not support the claim that developing country conglomerates are inefficient, financially precarious and necessarily create moral hazard. It also indicates that contrary to widely held beliefs, product market competition in emerging countries is no less intense than in advanced economies. Acknowledgements Please do not quote without permission from the authors. Comments are most welcome.Competition; Corporate Governance; Emerging Markets

Shareholder value maximisation, stock market and new technology: should the US corporate model be the universal standard

In 1992 a blue-ribbon group of US economists led by Michael Porter concluded that the US stock market-based corporate model was misallocating resources and jeopardising US competitiveness. The faster growth of US economy since then and the supposed US lead in the spread of information technology has brought new legitimacy to the stock market and the corporate model, which is being hailed as the universal standard. Two main conclusions of the analysis presented here are: (a) there is no warrant for revising the blue-ribbon groupÕs conclusion; and (b) even US corporations let alone developing country ones would be better off not having stock market valuation as a corporate goal.Shareholder wealth, Information technology, Stock-market efficiency

The Asian model: a crisis foretold

Abstract The East Asian countries achieved extraordinarily fast economic growth during the last four decades. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that they represented the most successful case of rapid industrialisation and sustained economic growth in the history of mankind. This paper argues that the influential thesis of the US government and the IMF are the fundamental causes of the Asian financial crisis lie in the dirigiste model of guided capitalism followed by these countries is seriously mistaken. The crisis has arisen in large measure by precipitate financial liberalisation which involved the abandonment of the essential tenets of the model

Corporate Governance, Competetion, The new International Financial Architecture and Large Corporations in Emerging Markets

This paper examines from the developing countries perspective important analytical and policy issues arising from: a) the current international discussions about corporate governance in relation to the New International Financial Architecture; b) changes in the international competitive environment being caused by the enormous international merger movement in advanced countries. The background to a) above is the emergence of corporate governance as a key issue in the current G7 proposals for the New International Financial Architecture. The G7 emphasis on corporate governance can be traced back to the thesis that the ‘deeper’ reasons for the Asian crisis lay in the microeconomic behaviour of corporations and businesses in the affected countries. The failings of the corporate governance mechanisms and distortions in the competitive process have received special scrutiny in such analyses. With respect to b) above, the context is that the largest corporations in advanced countries are currently in the process of potentially cartelising the world market place through a spate of cross-border mergers and take-overs. This huge merger movement raises serious policy concerns for developing countries. The paper's main conclusions are: 1. The thesis that the deeper causes of the Asian crisis were the flawed systems of corporate governance and a poor competitive environment in the affected countries is not supported by evidence. 2. The Anglo-Saxon model of widely held corporations with dispersed share ownership is by far the exception in developing countries and in much of continental Europe. Empirical evidence suggests that emerging markets, as well as European countries such as Italy, Sweden or Germany have successful records of fast long-term growth with different governance systems, indeed superior to those of Anglo-Saxon countries. 3. Empirical evidence does not support the view that the Asian crisis 1997 to 1999 was caused by crony capitalism. 4. Corporate financing patterns in emerging markets in the 1990s were broadly similar to those observed in the 1980s. Unlike their counterparts in advanced countries, large developing countries firms continued to rely overwhelmingly on external sources to finance their growth of total assets. 5. The analysis of this paper does not support the claim that developing country conglomerates are inefficient, financially precarious and necessarily create moral hazard. It also indicates that contrary to widely held beliefs, product market competition in emerging countries is no less intense than in advanced economies. Acknowledgements Please do not quote without permission from the authors. Comments are most welcome

Corporate governance, competition, the new international financial architecture and large corporations in emerging markets

Abstract This paper examines from the developing countries perspective important analytical and policy issues arising from: a) the current international discussions about corporate governance in relation to the New International Financial Architecture; b) changes in the international competitive environment being caused by the enormous international merger movement in advanced countries. The background to a) above is the emergence of corporate governance as a key issue in the current G7 proposals for the New International Financial Architecture. The G7 emphasis on corporate governance can be traced back to the thesis that the ‘deeper’ reasons for the Asian crisis lay in the microeconomic behaviour of corporations and businesses in the affected countries. The failings of the corporate governance mechanisms and distortions in the competitive process have received special scrutiny in such analyses. With respect to b) above, the context is that the largest corporations in advanced countries are currently in the process of potentially cartelising the world market place through a spate of cross-border mergers and take-overs. This huge merger movement raises serious policy concerns for developing countries. The paper's main conclusions are: 1.The thesis that the deeper causes of the Asian crisis were the flawed systems of corporate governance and a poor competitive environment in the affected countries is not supported by evidence. 2.The Anglo-Saxon model of widely held corporations with dispersed share ownership is by far the exception in developing countries and in much of continental Europe. Empirical evidence suggests that emerging markets, as well as European countries such as Italy, Sweden or Germany have successful records of fast long-term growth with different governance systems, indeed superior to those of Anglo-Saxon countries. 3.Empirical evidence does not support the view that the Asian crisis 1997 to 1999 was caused by crony capitalism. 4.Corporate financing patterns in emerging markets in the 1990s were broadly similar to those observed in the 1980s. Unlike their counterparts in advanced countries, large developing countries firms continued to rely overwhelmingly on external sources to finance their growth of total assets. 5.The analysis of this paper does not support the claim that developing country conglomerates are inefficient, financially precarious and necessarily create moral hazard. It also indicates that contrary to widely held beliefs, product market competition in emerging countries is no less intense than in advanced economies

Corporate Governance, Competetion, The new International Financial Architecture and Large Corporations in Emerging Markets

This paper examines from the developing countries perspective important analytical and policy issues arising from: a) the current international discussions about corporate governance in relation to the New International Financial Architecture; b) changes in the international competitive environment being caused by the enormous international merger movement in advanced countries. The background to a) above is the emergence of corporate governance as a key issue in the current G7 proposals for the New International Financial Architecture. The G7 emphasis on corporate governance can be traced back to the thesis that the ‘deeper’ reasons for the Asian crisis lay in the microeconomic behaviour of corporations and businesses in the affected countries. The failings of the corporate governance mechanisms and distortions in the competitive process have received special scrutiny in such analyses. With respect to b) above, the context is that the largest corporations in advanced countries are currently in the process of potentially cartelising the world market place through a spate of cross-border mergers and take-overs. This huge merger movement raises serious policy concerns for developing countries. The paper's main conclusions are: 1. The thesis that the deeper causes of the Asian crisis were the flawed systems of corporate governance and a poor competitive environment in the affected countries is not supported by evidence. 2. The Anglo-Saxon model of widely held corporations with dispersed share ownership is by far the exception in developing countries and in much of continental Europe. Empirical evidence suggests that emerging markets, as well as European countries such as Italy, Sweden or Germany have successful records of fast long-term growth with different governance systems, indeed superior to those of Anglo-Saxon countries. 3. Empirical evidence does not support the view that the Asian crisis 1997 to 1999 was caused by crony capitalism. 4. Corporate financing patterns in emerging markets in the 1990s were broadly similar to those observed in the 1980s. Unlike their counterparts in advanced countries, large developing countries firms continued to rely overwhelmingly on external sources to finance their growth of total assets. 5. The analysis of this paper does not support the claim that developing country conglomerates are inefficient, financially precarious and necessarily create moral hazard. It also indicates that contrary to widely held beliefs, product market competition in emerging countries is no less intense than in advanced economies. Acknowledgements Please do not quote without permission from the authors. Comments are most welcome

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016