Three Essays on Firms and Institutions in Developing Countries PDF Download
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Author: Lorenzo Lagos
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Languages : en
Pages :
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Author: Lorenzo Lagos
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Languages : en
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Author: Stanislav Markus
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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How do property rights become secure? Rather than emphasizing the state, the third essay investigates the role of firms to address these fundamental issues of political economy. The literature proceeds from the assumption of a strong and rational sovereign, yet most states in the developing world lack long time horizons and institutionally capacity. In this context, I argue that firms can enforce their property rights through alliances with stakeholders such as foreign actors, community residents, labor, and other firms. These stakeholders can impose costs on the potential aggressors through diverse mechanisms. Empirically, case studies and an original large-N survey of 516 firms in Russia and Ukraine are used to test the hypothesis that stakeholder alliances have significant deterrence capacity.
Author: Chinawut Chinaprayoon
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Author: Jie Bai (Ph. D.)
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Languages : en
Pages : 231
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This thesis consists of three chapters on microeconomic issues of firms in developing countries and the impact of government policies on business growth. The first chapter examines firms' incentive to establish a reputation for quality. A key problem in developing countries is the lack of reliable provision of high quality goods and services. I designed an experiment to understand this phenomenon in a setting that features typical market conditions in a developing country: the retail watermelon market in a major Chinese city. I begin by demonstrating empirically that there is substantial asymmetric information between sellers and buyers on sweetness, the key indicator of quality for watermelons, yet sellers do not sort and price watermelons by quality. I then randomly introduce one of two branding technologies into 40 out of 60 markets-one sticker label that is widely used and often counterfeited and one novel laser-cut label. I track sellers' quality, pricing and sales over an entire season and collect household panel purchasing data to examine the demand side's response. I find that laser branding induced sellers to provide higher quality and led to higher sales profits, establishing that reputational incentives are present and can be made to pay. However, after the intervention was withdrawn, all markets reverted back to baseline. To rationalize the experimental findings, I build an empirical model of consumer learning and seller reputation. The results indicate that information frictions and fragmented markets lead to significant under-provision of quality in this setting. Though there is a high demand for quality, trust could take a long time to establish under the existing branding technology, which makes reputation building a low return investment. While the new branding technology enhances consumer learning, small individual sellers do not have the incentive to invest in this technology due to their small market size and market competition. The second chapter (co-authored with Seema Jayachandran, Edmund J. Malesky and Benjamin Olken) considers how local governments' bribe extraction could interact with firms' growth. We propose a model in which government officials' choice of how much bribe money to extract from firms is modulated by inter-jurisdictional competition. The model predicts that economic growth decreases the rate of bribe extraction under plausible assumptions, with the benefit to officials of demanding a given share of revenue as bribes outweighed by the increased risk that firms will move elsewhere. A second prediction is that the negative effect of growth on bribery is larger if firms are more mobile. We find empirical support for these predictions. In particular, we employ two instrumental variables strategies-one based on growth in a firm's industry in other provinces within Vietnam and another based on industry growth in neighboring China and find that growth causes a decrease in bribe extraction. Our results suggest that as poor countries grow, corruption could subside on "its own." Consistent with the model's predictions, we find that the effect is for firms whose property rights to their land are transferable and who have operations in multiple provinces, two proxies for geographic mobility. The third chapter examines the impact of internal trade barriers on firms' performance and export activities. It is well known that various forms of non-tariff barriers exist among Chinese provinces. However, empirically, it is difficult to measure these barriers because they can take many forms. I take advantage of an export VAT rebate policy reform in 2004 as a natural experiment to identify the existence of internal trade barriers and study the impact on TFP and resource allocation. In particular, as a result of shifting tax rebate burdens, the 2004 reform leads to a greater incentive for the provincial governments to block the domestic flow of non-local goods related to exporting. I find that foreign trade companies in the coastal region become more "inward-looking" in the years after the reform, consistent with rising local trade barriers. The value of exports through intermediaries grows less in the inland region relative to the coastal region, and the negative effect is larger in inland provinces with greater exposure to the reform, measured using baseline reliance on trade through intermediaries. I extend the standard open-economy heterogeneous firm model by adding an intermediary sector as in Ahn, Khandelwal and Wei (2011) but with a new focus on the intermediary's role of domestic sourcing. The model can be used to analyze general equilibrium effects, examine firms' entry and exit into exporting, and quantify the distortion on TFP.
Author: Calvin Thrall
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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A long-underappreciated fact in the field of international political economy is that, while states are the actors who create international political institutions, it is often nonstate actors—particularly firms—who are most directly affected by them. As firms' operations have become increasingly global over the course of the last five decades, international institutions such as economic treaties have become increasingly important for firms' bottom lines. Theorizing from the corporate perspective, this project details three strategies by which firms influence and engage with international institutions: first, by lobbying for the creation of favorable institutions; second, by shifting their legal forms in order to gain access to new institutions; and third, by cooperating with international institutions to govern their own operations (when it is profitable to do so). In the first essay, I study the role of multinational firms in the development of international institutions. Over the course of the 20th century, states have developed large networks of bilateral or small-group economic treaties in several issue areas. These treaties, which are important tools of foreign economic policy, redistribute the gains and losses of globalization. Why do states sign treaties with some partners and not others? Motivated by the observation that the same pairs of states tend to sign multiple treaties within a short time period, I develop a theory of treaty regime coevolution that centers corporate demand for treaties. Firms expand into new foreign markets in search of profit, paying fixed costs to do so. However, once the initial cost is paid, these firms become the primary beneficiaries of any future treaty between home and host states. Incumbent firms therefore have incentive to lobby home state legislators and diplomats in favor of signing treaties with their host states, across several issue areas. Strong private sector demand can lead to the formation of multiple types of treaties between pairs of states, creating firm-driven interdependence across treaty networks. Using quantitative and qualitative data—including novel data from the USSR, declassified diplomatic cables, and elite interviews—I find support for my theory. The results have implications for the decline of multilateralism in foreign policy, and suggest new avenues for studying the effects of treaties. In the second essay, I study a case in which overlap between international institutions generated opportunites for corporate arbitrage. Multinational firms frequently route their foreign investments through intermediate shell companies. Increasingly, firms engage in proxy arbitration, using these shell companies to access other states' bilateral investment treaties and file investor-state disputes against their host states. I argue that proxy arbitration is actually a spillover effect of corporate tax avoidance. Firms invest abroad through intermediate shell companies to access the bilateral tax treaty network, reducing their withholding taxes. Because the tax and investment treaty networks overlap extensively, these "tax-planning" firms often gain investment treaty coverage as a side benefit, enabling them to file proxy arbitration in the event of a dispute. Using novel, fine-grained data on the ownership structures of multinational firms, I find evidence in support of the spillover effects theory. The results suggest that understanding the true effects of global governance institutions requires attention to how firms strategically change their legal forms to access or avoid them. Finally, in the third essay, I ask whether or not firms can cooperate with international institutions in a way that produces normatively positive outcomes. Multinational firms operate in multiple national jurisdictions, making them difficult for any one government to regulate. For this reason much of the regulation of multinational firms is done by the firms themselves, increasingly in conjunction with international organizations by way of public-private governance initiatives. Prior research has claimed that such initiatives are too weak to meaningfully change firms' behavior. Can public-private governance initiatives help firms self-regulate, even if they lack strong monitoring or enforcement mechanisms? I take two steps towards answering this question. First, I introduce a new measure of firms' performance on ESG (environmental, social, and governance) issues: the extent to which the firms issue public responses to claims of misconduct from civil society actors. Second, I argue that public-private governance initiatives allow firms to benefit from the legitimacy of their public partners, lowering the reputational cost of transparent response. Employing novel data on firm responses to human rights allegations from the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, I find that membership in the largest and most prominent initiative, the United Nations Global Compact, significantly increases firms' propensity to respond transparently to stakeholder allegations. These results suggest a limited but important role for public-private initiatives in global governance
Author: Xiaodai Xin
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Category : Debts, External
Languages : en
Pages :
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Abstract: Both economic growth and stabilization require a well-functioning financial system, which includes the central bank and private financial institutions. This dissertation is comprised of three essays on monetary policy and financial development which are related to the roles of the central bank and private financial institutions. To better stabilize the economy, a central bank needs to formulate an optimal strategy for monetary policy and pursues an appropriate objective (targeting regime). In a forward-looking New Keynesian model with persistent output and inflation, the first essay (chapter 2) evaluates a broad hybrid targeting regime when the central bank operates under discretionary monetary policy. By employing the numerical analysis and comparing the performance of different targeting regimes, I find that the hybrid targeting regime yields a social loss closest to that under the optimal committed policy, generating a better outcome than other policy regimes. The second essay (chapter 3) provides new micro-level evidence for the positive relationship between financial development and economic growth based on a large sample of cross-country firm-level data. By examining an important micro channel through which financial development reduces the costs of external finance to firms, I find that firms that are more externally dependent grow faster in countries with more developed financial systems. The third essay (chapter 4) investigates the impact of external debt on long-term investment and its interaction with domestic financial intermediation in emerging markets. Extending the Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model to a small open economy with the role of financial intermediation, I find that the overall effect of a high level of external debt on investment depends heavily on the degree of domestic financial intermediation. Using a large sample of panel data on 76 developing countries over the last three decades, the empirical results indicate that when a country's domestic banking sector develops to a certain degree, the high level of external debt facilitates investment.
Author: Shengzu Wang
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Category : Developing countries
Languages : en
Pages : 118
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Author: Silviu Dochia
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Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 103
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This thesis consists of three essays examining the relationship between institutions and economic development. Essay one focuses on private participation in infrastructure. Over the past decade private involvement in the provision of infrastructure services has grown increasingly common in a large number of countries around the world. Increased activity brought along a good deal of controversy, most frequently relating to the cancellation of high profile projects. This paper analyzes this phenomenon empirically, using project level panel data from the 1990-2005 period. My first finding is that, contrary to popular belief, infrastructure project cancellations are rare. Second, contract cancellations are not randomly distributed, but seem correlated with a number of factors. I find that cancellation rates are higher for water sector projects, countries with a poor track record of protecting property rights and those with more effective local bureaucracies. Neither the level of GDP per capita nor its growth rate seem to be important factors, but larger current account deficits are correlated with more cancellations. Essay two examines the economic rationale for industrial policies aimed at supporting small firms with the intention of improving the rate of innovation and economic growth. I argue that such policies, while very common in the last few decades, frequently ignore two fundamental facts. First, a firms' size is largely determined by the economic environment surrounding it, and in particular by the uncertainty it must face. Attempts to actively micromanage the mix of small to large firms while ignoring the environment they operate within is more likely to be harmful than helpful. The second often overlooked observation is that small and large firms often play complementary roles in the process of innovation. Instead of attempting to actively pick winners with certain characteristics, policymakers' efforts are better spent on building a framework which is conducive to all innovation, wherever it may originate. In the third paper I analyze the real world impact of direct financing programs for small and medium enterprises. I base my analysis on two specific SME financing schemes implemented in Romania between 1998 and 2004, but my findings are broadly applicable. I argue that direct funding programs can suffer from two major flaws: a failure to address the financial system's binding constraints, and a difficulty in dealing with imperfect information. I find that both problems were acutely relevant in Romania, where they created programs that appeared successful at the firm level but in fact had very limited impact.
Author: Zhixiang Liang
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Much of the literature on emerging market Business Group (henceforth BG) views the subject in a monochrome 'paragons or parasites' dichotomy. In these divergent perspectives, BGs have either a positive or negative effect on economic and institutional development. In the paragon view, BGs emerge as an organizing mechanism to address weak institutions by internalizing market transactions. However, with the development of market-supporting institutions, BGs become less efficient and theory predicts their dissolution and replacement with independent freestanding firms. In the parasite view, BGs emerge but develop strong economic and political power, which are used to block the development of market supporting institutions and support their entrenchment in a stagnant domestic economy, consistent with a middle-income trap.The overarching goal of this thesis is to address this dichotomous paradigm and investigate why neither perspective adequately explains the phenomenon of long-lived and efficient BGs. In some economies, BGs emerge, persist, and exhibit increasing efficiency and international competitiveness accompanied by continuing institutional development. More specifically, this thesis aims to offer more nuanced understanding between BGs and their institutional context to understand their resilience during market transitions. The dissertation addresses its theme with three related essays. The first investigates the fundamental source of the emergence and persistence of BG in a shifting institutional environment. Empirical results show that several complementary bundles of management practice differentiate BG affiliates and independent firms in the early phase of development but become less prominent at later stages. The second essay considers the export performance of BG affiliates through organizational capability lens to distinguish between market and nonmarket capabilities. This paper finds support for the hypothesis that BGs utilized superior nonmarket capabilities on enhancing their export performance and suppressing other's internationalization, but these advantages would be mitigated in a jurisdiction with better political and social support. The third essay complements process theories of emerging market BGs internationalization by considering the structural conditions for successful early-stage internationalization. We propose that international political economy origins have long-lasting path-dependent effects on BG strategy and structure and find strong evidence that BG affiliates in Latin America are less likely to export than are those in Asia. The overall implication of the thesis is to present a vibrant picture of BGs in their institutional context. Empirically, this thesis is among the first few to perform empirical research with firm-level microdata BG, collected from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. The large multi-country dataset allows for a comparative analysis of the issues, while most BG research focuses on single country settings. This thesis contributes a cross-country study using a BG standard definition, thereby adding to a comparative understanding of BG persistence. This thesis also adds to the literature by identifying explicitly non-financial consequences of group affiliation. To sum up, this thesis offers insights for future research on the broader spectrum regarding institutional spheres where BGs associated with and its either positive or negative inter-connections.
Author: Mizuhiro Suzuki (Ph.D.)
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Languages : en
Pages : 0
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This dissertation studies how households and individuals in developing countries deal with economic shocks and economic needs. In the first chapter, I study a Latin American ceremony, quincean̳eras, and how households manage the large expenditures on the expensive ceremony. I explore the coping strategy of households in Mexico and how such expensive events can affect economic outcomes such as household businesses and social networks. While the large expenditures on festivals and ceremonies in developing have been documented in the literature on development economics, few empirical studies have been conducted, especially on how poor households afford the events and what the economic consequences of such events are. This study fills the gap in the literature. The second and third chapters investigate the effect of weather shocks on individual behaviors in the context of developing countries. In the second chapter, I explore how temperature affects the work performance of bureaucrats. In particular, I study how the contents of corruption reports are affected by temperature during fieldwork. Using the federal audit program in Brazil, I find evidence that heat increases the probability of reporting corruption. This suggests that the work performance of bureaucrats is affected by external and seemingly irrelevant factors such as temperature. In the third chapter, I investigate the effect of temperature on exam performance and the interaction between exam stakes and exam performance. I approach these research questions by using exam score data in a centralized exam in Brazil and an institutional reform that increased the stakes of the exam. I find that the high temperature negatively affects the students' exam scores and the temperature effect becomes smaller when exam stakes are higher.
