Review of Development Finance最新文献

We examine the relationship between firm valuation and governance mechanisms, firm characteristics, and institutional factors of the American Depository Receipts (ADRs) domiciled in the Greater China region. We find that China ADRs have the highest market-to-book value ratio followed by Hong Kong and Taiwan ADRs. It appears that Chinese firms with the poorest external governance environment stand to benefit the most from cross listing under the ADR programs. Listing in the U.S. that requires more stringent regulations and disclosure rules may strengthen the firms’ governance practices and thereby enhance their firm value. Among the internal governance mechanisms, institutional ownership and insider ownership are important for firm value.

Recently, economists have started taking a closer look at cross border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) due to its phenomenal rise in the past two decades. This study investigates the relation between banking sector development and cross M&As in Africa. Our sample consists of 11 African countries with data covering the period, 1993–2008. We use a Baltagi panel instrumental variable Error Component Two Stage Least Squares (EC2SLS) estimator with the Baltagi-Chang estimators of the variance components to deal with endogeneity. The results of the study indicate that banking sector development promotes cross border M&A activity in Africa. We also document evidence suggesting that cross border M&A activity drives banking sector development in Africa. Overall, our evidence suggests a two-way causation between banking sector development and cross border M&As.

The aim of this paper is to study pricing of weather insurance contracts based on temperature indices. Three different pricing methods are analysed: the classical burn approach, index modelling and temperature modelling. We take the data from Malaysia as our empirical case. Our results show that there is a significant difference between the burn and index pricing approaches on one hand, and the temperature modelling method on the other. The latter approach is pricing the insurance contract using a seasonal autoregressive time series model for daily temperature variations, and thus provides a precise probabilistic model for the fine structure of temperature evolution. We complement our pricing analysis by an investigation of the profit/loss distribution from the contract, in the perspective of both the insured and the insurer.

In this paper, we study a sample of 1376 corporate asset sales and 250 asset exchanges in China between 1998 and 2006. We find that corporate asset sales in China enhance firm value with a cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of 0.46% for the pre-announcement five-day period, which is consistent with the evidence discovered in both U.K. and U.S. For companies that exchanged assets during the sample period, the pre-announcement five-day CAR of 1.32% is statistically significant. We also discover that gains from divesting assets are positively related to managerial performance measured by Tobin's q ratio and the relative size of the asset sold or exchanged. Well-managed (high-q) companies are more likely to sell or exchange assets in a value-maximizing fashion than poorly managed (low-q) companies. Furthermore, asset-seller gains are not related to enhancing corporate focus, but improving corporate focus by exchanging for core assets enhances firm value.

The literature suggests CCTs and remittances may protect poor households from income risk. We present a theoretical framework that explores how this ‘insurance’ effect can change households’ decision to apply for a loan via changes in credit demand and supply. Empirical evidence from poor rural households in Nicaragua shows CCTs did not affect loan requests while remittances increased them. The risk protection provided by remittances seems stronger, relative to CCTs, such that improvements on borrowers’ expected marginal returns to a loan or on creditworthiness more than offset decreasing returns to additional income. This suggests those transfers that best protect households from income risk favor financial deepening in the context of segmented markets.

This paper uses a new dataset on the composition of public debt in developing and emerging market countries to look at the correlation between country characteristics and domestic debt share. While the paper finds that most variables have the expected sign, it also finds that country characteristics cannot explain regional differences in the composition of public debt. Moreover, the paper finds a weak correlation between inflationary history and the composition of public debt. The paper explores the determinants of this finding and shows that the results are driven by the presence of capital controls.

The study examines the impact of foreign capital flows on investment volatility in emerging and frontier market economies in sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, the study attempts to answer the question of whether different components of foreign capital inflows explain investment volatility. Theory suggests that increased cross-border capital mobility increases investment volatility due to the possibility of substituting foreign for domestic investments. Empirical literature does not, however, provide any clear evidence in support of this theory. By using the dynamic panel data analysis, this study tests the hypothesis that increased capital flows increases investment volatility and the study established that international capital flows reduce investment volatility.

The objective of this overview paper is to address some key issues affecting the stability of financial institutions. The emphasis is on the micro-economics of banking: what type of incentives do financial institutions have in the current landscape? And what does this imply for regulation and supervision? The paper is motivated by the proliferation of financial innovations and their impact on the financial services industry. A fundamental feature of more recent financial innovations is their focus on augmenting marketability. Marketability has led to a strong growth of transaction-oriented banking (trading and financial market activities). This is at least in part facilitated by the scalability of this activity (contrary to relationship banking activities). It is argued that the more intertwined nature of banks and financial markets induces opportunistic decision making and herding behavior. In doing so, it has exposed banks to the boom and bust nature of financial markets and has augmented instability.

Building on this, the paper discusses the incentives of individual financial institutions. Issues addressed include: frictions between relationship banking and transaction activities that are more financial market focused, ownership structure issues, the impact of the cost of capital, the effectiveness of market discipline, and what configuration of the industry can be expected. We will argue that market forces might be at odds with financial stability. We will point at institutional and regulatory changes that might be needed to deal with the complexity of financial institutions.

African countries have had the notoriety of being characterized by unsustainable external debt. Despite several announced intents by world development agencies to reverse this trend, there appears to be only minimal progress. This paper points to failure to determine appropriate levels of sustainable external debt, inadequate effective governance infrastructure, and ineffective management of external shocks, as important reasons why Africa's external debt problems have persisted. We derive African-relevant thresholds for sustainable external debt, and highlight quantifiable improvements African countries can experience if they were to adopt better governance infrastructures and effective management of external shocks.

This paper investigates whether product market competition acts as an external mechanism for disciplining management and also whether there is any relationship between the degree of competition a firm faces and its corporate governance. We find that firms in competitive industries or with low market power tend to have weak corporate governance structures. Results are robust to various competition measures at firm and industry levels, even after controlling for firm-specific variables. We further find that corporate governance quality has a significant effect on performance only when product market competition is weak. The overall evidence suggests that product market competition has a substantial impact on corporate governance and that it substitutes for corporate governance quality. Finally, we provide evidence that the disciplinary force of competition on management is from the fear of liquidation.