Relative Peer Quality and Firm Performance
Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, Sureshbabu Mani, Pengfei Ye
Journal of Financial Economics,
No. 1,
2016
Abstract
We examine the performance impact of the relative quality of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO)’s compensation peers (peers to determine a CEO's overall compensation) and bonus peers (peers to determine a CEO's relative-performance-based bonus). We use the fraction of peers with greater managerial ability scores (Demerjian, Lev, and McVay, 2012) than the reporting firm to measure this CEO's relative peer quality (RPQ). We find that firms with higher RPQ earn higher stock returns and experience higher profitability growth than firms with lower RPQ. Learning among peers and the increased incentive to work harder induced by the peer-based tournament contribute to RPQ's performance effect.
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A Fresh Look at the Labor Market Height Premium in Germany
Frieder Kropfhäußer
Economics Bulletin,
No. 3,
2016
Abstract
I use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) to analyze the relationship between height and wages in a sample of young German workers. My results show that the crude height wage premium documented in the literature is explained by unobserved heterogeneity on the sibling level. This contradicts the findings of a labor market height premium in Germany using OLS and Hausman-Taylor estimators as well as the Swedish finding of a height effect remaining after controlling for sibling fixed effects.
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The Operational Consequences of Private Equity Buyouts: Evidence From the Restaurant Industry
Shai B. Bernstein, Albert Sheen
Review of Financial Studies,
No. 9,
2016
Abstract
How do private equity firms affect their portfolio companies? We document operational changes in restaurant chain buyouts using comprehensive health inspection records. Store-level operational practices improve after private equity buyout, as restaurants become cleaner, safer, and better maintained. Supporting a causal interpretation, this effect is stronger in chain-owned stores than in franchised locations—“twin” restaurants over which private equity owners have limited control. These changes are particularly apparent when private equity partners have prior industry experience. The results suggest that by bringing in industry expertise, private equity firms improve firm operations.
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To Invest or Not to Invest, That Is the Question: Analysis of Firm Behavior under Anticipated Shocks
Dejan Kovač, Nikola Kleut, Boris Podobnik, Vuk Vukovic
Plos One,
No. 8,
2016
Abstract
When companies are faced with an upcoming and expected economic shock some of them tend to react better than others. They adapt by initiating investments thus successfully weathering the storm, while others, even though they possess the same information set, fail to adopt the same business strategy and eventually succumb to the crisis. We use a unique setting of the recent financial crisis in Croatia as an exogenous shock that hit the country with a time lag, allowing the domestic firms to adapt. We perform a survival analysis on the entire population of 144,000 firms in Croatia during the period from 2003 to 2015, and test whether investment prior to the anticipated shock makes firms more likely to survive the recession. We find that small and micro firms, which decided to invest, had between 60 and 70% higher survival rates than similar firms that chose not to invest. This claim is supported by both non-parametric and parametric tests in the survival analysis. From a normative perspective this finding could be important in mitigating the negative effects on aggregate demand during strong recessionary periods.
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Unemployment and Business Cycles
Lawrence J. Christiano, Martin S. Eichenbaum, Mathias Trabandt
Econometrica,
No. 4,
2016
Abstract
We develop and estimate a general equilibrium search and matching model that accounts for key business cycle properties of macroeconomic aggregates, including labor market variables. In sharp contrast to leading New Keynesian models, we do not impose wage inertia. Instead we derive wage inertia from our specification of how firms and workers negotiate wages. Our model outperforms a variant of the standard New Keynesian Calvo sticky wage model. According to our estimated model, there is a critical interaction between the degree of price stickiness, monetary policy, and the duration of an increase in unemployment benefits.
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Informal or Formal Financing? Evidence on the Co-Funding of Chinese Firms
Hans Degryse, Liping Lu, Steven Ongena
Journal of Financial Intermediation,
2016
Abstract
Different modes of external finance provide heterogeneous benefits for the borrowing firms. Informal finance offers informational advantages whereas formal finance is scalable. Using unique survey data from China, we find that informal finance is associated with higher sales growth for small firms but lower sales growth for large firms. We identify a complementary effect between informal and formal finance for the sales growth of small firms, but not for large firms. Co-funding, thereby simultaneously using the informational advantage of informal finance and the scalability of formal finance, is therefore the optimal choice for small firms.
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