Search

This paper provides an alternative perspective on the firm-level empirical analysis of the relation between foreign ownership and capital demand adjustment in host countries. The author estimates a dynamic structural model of investment on a sample of 4672 Belgian firms for the period 2003-2010, permitting him to distinguish the ‘ownership status’ of firms. He considers a dynamic discrete choice model of a general specification of adjustment costs including convex and non-convex components. The author uses the method of simulated moments in order to estimate the structural parameters. His results indicate that multinationals’ affiliates face lower capital adjustment costs than national firms.

Creditors, banks and bank regulators should evaluate whether a borrower is likely to default. I apply several techniques in the extensive mathematical literature of stochastic optimal control/dynamic programming to derive an optimal debt in an environment where there are risks on both the asset and liabilities sides. The vulnerability of the borrowing firm to shocks from either the return to capital, the interest rate or capital gain, increases in proportion to the difference between the Actual and Optimal debt ratio, called the excess debt. As the debt ratio exceeds the optimum, default becomes ever more likely. This paper is “A Tale of Two Crises” because the same analysis is applied to the agricultural debt crisis of the 1980s and to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007. A measure of excess debt is derived, and we show that it is an early warning signal of a crisis in both cases.

The paper develops a model of firm´s investment under uncertainty with financial market imperfections and analyzes the effects of financial constraints on firm´s investment. Firm´s investment is an increasing function of the firm´s marginal q, however the investment function is characterized by an upper bound that depends on the firm´s borrowing capabilities. The firm´s marginal q is the sum of the expected value of the marginal profitability of the physical capital stock and of a positive external finance premium. In the presence of financial market imperfections the firm forms expectations about future financial conditions and these expectations raise the firm´s current marginal q. Similarly, the shadow price of firm´s debt is the sum of the interest cost of debt repayment and of a provision for external finance that depends on the firm´s expectations over future financial conditions.