Rising Corporate Market Power

Capital Market-Driven Corporate Finance

Much of empirical corporate finance focuses on sources of the demand for various forms of capital, not the supply. Recently, this has changed. Supply effects of equity and credit markets can arise from a combination of three ingredients: investor tastes, limited intermediation, and corporate opportunism. Investor tastes when combined with imperfectly competitive intermediaries lead prices and i...

Market for Corporate Social Responsibility

Much is expected of the modern corporation. Shareholders seeking to maximize their return on investment pay close attention to reported earnings and stock price appreciation. Unanticipated negative movements in these variables can give rise to shareholder agitation, amplified by hedge funds and activist pension funds. Although this is characteristic of the Anglo-American ‘market for corporate c...

Pricing Emerging Market Corporate Bonds

Harnessing Corporate Power

Pioneering companies in sectors ranging from wire to plastic films and planned residential communities have already demonstrated that today's environmental challenges hold many profit-enhancing opportunities. The late twentieth century witnessed two great intellectual shifts: the fall of communism, with the apparent triumph of market economics; and the emergence, in a rapidly growing number of ...

Accounting for Rising Corporate Profits : Intangibles or Regulatory

Since 1980, US corporate valuations have risen relative to assets and operating margins have grown. The possibility of sustained economic rents has raised concerns about economic dynamism and inequality. But rising profits could represent growing returns to corporate investments in intangibles instead of returns to political rent seeking. Using new data on Federal regulation and data on lobbyin...