The aim of this paper is to empirically investigate the determinants of creditor concentration in the use of bank loans by firms in a European cross-country framework. We analyze the influence of loan and borrower characteristics but also banking market structure and legal enforcement variables that are expected to influence the financial and strategic decisions relative to bank lending concent...

Merger Wars: Bidding for Complementary Assets By Lynne M. Pepall and Daniel J. Richards Department of Economics Tufts University Medford, MA 02155 e-mail: [email protected] [email protected] We examine the bidding competition for a set of complementary assets arising between two firms who also compete in a differentiated product market. The bidding contest takes the form of an acquisi...

NYSE and NASDAQ listed firms are required to have a majority of independent directors starting 2004. Since the regulation can weaken CEO influence over the board, affected CEOs may counter it by building a closely aligned team of top executives to strengthen their structural power. Using a differences-indifferences approach, we find that affected CEOs fill their executive suites with significan...

This dissertation consists of three essays that examine banking and corporate finance in developing countries. Specifically, it explores the theoretical and empirical implications of open capital markets, foreign bank entry, and the role of bond markets during banking crises. Chapter 1 analyzes the impact of opening capital markets using a theoretical model that incorporates both foreign and do...

Dominant players in a number of industries have pursued policies that may once have been effective, but that now make their markets attractive targets for new entrants. The strategies of new entrants rely on lower overhead costs, new technologies, and alternative distribution channels, and the active targeting of profitable customers. Dominant firms will struggle to respond to the threats, and ...

In this note we show that the profitability of merger in markets with quantity competition does not only depend on cost conditions but also on the market structure and on the involved firms’ ‘strategic power.’ Our main result is that bilateral merger can be profitable even if costs are linear – but only in the case of a ‘strong’ firm incorporating a ‘weak’ firm which has adverse effects on welf...

Competition in some product markets takes the form of a contest. If some firms cooperate in such markets, they must decide how to allocate effort on each of their products and whether to reduce the number of their products in the competition. We show how this decision depends on the convexity properties of the contest success function, and we characterize conditions under which cooperation is p...

Merger and Collusion in Contests by Steffen Huck, Kai A. Konrad and Wieland Müller Competition in some product markets takes the form of a contest. If some firms cooperate in such markets, they must decide how to allocate effort on each of their products and whether to reduce the number of their products in the competition. We show how this decision depends on the convexity properties of the co...

The objective of the analysis is the static (the database refers exclusively to year 1998) evaluation of the competitiveness of Romanian manufacturing, depending on the ownership-type. A ternary ownership-type structure is considered: the prevailing foreign-owned capital, the prevailing Romanian private capital and the prevailing state capital. The place, the share, the performance and the impa...

For a period starting in 2015, Apple, Google, and Microsoft became the most valuable companies in the world. Each was marked by an external developer ecosystem. Anecdotally, at least, developers matter. Using a formal model of code spillovers, we show how a rising number of developers can invert the firm. That is, firms will choose to innovate using open external contracts in preference to clos...