Calculating the cost of capital

One of the most important recent advances in corporate finance is the use of risk measures in setting discount rates or required rates of return for capital projects. An understanding of this area is of crucial importance to senior managers and corporate planners. This article explains how to calculate required rates of return using the modern approach to the cost of capital.     

双边道德风险与风险投资的资本结构

研究创业者和风险投资家双边道德风险下的融资合约,创业者无初始财富,风险投资家在提供资本支持的同时也扶助企业发展.模型存在贝叶斯均衡解的充分必要条件是,双方的努力互补,且从极大似然原理看,创业者在企业的发展中发挥了关键性的作用.由此内在地导出了风险投资企业的资本结构,仅在某个利润水平之上创业者才能获得普通股,而风险投资家持有可转换优先股.     

Self-enforcing capital tax coordination

Capital tax competition is known to result in inefficiently low tax rates and an undersupply of public goods. The provision of public goods and with it the welfare of all countries can be enhanced via tax coordination. Based on the standard Zodrow-Mieszkowski-Wilson tax-competition model this paper analyzes the conditions under which tax coordination by a group of countries is self-enforcing. In our analytical framework, there always exists a rather small stable tax coalition. For some subset of the parameter space the grand coalition is stable, even if the total number of countries is large. If the stable coalition is small, it is not very effective in mitigating the inefficiency of the non-cooperative Nash equilibrium. The ineffectiveness is increasing in the total number of countries.     

The decline of venture capital

Venture capital is a means of financing the growth of companies with a technologically innovative product, the investor's objective is the realisation of capital gains on the sale of his shareholding. The history of venture capital in the US and the UK is examined. After attracting great interest in the late 1960s and early 1970s, activity in the venture capital field has declined significantly. The reasons for this decline are analysed and it is suggested that a recovery of interest is unlikely.     

The syndication of venture capital investments

This paper examines competing finance, resource-based and deal flow explanations for the syndication of venture capital investments. Evidence from 60 firms (a 58.8% response rate) is analysed. Overall the finance perspective provides a strong explanation of motives for syndication, but the resource-based view is found to be much more important for those firms involved in at least some early stage transactions. The implications for researchers are that venture capital firms should not be treated as a homogeneous group and that the investment stages in which they operate may strongly influence attitudes towards syndication. In addition, there are implications for practitioners as venture capital firms may not be attributing sufficient attention to the need to augment their own resource base in order to enable them to make superior decisions when selecting deals and managing investments.     

Human capital practices of Russian enterprises

Abstract

The goal of this study was to explore current human capital (HC) management practices (including training and development, recruitment and selection, compensation, empowerment, diversity, and work/family balance) of Russian enterprises. The data were collected at 270 large, medium and small enterprises in Moscow and four representative regional centers. The study results suggest that Russian firms tended to emphasize current HC needs, not long-term HC development strategies. The firm size had an effect on differences in training, selection and compensation practices, with large firms being more long-term oriented. Correlation between elements of the HC management model provided some preliminary evidence that Russian firms tried to coordinate selection, compensation and training procedures. In addition, firms that empowered their employees were also putting more emphasis on long-term oriented training, selection and compensation practices. Finally, there were signs that diversity was gradually becoming an important issue for Russian enterprises of all sizes. However, compared to diversity, companies' emphasis on helping their employees to deal with the work/family balance issues was much stronger.     

Forecasting expenditure on capital projects

S-curves are widely used for planning, forecasting and control of cost, time and resources of a project. In this paper, a comparison of two S-curve models developed at the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) and Bradford University is carried out both from the viewpoint of predictive accuracy and ease of use. The models are validated using expenditure data for 21 recent U.K. health building projects. Methods of least squares is used to estimate the parameters of the two models. These parameters are categorized according to the total cost of the projects. Both the models are shown to be of comparable accuracy for fitting actual expenditure data. The DHSS model has a major advantage of simplicity of form and use, although the slightly greater mathematical complexity of the Keller-Singh model is off-set by the readily interpretable nature of its form and basic parameters. It is concluded that both or either of the models could be used by clients/contractors for effective planning and control of project costs.     

Venture capital and risk perception

This study extends the current state of research on venture capital (VC) determinants by introducing a behavioral perspective. We focus on individuals’ risk perception and connect it to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions of individualism and uncertainty avoidance. Individualism is related to overoptimism and uncertainty avoidance is related to overcaution, and hence affect the perception of risk. In a cross-country empirical analysis with 49 countries, we find that individualism is positively associated with VC activity, whereas uncertainty avoidance is negatively associated with VC activity. Our results are robust to controlling for other determinants as well as using other proxies of VC activity, other time periods, and subsamples of countries.     

Corporate valuation using imprecise cost of capital

If the estimated cost of capital bears a standard error, the estimation remains imprecise and firm values are biased on average, even though the estimator of the cost of capital is unbiased. Literature contributes approaches using adjusted discount factors to correct for such biases. This paper examines the theoretical and practical problems arising from the use of these approaches which are most likely to occur in the context of terminal value estimation. The adjusted discount factors imply time-dependent discount rates. Therefore, the commonly used valuation formula for perpetuities (Gordon formula) is no longer suitable to estimate unbiased terminal values. To continue application of this formula, this paper derives a new formula to directly adjust the cost of capital for estimation errors which yields unbiased terminal values.     

智能体建模和资本市场复杂性

以复杂适应系统的思想和智能体建模的方法研究资本市场复杂性是新兴的有价值的研究领域,阐述了资本市场作为复杂适应系统的动力机制,介绍了这一领域一个重要模型———少数派博弈(minority game,MG)模型.仿真发现,处于拥挤阶段的MG具有和实际市场相近的收益率分布.进一步扩展标准MG,提出了快速适应的少数派博弈模型,仿真结果显示,新的模型有着和真实市场相同的特征:收益率分布的尖峰和肥尾现象,揭示了资本市场复杂性的内部动力学机理.     

Manpower implications of capital investment in Sweden

Sweden has made a rational approach to the manpower problems arising from the modernisation of manufacturing processes as a result of capital investment. The Swedish experience is discussed under the headings of effectiveness of investment, congruence of objectives, changes in patterns of employment, union structure and differentials.     

Major capital decisions and technological change

This paper reviews a wide array of the analytical approaches to major capital decision-making available in the literature; indicates some of their weaknesses, especially when major technological changes are involved; suggests some modifications to improve their usefulness; and illustrates some of the additional benefits offered by such redesigned models The approaches examined are: neo-classical, including certainty and uncertainty models; behavioral, including organizational and simulation models; and financial, including evaluative and resource allocation models.After reviewing some of the practical issues confronted in the decision making process a modified general framework is presented to help strengthen the analysis of proposed capital projects Finally, bases are suggested for integrating evaluative investment criteria with the production capabilities embodied in major capital facilities and engendered by major technological innovations.     

Social capital or strong culture?

Organization scientists have recently introduced the concept of social capital to explain how the fabric of social connections among organization members leads to superior organizational performance. In this paper, I argue that the typical formulations of social capital sound remarkably similar to familiar conceptions of organizational culture, especially those features that indicate tightly coupled and deeply embedded social relations. I identify the common strands in the concepts of social capital and organizational culture. I propose that, without further efforts of conceptual clarification and empirical verification, the wholesale adoption by human resource development practitioners of the most popular features of the social capital concept is risky and likely to lead to disillusionment.     

A challenging marketplace for venture capital

This article looks at the contemporary situation facing the U.K. venture capital industry as it enters its second decade of activity. After 10 years of substantial growth, the industry is starting to mature. Accordingly, in an increasingly competitive marketplace, U.K. venture capital firms are having to address seriously strategic issues of product and market choice in order to meet the high investment expectations placed on them by their funders. There is evidence that the industry is already concentrating its finances into a small number of larger firms. It is likely that these better resourceed firms will have material advantages in initiating both product and market innovations. However, this concentration is unlikely to improve the supply of venture capital funds to start-up and other early stage, high risk ventures.     

Transnational social capital and scientist entrepreneurship

This paper provides a link between social capital and the entrepreneurial activity of university scientists in the life sciences. The two main hypotheses are that social capital promotes scientist entrepreneurship and transnational social capital is conducive to scientist entrepreneurship. These hypotheses are tested using a large data base of US scientists in the life sciences. The empirical results support the two main hypotheses. Social capital in general, and transnational social capital in particular, are found to enhance scientist entrepreneurship in the life sciences.     

Employee lawsuits and capital structure

Review of Managerial Science - We examine the effect of litigation on corporate capital structure by using a unique, hand-collected dataset of 30,841 employee disputes (after initial court...     

Computerized analysis of capital projects by DCF techniques

A program for the financial and economic analysis of capital projects is outlined in this article. The program is structured on three variants, which enable management among other things, to examine the influence of various financing methods on the rate of return on the equity capital (leverage). The program can provide a complete sensitivity analysis, to test how the project profitability is affected by changes in input data.     

资本自由化、内部资本配置与代理成本

本文从外部制度环境和内部资本配置两个角度,对创业企业代理成本影响因素展开大样本实证研究.研究结果表明,区域的资本自由化程度越高,创业企业的代理成本越低,其中由降低政府干预程度和产权制度创新构成的资本自由化因素作用最为明显.研究还发现,创业企业的内部资本配置对代理成本有着重要影响,具体表现为:1)拥有个人资本或外商资本的创业企业代理成本显著低于拥有国家资本的创业企业,并且外商资本比例或个人资本比例越高,代理成本越低;2)短期负债率的提高能有效降低以营业费用率为表征的代理成本,但却提高了以管理费用率为代表的代理成本,显示现阶段我国债权人治理效应仍然存在一定的局限性.这部分结果在一定程度上也为资本自由化进程对创业企业治理影响机理提供了证据.本文的研究为未来金融改革方向、创业环境政策制定及国有创业企业产权多元化提供了一定的实证依据.