Economic Evaluation of Scale Dependent Technology Investments

We study the effect of financial risk on the economic evaluation of a project with capacity decisions. Capacity decisions have an important effect on the project̂s value through the up‐front investment, the associated operating cost, and constraints on output. However, increased scale also affects the financial risk of the project through its effect on the operating leverage of the investment. Although it has long been recognized in the finance literature that operating leverage affects project risk, this result has not been incorporated in the operations management literature when evaluating projects. We study the decision problem of a firm that must choose project scale. Future cash flow uncertainty is introduced by uncertain future market prices. The firm's capacity decision affects the firm's potential sales, its expected price for output, and its costs. We study the firm's profit maximizing scale decision using the CAPM model for risk adjustment. Our results include that project risk, as measured by the required rate of return, is related to the inverse of the expected profit per unit sold. We also show that project risk is related to the scale choice. In contrast, in traditional discounted cash flow analysis (DCF), a fixed prescribed rate is used to evaluate the project and choose its scale. When a fixed rate is used with DCF, a manager will ignore the effect of scale on risk and choose suboptimal capacity that reduces project value. S/he will also misestimate project value. Use of DCF for choosing scale is studied for two special cases. It is shown that if the manager is directed to use a prescribed discount rate that induces the optimal scale decision, then the manager will greatly undervalue the project. In contrast, if the discount rate is set to the risk of the optimally‐scaled project, the manager will undersize the project by a small amount, and slightly undervalue the project with the economic impact of the error being small. These results underline the importance of understanding the source of financial risk in projects where risk is endogenous to the project design.     

本土企业推进人民币国际化的路径选择

金融危机引发的世界货币体系变迁,为人民币国际化提供了新的契机。推动人民币国际化,除了重视国家的宏观政策作用外,还要重视本土企业的微观市场作用,以贸易和投资两条主要途径推动人民币国际化。推行人民币计价贸易,以贸易发展提高企业竞争力进而增强本国货币的影响力;以贸易为依托有顺序地拓宽人民币直接投资区域,并辅以人民币金融投资增,强人民币的国际可接受性。本土企业还应在发挥自身功能的同时把握好与国家和其他微观主体的互动关系。     

企业进入权、组织控制与跨国公司专用性投资激励

论文从国际生产组织控制视角,将Rajan和Zingales^[1]进入权思想融入国际生产与贸易模型中,研究跨国公司专用性投资激励问题。研究发现,在进入权的机会控制和数量调整机制作用下,跨国公司通过限制进入、替代竞争来激发当地供应商做出事前定制投资、分摊投资和事后最优专用性投资,确保获取合意投入品和预期最大化利润。当前,政府要引导外向企业致力于微观企业主体的制度建设和组织能力培养,构建起中国国际生产网络及其组织机制,为推进对外直接投资和企业国际化经营提供微观保障。     

Between Poor Relief and Human Capital Investments – Paradoxes in Hybrid Social Assistance

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are often being promoted for their simultaneous advantages of short‐term income protection and long‐term human capital investments. Yet, existing evaluations have largely failed to test the underlying programme theory, and few empirical case studies have explored inherent contradictions and ambiguous consequences of this hybrid approach. To further understand the programmes' social policy implications, this study identifies and analyzes such ambiguities and paradoxical consequences in the case of Uruguay's CCT‐programme, Asignaciones Familiares (AFAM). Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with beneficiaries and members of the commission who designed the programme, this study reveals major paradoxes in AFAM's design and implementation caused by various endogenous factors. Relevant to social policy in general, and CCT‐evaluations in particular, findings also indicate that the hybrid social assistance approach may have perverse effects on the programme's twin objectives.     

转型国家金融自由化的内在逻辑与不同选择

俄罗斯和中东欧国家的金融自由化战略具有合理性,通过对其内在逻辑和不同选择的分析,可以更加清晰地看出其中的规律.由于缺少储蓄和资本,转型国家只能选择相对激进的金融自由化,甚至因此忽略财政赤字不断累积的风险,俄罗斯和中东欧国家在这方面具有共同特征.而在金融模式的具体选择上,俄罗斯和中东欧国家又具有一定的差异性,其中的逻辑在于金融自由化的约束条件决定了金融模式.     

The Effect of Competition on R&D Portfolio Investments

Although project portfolio management has been an active research area over the past 50 years, budget allocation models that consider competition are sparse. Faced with the competition, firms contemplating budget allocation for their project portfolio cannot limit their attention to the returns from their projects' target markets, as is the case for monopoly firms, but must also anticipate the competitive effects on these returns. Assuming firms allocate their budgets between projects offering incremental innovation targeting a mature market and projects offering radical innovation targeting an emerging market, we show that while the monopoly firm bases its budget allocation decision solely on the marginal returns of the markets, competing firms—as they take into account their counterparts' investment decisions—need to also consider the projects' average returns from their respective markets. This drives competing firms into incrementalism: faced with competition, firms invest larger portions of their budgets into projects targeting mature markets. This effect is amplified as the number of competing firms increases and firms allocate an even greater share of their budget into projects targeting a mature market. We further demonstrate the effects that changes to firms' individual budgets, as well as to market characteristics, have on firms' budget allocation decision.     

Investment attributes and learning from failure in foreign direct investments

This study examines the learning effect of multinational enterprises' (MNEs) failure experience in foreign direct investment (FDI). We also examine the contingent effects of two key investment attributes: cultural distance between the host countries and the MNE's home country and entry mode. Using a longitudinal dataset of Korean foreign direct investments during 1990–2011, we find that an MNE's prior FDI failure experience is negatively related to the failure likelihood of a focal subsequent FD, indicating a learning effect of FDI failure experience. Our results show that this learning effect weakens, as the cultural distance between the host countries of prior failed FDIs and South Korea, or the joint venture percentage among prior failed investments increases; however, those interaction effects become insignificant when a focal subsequent FDI is in a culturally different country, or a JV. This study enriches the literature on learning from failure and research on experiential learning in FDI by demonstrating the boundary conditions of the learning effect of the FDI failure experience of MNEs.     

VC治理行为中介作用下的关系专用性投资与技术创新绩效

以风险投资“关系型融资”机制为视角,立足资源基础理论与交易成本理论,在“关系租”起源与“关系型融资”价值创造机制探讨的基础上,构建关系专用性投资、VC治理行为与技术创新绩效关系整合模型,研究不同关系专用性投资属性对技术创新绩效的影响以及VC治理行为的中介作用.通过264家科技型创业企业调研所得数据进行实证分析,研究显示,实物型关系专用性投资与VC监控行为正相关,与VC增值服务负相关,VC监控行为与技术创新绩效负相关;知识型关系专用性投资与VC监控行为负相关,与VC增值服务正相关,VC增值服务与技术创新绩效正相关.VC治理行为在关系专用性投资与技术创新绩效的关系中具有部分中介效应.     

中国外商并购投资的理性思考

面对进入21世纪以来激荡汹涌的外资并购浪潮,我国必须秉持互利共赢、自主理性、和谐发展的理念,以前瞻的视野深入探究外商并购投资的运行机理和存在环境,借鉴域外成熟成功的立法经验,加强对外资并购的积极引导和法律规制,减少交易成本和社会成本,保护有效竞争的市场结构,提升我国企业的核心竞争优势,促进我国的经济发展。     

外商在我国合资与独资投资方式选择的博弈分析

随着我国市场改革开放的不断深入和中国各地方政府对外资需求竞争的激化,中外企业独资合资投资边际收益和成本发生了不对称变化。这一变化使中外企业选择合资独资投资比重发生重大变化,中外企业选择独资投资方式的可能性增加,外商企业在华投资方式将相应发生变化。