... on my Delta flight fits the stereotypical image of what a stewardess used to look like. You know, like the one you saw on old ... out of my house without my made-up face and being in full color-coordinated dress. My hair is always perfectly styled. I change its color ...
Story - antoq - 11/03/2010 - 05:58 - 0 comments - 0 attachments
Firm level trade data have become available in recent years and suggest new stylized facts about firms’ exporting behavior which challenges standard trade theory. With cross-country, firm level panel data, I deduce new stylized facts about exports and financial constraints: both the probability of exporting and exporting volume increase with firms’ age after controlling for productivity. Firms tend to export and export more if they are not financially constrained, after controlling for both age and productivity. Standard models assume that the financial market is complete that firms can borrow with no financial frictions and immediately achieve the optimal level after entrance. Therefore standard models have no implications for the growth process of exportation. This paper develops a model with credit constrained heterogeneous firms to explain how financial constraints impact exportation and tests its implications with the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys.
The past two decades have witnessed a rapid growth of option-based and stock-based compensation for corporate directors. According to Executive Compensation Reports, only about 1.6% of the 1,000 largest companies in the US offered equity-based compensation for directors in 1983, but by 1994, about 20% of firms did. Another survey conducted by Mercer Human Resource Consulting of 350 major companies reports that about 50% of firms offered stock options to directors in 1996, and about 80% did so in 2001 (Lublin and Bulkeley 2006). Similar to executive pay, outside director equity-based compensation has been a subject of heated debate, triggered by an unprecedented number of accounting and governance scandals in recent years. In this study, we examine how equity-based compensation for outside directors affects the board’s monitoring effectiveness over the financial reporting process as reflected in the extent of earnings management.
Boards of directors serve as an important mechanism to monitor senior management and reduce agency costs arising from the separation of ownership and control (Fama and Jensen 1983). Among other tasks, boards are responsible for overseeing firm accounting, auditing and internal control to ensure the integrity of financial reports. Board compensation, particularly performance-based compensation, can influence directors’ monitoring incentives. There are two competing views regarding the impact of equity-based compensation on directors’ monitoring effectiveness. Firms that rely on options and stocks to compensate outside directors argue that exposing directors’ wealth to the firm’s stock price is an effective way to align directors’ interests with those of shareholders. Some institutional investors and shareholder activists also advocate performance-based compensation such as option and stock awards for directors. Supporting this view, Yermack (2004) and Bryan and Klein (2004) show that the cross-sectional patterns of stock and option awards to outside directors conform to agency and contracting theories. In addition, Fich and Shivdasani (2005) and Becher et al. (2005) find that equity-based compensation for outside directors increases shareholder value. If equity-based compensation motivates outside directors to more effectively monitor executives and deter managerial opportunism, then greater equity incentives for outside directors would reduce opportunities for manipulation of accounting information and improve the integrity of financial reports.
Confronting the economic and security challenges posed by an unstable regional environment, the governments of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates agreed in 1981 to form the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, also known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Initially a common trade bloc, the GCC launched a common market on 1 January 2008 and plans to establish a common currency, the Khaleeji.
The economic history of these six countries has been strongly shaped by the discovery of oilfields, which started in Bahrain in the early 1930s, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the late 1930s, and Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates in the 1940s and 1950s. While initially the oilfields were exploited by British companies, by the early 1970s all six countries had gained independence and were in full control of the fields and means of production, as well as being active members (except for Bahrain and Oman) of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Oil had by then become the dominant sector in these economies.
