By considering yearly production growth rates for several manufacturing industries in more than 100 countries during (roughly) the last 40 years, we show that industries that are more dependent on external finance are hit harder during recessions. The observed difference in the behavior of industries is larger when financial frictions are thought to be more prevalent, linking the result directly to the financial mechanism hypothesis. In particular, more dependent industries are more strongly affected in recessions when they are located in countries with poor financial contractibility, and when their assets are softer or less protective of financiers. Copyright 2005 by The American Finance Association.
This article shows that mark-ups are significantly higher in South African manufacturing industries than they are in corresponding industries worldwide. We test for the consequences of this low-level of product market competition on productivity growth. The results of the paper are that high mark-ups have a large negative impact on productivity growth in South African manufacturing industry. Our results are robust to three different data sources, two alternative measures of productivity growth, and three distinct measures of the mark-up. Controlling for potential endogeneity of regressors does not eliminate the findings. Copyright (c) 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2008 The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
New data are presented for a large number of countries on how frequently former high-ranking politicians become bank directors. Politician-banker connections at this level are relatively rare, but their frequency is robustly correlated with many important characteristics of banks and institutions. At the micro level, banks that are politically connected are larger and more profitable than other banks, despite being less leveraged and having less risk. At the country level, this connectedness is strongly negatively related to economic development. Controlling for this, the analysis finds that the phenomenon is more prevalent where institutions are weaker and governments more powerful but less accountable. Bank regulation tends to be more pro-banker and the banking system less developed where connectedness is higher. A benign, public-interest view is hard to reconcile with these patterns.
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