Anusha Chari

Firm-specific information and the efficiency of investment

In the three-year period following stock market liberalizations, the growth rate of the typical firms capital stock exceeds its pre-liberalization mean by an average of 4.1 percentage points. Cross-sectional changes in investment are significantly correlated with the signals about fundamentals embedded in the stock price changes that occur upon liberalization. Panel-data estimations show that a 10-percentage point increase in a firms expected future sales growth predicts a 2.9- to 3.5-percentage point increase in the growth rate of its capital stock. Country-specific changes in the cost of capital drive changes in investment but firm-specific changes in the cost of capital do not.

Capital Account Liberalization: Allocative Efficiency or Animal Spirits?

In the year that capital-poor countries open their stock markets to foreign investors, the growth rate of their typical firms capital stock exceeds its pre-liberalization mean by 4.1 percentage points. In each of the next three years the average growth rate of the capital stock for the 369 firms in the sample exceeds its pre-liberalization mean by 6.1 percentage points. However, there is no evidence that differences in the liberalization-induced changes in the cost of capital or investment opportunities drive the cross-sectional variation in the post-liberalization investment increases.

Firm-Specific Information and the Efficiency of Investment

We use a new firm-level dataset to examine the efficiency of investment in emerging economies. In the three-year period following stock market liberalizations, the growth rate of the typical firms capital stock exceeds its pre-liberalization mean by an average of 5.4 percentage points. Cross-sectional changes in investment are significantly correlated with the signals about fundamentals embedded in the stock price changes that occur upon liberalization. Panel data estimations show that a 1-percentage point increase in a firms expected future sales growth predicts a 4.1-percentage point increase in its investment; country-specific changes in the cost of capital predict a 2.3-percentage point increase in investment; firm-specific changes in risk premia do not affect investment.

Stock Market Liberalizations and the Repricing of Systematic Risk

When countries open their stock markets to foreign investors, firms that become eligible for purchase by foreigners (investible) are repriced according to the difference in the covariance of their returns with the local and world market. An investible firm whose return covariance with the local market exceeds that with the world market by 0.01 will experience a firm-specific revaluation of 3.4 percent. In contrast, the repricing of firms that remain off limits to foreign investors (non-investible) bears no significant relationship to differences in local and world covariances. These findings suggest that the CAPM has predictive power for the cross-sectional repricing of systematic risk when barriers to capital movements are removed.

Foreign Direct Investment in India’s Retail Bazaar: Opportunities and Challenges

Despite encouraging signs, India’s retail market remains largely off‐limits to large international retailers like Wal‐Mart and Carrefour. Opposition to liberalising foreign direct investment in this sector raises concerns about employment losses, unfair competition resulting in large‐scale exit of incumbent domestic retailers and infant industry arguments to protect the organised domestic retail sector that is at a nascent stage. Based on international evidence, we suggest that allowing entry by large international retailers into the Indian market may help tackle inflation especially in food prices. Moreover, technical know‐how from foreign firms, such as warehousing technologies and distribution systems, can improve supply chain efficiency in India, in particular for agricultural produce. Better linkages between demand and supply have the potential to improve the price signals that farmers receive and also serve to enhance agricultural and other exports.

India Transformed? Insights from the Firm Level 1988-2005

Using firm-level data this paper analyzes the transformation of Indias economic structure following the implementation of economic reforms. The focus of the study is on publicly-listed and unlisted firms in manufacturing and services industries. Detailed balance sheet and ownership information permit an investigation of a range of variables. We analyze firm characteristics shown by industry before and after liberalization and investigate how industrial concentration, number, and size of firms evolved between 1988 and 2005. We find great dynamism displayed by foreign and private firms as reflected in the growth in their numbers, assets, sales and profits. Yet, closer scrutiny reveals no dramatic transformation in the wake of liberalization. The story rather is one of an economy still dominated by the incumbents (state-owned firms) and to a lesser extent, traditional private firms (firms incorporated before 1985). Sectors dominated by state-owned and traditional private firms before 1988-1990, with assets, sales and profits representing shares higher than 50%, generally remained so in 2005. The exception to this broad pattern is the growing importance of new private firms in the services sector. Rates of return also have remained stable over time and show low dispersion across sectors and across ownership groups within sectors.

Deregulation, Misallocation, and Size: Evidence from India

This paper examines the impact of the deregulation of compulsory industrial licensing in India on firm-size dynamics and reallocation of resources within industries. Following deregulation, resource misallocation declines and the left-hand tail of the firm-size distribution thickens significantly, which suggests increased entry by small firms. However, the dominance and growth of large incumbent firms remains unchallenged. Quantile regressions reveal that the distributional effects of deregulation on firm size are significantly nonlinear. The reallocation of market shares toward a small number of large firms and a large number of small firms is characterized as the shrinking middle in Indian manufacturing. Small and medium-sized firms may continue to face constraints in their attempts to grow.

The Influence of Domestic Firms on Foreign Direct Investment Liberalization

This paper investigates the influence of incumbent firms on the decision to allow foreign direct investment into an industry. Based on data from Indias economic reforms, the results suggest that firms in concentrated industries are more successful at preventing foreign entry, that state-owned firms are more successful at stopping foreign entry than similarly placed private firms, and that profitable state-owned firms are more successful at stopping foreign entry than unprofitable state-owned firms. These results continue to hold when we control for industry characteristics such as the presence of natural monopolies and the size of the workforce. When foreign entry is allowed in an industry, incumbent firms experience a significant decline in market share and profits. The pattern of foreign entry liberalization supports the private interest view of policy implementation.

Lessons Unlearned? Corporate Debt in Emerging Markets

This paper documents a set of new stylized facts about leverage and financial fragility for emerging market firms following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Corporate debt vulnerability indicators during the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) attributed to corporate financial roots provide a benchmark for comparison. Firm-level data show that post-GFC, emerging market corporate balance sheet indicators have not deteriorated to AFC crisis-country levels. However, more countries are close to or in the “vulnerable” range of Altman’s Z-score, and average leverage for the entire emerging market sample is higher in the post-GFC period than during the AFC. Regression estimates suggest that the relationship between leverage, exchange rate depreciations, and corporate financial distress is time varying. Also, a central finding is that firm size is correlated with corporate distress and, further, that currency depreciations amplify the impact of leverage on financial vulnerability for large firms during a crisis. Consistent with Gabaix (2011) the paper finds a granularity effect in that large firms are systemically important—idiosyncratic shocks to the sales growth of large firms significantly correlate with GDP growth in our emerging markets sample. Relatedly, the sales growth of large firms with higher leverage is more adversely impacted by exchange rate shocks. While this result holds for the average country in our sample, there is substantial cross-country heterogeneity.

Taper Tantrums: QE, its Aftermath and Emerging Market Capital Flows

This paper provides a novel perspective on the impact of U.S. unconventional monetary policy (UMP) on emerging market capital flows and asset prices. Using high-frequency Treasury futures data to identify U.S. monetary policy shocks, we find, through the lens of an affine term structure model, that these shocks represent revisions to both the expected path of short-term interest rates and required risk compensation. The risk compensation component is especially important during the UMP periods. Further, we find that these high-frequency policy shocks do exhibit sizable effects on U.S. holdings of emerging market assets and their valuations. We also document that the relative effects of U.S. monetary policy shocks are larger for emerging asset returns relative to physical capital flows, and they are largest for emerging equity markets relative to fixed income markets. Last, these effects are largest when the Federal Reserve is engaged in “tapering” its large-scale asset purchase program.