In this paper, we use data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the years 1992 to 1998 to study the determinants of saving in the form of voluntary contributions to personal pension plans (PPPs). We first estimate a probit model with selection for the probability of making these...

Why do some countries industrialize later than others? Recent literature suggests that the prime reason is low agricultural productivity. This paper argues that the initial inequality of human capital could also be a contributing factor to the delayed process of industrialization characterizing...

Why do some countries industrialize later than others? Recent literature suggests that the prime reason is low agricultural productivity. This paper argues that the initial level of human capital could also be a contributing factor. We construct a neoclassical growth model, which predicts that...

Cummins et al. (2006) construct a new measure of fundamentals, and show that the positive cash flow effects typically found in investment-Q models disappear when traditional Q is replaced with their new measure. Their results are not robust to small changes in their specification or in the...

Using data from a panel of 15 countries over the period 1990-1998, the determinants of the use of non cash payment instruments are analysed. The estimation results highlight the importance of distinguishing between the determinants of the value and volume of noncash transactions. It is found in...

We construct a dynamic monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous firms to study the links between firms’ earnings volatility, the degree of financial constraints that they face, their survival probabilities, and their export market participation decisions. Our model predicts that more...

Using a panel of 5999 Belgian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the period 2002-2008, we employ a Bayesian approach to derive firm-varying investment-cash flow sensitivities (ICFS) from reduced-form investment equations which include different measures of investment opportunities...

We investigate the extent to which financing constraints affect the innovation activities of over 120,000 mainly unlisted Chinese firms over the period 2000–2007. Based on a variety of specifications and estimation methods, we document that Chinese firms' innovation activities are constrained...