This paper defines four basic business models based on what asset rights are sold (Creators, Distributors, Landlords and Brokers) and four variations of each based on what type of assets are involved (Financial, Physical, Intangible, and Human). Using this framework, we classified the business...

How different are retailers' inventory levels around the world? Specifically, are retailers' inventories constant across countries, converging, or at least co-integrating? These might be viewed as various forms of global determinism. To see which of these forms hold, I use a novel dataset...

Firms have very different inventory levels. How much of this heterogeneity is due to differences among firms, versus among industries? Using all observations in COMPUSTAT for 1950 through 2004, we find that both industry and firm effects are significant. Further, firm effects are as strong as,...

How does the stock market affect inventory decisions? The efficient markets view is that low stock price means poor fundamentals, a higher cost of capital, and lower inventory. Normatively, firms should obtain their cost of capital from an efficient markets model of stock prices. My study is...

Private equity funds of funds (FOFs) have become big business. Today, FOFs form 14% of new money raised. I test six explanations for the rise of FOFs. First, I find that FOFs do not generally deliver superior returns. They do, however, do well enough for the limited partners (LPs) that hire...

We posit a theory that runs counter to how conventional wisdom thinks about analyst bias, that it is the result of distorted incentives by quot;the systemquot; - especially upstream factors like the analysts' employers. We suggest that analysts are also heavily influenced by what investors...

Venture capital firms (VCs) form syndicates that compete to invest in deals. Does more competition makes it less likely that VCs will choose syndicate partners based on past ties? Using over 200,000 observations on how VCs choose each other in 572 biotech deals in Massachussetts from 1967...

We ask whether, in China, geographic location has explanatory power for firms' inventory turn, and why. To do this, we undertake a variance component analysis (VCA) of firm-level inventory turn, using a panel dataset of 1,531 unique Chinese firms spanning 1999-2008. Our identification arises...

We review inventories in mainland China by evaluating the trajectory of aggregate inventories in recent decades, and then modelling the relationship of inventories in some 300,000 manufacturers with respect to volume (using cost of goods sold), industry (using SIC codes), and geographical...

We analyze a signaling game between the manager of a firm and an investor in the firm. The manager has private information about the firm's demand and cares about the short-term stock price assigned by the investor. Previous research has shown that under continuous decision choices and the...