We consider a Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson trade model with two lobbies, representing the interests of factor owners, and two political parties. The lobbies contribute resources to politics, equating their returns to political and economic activity at the margin, while the parties maximize their probability of election, trading off general voter dissatisfaction with protection against the electioneering resources that favorable policies attract from the lobbies. The equilibrium level of protection of a factor and its expected rate of return increase with its relative endowment. If this relative endowment is high (low) then the factor will be better (worse) off than under free trade but at intermediate factor endowment ratios, both factors will be worse off. Under parameter changes making lobbies more sensitive to the commodity price, the lobbies contribute more resources to politics and can both be worse off even though the parties are proposing lower trade distortions.

Risk premiums on dollar-denominated forward and futures contracts depend on risk attitudes, consumption parameters, and the stochastic structure of money and outputs. Pure monetary uncertainty leads to forward market backwardation; pure output uncertainty leads to contango under high risk aversion. Similar conclusions hold for futures contracts if neither money nor output show negative serial correlation. The conflicting effects of money and output shocks can imply that each contract switches between contango and backwardation, that one contract shows contango when the other shows backwardation, and that capital losses are expected on one contract when capital gains are expected on the other.

This paper considers a dynamic real exchange model of international trade in commodities and equities. Given “generalized Cobb-Douglas” intraperiod tastes that differ across countries, we find a closed-form solution with properties that are noteworthy, not because they reverse our presumptions, but because they exceed them. A consumption-based model of international equity investment might be expected to have the following properties: (i) The optimal portfolios should reflect the international pattern of commodity expenditure. (ii) A country’s portfolio should be biased toward equities in commodities that attract a large share of its expenditure. (iii) A country would short some equities, given an appropriate structure of equity returns. (iv) Short sales of equities would allow the international economy to move toward the situation that would prevail if risk markets were complete. In our model solution, these properties take strong forms:

An expected-utility-maximizing investor spends his portfolio income on commodities and real balances. Commodity prices and asset payoffs are determined endogenously in general equilibrium. The impact of commodity prices on investor welfare yields surprising relationships among the expected returns required on financial assets. Real (monetary) disturbances can generate a neg ative (positive) correlation between inflation and equity payoffs, but the expected nominal return on the equity can still be less (greater) than the nominal interest rate. The expected nominal return on an indexed bond can be greater than on a nominal bond. The expected real return on an equity can be lower than on an indexed bond.

If the representative consumer of a country is risk averse then the choice of trade controls must take account of their effects on the fluctuations of domestic real income. If the world price of the importable is uncertain and risk aversion is high then the optimal policy for achieving a ceiling on expected imports involves a reduction in imports and a rise in the domestic price as the world price falls. Moreover, a quota is superior to a tariff in achieving the ceiling. Under domestic uncertainty, a tariff is superior to a quota but it could be optimal to reduce the domestic price as imports increase.

John Fountain, Leslie Young; An Extension of the Composite Commodity Theorem: A Note, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 94, Issue 2, 1 March 1980, Page

Since liquidation and bankruptcy are costly, researchers have tried to find out why the claimants of a troubled firm do not work out a deal to avoid these costs. In this article we show that if a creditor has to deal with multiple borrowers who might default, it may be optimal for the creditor to randomly reject requests for a loan workout. We further demonstrate that the optimal acceptance rate used by a creditor is positively related to the liquidating cost and negatively related to the default benefit. Our model is particularly relevant when analyzing the default decisions of mortgage borrowers and small business owners.

Whereas most U.S. corporations are widely held, the predominant form of ownership in East Asia is control by a family, which often supplies a top manager. These features of “crony capitalism” are actually more pronounced in Western Europe. In both regions, the salient agency problem is expropriation of outside shareholders by controlling shareholders. Dividends provide evidence on this. Group-affiliated corporations in Europe pay higher dividends than in Asia, dampening insider expropriation. Dividend rates are higher in Europe, but lower in Asia, when there are multiple large shareholders, suggesting that they dampen expropriation in Europe, but exacerbate it in Asia.