I focus on the incentive effects of asset ownership in franchising. Franchise contracts give a manager ownership of some local assets; the franchisor owns other assets, notably the trademark. Under double moral hazard, the allocation of ownership effects the incentives of both the franchisor and the franchisee. I compare franchising with company-ownership of all assets. Franchising the local unit gives the manager strong incentives, but gives the central firm weak incentives. Franchising may be the preferred organizational form when the local manager's effort has a relatively small effect on the unit's current profit, but a large effect on the unit's future profit.

A number of studies have presented evidence rejecting the validity of the Sharpe-Lintner capital asset pricing model (CAPM). Possible alternatives include risk-based models, such as multifactor asset pricing models, or nonrisk-based models which address biases in empirical methodology, the existence of market frictions, or the presence of irrational investors. Distinguishing between the alternatives is important for applications such as cost of capital estimation. This paper develops a framework which shows that, ex ante, CAPM deviations due to missing risk factors will be very difficult to detect empirically, whereas deviations resulting from nonrisk-based sources are easily detectable. The results suggest that multifactor pricing models alone do not entirely resolve CAPM deviations.

This paper documents the fundamental role played by factor accumulation in explaining the extraordinary postwar growth of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Participation rates, educational levels, and (excepting Hong Kong) investment rates have risen rapidly in all four economies. In addition, in most cases there has been a large intersectoral transfer of labor into manufacturing, which has helped fuel growth in that sector. Once one accounts for the dramatic rise in factor inputs, one arrives at estimated total factor productivity growth rates that are closely approximated by the historical performance of many of the OECD and Latin American economies. While the growth of output and manufacturing exports in the newly industrializing countries of East Asia is virtually unprecedented, the growth of total factor productivity in these economies is not.

Greater corporate focus is consistent with shareholder wealth maximization. Diseconomies of scope in the 1980s are confirmed by a trend towards focus or specialization, a positive relation between stock returns and focus increases, and the failure of diversified firms to exploit financial economies of scope (coinsurance of debt or reliance on internal capital markets). Large focused firms were less likely to be subject to hostile takeover attempts than were other firms, but diversified firms were distinguished in the 1980s mostly by being relatively active participants, as both buyers and sellers, in the market for corporate control.

In many advertising-intensive industries one observes market share persistence, i.e., firms maintaining lead market shares over long periods of time. I hypothesize that firms that have the largest stock of well-established brands, a stock that I term brand capital, are most likely to introduce new products in response to new market information about consumer preferences. Firms with less brand capital delay their introductions until the uncertainty concerning the market size is reduced. I present empirical support in a study of new product introductions in the U.S. beverage industry.

This paper considers a representative agent model of asset prices based on a recursive utility specification. A constant elasticity of intertemporal substitution is assumed but the risk-preference component of utility is restricted only by qualitative, non-parametric regularity conditions. A principal contribution is to determine the exhaustive implications of this semiparametric recursive utility model for the one-step ahead joint probability distribution for consumption growth and asset returns. It is also shown, in contrast to the claims of previous studies, that the generalization from expected utility to recursive utility contributes substantially to the resolution of the equity premium puzzle.

Using theory, case studies, and cross-country evidence, we investigate the factors behind the concentration of a nation's urban population in a single city. High tariffs, high costs of internal trade, and low levels of international trade increase the degree of concentration. Even more clearly, politics (such as the degree of instability) determines urban primacy. Dictatorships have central cities that are, on average, 50 percent larger than their democratic counterparts. Using information about the timing of city growth, and a series of instruments, we conclude that the predominant causality is from political factors to urban concentration, not from concentration to political change.

We examine the reduced-form relationship between per capita income and various environmental indicators. Our study covers four types of indicators: urban air pollution, the state of the oxygen regime in river basins, fecal contamination of river basins, and contamination of river basins by heavy metals. We find no evidence that environmental quality deteriorates steadily with economic growth. Rather, for most indicators, economic growth brings an initial phase of deterioration followed by a subsequent phase of improvement. The turning points for the different pollutants vary, but in most cases they come before a country reaches a per capita income of $8000.

This paper presents new results on the size, frequency, and synchronization of price changes for twelve selected retail goods over the past 35 years. Three basic facts about the data are uncovered. First, nominal prices are typically fixed for more than one year, although the time between changes is very irregular. Second, prices change more often during periods of high overall inflation. Third, when prices do change, the sizes of the changes are widely dispersed. Both “large” and “small” changes occur for the same item, and the sizes of these changes do not closely depend on overall inflation.