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Empirical Essays in Institutional Microeconomics
Schwarz, Jiří ; Bauer, Michal (advisor) ; Benáček, Vladimír (referee) ; Bjørnskov, Christian (referee) ; Berggren, Niclas (referee)
The dissertation consists of three empirical papers in institutional microeconomics. The first paper examines the role of institutional quality in international trade, the second paper focuses on unintended consequences of intellectual property rights for social welfare, and the last one addresses the impact of banking on corporate financing and investment. An introductory chapter puts these three papers into perspective. In the first paper I analyze the role of institutions in price dispersion among cities in the European region in the 1996-2009 period. Using a number of institutional quality measures I find that the better the institutions, the lower the predicted dispersion. The result is robust to different specifications of the regression model and is consistent with a hypothesis that arbitrage, as an entrepreneurial activity and the main power behind the law of one price, is influenced by institutional quality. In the second paper I use a large data set of U.S. patents applied for between 1980 and 2007 by 22 large technology companies to study development of strategic patenting over time and across industries. Using two complementary methods I reveal strong evidence against the hypothesis of more strategic patenting after 1995. Contrary to the expectations, aerospace patents appear to be on average...
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Bankruptcy, Investment, and Financial Constraints: Evidence from a Post-Transition Economy
Pospíšil, Martin ; Swarz, Jiří
In this paper we use balance-sheet data and information on bankruptcy to study the relationship between investment, financial constraints, and bankruptcy in a post-transition country. Our data constitute a dynamic panel and cover the period 2006–2011, which also allows us to study the impact of the 2008 crisis on Czech companies. Using investment–cash flow sensitivity to analyze financial constraints we find there is robust evidence that cash flow and the level of debt have a positive and significant impact on the investment rate. By taking a closer look at individual subsamples we reveal that the existence of financial constraints, proxied by investment–cash flow sensitivity, is evident mainly after 2008 and in small and medium-sized enterprises. At the same time, we do not uncover any evidence that firms going bankrupt during our observed period faced more severe financial constraints. Moreover, companies going bankrupt had significantly higher levels of external debt and bank loans, which indicates that they may have been, in fact, less constrained than others.
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