Reuters (September 3)
“Publicly listed family-owned firms, defined as those where the founder of their family owns 20% of shares or votes, returned 3 percentage points more than non-family owned stocks during the virus-struck first half of 2020.” It might be a coincidence, “but the same thing happened after the last crisis…. The effect persists across sectors, regions and company size,” perhaps because the firms have less debt and invest more in R&D.
Tags: 2020, Crisis, Debt, Family-owned, Founder, Listed, R&D, Regions, Sectors, Shares, Size, Stocks, Virus
Bloomberg (January 26)
“Why are economists so willing to declare to the world that free trade is good?” Their consensus flies in the face of popular opinion and “powerful evidence that industries and regions that have been more exposed to Chinese import competition since 2000—the year China joined the World Trade Organization—have been hit hard and have not recovered.”
Tags: China, Competition, Consensus, Economists, Evidence, Free trade, Imports, Industries, Popular opinion, Regions, WTO
Euromoney (June Issue)
The African Development Bank’s 50th Anniversary brought much introspection, but infrastructure is only one problem hindering “meaningful continental integration.” Non-physical barriers present another. “Rules and regulations have not been harmonized within regions. Generally speaking, African countries trade more with Europe than they do with each other; even where roads are good, rent-seeking opportunities widely plague popular trade routes, with officials hoping to benefit from bribes at the expense of their neighbours.”
Tags: African Development Bank, Bribes, Europe, Infrastructure, Integration, Non-physical barriers, Officials, Regions, Regulations, Rent-seeking, Rules, Trade
