Economics Insights @ CBS

A meta-analysis of results from 320 published studies relates environmental, strategic, and organizational factors to financial performance. The 320 empirical studies that were reviewed were published between 1921 and 1987. Findings from the most frequently studied relationships include: 1. Industry concentration was addressed in almost 100 studies; over 1,100 tests show a clear directional effect. 2. Growth, analyzed in 88 studies, is consistently related to higher financial performance. 3. Market share is positively associated with financial performance. 4.

A number of issues that relate to the desirability and implications of new venture financing are examined within a principal-agent framework that captures the essence of the relationship between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. The model suggests: (1) As long as the skill levels of entrepreneurs are common knowledge, all will choose to involve venture capital investors, since the risk sharing provided by outside participation dominates the agency relationship that is created.

In estimating functions of continuous-time Markov chains via simulation, one may reduce variance and computation by simulating only the embedded discrete-time chain. To estimate derivatives (with respect to transition probabilities) of functions of discrete-time Markov chains, we propose embedding them in continuous-time processes. To eliminate the additional variance and computation thereby introduced, we convert back to discrete time. For a restricted class of chains, we may embed in a continuous-time Markov chain and apply perturbation analysis estimation.