Three essays in dynamic corporate finance

Summary Throughout my thesis, I elaborate on how real and financing frictions affect corporate decision making under uncertainty, and I explore how firms time their investment and financing decisions given such frictions. While the macroeconomics literature has focused on the impact of real frictions on investment decisions assuming all equity financed firms, the financial economics literature has mainly focused on the study of financing frictions. My thesis therefore assesses the join interaction of real and financing frictions in firms' dynamic investment and financing decisions. My work provides a rationale for the documented poor empirical performance of neoclassical investment models based on the joint effect of real and financing frictions on investment. A major observation relies in how the infrequency of corporate decisions may affect standard empirical tests. My thesis suggests that the book to market sorts commonly used in the empirical asset pricing literature have economic content, as they control for the lumpiness in firms' optimal investment policies. My work also elaborates on the effects of asymmetric information and strategic interaction on firms' investment and financing decisions. I study how firms time their decision to raise public equity when outside investors lack information about their future investment prospects. I derive areal-options model that predicts either cold or hot markets for new stock issues conditional on adverse selection, and I provide a rational approach to study jointly the market timing of corporate decisions and announcement effects in stock returns. My doctoral dissertation therefore contributes to our understanding of how under real and financing frictions may bias standard empirical tests, elaborates on how adverse selection may induce hot and cold markets in new issues' markets, and suggests how the underlying economic behaviour of firms may induce alternative patterns in stock prices.

Sexual dimorphism in resource acquisition and deployment: both size and timing matter.

Background and Aims The males and females of many dioecious plant species differ from one another in important life-history traits, such as their size. If male and female reproductive functions draw on different resources, for example, one should expect males and females to display different allocation strategies as they grow. Importantly, these strategies may differ not only between the two sexes, but also between plants of different age and therefore size. Results are presented from an experiment that asks whether males and females of Mercurialis annua, an annual plant with indeterminate growth, differ over time in their allocation of two potentially limiting resources (carbon and nitrogen) to vegetative (below-and above-ground) and reproductive tissues.Methods Comparisons were made of the temporal patterns of biomass allocation to shoots, roots and reproduction and the nitrogen content in the leaves between the sexes of M. annua by harvesting plants of each sex after growth over different periods of time.Key Results and Conclusions Males and females differed in their temporal patterns of allocation. Males allocated more to reproduction than females at early stages, but this trend was reversed at later stages. Importantly, males allocated proportionally more of their biomass towards roots at later stages, but the roots of females were larger in absolute terms. The study points to the important role played by both the timing of resource deployment and the relative versus absolute sizes of the sinks and sources in sexual dimorphism of an annual plant.

Western Préalpes Médianes Romandes: Timing and structure. A review.

Between the original position and their present day location as klippen, the Prealpes Medianes underwent a complex history of paleotectonics and alpine tectonics. Due to the opening of the Piemont ocean the Brianconnais sedimentation realm of the Prealpes Medianes evolved as a rim basin of the northern passive margin during Jurassic to Eocene times. Different paleotectonic features (normal faults, synsedimentary growth structures, inversion structures) developed and were active above a basal detachment in evaporitic layers. The tectonic movements were a consequence of thermal events in the crust. Isolated from the Iberic continent at the end of the Late Cretaceous, the Brianconnais exotic terrain was incorporated into the accretionary prism of the closing Piemont ocean and the incipient alpine orogeny during the Lutetian-Bartonian. The Prealpes Medianes were detached from their homeland during the Bartonian-Priabonian and were transported onto the foreland. The tectonic style is one of a thin-skinned foreland fold and thrust belt. Fault associated fold development above a main decollement, together with internal deformation, represent the Prealpes Medianes main structural features. The very low-grade metamorphic conditions have their origin in the heat flux induced by tectonic burial by overriding nappes in the accretionary prism. After having been transported on top of the developing Helvetic nappes the Prealpes were emplaced in their present day position in front of the Alpine mountain belt during Oligocene times. Post-emplacement and out of sequence thrusting, possibly younger than Oligocene, is observed and can be related to thrusting in the sedimentary substratum and the basement.

Timing of Palaeozoic magmatism in the Maggia and Sambuco nappes and paleogeographic implications (Central Lepontine Alps)

Magmatic rocks from the pre-Mesozoic basements of the Sambuco and Maggia nappes have been dated by U-Pb zircon ages with the LA-ICPMS technique. Several magmatic events have been identified in the Sambuco nappe. The mafic banded calc-alkaline suite of Scheggia is dated at 540 Ma, an age comparable to that of mafic rocks in the Austroalpine Silvretta nappe. The Sasso Nero peraluminous augengneiss has an age of 480-470 Ma, like many other ``older orthogneisses'' in Alpine basement units. It hosts a large proportion of inherited zircons, which were dated around 630 Ma, a Panafrican age indicating the Gondwanan affiliation of the Sambuco basement. The calc-alkaline Matorello pluton yielded ages around 300 Ma, similar to numerous Late Carboniferous intrusions in other basement units of the Lower Penninic (Monte Leone, Antigorio, Verampio) and Helvetic domains (Gotthard and other External Crystalline Massifs). Associated lamprophyric dykes are slightly younger (300-290 Ma), like similar dykes sampled in gneiss blocks included in the sedimentary cover of the underlying Antigorio nappe (290-285 Ma). The Cocco granodiorite and Ruscada leucogranite, both intruding the basement of the neighbouring Maggia nappe, yielded ages of ca. 300-310 Ma, identical within errors to the age of the Matorello pluton. They are significantly older than former age determinations. This age coincidence, coupled with remarkable petrologic similarities between the Cocco and Matorello granodiorites, strongly suggests paleogeographic proximity of the Sambuco and Maggia nappes in Late Carboniferous times. In recent publications these two nappes have been interpreted as belonging to distinct Mesozoic paleogeographic domains: ``European'' for Sambuco and ``Brian double dagger onnais'' for Maggia, separated by the ``Valais'' oceanic basin. In this case, the similarity of the Matorello and Cocco intrusions would demonstrate the absence of any significant transcurrent movement between these two continental domains. Alternatively, according to a more traditional view, Sambuco and Maggia might belong to a single large Alpine tectonic unit.

How critical is timing for the diagnosis of influenza in general practice?

Résumé La performance diagnostic des signes et symptômes de la grippe a principalement été étudiée dans le cadre d'études contrôlées avec des critères d'inclusion stricts. Il apparaît nécessaire d'évaluer ces prédicteurs dans le cadre d'une consultation ambulatoire habituelle en tenant compte du délai écoulé entre le début des symptômes et la première consultation ainsi que la situation épidémiologique. Cette étude prospective a été menée à la Policlinique Médicale Universitaire durant l'hiver 1999-2000. Les patients étaient inclus s'ils présentaient un syndrome grippal et si le praticien suspectait une infection à Influenza. Le médecin administrait un questionnaire puis une culture d'un frottis de gorge était réalisée afin de documenter l'infection. 201 patients ont été inclus dans l'étude. 52% avaient une culture positive pour Influenza. En analyse univariée, une température > 37.8° (OR 4.2; 95% CI 2.3-7.7), une durée des symptômes < 48h (OR 3.2; 1.8-5.7), une toux (OR 3.2; 1-10.4) et des myalgies (OR 2.8; 1.0-7.5) étaient associés au diagnostic de grippe. En analyse de régression logistique, le modèle le plus performant qui prédisait la grippe était l'association d'une durée des symptômes <48h, une consultation en début d'épidémie, une température > 37.8° et une toux (sensibilité 79%, spécificité 69%, valeur prédictive positive 67%, une valeur prédictive négative de 73% et aire sous la courbe (ROC) de 0.74). En plus des signes et symptômes prédicteurs de la grippe, le médecin de premier recours devrait prendre en compte dans son jugement la durée des symptômes avant la première consultation et le contexte épidémiologique (début, pic, fin de l'épidémie), car ces deux paramètres modifient considérablement la valeurs des prédicteurs lors de l'évaluation de la probabilité clinique d'un patient d'avoir une infection à Influenza.

Market-Based Instruments for ecosystem services: institutional innovation or renovation?

Recent years have seen widespread experimentation with market-based instruments (MBIs) for the provision of environmental goods and ecosystem services. However, little attention has been paid to their design or to the effects of the underlying pro-market narrative on environmental policy instruments. The purpose of this article is to analyze the emergence and dissemination of the term "market-based instruments" applied to the provision of environmental services and to assess to what extent the instruments associated are genuinely innovative. The recommendation to develop markets can lead in practice to a variety of institutional forms, as we show it based on the example of payments for environmental services (PES) and biodiversity offsets, two very different mechanisms that are both presented in the literature as MBIs. Our purpose is to highlight the gap between discourse and practice in connection with MBIs.