Policy makers are concerned with the accuracy of GDP forecasts and want to understand the reasons for the revision of forecasts. We study these issues by examining forecasts of annual UK GDP growth by a panel of agents, published monthly by HM Treasury. We focus on two main issues: the developing accuracy of the group-mean forecast as horizons shorten and the identification of information categories underlying agents' forecast revisions. The accuracy of the group-mean forecast is poor; there is evidence of information rigidity in forecasts within the target year, and accuracy only improves in May of the target year when contemporary information flows lead to increased accuracy. We find a pessimism bias; the median errors of group-mean forecasts are increasingly positive for horizons shorter than 17 months. We seek to explain revisions to both long- and short-horizon group-mean forecasts and individual agent forecasts. Modeling individual agents' forecast revisions using a moving window, we note a consistent tendency by agents to revise their forecast towards the group-mean. Although their importance varied over time, the main information categories explaining revisions were, over longer horizons, the cost of finance, production, and a business confidence indicator. FX rates and inflation were influential over shorter horizons.

This paper evaluates South African manufacturing performance over 25 years. It reports the evolution of five basic variables: employment, mark-ups, exports, domestic sales, and investment, using an aggregated sample of firms from a reliable business database. The approach differs from other economic models by the complementary use of management perceptions in estimated equations. The results reinforce some previous findings; for example, wage pressure tends to constrain domestic sales while the relative wage incentivizes capital investment. The exchange rate matters for exports and investment is constrained by skill shortages. Other findings add evidence to contested issues such as the importance of the interest rate level for investment and exchange rate stability for export growth. Relationships between key variables can help to identify growth constraints and the potential for manufacturing jobs. In particular, the lack of transmission from exports to employment or to domestic sales and the response of the mark-up to investment suggest institutional failures in coordinating market activity.

This paper evaluates South African manufacturing performance over 25 years. The results show some surprises. First, neither the exchange rate nor exports are determinants of domestic sales.Second there is a lack of transmission from investment to growth, reflected in the domestic mark-up which tends not to be reduced by capital investment.Third, although negative volatility effects were found for investment and exports, they were weak or inconsistent.Fourth, there is little evidence that interest rates affect capital investment.These unexpected findings have policy implications. The lack of transmission from exports to domestic sales and the unresponsiveness of the mark-up to investment suggests institutional failures in making markets work. The lack of volatility effects and interest rates effects suggest that policy emphasis should not unduly be placed on stability or the cost of capital, at the expense of institutional reforms perhaps in the area of competition and industrial policy.

Empirical work on stock market data, coupled with behavioural findings on corporate decision-making, have produced a set of challenges for orthodox macroeconomics. This paper critically considers the work of Andrew Smithers and related contributions, the insights from which have largely been ignored in consensus economics. Key features of this alternative framework are a rejection of efficient markets; a distinction between market and fundamental value of assets; the need to consider multiple financial assets; perverse effects of managerial compensation; the heterogeneity of economic actors; and behavioural theories of corporate decisions. The way that these facets are unified in a coherent critique marks Smithers out as an original thinker. But his work should also be seen in the context of past and contemporary authors who have attempted to incorporate firms and shareholders into economic theory. Despite the broad historical sweep of his work, Smithers has surprisingly little to say about political economy. Apart from references to executive compensation, his account does not differentiate much between the managerial capitalism and the era of shareholder value that has characterized major Anglophone countries since the 1980s. The result of this is that doubts remain over elements of his theory and that some policy implications are uncertain or unexplored.

The literature suggests that the dispersion of agents’ forecasts of an event flows from heterogeneity of beliefs and models. Using a data set of fixed event point forecasts of UK GDP growth by a panel of independent forecasters published by HM Treasury, we investigate three questions concerning this dispersion: (a) Are agent’s beliefs randomly distributed or do agents fall into groups with similar beliefs? (b) as agents revise their forecasts, what roles are played by their previous and consensus forecasts? and (c) is an agent’s private information of persistent value? We find that agents fall into four clusters, a large majority, a few pessimists, and two idiosyncratic agents. Our proposed model of forecast revisions shows agents are influenced positively by a change in the consensus forecast and negatively influenced by the previous distance of their forecast from the consensus. We show that the forecasts of a minority of agents significantly lead the consensus.

• Markets are more suited to reacting to incremental demand change than to implementing entirely new sets of opportunities. This is not only because markets are often short-termist or rent-seeking, but also because major innovative change implies external gains and losses beyond the individual innovating firm. • Industrial strategy complements or circumscribes market competition. It deals with the co-ordination of structural change, recognition of inter-dependencies across sectors and places, and the building of capabilities and future options. Industrial strategy concerns more than subsidies and picking winners. It is about enabling change. • Demand is there potentially, but it is latent, not effective and needs to be fostered by public-led coordination. Industrial strategy should then be conceived as including research on public projects which would make effective the latent demand for new market and non-market provision. New institutions linking private and public finance and research may be necessary for the unlocking of this potential. Private venture capital finance does not currently have the mission or interest in pursuing large co-ordinated schemes. • The focus of this chapter is on the supply and coordination of investment i.e. forward commitments, whether they comprise physical capital, organisation, infrastructure, skills, or innovation. • The investment decision-making of individual firms are autonomous in a mixed economy. It is hard to persuade firms to sign up to coordinated plans when they are competing to capture rents and when they have more private information than any regulator or official. • The proclivity of corporations to invest capital depends on the corporate culture of the economy. It is influenced by institutional features – regulation, takeover codes, company law and codes of conduct that concern the duty of directors and the rights of different types of investor. This complex of institutions makes up the “corporate governance” environment that reflects the balance of power between the various parties or “stakeholders” involved with a company’s activities such as investors, managers and workers. When a firm’s corporate governance is attuned mainly to the interests of investors it tends to invest less capital and distributes more. In this framework the market then allocates capital - in an uncoordinated manner. • The reform of corporate governance is a pre-requisite for a successful industrial strategy that identifies and responds to latent demand.

Abstract: Since the achievement of democracy, high levels of gross fixed capital formation have been required for the economic and social transformation of South Africa. Public-sector investment has risen, particularly since 2008, but private-business investment has not grown enough, while manufacturing’s share of the capital stock has declined substantially. Common explanations for low investment in manufacturing are examined in the light of empirical literature and are judged to have inadequate evidential support. Industrial policies derived from these views, such as maintaining low interest rates to promote investment, need to be based on stronger evidence. An argument is put forward for a system-based approach to research on the determinants of investment.

The economics of dividend policy has focused on the single tight narrative that dividends keep managers honest, mitigating concerns that they over-invest. This article provides a critique of that agency narrative, arguing that pressure from short-term focused investors, executives and board members pushes the firm into preemptive actions of returning too much cash via dividends. We analyze three channels of influence for investor pressure through 1) threat of takeovers, 2) shareholder value oriented corporate governance, measured by director independence and board equity incentives, and 3) trading and institutional ownership patterns. We find that firms adopt a higher dividend payout to discourage takeover bids. Also, FTSE 100 firms, that are most focused on shareholder value governance in the form of equity-based compensation and a higher share of independent directors, display a higher dividend payout. Frequency of trading and ownership by transient investors seeking current profits also predict increased dividend payout. Traditional agency theory, focused on dividends as a tool for managerial discipline, is not strongly supported by the results, which rather support a narrative of short-term investor pressure on firms irrespective of investment opportunities.

We explore the role of taxes on stimulating investment decisions for levered firms under cash flows and investment costs uncertainty using the adjusted present value-based real options approach developed by Myers and Read (2019). We extend their work to consider combined tax credits and uncertain investment costs. We then run a numerical analysis to quantify the impact of uncertainty, corporate tax and investment tax credit in stimulating investments.

We estimate the effect of external financial constraints on fixed investment intentions for UK manufacturing by size of firm distinguishing between normal effects and those since the financial crisis began in the UK in 2007. Our financial constraints data are constructed to reflect only supply-side influences i.e. they are independent of cyclical conditions that may affect the demand for credit. Using consistent quarterly long run survey data with IV estimation, we find that only for the crisis period are financial constraints important for large firms and then only for periods of falling business optimism. By contrast, small firms experienced continuous constraint but with no additional supply side effects during the crisis. A policy implication for the UK is that the key to resumed lending may lie not so much with bank behaviour as with the demand conditions that firms face, in particular the sustainability and certainty of demand.

In this chapter I first review the current state of play in corporate governance debates, highlighting challenges to the dominant agency view. Following a critique of the economic reasoning supporting shareholder primacy I consider two contrasting approaches to fixing the problems of labour engagement and capital commitment that affect economic performance. These approaches—which could loosely be called stakeholding—differ in the emphasis given to the roles of management on the one hand and governance on the other in addressing the identified problems. I analyse them here in respect of their logical consistency and also their feasibility. A management-oriented approach is unlikely in itself to be sufficient but it may help in creating the underlying institutional supports needed for governance reform.

We investigate the accuracy of capital investment predictors from a national business survey of South African manufacturing. Based on data available to correspondents at the time of survey completion, we propose variables that might inform the confidence that can be attached to their predictions. Having calibrated the survey predictors' directional accuracy, we model the probability of a correct directional prediction using logistic regression with the proposed variables. For point forecasting, we compare the accuracy of rescaled survey forecasts with time series benchmarks and some survey/time series hybrid models. In addition, using the same set of variables, we model the magnitude of survey prediction errors. Directional forecast tests showed that three out of four survey predictors have value but are biased and inefficient. For shorter horizons we found that survey forecasts, enhanced by time series data, significantly improved point forecasting accuracy. For longer horizons the survey predictors were at least as accurate as alternatives. The usefulness of the more accurate of the predictors examined is enhanced by auxiliary information, namely the probability of directional accuracy and the estimated error magnitude.

The purpose of this article is to examine whether Research and Development (R&D) expenditure is biased downward because of self-serving behavior of highly incentivized managers. This offers an insight into the general relationship between incentives and opportunism. Using instrumental variables and panel-data methods for a sample of high R&D spenders in the UK, we examine whether R&D is reduced in cases of imminent departure of the CEO. Results show evidence for this but only for the sample above the median in intensity of stock and options in the compensation package. This suggests that opportunism is enhanced by inappropriately strong incentives. The main results are robust to the inclusion of a number of corporate governance variables.

A regulatory change in 2006, permitting equity compensations in China, offers a natural experiment to investigate drivers and outcomes of stock options. There are two unique features. First, adoption of stock options occurred rapidly compared to the US, where stock options have been around for more than 100years with periods of high (1990s) and low (before 1950s) adoption. Second, stock options have been issued by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), an unusual aspect. This study analyzes all listed companies in China from 2004 to 2014, testing two competing theories: optimal contracting and managerial power. If managers own more equity, if the CEO also serves as board chairman and if compensation committees exist, managers are more likely to receive stock options. Ownership type and firm characteristics are also essential factors in granting stock options. In non-SOEs, evidence suggests that controlling shareholders award stock options less frequently but if they do they seem to induce managers to collude in tunneling. Applying a propensity score matching approach to account for an alleged self-selection bias, we do not observe any improvements in firm performance or shareholder value after stock options have been issued. Accordingly, managerial power seems to be the predominant driver for the introduction of stock options. Hence, managerial accountability and better disclosure are essential to ensure that stock options do contribute to value creation.

Advertising and its effects have been debated for well over a century. In the last few decades a generally sceptical view of the benefits of advertising has been overturned by a series of academic advances in economics that detail a variety of ways in which advertising may affect the economy and society. This academic work has however been paralleled by a growing popular and political opposition to advertising and its social effects. In this article, the positive economic case for advertising is challenged by an assessment of the main channels of its influence and by a review of the associated empirical findings on its economic and wider impact. A policy response of limiting the tax deductibility of business advertising is explored.

Advertising and its effects have been debated for well over a century. In the last few decades a generally sceptical view of the benefits of advertising has been overturned by a series of academic advances in economics that detail a variety of ways in which advertising may affect the economy and society. This academic work has however been paralleled by a growing popular and political opposition to advertising and its social effects. In this paper, the positive economic case for advertising is challenged by an assessment of the main channels of its influence and by a review of the associated empirical findings on its economic and wider impact. A policy response of limiting the tax deductibility of business advertising is explored.

China's growth model suggests that the 2008 financial crisis may have affected the Chinese economy differently from what one observes in mature market economies. In this paper, we examine how Chinese corporate investment responded to the financial crisis by using 1689 listed nonfinancial firms during Q12006–Q32010. We document that (1) the overall impact of the financial crisis on Chinese corporate investment is negative; (2) among three channels conveying the effect of the financial crisis, namely, the demand channel, the financial constraints channel, and the uncertainty channel, the demand channel dominates; (3) financial assets held by a nonfinancial firm are important in explaining the firm's fixed investment behaviour; (4) as compared to non-state firms, state-controlled firms are less affected by the financial crisis and more active in engaging in financial assets investment; and (5) foreign ownership can be seen as a buffer against the negative effect of the financial crisis and foreign-involved Chinese firms are less active in financial assets investment as compared to domestic firms.