In this section Overview Prime industrial space Output, prices and jobs The Economist commodity price index Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates Firms' access to capital Markets Reprints.
Brazil, China, India and Russia all beat the average.In this section Overview Prime industrial space Output, prices and jobs The Economist commodity price index Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates Firms' access to capital Markets Reprints.
When Brazil was closed and regulated, with little competition, and high inflation and interest rates, firms often made most money in financial markets—and cared little about such mundane matters as transport costs.
The higher the interest rate that firms must pay on their securities, the smaller will be the investment program that they see as promising to be profitable.
Curiously, new research by Justin Murfin of Yale University and Mitchell Petersen from the Kellogg School of Management, suggests that the same is true of finance.They examined 30 years of corporate loans and found that the spread (or excess interest rate) that firms pay varied depending on when the debt was issued, with borrowing costs peaking in February and August.
Prices were rising (by 7.4% in the year to December) and yet the political pressure to suppress interest rates remained firm.
Both schemes have been modified but the row goes on.Embraer's president, Mauricio Botelho, insists that, coming from a developing country with high interest rates, his firm merits special consideration.
Facing higher interest rates, Italian firms paid back 10% of their loans in the past year.
Despite the widely held expectation that the Bank of England's monetary policy committee will cut interest rates tomorrow, firms in the housing sector fared badly yesterday.
In this section Overview Output, prices and jobs The Economist commodity-price index Remittances Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates Markets Firms' access to capital Reprints.
