Federica Romei discussion of: Corporate zombies
讨论Banerijee和Hofman对僵尸企业的研究，他们用利润不覆盖利息支付且资产市场价值低的新定义，分析14国30年数据，发现僵尸企业随时间增加且易复发，但定义可能导致过度识别。
The paper by Banerijee and Hofman studies and analyses the characteristics of zombie firms. The authors use a new definition of a zombie firm: one which is not profitable – the profits of a zombie firm do not cover the interest rate payments on debt. However, this is not enough since start-up firms can be non-profitable for the first years of their life. Hence, a zombie firm should have a low assets’ market value to replacement costs. They used data on firms in 14 countries for 30 years to analyse the characteristics of such firms. They found that zombie firms increased substantially over time. Also, many zombie firms re-enter the market but are less productive and more likely to zombify again. The paper studies a fascinating and vital phenomenon. Researchers and policy-makers want to understand the characteristics of zombie firms and how they operate in the corporate market. The main problem is that we do not have a proper definition of a zombie firm. The authors try to solve this problem. However, although their definition considers that low profitable firms may be non-zombie since they can be a start-up, but there are still possible problems with their definition. Indeed, I suspect it may lead to an overidentification of zombie firms. Here are my comments.