Panel parametric,semiparametric, and nonparametric construction of counterfactuals

We consider panel parametric, semiparametric and nonparametric methods of constructing counterfactuals. We show through extensive simulations that no method is able to dominate other methods in all circumstances, since the true data‐generating process is typically unknown. We therefore also suggest a model‐averaging method as a robust method to generate counterfactuals. As an illustration of the sensitivity of counterfactual construction, we reexamine the impact of California's Tobacco Control Program on per capita cigarette consumption and election day registration (EDR) laws on voters' turnout by different methods.     

自然资源资产离任审计能提升环境治理效率吗？

基于2010—2017年中国280个地级市的面板数据，以领导干部自然资源资产离任审计试点为准自然实验，利用多期双重差分模型，检验了领导干部自然资源资产离任审计对环境治理效率的作用，结果表明自然资源资产离任审计能够通过推动环境制度建设、强化环境监管能力和增加环境治理投入等路径，显著提升环境治理效率。进一步分析发现，自然资源资产离任审计在财政状况较好、资源承载力较弱以及未实施中央环保督察的地区对环境治理效率的提升作用更强。     

The Self‐Help Myth: Towards a Theory of Philanthropy as Consensus Broker

This article presents a theoretical and methodological approach to studying how philanthropic power is maintained through the process of negotiating consensus between greatly unequal partners such as wealthy funders and social movement leaders. It is proposed that grant agreements between private foundations and social movement organizations construct idealized spaces of public participation and discursive theories of change that draw attention away from structural inequality and antagonism, ultimately generating consent. Drawing upon archival and ethnographic research on philanthropic investments in addressing migrant poverty in California's Central Valley, the article shows how consensus between foundation staff and farmworker and immigrant organizers promote funding frameworks that exclude questions that challenge relationships of power and systems of agricultural production that contribute to enduring poverty across the region. The Gramscian conceptual frames of “discursive power,” “hegemony as politics,” and “strategic articulation” are presented as a theoretical framework from which to understand the power of private philanthropy as consensus broker during historical moments of crisis.     

From market failure to organisational failure

In this paper, we argue that environmental economists who have dedicated their attention to problems of market and regulatory failure have been remiss in ignoring the potential for failure in the one institution that actually manages environmental resources - the business firm. Traditionally the firm has been modelled as a unitary, rational, optimising persona ficta. There is, however, abundant empirical and theoretical evidence to suggest that the business firm is an imperfect institution in that there are systematic deviations between the environmental objectives of the firm's leaders (principals) and the actions of the firm's employees (agents) which determine environmental performance. In the paper, we draw parallels between the causes of market failure and public policy tools to correct them on one hand and the causes of organisational failure and the management tools suited to their remedy on the other. Although much of the paper is concerned with the interrelationship between public policy that promotes sustainability and business policy to fashion a sustainable enterprise, our work is relevant irrespective of the reason why a firm's principal may want to improve environmental performance. No matter what the reason, the principal must concern him- or herself with operationalising objectives in management systems. It is consistent with the precautionary principle to assume that employees will do what the firm measures and rewards, not what its principal says is important. We build a verbal model, based on the language of principal-agent theory, to analyse how different management instruments might be employed to improve the firm's environmental performance. The model is one of three decision makers in a vertical hierarchy. Each of the first two has various instruments at its disposal to influence the behaviour of the agents subordinate to it. In the end, the goal is to ensure consistency between social, economic, and personal objectives. The specific management tools we analyse, with reference to the formal modelling which has appeared in the literature, include the compensation system, quantification and monitoring of non-financial objectives, internal pricing, horizontal task restructuring, centralisation vs. decentralisation of decision making, and corporate sanctions of agents for negligence. We conclude the paper by reiterating that the corporate policy statements to the effect that the firm should respect the environment are insufficient to ensure that result. In addition, firms' principals must operationalise that goal in the systems of measurement and control which govern the behaviour of those who really matter - the employees.     

Choosing an Accounting Method to Explain Public Policy: Social Return on Investment and UK Non-profit Sector Policy

We examine why certain accounting methods are chosen by government policy-makers to explain and rationalize their policy actions. We focus on the case of social return on investment (SROI), an accounting methodology that aims to capture and quantify the value created by social purpose organizations, and employs techniques of monetization and the expression of value as a ratio of benefits for investments [see REDF. (2000). SROI methodology: Analyzing the value of social purpose enterprise within a social return on investment framework. San Francisco: REDF; New Economics Foundation (NEF). (2007). Measuring real value: A DIY guide to social return on investment]. In particular, we examine how and why SROI was chosen for explaining and rationalizing the UK Government's policy of greater involvement of non-profit sector organizations in public service delivery. Our central contribution is to propose two important factors, which we identify as the capturability and communicability of accounting methods, that help to explain why a particular accounting method would be chosen by policy actors to explain and rationalize their public policy choices. The research helps further our understanding of the intersection between accounting and public policy by focusing explicitly on accounting's important role in explaining and rationalizing public policy.     

Payments for ecosystem services and corporate social responsibility: Perspectives on sustainable production,stakeholder relations,and philanthropy in Thailand

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are environmental management tools that enable corporations to simultaneously enhance their environmental performance and fund sustainable development in rural areas. PES is primarily promoted as part of a sustainable production strategy for conserving natural resources, offsetting carbon emissions, and green supply chain management. Nevertheless, PES uptake by the private sector remains low, and few studies have analysed whether corporate‐financed PES schemes conform to this rationale. This study evaluates three of the first PES schemes in Thailand, financed by large corporations in the water utilities, aquaculture, and beverage sectors. Interviews with 39 business managers and project stakeholders suggest that PES may be viewed as a tool for philanthropy, public relations, and gaining license to operate—akin to many corporate social responsibility initiatives. Explanations and ramifications are discussed in the context of ecological uncertainty, risk management, financial performance, organisational learning, and the corporate‐engagement strategies of non‐governmental organisations.     

Predictability and Reflexivity

Abstract . Reflexive predictions are self-defeating or self-fulfilling. However, it was shown that in most cases of self defeating public predictions of social events conceptually at least one correct prediction exists. Unfortunately the term “reflexive prediction” is applied in the literature to quite distinct phenomena. A. Grünbaum, moreover, argued that reflexive prediction occurs also in the natural sciences using as example the fire-control system which “obeys only natural laws.” The purpose of this paper is two fold: first, it clarifies the terminological confusion. Second, it argues that every man-made tool (fire-control systems are tools) obeys natural laws and so does the person. The question of a person's higher functions, such as expectation and decision is only acknowledged. The conclusions are (1) that there is a fundamental difference between reaction to public (predictive) utterances and reaction to discriminatory behavior based on private ptediciion. (2) The reflexivity of public prediction is a phenomenon characteristic of the social sciences. at least as long as these disciplines are set apart from the natural sciences.     

Environmental transparency and investors' risk perception: Cross-country evidence on multinational corporations' sustainability practices and cost of equity

We explore whether a greater amount of environmental disclosure can reduce a firm's ex ante cost of equity. This could occur because the quantity of environmental information changes investors' risk perception of the company, thereby influencing its ex ante cost of equity. Our study is a cross-country analysis of 1481 multinational corporations (MNCs) across 43 countries and territories from 2013 to 2019. Firstly, we measure investors' risk perception as a firm's ex ante cost of equity by employing five different valuation models, all based on equity analysts' forecasted data. We then investigate whether large quantities of environmental information disclosed by an MNC affect its ex ante cost of equity. We find evidence that investors price the amount of environmental disclosure. More environmental disclosure decreases a firm's ex ante cost of equity because it lessens investors' information asymmetry. However, this relationship is non-linear. Once the amount of environmental disclosure data exceeds a certain threshold level, a firm's ex ante cost of equity will rise again. Our empirical results also suggest that non-financial factors at the country level play a role in shaping how investors perceive a firm's riskiness. Locating the firm in a country with better environmental performance and a higher score of the human development index can reduce investors' risk perception and result in a lower ex ante cost of equity. A policy implication of our findings is that a global standardised and effective corporate sustainability reporting is needed to provide investors a more holistic view for evaluating the riskiness of their investments.     

Can entrepreneurial orientation improve sustainable development through leveraging internal lean practices?

This study aims to examine the mediating role of internal lean practices (ILPs) on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and triple bottom line performance (i.e. environmental, social, and operational performance). We examine Chile, which represents a vibrant economy and one of the world's most productive entrepreneurship ecosystems but with a history of socio‐economic inequalities and strong profit‐driven pressures to overextract natural resources. The study is based on a questionnaire related to manufacturing sent to 112 companies in Chile. The proposed relationships are analysed through structural equation modelling. The results indicate that ILPs fully mediate the effect of entrepreneurial orientation on environmental performance and social performance and partially mediates the effect of entrepreneurial orientation on operational performance. Our study extends the literature by explaining that entrepreneurial orientation builds and strengthens ILPs for creating triple bottom line competitive advantage.     

Group differences in reciprocity, multiplexity and exchange: measures and application

Local forces structure social networks. One major and widely researched local force is reciprocity, often assumed to work homogeneously across actors??i.e., all actors are equally subject to the same level of force towards reciprocity. Other local forces, like multiplexity and exchange, are also often assumed to apply equally to different actors. But social theory provides us with ample arguments why such forces might be stronger in some subsets of actors than others, or why such forces might affect intergroup ties more than intragroup ties. In this paper we introduce standard measures to capture these group specific forces towards reciprocity, multiplexity, and exchange. All the measures control for differential tendencies of actors to initiate ties of various types. We also introduce a procedure by which differences in the strength of these forces between groups and subgroups can be statistically evaluated.     

可持续发展视角下的煤炭城市环境伦理研究——以榆林市为例

资源环境是人类赖以生存和发展的物质基础。人类在享受巨大的物质财富的同时,却以前所未有的规模和速度破坏着其赖以生存的自然环境,致使环境问题已经成为人类生存和发展所面临的一个严重威胁,引发了日益严重的环境伦理危机。这一点在以煤炭资源为主要发展动力的城市尤为如此。鉴此,从可持续发展视角来探讨煤炭城市的环境伦理建设问题就显得尤为重要。本文从理论上阐述了可持续发展与环境伦理之间的内在关系,并以典型的煤炭资源型区域-榆林市为例,剖析了其在开发煤炭资源过程中所引发的严重环境伦理问题及造成这些问题的原因:缺乏对自然的敬畏感;粗放式经济增长方式使然;政府GDP第一的考核指标作祟;相关法律法规不完善。最终提出了改善环境伦理问题的一系列建议:摒弃GDP第一的理念,树立绿色GDP发展理念;加强环境伦理宣传教育;优化产业结构,转变经济发展方式;完善相关法律法规,加大执法力度;实行资源占用补偿机制。     

浅析旅游资源开发中存在的环境问题及其对策

基于对旅游资源开发与环境保护关系的分析,本文结合旅游资源开发中环境保护与经济、社会发展的两大关系内容,针对旅游资源因不合理开发而导致的水污染、噪声和大气污染、固体废弃物污染、自然景观原有面貌的破坏以及和谐生态系统的破坏等环境问题,提出了旅游资源开发过程中的环境保护对策。     

Entrepreneurial human capital,equity concentration and firm performance: Evidence from companies listed on China's Growth Enterprise Market

In this work, a sample of firms listed on China's Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) is employed to investigate the impact of human capital and equity concentration on firm performance. It shows that entrepreneurs' education level, industry experience and technical professional background have a positive impact on firm performance. Moreover, the higher the equity concentration, the better a firm's performance. Entrepreneurs with rich industry experience and a technical professional background tend to collect and condense equity, thereby increasing equity concentration. These findings reveal the relationship between entrepreneurial human capital and ownership concentration and enrich research on firm performance.     

Can transnational aluminium producers be ecologically sustainable? A case study of Jamaica's bauxite/alumina industry

The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether the transnational aluminium corporations currently involved in Jamaica's bauxite/alumina industry are promoting an ecologically sustainable industrial development (ESID). ESID is defined as those patterns of industrialisation that enhance economic and social benefits for present and future generations without impairing basic ecological processes. This discussion will be pursued by comparing actual industrial performance against three proposed conditions that this pattern of industrialisation must satisfy if it is to be deemed ecologically sustainable: (1) It must minimise the degradation of the environment, (2) it must make the most efficient use of man-made and natural capital and (3) it must promote equity. These criteria are applied to two major environmental problems related to bauxite mining and storage of hazardous bauxite waste; rehabilitation of mined out bauxite fields and storage of hazardous bauxite residue. My findings indicate that the current activities of Jamaican bauxite/alumina production to a certain extent can be characterised as ecologically sound, insofar as the biosphere is not severely degraded. This is due to several measures initiated both to prevent environmental degradation as well as enhancing a more efficient use of production inputs. To be deemed ecologically sustainable, however, the industrial activity must also in accordance with the proposed criteria, promote equity. Regardless of extensive corporate initiatives beyond regulatory compliance, a significant share of Jamaica's potentially productive lands remains destroyed and/or occupied. Thus, 1 question whether the present pattern of Jamaican bauxite/alumina production can be characterised as ecologically sustainable.     

Integrated environmental policy instruments driven river water pollution management decision system

Market-based approaches and command and control regulations are the two main tools that policy/decision makers use to implement environmental protection goals; however, these alone have proven to be somewhat ineffective or counterproductive in some cases. Therefore, this study proposes a hybrid environmental policy tool to guide river basin environmental management decisions. The river basin authority and regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as the two leading decision makers, and policy makers and implementers of river basin management, make decisions sequentially in a process similar to a Stackelberg game. This decision making can be mathematically represented using a bi-level optimization model. The proposed model addressed the conflicting equitable resource allocation and economic efficiency objectives to achieve coordinated development of the whole river basin. To verify the model effectiveness, the most considerable pollutant emissions limits and water quality standards were set, and incentive measures (pollution chargers and subsidies) were applied to assess these hybrid instruments' impact on the decision outcomes. The results from a Minjiang river basin case further illustrated that the trade-off between social equity and cost-efficient environmental goals could efficiently achieve, proving that a combination of instruments could be influential in pollution decision-making and delivery of environmental policy. Given the model's proven effectiveness, several proposals are given for solving complex pollution problems that also need to consider the related socioeconomic issues.     

Hospital efficiency and equity in health care delivery: A study based in China

Hospital efficiency and equity in health care delivery are two enduring research topics. Yet little research has been done to examine the relationship between them. This paper studies the impact of hospital efficiency on equity in health care delivery based on a proprietary dataset of hospital characteristics and 630,000 inpatient records from 149 public hospitals in a representative Chinese city. To measure the hospitals' efficiencies, this study takes the hospitals' operational features and case-mix indexes into account, and computes the efficiency levels using data envelopment analysis with bootstrapping. Through regressions that control for a variety of the patients’ personal characteristics (e.g., age, disease, residence, hospital visit frequency), this study shows that the gap between hospitalization expenses of urban and rural inpatients in more efficient hospitals is smaller than those in less efficient hospitals. Thus efficiency enhances equity in expenditure between urban and rural patients. But the dwindling urban-rural gap in expenditure is achieved by raising the spending of rural patients, thereby undermining their access to health care. This pattern is more conspicuous in large and sophisticated high-tier hospitals. Further analysis shows that hospital efficiency impacts equity of health care delivery by inducing different lengths of stay and uncovered parts of total expenditure for urban and rural groups. The findings imply that an efficiency-oriented health care policy may lead to social benefit loss.     

控股股东股权质押是否增加企业的财务风险？——来自民营企业的经验证据

以2014—2019年深沪A股民营上市公司为样本,考察控股股东股权质押对企业财务风险的影响。研究发现,控股股东股权质押增大企业财务风险的效应受到股权质押率高低的影响,当控股股东股权质押率较高时,股权质押增大企业财务风险的效应会更加显著。进一步研究发现,股权制衡度弱化了股权质押增大企业财务风险的效应。在董事长和总经理两职合一的民营上市公司中,控股股东股权质押增大企业财务风险的效应更加显著。     

Factors affecting corporate environmental strategy in Spanish industrial firms

During the last 30 years, environmental issues have become very important for governments, consumers and companies. Firms, aware of their environmental responsibilities, have started to show an important commitment to society and the natural environment, developing environmentally friendly strategies. However, the factors that determine the choice of environmental strategies are still unclear. They range from ethical motivations to social, legislative and competitive factors. This study analyses the main antecedents that influence firms' ecological behaviour, distinguishing between environmental orientation and environmental strategies. The hypotheses proposed in this study are analysed by means of a structural equation model on a sample of 235 industrial firms. The results reveal that competitive motivations and management commitment are the most important factors explaining why firms incorporate environmental issues into their strategic planning process. Moreover, management commitment is a critical factor for firms because managers' perception about customers' ecological concern directly influences firms' environmental behaviour. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Debt finance and the cost of management ownership: Some elementary results

Increased debt reduces a company's equity base, which reduces the dollar investment a manager must make to hold a given proportion of stock. Therefore, it is often argued, managers' effort incentives are improved by high leverage. This paper shows that while risky debt reduces the cost of providing managers with substantial equity ownership, the cheaper equity captures less of the fruits of the manager's effort. Managers' effort incentives are improved by high debt levels only under quite restrictive conditions. These conditions are more plausible when agency problems are due to a managerial propensity to expand size by investing in negative net present value projects. The results also imply that when debt is increased to reduce the agency costs of free cash flow, the accompanying covenants should allow for substantial cash distributions to shareholders even before bondholder claims are satisfied.     

我国环境会计信息披露研究

社会科技工业的进步推动了经济的高速发展,同时也导致环境出现了严重的问题,环境会计作为会计学的一个分支引起了人们的关注,环境会计的切入点就是信息披露,目前我国环境会计信息披露现状很不乐观。本文从环境会计的基本理论着手,分析了我国企业环境会计信息披露存在的一些问题:缺乏相应的理论指导、专业人才以及相关法律法规会计准则;企业自身没有环保意识;相关部门缺乏有力的监管。笔者指出要想解决这些问题,在落实我国基本理论研究的基础上,规范环境会计信息披露的内容,企业自身要提高就业人员的专业素质,政府也要明确各部门职责,完善法律法规会计准则制度同时加大宣传环保的重要性。