Women business owners: a source of stability during the great recession?

During the period of the Great Recession, previous research has found that women-owned firms were less likely to lay-off workers than were firms owned by men. Given that the individual firm behaviour has a cumulative effect on regional economic performance, we expect greater stability across those regions with a larger share of women-owned and managed businesses. We test this hypothesis using US county data during the period from 2007 to 2013 at the US county level. Consistent with the findings of Matsa and Miller, our results suggest that regional economic stability increases with the share of women-owned and managed establishments.     

Board diversity and firm performance: evidence from the U.K. SMEs

This study examines the relationship between board diversity and firm performance in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the U.K. In particular, we investigate the role of gender and age as two dimensions of diversity. Using a large sample of SMEs (34,798 firms) located in the U.K. and focusing on the period from 2005 to 2013, our results show a significant negative association between each of gender diversity and age diversity, and firm performance. Our evidence yields important insights on the association between board diversity and firm performance, and calls suggestions for increased board diversity into question. A possible explanation for our findings could be due to the fact that our sampled firms are SMEs, whereas those in previous studies have been large enterprises. This research provides insights to entrepreneurs on how to enhance their performance, and to governments and policymakers on the development of rules that would achieve better performance in the SME sector.     

The Importance of Monitoring and Mitigating the Safety-Net Consequences of Regulation-Induced Innovation

To be effective, programs of regulatory reform must address the incentive conflicts that intensify financial risk-taking and undermine government insolvency detection and crisis management. Subsidies to risk-taking that large institutions extract from the financial safety-net encourage managers to make their firms riskier, harder to supervise, and politically and administratively more difficult to fail and unwind. Except in the very short run, repealing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act or breaking up so-called too-big-to-fail institutions will do little to arrest subsidy-induced activities. Rebuilding Glass-Steagall barriers between banking, securities, and insurance firms would instead make implicit taxpayer support of large institutions less transparent and serve foreign interests by encouraging conglomerate firms to operate affected businesses through foreign subsidiaries. To discourage financial institutions from abusing safety-net support, government supervisors must be made specifically accountable for delivering and pricing safety-net benefits fairly and efficiently. If it wants to make the system more stable, Congress should focus on: rewriting top officials' oaths of office; changing the ways top officials are recruited, trained, and compensated; reworking the ways they measure and report regulatory performance; and changing the kinds of securities that large institutions have to issue.     

家族企业管理层行为对企业创新绩效的影响——长期导向的中介效应与组织惯例的调节作用

家族企业在世界经济中扮演着重要角色,备受国内外学者关注。通过研究家族参与管理和CEO长期任职与企业创新绩效之间的关系,探讨了长期导向的中介效应与组织惯例的调节作用。基于浙皖家族企业样本实证分析,得出以下结论:家族参与管理和企业创新绩效之间存在倒“U”型关系;家族企业CEO长期任职对长期导向的形成有积极正向影响;长期导向在CEO长期任职与家族企业创新绩效间起中介作用;组织惯例正向调节家族参与管理对创新绩效的影响,正向调节长期导向对创新绩效的影响。通过探究管理层行为对企业创新绩效的影响,丰富了国内家族企业研究成果,也为家族企业响应不断变化的外部环境、实现可持续创新发展提供了有益启示。     

投资银行声誉机制有效性——执业质量与市场份额双重视角的研究

本文从“事后的”IPO折价、投行市场份额的增长和发行公司质量等多个角度检验了中国投资银行声誉机制的有效性。和以往的研究不同,本文从市场份额和执业质量两个维度衡量投资银行声誉。其中,投行执业质量用投行承销的IPO公司会计业绩“变脸”率来衡量。研究结果显示,尽管单纯考虑市场份额或执业质量时,这些变量对IPO发行折价均无显著影响,但若同时将两者纳入分析框架,并考虑其交互作用,投行声誉的作用就能显著表现出来:市场份额高且执业质量好的投行可以显著降低IPO发行折价,并且能够在未来获得更多数量以及更高质量的上市公司认可。     

Are small employers more cyclically sensitive? Evidence from Brazil

An important issue facing policymakers is the degree to which fluctuations in economic activity affect employment in large and small businesses across sectors and regions. This issue is particularly relevant for developing countries as it matters for the understanding of the labour market dynamics, and for devising national, sectoral, and regional labour policies that aim at dampening employment fluctuations, particularly during recessions. Using a unique monthly dataset of 27 states and eight industries from 2000:1 to 2009:7, this paper evaluates the sensitivity of businesses of different sizes to business cycle conditions in Brazil. The behaviour of the difference in employment growth rates between large and small firms is counter-cyclical and suggests that small firms are more sensitive to business cycle conditions. In addition, the SVAR impulse response analysis suggests the existence of the effect of small firms hiring cheaply from unemployment proportionally more than large ones. On the other hand, credit constraints seem to hit small firms harder and help to explain the empirical regularity that small firms are more cyclically sensitive than large ones for the Brazilian case.     

China and the global business revolution

As China joins the World Trade Organisation, the author questionswhether China's large firms will be able to compete on the globallevel playing field. Over the past two decades, Chinese largeenterprises have undertaken extensive evolutionary change (comparableto that of other latecomer countries such as Korea, Taiwan andSingapore) but, at the same time, the world's leading firmshave undergone a revolutionary transformation. Based on analysisderived from case studies made in the course of the China BigBusiness Programme at the Judge Institute of Management Studies,Cambridge, the author concludes that China's large firms havenot caught up with the world's leading businesses.     

Are bid preferences benign? The effect of small business subsidies in highway procurement auctions

Bid preferences in procurement auctions allow firms from an identifiable group an advantage in bidding against unfavored firms. While economic efficiency is expected to fall as a result of bid preferences, government procurement costs may either increase or decrease depending on the competitive response of favored and unfavored firms. This paper uses data from California auctions for road construction contracts, where small businesses receive a 5-percent bid preference in auctions for projects using only state funds and no preferential treatment on projects using federal aid. I show that while firms' bidding behavior matches theoretical predictions, procurement costs are 3.8 percent higher on auctions using preferences. The higher procurement cost in preference auctions is attributed to reduced participation by lower cost large firms.Structural estimates of latent firm costs are then used to evaluate how efficiency and the division of surplus between firms and the government are impacted by bid preferences. Firm profits are 3.1 percent lower under bid preferences, however this is overwhelmed by the efficiency loss due to reduced large firm participation. The efficiency loss conditional on firm participation is estimated to represent around 0.1 percent of overall procurement costs. Including the adverse effect of preferences on the participation of large firms increases the estimated efficiency loss to 3.6 percent, which represents 27 cents for each additional dollar awarded to small businesses through the program. Counterfactual simulations indicate that if participation were instead inelastic to bid preferences, the 5-percent bid preference would be close to the optimal level.     

You are suffocating me: Firm-level analysis of state-owned enterprises and private investment

Literature on whether government spending crowds out or crowds in the private sector is large, but still without an unambiguous conclusion. Using firm-level data from Ukraine, this paper provides a granular empirical investigation to disentangle the impact of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on private firm investment in Ukraine—a large transition economy. Controlling for firm characteristics and systematic differences across sectors, the results indicate that the SOE concentration in a given sector has a statistically significant negative effect on private fixed capital formation, and that the impact of SOEs is stronger in those industries in which SOEs have a more dominant presence. These findings imply that private firms operating in sectors with a high level of SOE concentration invest systematically less than businesses that are not competing directly with SOEs.     

Information, bilateral negotiations, and worker recruitment

This paper studies experimentally how firms choose between using a centralized market and bilateral negotiations to recruit new personnel. In the market firms interact with several workers but do not have information about workers’ behavior in the past. In the bilateral negotiations firms negotiate bilaterally with prospective workers and learn about workers’ performance in previous jobs. We show that the interaction between social preferences, the incompleteness of contracts and the existence of information about a worker’s past performance provides an explanation for firms forgoing market opportunities and bilaterally negotiating with a worker. We observe that approximately 30% of all job contracts were bilaterally negotiated when these contracts are incomplete as opposed to only 10% when contracts were complete. The surplus from trade is higher when incomplete contracts can be bilaterally negotiated, which can be attributed to the presence of information.     

技术型创业者创造力特征对企业绩效的影响

“双创”国家战略鼓励不同类型的创业者参与创新创业活动，实现中国经济的创新驱动。作为将自有创新成果商业化的创业群体，技术型创业者不仅具备一般创业者特征，还拥有显著的创造力特征。已有研究表明，创业者的技术特征对企业绩效具有重要影响，但缺少技术型创业者的创造力水平对创业企业绩效影响机制的探讨。鉴于此，以2020年深圳证券交易所创业板上市的企业为样本，研究技术型创业者创造力特征对创业企业绩效的影响。多元线性回归分析结果表明，技术型创业者创造力水平与创业企业绩效呈正相关关系；在中型企业中，技术型创业者创造力水平对创业企业绩效具有显著正向影响，而在大型企业和小微企业中，技术型创业者创造力水平对企业创业绩效的影响则不显著或较小。     

Export Destination,Product Quality and Wages in a Middle‐Income Country. The Case of South Africa

A robust finding in the firm‐level literature is that exporting firms pay higher wages. Using South African data this paper investigates the relationship between export destination and wages at a worker level. South Africa, a middle‐income country, has two distinct main export markets—a regional market where per capita incomes are lower than at home, and an international market with higher per capita incomes. Our estimates show that workers in firms that export to the region earn less than those that produce for the domestic market. Those in firms that export outside the region earn more than either domestic producers or region‐only exporters. Much of this difference in wages can be explained by the premium the different types of exporters pay for skills. These results support previous studies which suggest that export destination is related to product quality which in turn is related to worker quality and therefore wages.     

Origin and concentration

We analyse the effects of different types and concentration of ownership on performance using a large population of firms in the Czech Republic after mass privatization. Specifications based on first‐differences combined with instrumental variables show that the performance effects of different types and concentration of ownership are limited when compared to earlier studies. Often, concentrated ownership has a positive effect, a finding that supports the agency theory. The positive effect of foreign ownership is detected primarily for majority ownership and for ownership by foreign industrial firms. The state as a holder of the golden share has a positive effect on employment and sometimes, also on output and profitability. Overall, our results highlight the benefits of strategic restructuring accompanied by an inflow of new capital and managerial culture.     

Employment in family managed firms: Less but safe? Analysing labour demand of German family managed firms with a treatment model for panel data

This paper analyses the differences in labour demand between family and non-family managed firms. These firms seem to have better employment performance than non-family controlled companies. Therefore, this study applies a treatment model for panel data controlling for endogeneities of being a family managed firm or not. The results of the estimations indicate that labour demand is possibly larger because of family members joining the firms as extra employees. Moreover, labour turnover is lower, supporting the assumption that family firms offer some kind of implicit labour contracts. However, in opposite to previous results, it seems that only small family managed firms show different employment behaviour.     

我国制造企业“服务增强”的实证研究及政策建议

通过"服务"增强制造企业竞争力、形成服务差异化竞争已成为全球化竞争和知识经济背景下我国制造企业的重要战略选择。本文在界定"制造企业服务增强"微观层面概念和阐述其表现形式的基础上,提出国内制造企业的服务增强具有明显的"质量弥补"特征;随后通过问卷调查获取国内制造业的大样本数据,针对基于要素替代的质量弥补以及服务差异化竞争对绩效的影响展开实证研究;最后,指出国内制造业服务增强存在的不足和问题,提出相应的对策建议。本文对企业管理实践者和政策制定者都有较强的启发意义。     

The impact of product diversification strategy on the corporate performance of large Spanish firms

We analyze the impact of product diversification on performance. This topic has been discussed in the literature, and there is no consensus so far as to the significance or the direction of the impact. Performance is measured using Tobin's q for a sample of 103 large, non-financial Spanish firms (1992–1995). Diversification is measured by means of a categorical variable, as suggested by Varadarajan. The principal results indicate that the firms with intermediate levels of product diversification have the highest performance, while the firms with low and high levels of diversification show significantly lower performance, which performance is not significantly different between them.     

Does corporate board downsizing increase shareholder value? Evidence from Japan

Japanese firms that have traditionally had large boards have recently become subject to pressures for small boards. This study shows that Japanese firms that substantially decreased board size tended to adopt an officer system and so did not substantially decrease the size of the management team (executive officers and directors). This tendency is especially evident for high-performing firms that face less information asymmetry. Japanese firms endogenously choose the change in the management team size when downsizing their boards. Firms that downsize boards do not show performance improvements, suggesting that board downsizing does not necessarily raise shareholder value.     

How credit constraints affect small and medium enterprises' strategic employment decisions and employees' labour outcomes: Evidence from Vietnam1

This study makes use of rich firm-level and linked firm-employee datasets that span the 2009–2015 period in Vietnam to examine how SMEs' credit constraints affect their strategic employment decisions and employees' labour outcomes. Our results show that constrained SMEs enlarge total employment by employing relatively more temporary workers and paying their employees relatively lower wages than unconstrained borrowing firms. Meanwhile, discouraged firms, mostly informal businesses, do not behave differently from unconstrained counterparts. In order to maintain a stable employment portfolio, discouraged firms are relatively more willing to reward their employees with an overtime payment.     

Assessing the relative efficiency of agricultural production units in the Blackland Prairie,Texas

The hypotheses that endogenous credit constraints based on fluctuating asset values and cash flow prolong and accentuate US cattle cycles; and that more diversified cow-calf firms are less affected by this phenomenon are tested. Breeding cattle inventories are an interesting example to study credit constraints because they are among the most cyclical of economic time-series, firms have heterogeneous diversification levels, and they avoid many of the problems with previous investment-cash flow sensitivities studies noted by Kaplan and Zingales. The results are consistent with earlier credit constraint studies, i.e. breeding cattle inventories are sensitive to shifting credit constraint regimes and cow-calf firms with higher diversification levels are less affected by credit constraints.     

The relationship between business diversification and productivity: considering the impact of process innovation at different corporate life cycles

This paper investigates the link between a firm's process innovation (PI) and its segment productivity at different life cycles. The results show that business diversification is negatively associated with a firm's productivity, and further reveal that a firm's PI moderates the above relationship. In addition, the corporate life cycle literature builds blocks for this study to explain that the involvement of administrative costs varies across life cycles when diversified firms get mature and bigger. Our empirical evidence indicates that the potential costs of a complex organisational structure contingent on business diversification at a firm's mature life cycle could be alleviated by the conduct of process innovation. As process innovation at different life cycles may alter managerial incentive that leads to different firm performance, the managerial implication is that diversified firms should appropriately engage in process innovation to prevent unfavourable liability from the development of their businesses.