Risk Management and Firm Value: Evidence from Weather Derivatives

This paper shows that active risk management policies lead to an increase in firm value. To identify the effect of hedging and to overcome endogeneity concerns, we exploit the introduction of weather derivatives as an exogenous shock to firms’ ability to hedge weather risks. This innovation disproportionately benefits weather‐sensitive firms, irrespective of their future investment opportunities. Using this natural experiment and data from energy firms, we find that derivatives lead to higher valuations, investments, and leverage. Overall, our results demonstrate that risk management has real consequences on firm outcomes.     

The Real Effects of Financial Sector Interventions during Crises

We assess the importance of supply‐side credit market frictions by studying the impact of bank recapitalization on firm growth in 50 countries during the recent crisis. Our identification strategy exploits the crisis as a shock to credit supply and combines an exogenous measure of firms’ dependence on external financing with policy interventions aimed at restoring bank capital. We find that the growth of financially dependent firms is disproportionately positively affected by bank recapitalization. This effect is quantitatively important and robust to controlling for other policies. These results provide new evidence of the influence of credit market frictions on economic activity.     

A confirmatory analysis of the unit root hypothesis for OECD consumption-income ratios

This article investigates the existence of a unit root in the consumption-income ratio for a sample of 23 OECD countries over the period 1960 to 2005. For that purpose, we first use recently developed unit root tests with good size and power. Second, we employ the more powerful panel unit root tests of Pesaran (2003 Pesaran, MH. 2003. A Simple Panel Unit Root Test in the Presence of Cross-Section Dependence mimeo, Cambridge University [Google Scholar]) and Smith et al . (2004) that take the null of nonstationarity and a bootstrap version of the test of Hadri (2000 Hadri, K. 2000. Testing for stationarity in heterogeneous panel data. The Econometrics Journal, 3: 148–61. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) that takes stationarity as the null hypothesis. Overall, our confirmatory analysis renders clear-cut evidence that OECD consumption-income ratios contain a unit root.     

Mergers and Acquisitions and Market Volatility of Brazilian Banking Stocks: An Application of GARCH Models

The main objective of this research was to investigate the impacts caused by announcements of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on the volatility of the returns of Brazilian bank stocks from 1994 to 2015. In order to achieve the proposed objective, this study applied Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) class models to the series to model their volatility. Our results confirmed the impact of the announcement of M&As on volatility. They suggest that M&A announcements are expected to cause a negative reaction if related to an expansion or a deal involving a less-well known bank, and a positive reaction if it involves well-known bank with good reputation—a higher level of confidence and a lower level of information asymmetry for investors.     

Unbundling tolls from contracts: a new road PPP model

Considerable evidence from different countries has revealed important shortcomings in most road public–private partnership (PPP) models. In this paper a new PPP model is presented that overcomes some of the problems found in PPP road contracts. The new model is based on separating user tolls from the fees paid to PPP contractors and setting up new institutional arrangements to oversee PPPs.     

Operations in banking: the service quality and effects on satisfaction and loyalty

This paper studies the service quality provided by the banks. The objectives are (i) to identify which aspects of the transactions carried out by the banks are important for the service quality perceived by the customers, taking into account some aspects that are sometimes ignored (online channels) and (ii) to observe how service quality influences customer satisfaction and how customer satisfaction affects the loyalty towards the bank. Using a factor analysis, the research identifies the operative, physical, new technologies and human factors. Next, using structural equations models with AMOS, the results show an influence of the operative aspects and the new technologies on service quality, as well as the confirmation of quality as a precedent to customer satisfaction, and how such satisfaction influences on customer's loyalty towards the bank.     

Management and employee involvement in achieving an environmental action-based competitive advantage: an empirical study

The objective of this work is to conduct an empirical study that shows whether certain management and human resource factors influence the achievement of an environmental action-based competitive advantage in a company. To this end, we have taken a sample of 110 factories. Management's deep involvement and its strategic integration, as well as employee motivation and participation, have a positive impact on the achievement of an environmental action-based competitive advantage in a company.     

The effect of a destination branding strategy for rural tourism on the perceived value of the conservation of the indigenous resources of the rural tourism destination: the case of Spain

The identification of mechanisms that encourage the tourism sector to contribute to sustainable conservation is of great interest. The present work proposes the use of destination branding based on contribution to the conservation of the indigenous resources of the rural tourist destination, and studies the effect this has on perceived value for the tourist visiting the destination. A scale of destination brand identity is validated, along with a scale for destination brand positioning and another for perceived value, as viewed by the tourist, of contribution to sustainable conservation. The perceived value scale offers an overall perspective which includes: functional-affective factors; benefits–sacrifices; the pre-visit stage; and the stay in the rural tourism location. These findings make a new contribution to both literature and to the professional sector.     

Policies to increase business tourism income: A dynamic panel data model

This article aims to identify the determinants that influence business tourism income and that may be controlled by economic agents and policy makers of destination countries. For the development of the empirical study, a dynamic panel model by the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) was estimated using the Gretl 2016a software, and a sample of 122 countries for the period 2002–2013 (12 years) was used. The study reveals that, for the development of policies to stimulate the growth in the short and long-term of business tourism income, countries should develop measures that encourage capital investment in tourism and foreign direct investment.