Economic integration,market discipline and productivity growth in Spain

This paper explores the changes on productivity growth, economies of scale and market discipline experienced by a selected number of Spanish manufacturing industries as a result of the 1986?–?92 integration of Spain into the European Union. Since the intra-union trade liberalization process spanned a seven-year, multi-stage, adhesion period we employ a model with a smooth transition variable to account fully for its impact. An additional model that uses separate sets of dummy variables captures differences in the regression estimates during the transitional and liberalized periods. In both model specifications we find strong evidence of increases in returns to scale and reductions in producers' mark-ups, whereas productivity growth increases are found to be small and uneven.     

Unemployment by Gender: Evidence from EU Countries

This paper applies panel unit-root tests that allow for structural breaks and cross-sectional dependence to examine the validity of hysteresis in gender unemployment rates and gender unemployment gap for a panel of 15 European countries. Addressing breaks, there is evidence to reject the null hypothesis of hysteresis for the unemployment rates and unemployment gap series. Allowing for both cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneous structural breaks, this result is reverted, and we fail to reject the null hypothesis of unit root.     

The relevance of earnings and cash flows in a heavily regulated industry: Evidence from the Greek banking sector

This study examines the informational quality of annual accounting earnings within Greek banking institutions taking into consideration the most significant risks facing by such firms and specifically interest rate risk, credit risk, liquidity risk and solvency risk, alongside with the persistence of earnings and bank size as significant determinants of ERCs. Data analysis over a period of ten years (1995-2004) revealed that earnings have higher incremental importance in explaining stock return movements compared to cash flows since earnings change has been found to affect stock returns positively. Additionally, interest rate risk has a positive but not significant impact on the return-earnings relation but on the contrary solvency risk, credit risk and liquidity risk proved to have a negative impact on the valuation process for both small and big-sized banks. Finally, tests on the incremental informativeness of cash flows when earnings are transitory provide significant results suggesting that investors seek for alternative measures of banks' performance when earnings are characterized by increased extremity but inversely cash flows and earnings seem to be equally value relevant when investors evaluate big-sized banking institutions. The results are generally robust to the specification of the empirical models and the research design employed in our study.     

Residents’ place image: a meaningful psychographic variable for tourism segmentation?

ABSTRACT

While there has been a considerable body of research on tourists’ place image, there remains limited attention on residents’ place image, specifically, in relation to its segmentation utility. This study seeks to address this oversight by a) clustering the local residents based on the image held of a tourism place, and b) exploring the extent to which the identified image-based resident clusters share similar (dissimilar) demographic characteristics and attitude towards tourism development. Empirical analysis was based on a sample of 481 residents of a Greek city. The findings support the utility of residents’ place image as a psychographic segmentation variable revealing the existence of three distinct resident groups – termed “Nature Loving”, “Apathetic” and “Advocate.” Results also suggest that these resident groups exhibit dissimilar demographic characteristics and dissimilar attitude towards tourism. In comparison with other segments, the Apathetic exhibits the least favourable image and the least supportive attitude towards tourism.     

A hierarchical model of technology adoption for small owner-managed travel firms: An organizational decision-making and leadership perspective

This article assesses the diffusion of innovation theory and the technology acceptance model, and explores the factors influencing the decision to engage in technology adoption in small owner-managed travel firms. This is done through the use of the overarching theory of organisational decision-making to identify concepts and constructs which relate to the decision to adopt. The work aims to identify the genesis of adoption decisions in particular where owners are themselves the managers and provide leadership for the organization. After the distillation of factors it was found that due to simple hierarchical structures and decision-making processes which were further exacerbated by immediate self-interest, leadership was the most significant driver. This article goes further to identify leadership typologies at each level of technology adoption in firms.     

Is sustainability rating material to the market?

This study examines whether information about a firm's engagement in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices is material to market participants. Evidence from a sample of 1856 initial public offerings (IPOs) by U.S. companies for the 2007–2018 period robustly documents that firms for which there is available ESG performance information prior to going public exhibit higher underpricing due to a positive market response. Such a reaction is validated by agency cost-reducing practices that ESG-rated firms follow prior to the IPO, the superior post-IPO market performance they exhibit in terms of equity financing, and the higher share of financially sophisticated investors they attract compared to their ESG-unrated peers. Overall, our results highlight that it pays off to do good and to have the right investors; however, firms’ good ESG practices need to be visible to the market, through rating practices, to reap the benefits.     

Identifying the effects of bullying victimization on schooling

I estimate whether bullying leads to worse academic outcomes for bullied students, exploiting state-year differences in anti-bullying laws, and within-law heterogeneity that provide variation in the probability of bullying victimization. Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, I show that bullying increases the probability of skipping classes and dropping out of high school, and it decreases grade point average by up to 5%. Heterogeneity analysis shows that physical bullying imposes a greater burden on males, though females are relatively more sensitive to nonphysical bullying. These negative effects persist into adulthood as high school bullying decreases college performance and college graduation.