The institutionalization of social and environmental reporting: An Italian narrative

This paper focuses on social and environmental reporting (SER) and investigates, through prolonged fieldwork with an Italian multinational company, the dynamics through which SER, from its first introduction, has modified and developed to become institutionalized. The empirical data has been interpreted through the lens of institutional theories to provide a narrative of a three-step process which has brought about the institutionalization of SER, namely: (i) the construction of a common meaning system around the concept of social and environmental responsibility; (ii) practicalisation involving the emergence of rules and routines; and (iii) reinforcement through the implementation of intra-organizational managerial procedures and structures. The paper highlights that SER, as a result of a recursive and progressive process, has become an established and taken for granted actuality within the case study organization.     

International asset allocation under regime switching, skew, and kurtosis preferences

This paper investigates the international asset allocation effectsof time-variations in higher-order moments of stock returnssuch as skewness and kurtosis. In the context of a four-momentInternational Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM) specificationthat relates stock returns in five regions to returns on a globalmarket portfolio and allows for time-varying prices of covariance,co-skewness, and co-kurtosis risk, we find evidence of distinctbull and bear regimes. Ignoring such regimes, an unhedged USinvestor's optimal portfolio is strongly diversified internationally.The presence of regimes in the return distribution leads toa substantial increase in the investor's optimal holdings ofUS stocks, as does the introduction of skewness and kurtosispreferences.     

Modeling hard and soft facts for SMEs: Some international evidence

This paper asks how well the use of quantitative and qualitative variables can improve the assessment of companies' creditworthiness and how this result can be influenced by the economic and financial peculiarities of countries. We harden qualitative variable measures to model soft information aimed at scoring microfirms, small, and medium‐sized firms. The structural survey covers Germany, Italy, and the UK in a sample of about 17 thousand companies observed during the financial crisis. Soft facts are determined within the balanced scorecard framework in order to find out the impact of customers, business processes, learning and growth, and financial perspectives. Our findings show that credit models integrating soft variables optimize the risk estimation, but estimates are country‐specific and should be tailored to the characteristics of each economic system.     

Knowledge misappropriation risks and contractual complexity in entrepreneurial ventures’ non-equity alliances

Small Business Economics - This paper explores the role of anticipated knowledge misappropriation risks in contract design in non-equity alliances involving high-tech entrepreneurial ventures. We...     

ECONOMIES OF SCALE AND SCOPE IN POSTAL OUTLETS UNDER CONSIDERATION OF UNOBSERVED HETEROGENEITY

ABSTRACT: We analyze economies of scale and scope in Swiss Post's post offices and franchised postal agencies under consideration of different underlying production technologies and unobserved factors using a latent class model. The results confirm the existence of unobserved heterogeneity and of increasing economies of scale and scope in the Swiss Post's outlet network.     

RISK MEASURES: RATIONALITY AND DIVERSIFICATION

When there is uncertainty about interest rates (typically due to either illiquidity or defaultability of zero coupon bonds) the cash‐additivity assumption on risk measures becomes problematic. When this assumption is weakened, to cash‐subadditivity for example, the equivalence between convexity and the diversification principle no longer holds. In fact, this principle only implies (and it is implied by) quasiconvexity. For this reason, in this paper quasiconvex risk measures are studied. We provide a dual characterization of quasiconvex cash‐subadditive risk measures and we establish necessary and sufficient conditions for their law invariance. As a byproduct, we obtain an alternative characterization of the actuarial mean value premium principle.     

Firm Size and Cooperation: The Determinants of Cooperative Agreements in Information Technology Industries

This paper aims to shed light on factors that lead firms to resort to collaborative ventures. Specific attention is devoted to the role of firm size. The study relies on an extensive econometric analysis of a representative sample of firms in three Information Technology industries (semiconductor, data processing, and telecommunications). Data relating to the number and type of agreements concluded by firms, provided by the ARPA database developed at Politecnico di Milano, are correlated with firm–, industry– and country–specific variables. The findings of the econometric estimates point to the importance of firm size, scope of activity within the industries considered, diversification in related industries, and, to a less extent, degree of internationalization in explaining use of agreements. Moreover, the study provides preliminary evidence in support of a complementary relation between interfirm linkages and R&D expenditures. A positive correlation with growth rates also seems to emerge. In contrast, the s regarding the relation between internal capital expenditures and recourse to agreements are mixed.     

Firm size and the adoption of flexible automation

Data on the diffusion of flexible automation systems in the Italian metalworking industry are used to point out the role of size for the adoption of complex, systemic innovations. Plant and firm sizes turn out to be positively correlated to adoption rates. Moreover, adoption is more likely, ceteris paribus, in plants which are part of large industrial groups. This pattern applies in general, and is particularly remarkable for more advanced solutions. In this light, guidelines for industrial policies that focus on financial support, the diffusion of industrial standards, and the correction of asymmetries in the availability of know-how and skills are proposed.Financial support for this paper was provided by the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione (MPI 40% research funds). Grants from the Fondazione Mauro and the CNR research project Tecnologie Meccaniche are also acknowledged. The research took advantage of the FLAUTO database, set up at the Laboratorio di Economia dei Processi di Automazione, MIP-Politecnico di Milano.     

Alternative econometric implementations of multi-factor models of the U.S. financial markets

This paper analyzes the empirical performance of two alternative ways in which multi-factor models with time-varying risk exposures and premia may be estimated. The first method echoes the seminal two-pass approach introduced by Fama and MacBeth (1973). The second approach is based on a Bayesian latent mixture model with breaks in risk exposures and idiosyncratic volatility. Our application to monthly, 1980–2010 U.S. data on stock, bond, and publicly traded real estate returns shows that the classical, two-stage approach that relies on a nonparametric, rolling window estimation of time-varying betas yields results that are unreasonable. There is evidence that most portfolios of stocks, bonds, and REITs have been grossly over-priced. On the contrary, the Bayesian approach yields sensible results and a few factor risk premia are precisely estimated with a plausible sign. Predictive log-likelihood scores indicate that discrete breaks in both risk exposures and variances are required to fit the data.