Politically connected directors and firm value: Evidence from forced resignations in China

The Central Committee of the Communist Party in China issued the No. 18 Document on Oct 30, 2013 to ban government officials from taking any positions in Chinese firms. Using this decision as a unique natural experiment, we examine the causal relation between political connections and firm valuation. We find that the value of firms with politically connected directors drops significantly upon the announcements of the new rule and the resulting director resignations. Furthermore, the decline in valuation is more pronounced when a firm is in a regulated industry, and when a departing director is of vital importance for building and maintaining political connections. Moreover, non-state-owned enterprises suffer more loss of value than their state-owned peers following the resignations of politically-connected directors. Finally, firms exhibit insignificant value loss when their departing directors are of less political importance in allocating resources. These results suggest that hiring politically connected directors has a positive effect on firm valuation in China.     

Exporting,R&D investment and firm survival in the Indian IT sector

This paper examines the effect of exporting and R&D investment on firm survival for a panel of Indian IT firms. We show that exporting has competing effects on firm survival. On the one hand, exporting and investing in productivity are complementary activities, while, on the other, exporting activity is an additional source of uncertainty for the firm. We show that both effects influence survival, but operate at different points in time. Specifically, the hazard facing exporters is higher than non-exporters in the initial phase following entry into the export market, reflecting the fact that exporters are particularly vulnerable to shocks in the start-up phase. However, over time, exporters benefit more from productivity gains than non-exporters and the hazard facing exporters falls below that confronting non-exporters.     

Managing the foreign investment portfolio: How industry and governance diversity influence firm performance

Foreign investment has been seen as an important strategy for learning about new technologies and markets. However, the link between the characteristic of a foreign investment portfolio and firm performance has not been examined in detail. Using panel data from 199 Taiwanese firms, this study examines how the foreign investment portfolio in terms of industry and governance diversity influences firm performance. This study finds that governance diversity has an inverse U-shaped relationship to firm performance, whereas industry diversity does not. In addition, this study also finds that their relationships are affected by R&D capability and industry profitability. The empirical findings of our study are useful for firms that invest in emerging economies.     

The effect of firm scale and CSR geographical scope of impact on consumers' response

The role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in shaping consumer perception and attitude has received many attentions both in the academia and practitioner world. While this domain has invited numerous research, but research highlighting how consumers react toward learning the size of a firm conducting CSR and geographical scope of the CSR impact is still scarce. We investigate how consumers shape their attitude and consumption behavior after knowing that the CSR action is done by a small, locally-owned business that brings impact to the local community through an experimental study. Our study adds a shade in understanding how the effect of a firm size and geographical scope of CSR impact might increase consumers' favorable attitude and behavior toward the business and its products. Our findings show that when consumers learn that the firm conducting CSR is a small, locally-owned (in coffee shop business) that directs its action toward local beneficiaries, they demonstrate more favorable attitudes toward the action and the firm, which manifest in the form of better intentions to acquire the product as well as willingness to pay premium prices for it. Our findings confirm the US consumers' love affair with local businesses, in particular. While the findings generally benefit small, locally-owned businesses, they also suggest recommendations for large, multinational businesses to design their marketing strategy in an attempt to increase favorable reactions from consumers.     

Optimizing station location and fleet composition for a high-speed rail line

This paper proposes a new strategic planning model for high-speed rail ventures. It is a mixed-integer optimization model that applies to a given line and focuses on two key strategic decisions: station location and fleet composition. Our purpose is to improve on previous station location models by including fleet composition decisions. In the new model, we additionally take into account in an approximate fashion the interrelationships between strategic and subsequent tactical decisions, regarding line planning, train scheduling and fleet assignment issues. The usefulness of the model is demonstrated for a case study involving a planned Lisbon-Oporto high-speed rail line.     

When does a service guarantee work? The roles of the popularity of service guarantees and firm reputation

Despite substantial research on service guarantees in the literature, little study has examined how the popularity of service guarantees (SG) in a particular industry affects the effectiveness of SGs. Through four studies, the authors demonstrate an interactive effect between the market-level factor (the popularity of SGs) and the firm-level factor (firm reputation) in affecting consumer's responses to a travel agency's actions in (not) offering an SG. When offering SGs is popular in a given market, consumers perceive a loss from the absence of SGs, and a high-reputation agency will outperform a low-reputation agency in consumer service evaluation when neither agencies offer SGs. However, if both agencies provide guarantees, the SG offered by the high-reputation agency does not necessarily lead to greater service evaluation than that offered by the low-reputation agency. The results reverse when offering SGs is rare in the market, as consumers perceive a gain from the presence of SGs.     

Sustainable tourism planning and climate change adaptation in the Alps: a case study of winter tourism in mountain communities in the Dolomites

A vast body of literature suggests that the European Alpine Region is extremely sensitive to climate change. Winter tourism is closely related to climate variations, especially in mountain regions where resorts are heavily dependent on snow. This paper explores how to effectively integrate a climate change adaptation perspective with local discourses about sustainability and tourism, an increasing priority for policy-makers in the region and elsewhere. It reports on the development and application of a participatory decision support process for the analysis of adaptation strategies for local development of an Alpine tourism destination, Auronzo di Cadore (Dolomites, Italy). This experience significantly contributed to the idea that an efficient combination of modelling capabilities, decision support tools, and participatory processes can substantially improve decision-making for sustainability. The authors show that, in this case study, such a combination of methods and tools allowed for managing the involvement of local actors, stimulating local debates on climate change adaptation and possible consequences on winter tourism, encouraging creativity and smoothing potential conflicts, and easing the integration of the qualitative knowledge and the preferences of the involved actors with quantitative information. This contributed to an integrated sustainability assessment of alternative strategies for sustainable tourism planning.     

基于EIQ和PCB的配送中心设备决策模型的研究

讨论了EIQ和PCB分析的基本内容.分析影响配送中心储存、分拣和搬运设备选择的因素,以及EIQ和PCB分析在配送中心设备选择中的应用,最后提出基于EIQ和PCB分析的配送中心设备决策模型DC-EDM.     

Modelling airline flight cancellation decisions

In order to predict airline responses to Traffic Management Initiatives (TMIs), and reveal the underlying preference structures that shape these responses, we study US domestic airlines’ cancellation decisions in response to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s TMIs, in particular, to Ground Delay Programs (GDPs). By observing the actual flight-cancellation choices made by airline dispatchers, the airlines’ cancellation utility functions can be inferred through the use of binary choice models. The model captures how delays to a given flight and potential delay savings to other flights affect flight cancellation decisions. We also find larger, fuller, less frequent, shorter-distance, and spoke-bound flights are less likely to be cancelled, and that there is inter-airline variation in flight cancellation behaviour.     

How Productive Is Workplace Health and Safety?

In this paper, we investigate the causal impact of workplace health and safety practices on firm performance, using Danish longitudinal matched employer–employee data merged with unique cross‐sectional representative firm survey data on work environment conditions. We estimate standard production functions, augmented with workplace environment indicators, addressing both time‐invariant and time‐varying potentially relevant unobservables in the production process. We find positive and large productivity effects of improved physical dimensions of the health and safety environment, specifically, “internal climate” and “monotonous repetitive work”.