How does a firm's life cycle influence the relationship between carbon performance and financial debt?

In a progressively more stringent regulatory context concerning greenhouse gas emissions derived from a growing awareness of how economic activity affects our environment, this study analyzes how the firm's life cycle affects the relationship between carbon performance and financial debt. Using panel data on a sample of European listed firms during the 2005–2018 period, we find evidence suggesting that firms with better carbon performance have greater access to external financing during their growth stages and lesser access during maturity, although it has no effect during the shake-out stage. Furthermore, carbon performance has a strong positive effect during growth, maturity, and shake-out when firms need to finance additional tangible investments. We also find that the negative relationship between liquidity and debt is reversed during innovative stages for firms with better carbon performance. Our results are robust to the use of alternative measures of life cycle stages and to the consideration of industrial, legal, and cultural contexts.     

The work values and job involvement of Post-80s employees in the hospitality and tourism industry: empirical evidence from Macau

The purpose of this research was to examine the work values (WV) and the job involvement (JI) of the younger workforce in a Chinese society. Specifically, the study explores the case of Macau, which has transformed from a sleepy enclave to a gambling mecca. The findings from 384 full-time Chinese employees revealed four WV factors considered important to them. The Post-80s value the social environment and freedom. WV are significantly positively correlated with JI and vary significantly across demographic variables. Intrinsic WV have prediction power towards JI. The lack of research on the younger generation particularly in this popular tourism destination contribute to a better understanding and management of the workforce. It also highlights that traditional Chinese managerial practice might not be able to cope with the new expectations and work habits of the younger workers.     

Unusual patterns in China’s prefectural GDP growth rates

This article examines the last (rightmost) digit of China’s prefectural GDP growth rates, and find that they are unevenly distributedamong 0 to 9. There are too many 0s, 1s, 2s, 5s and too few 4s, 7s, 9s. Moreover, the distribution of the last digit is less skewed when the macro economy grows quickly and when the prefecture’s growth rate ranks high within the province. These patterns reveal that local officials artificially influence the data in order to exceed some thresholds. However, they do not necessarily imply that China's GDP data are falsified.     

Expected work experience and the gender wage gap: A new human capital measure

Work experience is a key variable in earnings function estimates and wage gap decompositions. Because data on actual work experience are rare, studies commonly use proxies, such as potential experience. But potential experience is identical for all individuals of the same age and level of education, so it ignores labor market intermittency because of childbirth and child rearing—a critical omission when analyzing gender differences in earnings. This paper constructs a better proxy: expected work experience, which is the sum of the annual probabilities that an individual worked in the past. This measure can be generated using commonly available data on labor force participation rates by age and gender to gauge the probability of past work. Applying the measure to labor force survey data from the Philippines shows that conventional proxies underestimate the contribution of gender differences in work experience in explaining the gender wage gap.     

The dynamics of privilege: How employees of a multinational corporation construct and contest the privileging effects of English proficiency

In this article we analyze how privilege is dynamically constructed as well as contested. A positioning analysis of interviews with employees of a multinational organization reveals the construction of a hierarchy of privilege. As this hierarchy is based on English proficiency along with other diversity dimensions, privilege is multifaceted. Furthermore, privilege is also contested. Contesting English-proficiency–related privilege is connected to the speaker's position in the hierarchy of privilege. The analysis shows that both category membership and specific competences and skills cumulate to produce privileging effects, but also the possibilities for contesting privilege. At the same time, although the privilege gained by English proficiency is not invisible and is regularly contested, it is nevertheless silenced by those in advantage.     

Existence of a calibrated regime switching local volatility model

By Gyöngy's theorem, a local and stochastic volatility model is calibrated to the market prices of all European call options with positive maturities and strikes if its local volatility (LV) function is equal to the ratio of the Dupire LV function over the root conditional mean square of the stochastic volatility factor given the spot value. This leads to a stochastic differential equation (SDE) nonlinear in the sense of McKean. Particle methods based on a kernel approximation of the conditional expectation, as presented in Guyon and Henry‐Labordère [Risk Magazine, 25, 92–97], provide an efficient calibration procedure even if some calibration errors may appear when the range of the stochastic volatility factor is very large. But so far, no global existence result is available for the SDE nonlinear in the sense of McKean. When the stochastic volatility factor is a jump process taking finitely many values and with jump intensities depending on the spot level, we prove existence of a solution to the associated Fokker–Planck equation under the condition that the range of the squared stochastic volatility factor is not too large. We then deduce existence to the calibrated model by extending the results in Figalli [Journal of Functional Analysis, 254(1), 109–153].     

Environmental regulations and industrial competitiveness: evidence from China

Economic activities are closely related to real-world environmental issues. Currently, more attention is paid to the association between environmental regulations and industrial competitiveness (IC) because of pressures on economic development and environmental protection. In this study, we identify and explain the association between environmental regulations and IC in China. As the largest developing country in the world, China has the unavoidable responsibility of protecting the environment and promoting global economic development. We analyse the mechanisms behind environmental regulations and industrial competiveness at the provincial level and conclude that the impact of environmental regulations upon IC is not a simple linear one, but a U-shaped relationship. It is argued that the crucial intervention to activate the U-shaped relationship, or Porter’s Hypothesis, is innovation, which can be triggered by stringent regulations and well-designed policies.     

近百年拙政园平面测绘精度评估与研究

在江南私家园林的研究领域中，描绘园林的平面测绘图在不同历史时期呈现不同的精度，为获得更为精确和真实的平面测绘图，尝试以江南私家园林代表之一的拙政园为例，运用无人机摄影测量技术获取正射影像图，并收集不同历史文献中的拙政园平面图，提取其中水体、山石、建筑及植物4种园林要素，用周长、面积、形状指数等指标进行测绘精度分析，来探讨成图精度的差异以及误差来源，讨论该技术在古典园林测绘过程中存在的优势与不足，并提出进一步优化建议，以期为中国古典园林的保护与更新提供一种新的思路。     

CEO自恋对创新绩效的影响研究 ——基于企业异质性的调节作用

从CEO心理特征视角出发,探究了CEO自恋与企业创新绩效之间的关系。以2011—2016年A股135家上市公司的纵向数据为样本,通过广义估计方程模型进行实证检验。研究发现:CEO自恋对企业创新绩效具有显著促进作用。进一步研究发现,CEO自恋对企业创新绩效的影响受到企业异质性的调节作用:相比小规模企业,大规模企业中CEO自恋对创新绩效的促进作用更显著;相比低财务杠杆企业,高财务杠杆企业中CEO自恋对创新绩效的促进作用更显著;相比非国有企业,国有企业中CEO自恋对创新绩效的促进作用更显著。     

GVC参与度对中国制造业出口国内附加值的影响研究

基于贸易增加值核算框架,使用2000年~2014年中国18个制造业的样本数据,应用广义最小二乘法实证检验了GVC参与度对出口国内附加值的影响效果。结果显示:参与GVC程度的加深会带动出口国内附加值的增长,进口中间品会降低出口国内附加值,但GVC参与度提高所引起的出口国内附加值增长幅度大于进口中间品所引起的下降幅度,出口国内附加值与GVC地位存在U型关系,行业生产效率的提升、产品国际竞争力的增强和加入WTO都显著提高了出口国内附加值,改变出口国内附加值的测度方法后,上述结果依然稳健。将制造业分为高、中级技术类别,高技术制造业有更强的附加值获取能力,中级技术制造业更多依赖高密集度的劳动投入分享附加值。