Above and beyond? How businesses can drive sustainable development by promoting lasting pro-environmental behaviour change: An examination of the IKEA Live Lagom project

Current global changes require new business approaches driving sustainable development on all fronts. To date, most business approaches have focused on sustainable marketing and corporate social responsibility initiatives. In this field study, we examine IKEA's Live Lagom project, a 3-year behaviour change initiative that aimed to explore how to go above and beyond conventional approaches demonstrating how businesses could support sustainable development by supporting their customers' attempts to live more sustainable lifestyles. We examined the effectiveness of the project involving multifaceted behaviour change interventions, testing for behavioural changes both during and after the project period. In addition, we explored changes in participants' attitudes towards the company. Findings show that the extensive set of interventions led to changes in pro-environmental behaviours across all three participant groups with potentially positive impacts on the customer–company relationship. The article thus provides a call for further businesses to engage in similar behaviour change projects that would allow citizens to engage in more sustainable lifestyles and behaviours across contexts.     

广西民间传统手工艺转型发展商业模式探究--以博白竹藤编织工艺为例

民间传统手工艺是一个民族文化的重要组成部分。广西是一个多民族聚居区,存在丰富多样的传统手工艺文化。面对如今经济社会快速发展的时代,现代化工业的快速发展、社会环境的浮躁、缺乏关注导致创新的缺失等原因使得民间传统手工艺的传承和发展面临较大的困难。除了政府的制度和措施,也应积极探索其他方式。论文以广西博白竹藤编织手工艺面临的困境为研究对象,对其创新发展的市场潜力与可行性、商业模式的转型发展进行探索,以期对我国民间传统手工艺的传承与壮大提供一定的参考和借鉴。     

A division of the capitalist class and the market for money capital

In a one‐commodity economy populated by capitalists equipped with equal endowment but with heterogeneous linear production technology, a division of the capitalist class emerges endogenously. The capitalists with relatively weak technology, yielding the profit rate lower than the interest rate, become a money capitalist (lender), whereas the capitalists with relatively strong technology, yielding the profit rate greater than the interest rate, become an industrial capitalist (borrower). The equilibrium interest rate is derived by the associated demand and supply relation. From this setup of the model follow two essential relationships Marx establishes between the average profit rate and the interest rate: (a) that the profit (rate) sets a maximum limit of interest (rate), and (b) that the two rates are correlated in the long‐run. Lastly, the profit rate of financial sector is less than that of industrial sector due to the basic setup of the model where the industrial sector uses leverage to amplify the underlying capital profit rate, whereas the financial sector lacks intermediation technology, which would have enabled it to borrow profitably.     

利率管制松绑、企业会计信息披露质量与融资约束

已有研究发现,以资本价格——利率为代表的要素市场改革会对企业行为产生重要影响,但这种影响的作用机理如何通过改变资本市场中的信息供求关系予以实现,亟待深入研究。为此,本文以我国2013年央行全面放开利率管制为背景,基于产权性质差异构建双重差分模型,检验利率管制松绑在企业层面的信息溢出效应。研究发现:央行全面放开利率管制不仅有助于促进企业披露高质量的会计信息,还能够缓解企业的融资约束,且企业信息披露质量的提升是导致利率管制松绑降低融资约束的重要渠道。进一步研究发现,对于市场化程度较低地区、R&D投入较高以及短期贷款占比较大的公司,上述信息溢出效应更加显著;另外,利率管制松绑后企业披露高质量的会计信息能够增进投资者的信任,提高信息披露的价值相关性。以上研究结论表明,为应对利率市场化改革带来的机遇与挑战,保障可持续发展,企业会选择主动优化信息环境,来消除信贷市场摩擦,解决“融资难”问题。     

人力资本、营商环境优化与外资企业创新——兼论引智的重要性

在营商环境优化成为培育引资及引技竞争新优势的背景下，考察发展中国家的营商环境优化对外资企业创新意愿的影响以及外资企业人力资本的调节效应。研究表明：营商环境优化降低了外资企业进行技术创新、流程创新和产品创新的意愿，且平均边际效应依次增强；内在机制是营商环境优化带来的外资企业特惠度降低和内资企业竞争力增强；外资企业的人力资本增强了营商环境优化对其创新意愿的降低作用，且是通过增强外资企业特惠度、降低抑制其创新意愿以及营商环境优化促进内资企业竞争力的方式实现的。进一步发现，外资企业的引智具有显著的创新溢出效应，且内资企业的吸收能力存在积极的调节效应。     

Entrepreneurial ecosystems

International business fundamentally is about creating an ecosystem environment conducive to entrepreneurship. This means fostering actions and behavior that provide a systemic interaction with multiple entities. In this editorial for the special journal issue, the historical background and origins of the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept is discussed with the view to connected different strands of literature. This provides an optimal way to understand the way entrepreneurship develops through an ecosystem logic. The theoretical perspectives for understanding entrepreneurial ecosystems are discussed that lead to a discussion on each of the articles included in the special journal issue. Themes emerging from these articles are then stated that include a focus on value co‐creation, stakeholder collaboration and entrepreneurial networks. This enables a holistic way to understand the linkages international business has with entrepreneurial ecosystems.     

乡村森林旅游项目升级发展过程政商博弈探微——基于Z风景区3A创4A的案例分析

以Z风景区3A创4A愿景中当地政府与风景区经营商两个主体的决策行为为研究对象,以制度经济学为理论基础,采用博弈论模型进行分析。结果表明:在政府和经营商目标不一致的前提下,从政府来说,在政绩驱动下急于达到创4A目标,但政府又不能滥用纳税人的钱追加投资,其意愿是让商家继续投资,为创4A发力;从商家来说,虽然创4A有利于项目营利空间,但是客观上有规避未来市场不确定性和投资回报周期长双重风险的意识,还可能由于政府对项目创4A的急切性,导致商家存在"政府有可能追加投资,自己"搭便车"的"等靠要"机会主义思想,追加投资意愿不高;反过来也可能存在政府等待商家投资的搭便车行为。为此,提出以政商共同利益最大化为目标,通过改变激励措施,使政商博弈达到合作状态下较优的均衡结果。     

Misclassification errors in labor force statuses and the early identification of economic recessions

Accurate identification of economic recessions in a timely fashion is a major macroeconomic challenge. The so-called Sahm recession indicator (Sahm, 2019), one of the most reliable early detectors of the U.S. recessions, relies on changes in unemployment rates, and is thus subject to misclassification errors in labor force statuses based on survey data. We propose a novel misclassification-errors correction to improve the predictive timeliness and provide a proper threshold value. Using historical data, we show that the adjusted unemployment-based recession indicator offers earlier identification of economic recessions.     

Does air pollution change a firm's business strategy for employing capital and labor?

We examine the impact of air pollution on a firm's capital-labor ratio. We propose the hypothesis that, in dealing with air pollution, a firm responds strategically by using relatively more capital and less labor to contain labor costs and remain competitive in the market. Using a sample of Chinese firms and a satellite-based air pollution metric, we test this hypothesis, and our results confirm it. In addition, we document that the impact of air pollution on the capital-labor ratio is more salient for firms with high economic incentives and close monitoring. Further, we report that to respond to worsening air pollution, a firm uses more capital and substitutes lower-quality labor with more high-quality labor. Finally, after increasing the capital-labor ratio, a firm's value increases, in terms of Tobin's Q, suggesting that the adoption of a higher capital-labor ratio, due to air pollution, is a sound business strategy.     

How government-led land consolidation efforts achieve grain production stability? An empirical analysis in Hubei Province,China

China has been conducting massive land consolidation (LC) projects since the late 1990s to ensure national food security which has been one of the common issues in the world. How the implementation of LC projects affects grain production stability is a question should be answered. Basing on an empirical analysis at the county level in Hubei Province, China, this paper separates the trend component and the fluctuation component from a time series of grain production over 1991-2016 using the H-P filtering method. Then we estimate the impacts of LC projects and climate change on the trend and fluctuation rate of grain production for the entire Hubei Province. Moreover, the effects on the production of different major crops for the central, eastern, southwestern, northwestern and northern areas are also examined, respectively. The results show that: (1) the production trends for five subareas and the whole area all have followed a trajectory of “increase-decrease-increase” from 1991 to 2016. The magnitude of fluctuation rate was large but became smaller in recent years. (2) The contribution of LC to the long-term trends of grain production for the entire samples in Hubei Province mainly benefits from the growth in the cultivated land area through LC; more LC investment and newly-added arable land area promote the sudden increase in grain production above the long-term trends, while the impacts of LC area are negative. (3) The impacts of LC on the major crop production vary across areas. LC exerts significant impacts on the production of major crops in the central and eastern Hubei, and this effect persists to the following year. Similarly, this influence also exists in the southwestern and northern area, while becomes insignificant in the following year. No significant effect of LC variables is found in the northwestern area. These findings may provide reference for the government to address LC inefficiency and food security problems, and an effective and innovative mechanism combining the agricultural production, land consolidation and meteorological factors needs to be established to ensure food security and long-term and stable agricultural production. In addition, the regional difference in natural conditions and LC orientations should also be considered.