Female leadership,internet use,and performance of agricultural cooperatives in Vietnam

Supporting agricultural cooperatives might contribute to the livelihood improvement of many small-scale farmers in developing countries. This research examines the factors affecting the internet use of agricultural cooperatives with a focus on female leadership, its effects on cooperatives’ economic, social, and innovative performance, and the distributional effects of internet use on economic performance. Our analysis relied on the data of 3,512 agricultural cooperatives collected in 2021 from Vietnam. We addressed the endogeneity issue of internet use in impact assessment by employing an instrumental variable approach. Our results show that female leadership was positively and significantly associated with internet use and that internet use had a positive and significant effect on returns on assets, returns on equity, labor productivity, payment per laborer, contribution to labor union and insurance per laborer, and innovation in products of agricultural cooperatives. In addition, unconditional quantile regressions show that internet use in agricultural cooperatives exacerbated income inequality. Enhancing female leadership and promoting rural education were recommended to improve agricultural cooperatives’ performance.     

市场竞争强度、管理层持股与公司绩效——基于内生性视角的经验证据

本文选取2007—2009年679家中国非金融类上市公司组成的平衡面板数据集,运用超产权理论,引入市场竞争强度,从内生性视角实证检验了管理层持股与公司绩效之间的关系。结果发现,在控制内生性影响后,管理层持股与公司绩效之间存在倒u型激励效应和市场竞争调节效应,后者具体体现为,当竞争强度增加时,利益协同效应增强;当垄断程度增强时,壕沟效应加剧。本文的经验发现有助于认知股权激励的机制安排和政府监管的政策取向。     

受教育水平对健康的影响——以中国老人为例

本文使用中国老年人口健康长寿影响因素跟踪调查中2008年的数据,将被访老人父亲的受教育年限与其配偶的受教育年限作为其自身受教育年限的工具变量,分别在线性模型和二元选择模型下,估计了老年人受教育水平对其健康状况的影响。健康状况使用了自评健康和MMSE二种不同的衡量指标。研究发现仅控制人口因素时,受教育水平对男性老年人自评健康有5%水平显著的正向影响,受教育水平每增加一年,老年男性自评健康差的概率降低0.006,而且这种影响主要是通过社会经济因素进行的,在控制社会经济因素后,这种效应消失;在控制了社会经济因素后,受教育水平对女性老年人自评健康有负向影响。受教育水平对老年人的认知能力有1%显著性水平下的正向影响,而且对女性的影响大于男性。仅控制人口因素时,受教育年限每增加一年,男性老人认知能力受损的概率降低0.014,而女性老人认知能力受损的概率则降低0.030。是否控制生活习惯对这种影响的规模几乎没有作用,但是控制社会经济因素会增大这种影响,其中女性群体的增幅大于男性。     

Modeling Simultaneity in Survey Data

Responses to questions in a survey can reflect a behavior process that influences multiple response items. Respondent ratings of brand attributes, for example, can be affected by past purchases by making a brand more salient, or by respondents attributing higher performance to justify their purchases. When multiple response items are influenced by a common underlying process, there is simultaneity in the data. This paper proposes an approach to model the simultaneity in different survey responses by using common parameters and structural relationships motivated by behavioral theories on how consumers respond to surveys. Specifically, the proposed models show how brand usage and attribute perception responses are jointly determined by justification, order, and brand halo effects in two brand positioning studies. We detect a significant tendency for respondents to inflate their reported beliefs for particular brands as well as the selected brand across five countries in an international survey as well as in a domestic study. JEL Classification: C35, C53, D12, M31     

公司治理机制、替代效应与风险承担

以２００２—２０１１年４１０家上市公司为样本,在动态内生性的框架下,考虑了公司治理机制间的交互效应,运用动态面板的ＳｙｓｔｅｍＧＭＭ估计方法,同时控制了三种内生性,以动态视角研究公司治理机制与公司风险承担间的关系。研究发现,公司治理机制不仅对当期公司风险承担有影响,而且对下一期公司风险承担有影响,并且前期公司风险承担对当期公司治理机制有反馈效应,这表明在公司治理机制与公司风险承担间存在动态内生性。研究还发现,公司治理机制在提高公司风险承担方面存在替代效应。     

Using demographic identification to estimate the effects of board size on corporate performance

Motivated by agency theory, we investigate the effect of board size on corporate outcomes. To address endogeneity, we exploit the variations in the director-age populations across the states in the US. We argue that firms with access to a larger pool of potential directors tend to have larger boards. Consistent with this notion, our empirical results show that firms located where the size of the director-age population is larger have significantly larger board size. Because the director-age population represents broad demographic trends outside of any firm’s control, it is unlikely related to firm outcomes or policies and should be exogenous. Using the director-age population as our instrument, we estimate the effects of board size on firm value and profitability. Our approach is less vulnerable to endogeneity and is more likely to show a causal effect.     

Returns to Education Using a Sample of Twins: Evidence from Japan*

The objective of this article is to measure the causal effect of education on earnings using a large dataset of twins compiled in Japan with wide‐ranging socioeconomic information. Recent research conducted in China showed that, contrary to the case in Western countries, ability bias is large in estimating the return to education. It is argued that the low rate of return in China is in part due to the competitive and exam‐oriented education system, which is similar to the system in Japan. The empirical results in our study show that the estimated rate of return to education using the sample of identical twins in Japan is 9.3 percent even after omitted ability bias and measurement errors in self‐reported schooling were corrected. Our findings suggest that the conventional OLS estimate is not significantly contaminated by potential biases in Japan.     

The nexus between public sector corruption and private sector efficiency: Evidence from worldwide firm-level data

Anti-corruption is highlighted as one of the key institutional principles by the United Nations, as corruption hinders the progress in achieving sustainable development goals. However, the extant literature on how private firms' efficiency is influenced by corruption prevailing in regulatory agencies across economies has been inconclusive. Analyzing the World Bank Enterprise Survey data across 45,121 firms from 80 countries, this study finds that bribe payments to corrupt public officials by firms causes bureaucratic delays. Employing an instrumental variable Tobit framework to address the issue of endogeneity inherited with observational data, this study demonstrates that an increase in the magnitude of bribes and depth of corruption by one percentage point separately expands the firm managers' time being spent on regulatory requirements by 2.78 percentage points and 2.47 percentage points, respectively. The findings are robust to different specifications. The results imply the importance of promoting anti-corruption measures across countries to create a conducive environment for firms to enhance efficiency, and thereby to achieve sustainable development goals successfully.     

Proxy variable estimation of productivity and efficiency

We model productivity and inefficiency jointly, instead of modeling and estimating either only productivity or only inefficiency with many variable and quasi-fixed inputs. In the first model, we use a multi-step procedure. We use the proxy variable method based on the first-order condition (FOC) of expected profit maximization with respect to the single variable input to take care of the endogeneity problem arising from both productivity and inefficiency. To separate mean inefficiency from mean productivity we assume them nonparametric functions of different sets of exogenous variables. In the second model, we consider a novel system consisting of the production function and the FOCs of expected profit maximization for the multiple variable inputs. Distributional assumptions are made on all the random errors associated with the production function, the FOCs, productivity, and inefficiency functions in the second model. We use the Colombian food manufacturing data as an application of our model.     

The financial and green effects of cultural values on mission drifts in European social enterprises

The sustainable social enterprises (SEs) literature shows that SEs have to simultaneously pursue economic, social, and environmental aims. However, tensions between these objectives can make this a challenging task and lead towards mission drift. This work investigates if the cultural dimension can forecast the mission drift. We empirically analyze this relationship in three stages. In the first stage, we identify a homogeneous dataset of 287 sustainable SEs from seven EU countries from 2011 to 2020. Then, in the second stage, we apply the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology to calculate the efficiency of the SEs. An efficient SE has to simultaneously achieve social, environmental, and economic aims. We calculate a proxy of the mission drift and generate a dichotomous category variable that assigns value 1 to the SE not affected by mission drift, 0 otherwise. In the last stage, we implement the 2SLS logistic regression between the variable that identifies the SEs affected by mission drift and three cultural dimensions: avoidance of uncertainty, masculinity, and short-term orientation.