Empirical Findings on Business–Society Relations in Europe

Based on a theoretical exploration in a previous article, this paper empirically analyzes which issues of SD are taken into account by corporations and stakeholders in what way, and to what extent the concept of sustainable development (SD) can be achieved through stakeholder relations management (SRM) on the corporate level. An important basis for this empirical analysis is a referential framework, which specifies 14 issues of SD. In a first empirical step, the literature-based framework has been operationalized for the business world by analyzing sustainability reports. In a second empirical step, the operationalized framework served as the basis for a survey of selected MNCs. The analyses of the sustainability reports and the survey show how MNCs deal with particular issues of SD and what role they perceive particular stakeholders play. A key conclusion of the article is that SRM indeed promotes SD, but that it is no alternative to predictable government regulation.     

A nonparametric analysis of multi-product oligopolies

We develop revealed preference tests for models of multi-product oligopoly, building on the work in Carvajal et al. (Econometrica 81(6):2351–2379, 2013). We analyze a Cournot model with multiple goods and show that it has testable restrictions when at least one good is produced by two or more firms. We also develop a revealed preference test for Bertrand oligopoly in a setting where each firm produces a single differentiated good, and these goods are potentially substitutes for each other. Our tests require qualitative assumptions on the shape of the demand curves and (in the Bertrand case) their evolution across observations, but they do not rely on the estimation of market demand.     

The impact of science and technology parks on firms’ product innovation: empirical evidence from Spain

Science and Technology Parks (STP) have attracted considerable attention and public funds in recent years. However, the conclusions on their effectiveness remain mixed. This work evaluates the impact of STP on firm product innovation in the Spanish context, as an example of a less developed innovation system in which regional and national governments are prioritizing STP initiatives. This work draws on a large sample of firms provided by the Spanish Survey on Technological Innovation that is conducted annually by the National Statistical Institute. We explore alternative econometric methods to obtain average treatment effects for firms located in 22 Spanish STPs. Our results show that Spanish STPs have a strong and positive impact on the probability and amount of product innovation achieved by STP located firms. These results hold when the endogeneity of STP location is taken into account.     

Output gap in Brazil: a real-time data analysis

Recent literature for developed economies has shown that output gap estimates go through important revisions over time, impairing their reliability in real time. We organize a real-time data set for Brazil’s GDP and assess the revisions of the output gap estimated by four different methods. Similar to the findings of studies for developed economies, the output gap revisions in Brazil are substantial in all methods, with frequent changes in the output gap sign. In general, both the GDP data revision and the effect of adding new observations to the sample are relevant sources of output gap revisions. However, differently from those studies, we cannot assert that the latter source is preponderant.     

An empirical analysis on the determinants of CEE government bond spreads

This paper studies the spread between 10 year Euro denominated Central and Eastern European (CEE) government bonds and their German counterpart. With newly available time series, regressions are run for each country separately in order to deliver a first insight into the underlying determinants. While higher ECB reference rate and market volatility increase bond spreads and turn out to be the main driving factors, there is no common pattern of macroeconomic fundamentals, pointing to strong heterogeneity within the CEE region. Overall, market variables are more significant than fundamentals during 1999 to 2007.     

Institutional design and governance of airport regulators: The case of Latin America

This paper offers a cross-country assessment of the governance of airport regulators in Latin America. The analysis links the institutional design of airport regulators, whether in the form of independent regulatory agencies or government departments, to their overall governance. It examines four dimensions of regulatory governance: autonomy, transparency, accountability, and bureaucratic quality. Independent regulatory agencies in the Latin American airport sector seem to provide a better framework for transparency and bureaucratic quality than government departments. It is not conclusively found, however, that independent regulatory agencies contribute to a more autonomous decision-making or to an enhanced accountability of regulators to other branches of government and airport users. Overall, governance indicators of airport regulators in Latin America are well below the threshold that defines good governance.     

Efficiency tests with overlapping data: an application to the currency options market

This paper presents the results of an empirical study into the efficiency of the currency options market. The methodology derives from a simple model often applied to the spot and forward markets for foreign exchange. It relates the historic volatility of the underlying asset to the implied volatility of an option on the underlying at a specified prior time and then proceeds to test obvious hypotheses about the values of the coefficients. The study uses panel regression to address the problem of overlapping data which leads to dependence between observations. It also uses volatility data directly quoted on the market in order to avoid the biases which may occur when ‘backing out’ volatility from specific option pricing models. In general, the evidence rejects the hypothesis that the currency option market is efficient. This suggests that implied volatility is not the best predictor of future exchange rate volatility and should not be used without modification: the models presented in this paper could be a way of producing revised forecasts.     

L’EFFICIENCE DES COOPERATIVES DE SERVICES FINANCIERS: UNE ANALYSE DE LA CONTRIBUTION DU MILIEU*

RÉSUMÉ 1 : Le faible niveau moyen d’efficience des institutions bancaires habituellement trouvé dans les études empiriques a été qualifié de « boîte noire » par Berger et Mester (1997) . Cette étude cherche à identifier si les caractéristiques de l’environnement de même que celles qui sont propres à une coopérative d’épargne et de crédit pourraient expliquer une partie des écarts de performance apparaissant dans les scores d’efficience. Le modèle de coût que nous avons estimé est basé sur la valeur ajoutée par l’intermédiation financière. Par ailleurs, pour éviter la perte d’informations découlant de la borne à l’unité des scores d’efficience découlant du DEA, nous avons comparé les résultats d’une analyse avec le score d’efficience et de superefficience. Nos résultats montrent qu’au moins 34% des écarts de scores peuvent être expliqués par un ensemble limité de variables: taille de la coopérative, taux de capitalisation, épargne par membre, nombre de membres et type de marché.     

Spanning with futures contracts

Regression-based testing techniques have long been used to quantify whether the efficient frontier of a set of assets spans the frontier of a larger collection of investments. This paper derives regression-based spanning tests for the case in which the investment possibilities set contains, or is constituted by, futures contracts for which marked-to-market margins are explicitly taken into account. Two empirical applications illustrate our results.