Corporate Governance in China: A Meta‐Analysis

How has the impact of ‘good corporate governance’ principles on firm performance changed over time in China? Amassing a database of 84 studies, 684 effect sizes, and 547,622 firm observations, we explore this important question by conducting a meta‐analysis on the corporate governance literature on China. The weight of evidence demonstrates that two major ‘good corporate governance’ principles advocating board independence and managerial incentives are indeed associated with better firm performance. However, we cannot find strong support for the criticisms against CEO duality. In addition, we go beyond a static perspective (such as certain governance mechanisms are effective or ineffective) by investigating the temporal hypotheses. We reveal that over time, with the improvement in the quality of market institutions and development of financial markets, the monitoring mechanisms of the board and state ownership become more strongly related to firm performance, whereas the incentive mechanisms lose their significance. Overall, our findings advance a dynamic institution‐based view by substantiating the case that institutional transitions matter for the relationship between governance mechanisms and firm performance in the second largest economy in the world.     

How does public spending affect technical efficiency? Some evidence from 15 European countries

The relationship between government size and economic growth has been widely debated. Revisiting the subject from a distinct angle with respect to the mainstream approach, we provide an empirical analysis of the impact of government size on technical efficiency. The aim of this paper is to estimate the impact of public sector's size and of public expenditure components on 15 European countries’ technical efficiency from 1996 to 2014 by using a True Random Effect model. Using the total public expenditure as a proxy for the government size we estimate simultaneously national optimal production function and technical efficiency by controlling for income distribution and institutional quality. Our main findings show that the effect of public sector's size on efficiency is positive while the type of public expenditures may have both positive and negative impact. In more details, results suggest that education and health expenditures have a positive effect on technical efficiency, while others have a negative impact.     

ESTIMATES OF THE PRICE ELASTICITY OF SWITCHING BETWEEN BRANDED AND GENERIC DRUGS

We estimate price elasticities of switching from branded to generic drugs for two widely used drugs: Prozac and Zocor. We find the price elasticity of switching varies by drug and is between 0.01 and 0.10. While elasticity estimates for Zocor are robust to the inclusion of controls for supply‐side factors, those for Prozac are not. Our results indicate consumers in managed care plans are most responsive to differences in out‐of‐pocket (OOP) cost, and we estimate that a 10% increase in the OOP cost difference between Zocor and generic Simvastatin increases an individual's probability of switching to the generic by approximately 0.3%. This would result in a modest total savings of $36,700 among our sample of 114,218 privately insured Zocor users. Our finding that individuals are relatively unresponsive to the lower prices caused by generic introduction implies that policies targeting supply‐side behavior are likely to have a larger effect on generic uptake than price‐based inducements. If generic‐uptake did occur immediately within the first 18 months after generic introduction, the total savings among individuals and insurance companies within our sample would be approximately $7 million for Zocor and $255,000 for Prozac. (JEL I11, I18)     

Selective Entry in Highway Procurement Auctions

When participating in an auction is costly, a potential bidder has to decide whether to enter the auction or not. The extent to which the potential bidders know their private cost before making their entry decisions determines how selective the entry process is. Endogenous selective entry is common in many auctions and it has important implications for designing auctions, in particular, choosing the bid discount policy that is frequently used in public procurements to achieve distributional goals of the government. Prior empirical studies of the bid preferences were based on frameworks that either did not explicitly model endogenous participation or assumed endogenous, but non-selective participation. This study empirically investigated whether the entry process is selective in the highway procurement auctions run by the California Department of Transportation. To this end, the asymmetric affiliated-signal model was adapted to permit endogenous selective entry. Model parameters, including entry costs and distributions of construction costs for regular and fringe companies, were estimated nonparametrically. The results show evidence favoring selective entry of the fringe firms and imply that the level of bid discount required to achieve the procurement buyer’s policy objective may be lower than what is previously found in the literature under the assumption of non-selective entry.

     

Negative Affect and Counterproductive Workplace Behavior: The Moderating Role of Moral Disengagement and Gender

There has been growing scholarly interest in understanding individual-level antecedents of counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB). While researchers have found a positive relationship between individuals’ negative affect and engagement in CWB, to date, our understanding of the factors which may affect this relationship is limited. In this study, we investigate the moderating roles of moral disengagement and gender in this relationship. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that individuals with a greater tendency to experience negative emotions were more likely to engage in CWB when they had a higher propensity to morally disengage. Moreover, we found that this interacting relationship varied across men and women. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and offer avenues for future research.     

The importance of consumer characteristics and market structure variables in driving multiple store patronage

The purpose of this study is to investigate multiple store patronage. Specifically, the aim is to relate the number of stores patronized to a set of consumer characteristics and market structure factors, according to a cost–benefit approach. Data from a sample of 1000 shoppers indicate that only few consumer characteristics impact on multi-store patronage pattern for grocery purchases (gender and shopping activity perception). Moreover, the number of stores operating in the market proved to be an important determinant of patronage set size. Implications for retailers are discussed with suggestions for future research.     

Acquisitions and CEO power: Evidence from French networks

During mergers and acquisitions, the CEOs of the acquiring firms are likely to cancel the deal if the market does not react favorably to its announcement. Using a sample of French acquisition announcements during the period from 2000 to 2005, this paper studies the conditions in which CEOs are more willing to listen to investors. Furthermore, according to the strong networks developed through French elite schools' alumni and board ties, the well-connected CEOs are more likely to complete any deal in spite of a negative market reaction to acquisition announcements.     

Modeling hedge fund exposure to risk factors

This paper examines the adjustment dynamics of hedge fund returns and studies their exposure to risk factors in a nonlinear framework for several types of strategies over the last two decades. Nonlinearity is justified by distortions due to the use of short selling, leverage, derivatives and illiquid assets for hedge fund strategies. Among nonlinear models, switching regime (STR) models are applied to reproduce the dynamics of hedge fund returns. This nonlinear multivariate modeling has the advantage of capturing the time-varying exposure of hedge fund strategies to risk factors, and of specifying the asymmetric relationship between hedge fund returns and risk. The findings are interesting and provide several contributions to the hedge fund literature. First, we show that the dynamics of hedge fund returns exhibit significant asymmetry and nonlinearity, indicating that they evolve and vary asymmetrically in accordance with stages in financial cycles. Second, hedge fund exposure to risk factors also varies over time, depending on the strategy and the regime. Finally, our modeling captures the most important changes in hedge fund exposure to risk factors induced by the recent global financial crisis (2008–2009).