What constitutes a constitutional amendment culture?

Why are some constitutions amended frequently and others hardly at all? An obvious candidate determinant is constitutional rigidity, i.e., the size and number of procedural barriers to amendment. Given some demand for amendment, greater rigidity implies a smaller supply. However, measures of rigidity often do not correlate significantly (or even with the predicted sign) with amendment rates. Ginsburg and Melton (2015) argue that amendment culture – “shared attitudes about the desirability of amendment” – is a more important determinant of amendment rates. We study up to 128 constitutional episodes from 54 countries and estimate relationships between amendment rates and Hofstede cultural indices. Cultures that are more individualistic and less prone to uncertainty avoidance are associated with higher amendment rates. When cultural dimensions are controlled for, the lagged amendment rate (Ginsburg and Melton’s proxy for culture) is not a robust correlate.     

Enhancing environmental information transparency through corporate social responsibility reporting regulation

This research aims to contribute to the scientific debate about the lack of interlinkages between mandatory non-financial reporting and sustainable business models. For our purposes, a counter-accounting analysis was conducted on the non-financial reports of a sample of 145 Italian firms interested by the Directive 2014/95/EU effects. Specifically, the study adopts an empirical approach to evaluate environmental information transparency, which represents one of the main critical issues concerning the non-financial declarations prepared by European Italian Public Interest Entities (PIEs) to comply with Directive 2014/95/EU. The results highlight that corporate governance and report characteristics affect environmental transparency. Furthermore, the results confirm the overall attitude to avoid the disclosure of unfavourable or unavailable environmental information through impression management strategies. Finally, the analysis underlines the opportunities for policymakers to rethink mandatory non-financial reporting to sustain the ecological transition of European PIEs.     

知识型员工冗余对中小上市公司二元创新的影响：环境特征的调节作用

以277家中小板和创业板上市公司2012-2017年平衡面板数据为样本，利用泊松模型，实证分析知识型员工冗余与企业二元创新的关系，并探讨外部环境特征（要素市场发育程度和市场不确定性）的调节机理。研究表明：企业应保持一定的知识型员工冗余，促进企业二元式创新，过多或过少的知识型员工冗余均不利于企业开展创新活动；不同的环境特征对二者间关系的调节作用存在异质性，要素市场发育程度会减弱知识型员工冗余与探索式创新、利用式创新间关系，而市场不确定性会加强知识型员工冗余与探索式创新、利用式创新间关系。     

Religious belief and international business negotiations: Does faith influence negotiator behaviour?

Religious observance is widespread and continues to influence managerial behaviour in many parts of the world. However, its role in international business negotiations has not received much scholarly attention. This study explores some of the key ways in which religious belief shapes negotiation behaviour. Focusing specifically on the Islamic context, and drawing on interviews with 27 religiously observant Muslim managers in Malaysia, the study found that commitment to a common religion among negotiators positively influenced certain components of the negotiation process through, for example, the use of religious/emotional appeal, which emphasised their ‘spiritual camaraderie’. In some instances, however, we observed something of a paradox, whereby differing religious beliefs among negotiating counterparts were claimed to actually enhance, rather than hinder, negotiations.     

Determinants of spectator no-show behaviour: first empirical evidence from the German Bundesliga

The analysis of stadium attendance demand has a long tradition in the economic literature. However, despite its evident merits, this previous research has been critiqued at several levels, in particular for relying on a suboptimal demand proxy, i.e. published attendance data. In this short note, we address these shortcomings by exploring a highly unique data set containing official information on spectators’ decisions of whether or not to physically attend 704 German football Bundesliga games played between August 2014 and January 2017.     

Twenty-five years of business systems research and lessons for international business studies

Since 1992, the national business systems (NBS) approach has been increasingly used to analyse not only firm characteristics, structures and strategies within NBS, but also the nature of international business and its interactions with both national and transnational institutions. In reviewing 25 years of NBS literature, we heed calls in IB journals urging researchers to use NBS notions and findings in IB research. Our systematic review of 96 articles analyses the patterns and contributions of NBS literature, revealing four thematic junctures: (1) comparative business systems, (2) firm internationalisation and the management/organisation inside MNCs, (3) the role of internationalisation in the development of organisational capabilities and innovation and (4) the emergence of transnational communities in and across firms and societies. Themes are described in terms of (a) the research questions (RQ) they focus on, (b) how NBS approach investigates the RQ and what are the major findings, (c) how IB frames and approaches the same RQ, (d) how does the NBS approach extend the perspectives of IB and (e) what are the problems faced by NBS in terms of developing further insights into the RQ. Our review contributes to the recent endeavour of IB research to institutionalism, encouraging a productive dialogue between IB and NBS research.     

以“合”为贵？合作文化与企业创新

本文以2006-2015年沪深A股非金融上市公司为样本,基于上市公司网站对于企业文化的叙述和年报董事会报告两份本文,采用文本分析方法,构建两个度量企业合作文化强弱的指标,并研究企业合作文化对企业创新产出和创新效率的影响。研究发现,企业文化越强调合作,企业的创新产出越多,创新效率越高。这一结论在采用增加控制变量、利用水稻播种面积作为工具变量以及以董事长的非正常离职事件为冲击进行PSM-DID等多种方法后仍然稳健。渠道检验的结果显示,合作文化是通过提高企业内部员工的凝聚力和促进企业的“产学研”合作这两种渠道来促进企业创新。进一步的研究表明,合作文化的促进作用在竞争性行业以及地区信任程度和产业集群程度较高的地区中尤为显著。本文不仅从微观层面揭示企业文化对公司财务行为的影响机理,丰富和补充了当前方兴未艾的“文化与金融”研究,而且为国家制定建设社会主义文化强国的方针战略提供理论基础和实证支持。     

Information flow between prediction markets,polls and media: Evidence from the 2008 presidential primaries

Are the forecast errors of election-eve polls themselves forecastable? We present evidence from the 2008 Democratic Party nomination race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton showing that the answer is yes. Both cross-sectional and time series evidence suggests that market prices contain information about election outcomes that polls taken shortly before the contests do not. Conversely, election surprises relative to polls too Granger cause subsequent price movements. We then investigate whether the additional information in prices could come from the media coverage of these campaigns, and uncover a set of complex relationships between pollster’s surprise, price movements, and various aspects of media coverage. Prices anticipate the balance and content of media coverage, but not the volume. On the other hand, it is the volume of media coverage, not the balance or content, that anticipates the surprise element in election outcomes. Moreover, Granger causality between prices and election surprises barely changes after controlling for media coverage, and causality from media volume to surprises persists too after controlling for price movements. Taken together, the results suggest that both prices and the volume of media coverage contain independent election-relevant information that is not captured in polls.     

地区关系文化与企业创新

作为中国文化的重要组成部分，关系文化在制度改革进程中，促进了体制约束或资源匮乏背景下的企业创新行为。然而，浓重的地区关系文化犹如无形的制度牢笼，束缚着企业创新活动。利用中国内地120个城市工业企业数据，实证考察了地区关系文化对企业创新的影响。结果显示，地区关系文化对企业创新具有显著促进作用。随着地区关系文化的发展，企业创新活动将受到抑制，两者呈现显著倒“U”型关系。进一步研究表明，地区关系文化对企业创新的倒U型效应仅在规模较大的企业中显著；相较于国有企业，该效应在非国有企业样本中更显著；企业是否属于高技术行业则对两者关系无实质性影响。     

Transport infrastructure equities in mixed-asset portfolios: estimating risk with a Garch-Copula CVaR model

Transport infrastructure is an important subsector within infrastructure, but knowledge of its equities in terms of risk-return characteristics and contribution to portfolio performance is still limited. This study assesses the subsector individually and in a multi-asset, index-based portfolio. In doing so, we apply a t-Copula-based Conditional Value-at-Risk model to simulate risk and returns. Our findings reveal that the subsector has a relatively low dependency on other equities, performs like other alternative asset classes such as general real estate, and does not grant significant risk diversification benefits for mainstream institutional investors such as pension funds. Investors aiming for higher target returns may however assign substantial weights to transport infrastructure, supporting our conjecture that it does not share the same asset class characteristics as general infrastructure. By contrasting Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) scores for both the mean-variance framework and the t-Copula simulation, we further document the limitations of traditional VaR approaches. Hence, this study’s results support the use of risk assessment tools that incorporate non-normal distributions to represent multivariate dependence structures.