Intangible capital,corporate valuation and asset pricing

Recent studies have found unmeasured intangible capital to be large and important. In this paper we observe that by nature intangible capital is also very different from physical capital. We find it plausible to argue that the accumulation process for intangible capital differs significantly from the process by which physical capital accumulates. We study the implications of this hypothesis for rational firm valuation and asset pricing using a two-sector general equilibrium model. Our main finding is that the properties of firm valuation and stock prices are very dependent on the assumed accumulation process for intangible capital. If one entertains the possibility that intangible investments translates into capital stochastically, we find that plausible levels of macroeconomic volatility are compatible with highly variable corporate valuations, P/E ratios and stock returns. We thank Ellen McGrattan, Edward Prescott, Rene Stulz and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments as well as workshop participants at FAME, the 5th Conference of the Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, the European Central Bank, Columbia Business School Finance Free Lunch and the University of Zürich. This research has benefited from financial support from the National Center for Competence in Research “Financial Valuation and Risk Management”. The National Centers of Competence in Research are managed by the Swiss National Science Foundation on behalf of the Federal Authorities.     

Financial development,financial liberalization and social capital

The relationship between financial liberalization policies and financial development is controversial. The impact of these policies differs greatly across countries. In the literature, the quality of formal institutions has been identified as an important source of this heterogeneity, as countries with a weak institutional environment generally fail to benefit from financial liberalization. Using panel data covering 82 countries for the period 1973–2008, we find evidence that social capital may substitute for formal institutions as a prerequisite for effective financial liberalization policies. In particular, we find that during the post Washington-consensus period countries with a high prevailing level of social capital can ensure that financial liberalization positively influences financial development, despite the poor quality of their formal institutions.     

The effects of national culture on corporate social responsibility disclosure: a cross-country comparison

This article presents a cross-country analysis of the influence of national culture on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure. We analyse the relationship between the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the sustainability disclosure with the GDP per capita (GDPPC) of 44 countries, using panel data with information based on the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. The governance effectiveness and the foreign direct investment are also included in the analysis. The results show that in countries with higher GDPPC, the CSR disclosure is negatively related to individualism and masculinity and positively related to uncertainty avoidance and indulgence. When focusing in countries with lower GDPPC, the results suggest that CSR disclosure is negatively related to power distance and positively related to uncertainty avoidance. Moreover, five of the six Hofstede’s cultural dimensions negatively affect sustainability disclosure in countries with middle GDPPC.     

Corporate governance,human capital,and productivity: evidence from Chinese non-listed firms

This article analyses the effects of corporate governance (CG) and human capital on productivity by using the 1999–2006 data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC). The findings of this study are twofold. First, CG and human capital generate significant positive effects on the productivity of both state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs. Second, CG has significantly different moderate and mediate effects on the relationship between human capital and productivity. Our results are robust to different specifications and alternative measures. This study provides clear policy implications by suggesting that the firms in emerging markets, especially SOEs, must improve their CG and their allocation of human capital for them to enhance their productivity.     

Economic freedom and social capital

This article brings together two growing literatures, social capital and economic freedom, to examine whether economic freedom contributes to social capital. More specifically, using US state-level data from 1986 to 2004 and both OLS and System GMM dynamic panel estimation, we find that there is no clear trade-off between economic freedom and either the level or growth of social capital.     

Structural social capital and mental health: a panel study

ABSTRACT

The link between social relations and psychological wellbeing is well established in sociological and mental health studies. Since the beginning of the 2000s, this link has been garnering new attention and interest in economic and public health studies. Almost twenty years of empirical studies testing this relationship have established contrasting results for two main reasons. First, the majority of the studies are based on cross-sectional data, leaving out endogeneity and heterogeneity problems; second, mental health measurements are often discordant from each other. This study investigates the relationship between structural social capital and individual self-rated mental health using five waves of the British Household Panel Survey from 1991 to 1995 (unbalanced panel N = 44,684). We take into account the heterogeneity and endogeneity issues and implement fixed effects and lag-dependent variable estimations. Moreover, we used different methodologies to measure mental health as a robustness check. Our findings show the existence of a negative relationship between being both a member of and active in an organization and worse mental health. In addition, being active within an organization in the previous year has a negative effect on worse mental health in the following year.     

Corporate social irresponsibility,CEO overconfidence,and stock price crash risk

This study examines whether and how corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) influences stock price crash risk for firms with overconfident CEOs. We find that the positive association between CEO overconfidence and stock price crash risk as shown in prior studies is significantly weakened when firms have higher CSI concerns. As a result, our intriguing findings demonstrate that investors are less surprised at the negative news hoarded by overconfident CEOs of CSI firms, possibly because they are already aware of and have previously reacted to the socially irresponsible behavior in their daily operations.     

Corporate tax avoidance and cost of equity capital: international evidence

ABSTRACT

This study examines the association between firm’s tax avoidance activities and cost of equity capital across 17 countries. Consistent with the prior study based on the U.S. evidence, within strong investor protection countries, the extent of firm’s tax avoidance is negatively associated with its cost of equity capital. This result indicates that strong investor protection induces investors to perceive firm’s tax avoidance activities as the results of efficient tax planning to reduce tax liabilities. To the contrary, we find that the extent of firm’s tax avoidance is positively associated with its cost of equity capital within weak investor protection countries. This result suggests that investors impose equity risk premium on firm’s tax avoidance activities in weak investor protection countries, where agency conflicts prevail more on firm’s tax avoidance activities. As the first international study on the association between firm’s tax avoidance activities and its cost of equity capital, this study contributes to the literature by suggesting that such an association may vary across countries depending on the strength of investor protection within each country of domicile.     

Dynamics of social trust and human capital in the learning process: The case of the Japan garment cluster in the period 1968–2005

This paper examined the ways and the extent to which human capital and social trust are associated with the learning process of a manager in making operations decisions through experience. To this end, using a data set originally and purposively constructed by the author, I investigated the development and transformation of the garment industry cluster region of Kojima, Japan. The major findings through statistical estimations are as follows. (1) In the cluster development stage, the social trust of an enterprise and its manager's experiences in firm operations could be regarded as forming a complementary association. (2) In the stage following cluster development, however, a manager's human capital as accumulated through schooling and personal experience, instead of social trust, become complementary.     

The role of natural capital in supporting national income and social welfare

Using life satisfaction as a proxy for social welfare, this study contributes to the extant literature by empirically demonstrating that natural capital contributes to social welfare, functioning in part through increasing national income and in part through its direct effect on life satisfaction; the direct effect is approximately 40% greater than the indirect effect. This suggests that the true welfare benefits of natural capital may not be adequately reflected in conventional economic data and, therefore, studies seeking to evaluate the contribution of natural capital to human well-being should consider employing data sets that capture subjective elements of welfare. The magnitudes of the reported marginal effects of natural capital on social welfare, however, are small. This is perhaps due to the fact that (1) there are shortcomings in the measure of natural capital; (2) life satisfaction effects are unlikely to reflect the poorly understood benefits that natural capital provides; and (3) keystone species (such as mosquitoes) and integral ecosystems (such as wetlands) may be negatively associated with life satisfaction, even though such components of natural capital are vitally important to sustaining ecosystems and human life     

企业社会资本:理论与实证研究述评

大量研究表明,社会资本是企业重要的战略资源和有效的治理机制,因而企业社会资本理论成为当前经济学和管理学研究的前沿领域之一。本文在已有文献的基础上,对企业社会资本的概念界定、分析维度和测量方法方面的研究进行了归纳;并从公司治理、融资行为、技术创新和企业家4个方面,对现有关于企业社会资本与企业绩效之间关系的实证研究进行了梳理。最后,就企业社会资本理论的发展现状和趋势进行了简要总结。     

企业社会资本对技术创新绩效的影响研究

文章从企业社会资本提高技术创新能力的角度出发,首先在现有研究文献的基础上,对社会资本、吸收能力、企业创新绩效及其三者关系进行了分析,发现引入企业规模作为控制变量才能更为科学地梳理三者之间的关系。其次构建了关于三个主要研究变量之间的理论关系模型,提出相关研究假设。最后采用问卷调查方法对长三角地区的企业进行数据收集,利用回归分析等方法对模型所包含的假设进行实证检验。通过理论分析和对350份有效问卷数据的实证分析,研究发现企业社会资本与吸收能力对企业技术创新绩效存在着显著的正向影响。其中吸收能力起到调节性中介作用,在大中型企业中,企业社会资本、吸收能力和技术创新绩效三者之间的关系并不显著;在小微型企业中,吸收能力对企业社会资本与技术创新绩效的调节作用不显著。     

The Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility and Its Limits

Companies are, in a broad sense, a group of different agents that have a relationship with shareholders, citizens, providers, and customers. In other words, they are known as stakeholders. Corporate social responsibility may help to establish clear boundaries among the different interests of the groups described above. In this paper, the authors will describe, analyze, and formalize the critical responsibility parameters, as well as the variables that shape them. Corporate social responsibility is proposed as a new management tool and not as a fashionable concept. Furthermore, the advantages and limitations of corporate social responsibility will be analyzed in order to define a management model for achieving responsibility among organizations. Finally, the model limitations are presented, both in the verbal and the mathematical formalizations.

Corporate labour share of income and the shadow economy: a cross-country analysis

This article addresses a link between the size of the shadow economy and the corporate labour share of income in the European Union. Fixed individual and time effects models suggest that there is a negative link between these two indicators. The coefficients are statistically significant if we control for other variables related to labour markets, such as unemployment rates or strictness of employment protection (regular contracts). Depending on the exact model specification, our estimates suggest that an increase in the shadow economy by 1% of GDP results in a 0.5–1% decline in the labour share of income in the corporate sector.     

Infinite desires in a finite world: Scarcity and its socio-economic implications

Natural resource scarcity has been making a resurgence as a dominant theme in recent economic writings. Most of the papers on this subject, however, have been narrow in their scope— discussing the issue mainly from a specific viewpoint or ideological stand. This paper attempts to give a balanced treatment to three economic positions (the traditionalist, the revisionist, and the unorthodox economist) taken toward natural resource scarcity. As such, the main objective of the paper is to present and analyze the basic arguments that have been advanced by the proponents of these three positions. It is the author's intent that this approach will help clarify the main factors that have been the source of disagreements among economists over the probable causes and ramifications of societal problems emanating from scarcity and in so doing provide a clearer perspective for prudent action.     

Social capital approach on Enterprise 2.0: a multiple case study

The goal of Enterprise 2.0 is to create a collaborative work environment and facilitate knowledge sharing. However, organisations report both increases and decreases in productivity associated with Enterprise 2.0. The focal qualitative case study adopts the social capital approach as a theoretical lens to provide a holistic account of Enterprise 2.0. The study reveals the multilevel and multifaceted nature of Enterprise 2.0 and shows how it associates with individual employees’ behaviours, their mutual work- and non-work-related relationships and knowledge sharing patterns, as well as managerial processes. Thus, the study continues and contributes by going beyond the mere operational use and benefits of Enterprise 2.0, and approaches it as a holistic socio-technical phenomenon that largely intertwines with organisational realities and strategic management. Furthermore, the study provides a discussion on Enterprise 2.0 as a driver of social change, and what kind of managerial action and involvement is required for its success.     

转型期我国中小企业与研究机构合作的信任基础

中国社会转型期间的信任结构极大地影响着研究机构与中小企业的合作方式和效率。本文认为．信任机制是决定研究机构与中小企业合作是否成功的基础,并从理论上剖析了转型期信任机制的转变规律。     

Corporate Social Responsibility,Values, and Cooperation

Lately, some questions relating to Corporate social responsibility (CSR) have become relevant. The European Commission defines CSR as the enterprises’ contribution to sustainable development. In the field of cooperation, there are numerous examples of enterprises very closely engaged in sustainable development that apply very strict ethical codes to their regular operations. This work tries to think about: (1) the necessity of taking upon, again, the moral teachings of some fathers of economics as Adam Smith or Robert Owen, most of which were scorned since the triumph of utilitarianism and rationalism; (2) the slide of society through post-modern values; and (3) the role of cooperative principles and values in the new cultural environments.

Growth and social security: the role of human capital

This paper studies the growth and efficiency effects of pay-as-you-go financed social security when human capital is the engine of growth. Employing a variant of the Lucas model [Lucas, R.E., 1988. On the mechanics of economic development. Journal of Monetary Economics 22, 3–42.] with overlapping generations, it is shown that a properly designed, unfunded social security system leads to higher output growth than a fully funded one. Furthermore, the economy with an unfunded social security is efficient, while the other one is not. These results stand in sharp contrast to those obtained in models where the reason for economic growth is physical capital accumulation.     

The role of social capital in the labour market in China1

Social capital is considered to play an economic role in labour markets. It may be particularly pertinent in one that is in transition from an administered to a market‐oriented system. One factor that may determine success in the underdeveloped Chinese labour market is thus guanxi, the Chinese variant of social capital. With individual‐level measures of social capital, we test for the role of guanxi using a dataset designed for this purpose, covering 7,500 urban workers and conducted in early 2000. The evidence is consistent with the basic hypothesis. Both measures of social capital – size of social network and Communist Party membership – have significant and substantial coefficients in the income functions. Social capital can have influence either in an administered system or in one subject to market forces. It appears to do so in both parts of the labour market.