Firm efficiency and stock returns

In this paper, we investigate the role of firm efficiency in asset pricing using a sample of US publicly listed companies for the period 1988–2007. We employ non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) on various input/output combinations, focusing on sales and market value as output measures in the construction of the frontier technologies. Using these performance measures, we examine whether efficient firms perform differently from inefficient firms following standard financial analysis procedures. First, we employ performance attribution regressions, by forming portfolios based on efficiency scores and tracking the performance of the various portfolios over time. Second, we perform cross-sectional/panel regressions to determine whether firm efficiency indeed has explanatory power for the cross-section of stock returns. Our results suggest that firm efficiency plays an important role in asset pricing and that efficient firms significantly outperform inefficient firms even after controlling for known risk factors.     

Riskiness,endogenous productivity dispersion and business cycles

In the data, cross-sectional productivity dispersion is countercyclical at both the plant level and the firm level, see e.g. Bloom (2009). I incorporate a firm׳s choice of risk level into a model of firm dynamics with real business cycle features to explain this empirical finding both qualitatively and quantitatively. In the model, in every period, each firm chooses the investment amount and the risk level associated with a production project every period. All projects available to each firm have the same expected flow return, determined by the aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks to the firm׳s productivity, and differ from one another only in their risk. The endogenous option of exiting the market and the limited funding for new investment jointly play an important role in motivating firms׳ risk-taking behavior. The model predicts that, in each period, relatively small firms are more likely to take risk and hence exhibit a higher exit rate, and that the cross-sectional productivity dispersion, measured as the standard deviation of the realized individual component of productivity, is larger in recessions.     

Simultaneous search with heterogeneous firms and ex post competition

In this paper we study the allocation of workers over high and low productivity firms in a labor market with coordination frictions. Specifically, we consider a search model where workers can apply to high and or low productivity firms. Firms that compete for the same candidate can increase their wage offers as often as they like. We show that if workers apply to two jobs, there is a unique symmetric equilibrium where workers mix between sending both applications to the high and sending both to the low productivity sector. But, efficiency requires that they apply to both sectors because a higher matching rate in the high-productivity sector can then be realized with fewer applications (and consequently fewer coordination frictions) if workers always accept the offer of the most productive firm. However, in the market the worker's payoff is determined by how much the firm with the second highest productivity is willing to bid. This is what prevents them from applying to both sectors. For many configurations, the equilibrium outcomes are the same under directed and random search so our results are not driven by random search. We discuss the effects of increasing the number of applications and show that our results can easily be generalized to N-firms.     

Agglomeration elasticities and firm heterogeneity

This paper examines three key issues encountered when estimating the relationship between agglomeration and multi factor productivity (‘agglomeration elasticities’): the sorting of heterogeneous firms, the convexity of agglomeration effects, and the challenges of identifying the impact of persistent spatial differences in effective density. We use a firm-level panel containing production data together with detailed information on the geographic location of employment, covering a high proportion of the New Zealand economy. We are able to control for heterogeneity along firm, region, and industry dimensions, and to estimate separate agglomeration elasticities across industries and regions. Sorting leads to upward biased elasticity estimates but using firm fixed effects can lead to downward bias due to the highly persistent nature of agglomeration variables. Our preferred estimates control for sorting across regions and industries. Overall, we find a positive agglomeration elasticity of 0.066. Within industries and, to a lesser extent within regions, there is pronounced variation in the strength of agglomeration effects, and evidence of decreasing returns to agglomeration. High density areas attract firms that benefit most from agglomeration.     

Revealing Incentives for Compatibility Provision in Vertically Differentiated Network Industries

We determine the incentives for compatibility provision of firms that produce network goods with different intrinsic qualities when firms do not have veto power over compatibility. When network effects are strong, there are multiple equilibria in pricing and consumer decisions. We show that in some equilibria, it is the high‐quality firm that invests in compatibility, whereas in others, the low‐quality firm triggers compatibility. The socially optimal compatibility degree is zero, except under very strong network effects, where one of the equilibria has all consumers buying the low‐quality good. In this case, a partial degree of compatibility is optimal.     

Family Business Restructuring: A Review and Research Agenda

Although business restructuring occurs frequently and it is important for the prosperity of family firms across generations, research on family firms has largely evolved separately from research on business restructuring. This is a missed opportunity, since the two domains are complementary, and understanding the context, process, content, and outcome dimensions is relevant to both research streams. We address this by examining the intersection between research on business restructuring and family firms to improve our knowledge of each area and inform future research. To achieve this goal, we review and organize research across different dimensions to create an integrative framework. Building on current research, we focus on 88 studies at the intersection of family firm and business restructuring research to develop a model that identifies research needs and suggests directions for future research.     

Firm efficiency: Domestic owners,coalitions, and FDI

In this paper we analyze the evolution of firm efficiency in the Czech Republic. Using a large panel of more than 190,000 Czech firm/years we study whether firms fully utilize their resources, how firm efficiency evolves over time, and how firm efficiency is determined by ownership structure. We employ a panel version of a stochastic production frontier model for the period 1996–2007 with time-varying efficiency. We differentiate among various degrees of ownership concentration and domestic or foreign origin. In a two-stage set-up we first estimate the degree of firm inefficiency and then the effect of ownership structure on the distance from the efficiency frontier. Our results support the hypothesis that concentrated ownership is positively related to efficiency. FDI has beneficial effects at the microeconomic level. However, we show that a simple majority is not necessarily the best structure to improve efficiency. We further analyze the effects of ownership coalitions and shed light on many other subtleties of how ownership and the specific industry affect firm efficiency.     

How Corporate Social Responsibility Engagement Strategy Moderates the CSR–Financial Performance Relationship

We propose that firm profits are shaped by how firms engage in corporate social responsibility. Recent research on the corporate social responsibility (CSR)–corporate financial performance (CFP) relationship proposes a variety of contextual and organizational factors to create a more robust link. However, few of these studies explore the role of the CSR engagement strategy. Drawing on absorptive capacity theory and related perspectives such as time compression diseconomies, asset mass efficiencies, and path dependence theory, we argue that when a firm engages in CSR slowly and consistently, focuses on related CSR dimensions, and starts with internal dimensions of CSR, CFP will be enhanced. With longitudinal data collected from 130 firms from 1995 to 2007, we find that firms benefit more when they adopt a CSR engagement strategy that is consistent, involves related dimensions of CSR, and begins with aspects of CSR that are more internal to the firm. The pace of the CSR engagement strategy, however, does not moderate the CSR–CFP relationship. This study helps fill the gap in CSR research by showing that, regardless of contextual factors, a firm can choose the proper strategy to enhance the financial benefits of the CSR engagement.     

The temporal behavior of scale economies within A banking firm

Examining the time path of the scale economies has not received much attention until recently. Moreover, the time path of scale economies for a given firm has not been studied in the banking literature at all. Examining scale economies, either from cross-sectional or panel data, based only on a single estimate ignores the dynamic behavior (both cost- and production-wise) of a banking firm as well as of the banking industry. We study the time-varying scale economies of commercial banking firms. We employ the Kalman-filter approach in estimating the translog cost function. The Kalman filter allows the parameters of the translog cost function and therefore the scale economies to be time dependent and varying. The estimation results indicate significant variation in inter- and within-firm scale economies over time for sample banks.     

Antecedents of the small firm effect: the role of knowledge spillover and blocked mobility for employee entrepreneurial intentions

Small firms are said to produce more entrepreneurs than larger ones (“small firm effect”). Applying existing theories, we analyze how different management positions influence employee entrepreneurship in small firms. Based on a panel study of 4832 cases, we provide evidence for the fact that small firms indeed produce more entrepreneurs. Moreover, we show that lower management positions of small firm employees are responsible for this small firm effect. We conclude that small firms seem to create an environment in which employees on low management positions strongly benefit from knowledge spillover effects as they are educated necessary skills, knowledge and expertise, and are able to build up networks conducive to entrepreneurship (“knowledge spillover effect”), while not having the multifaceted advancement opportunities as in large companies (“blocked mobility effect”).     

Spatial Price Discrimination in the Spokes Model

The spokes model allows to address nonlocalized spatial competition between firms. In a spatial context, firms can price discriminate using location‐contingent pricing. Nonlocalized competition implies that neighboring effects are not relevant to firms. This paper analyzes spatial price discrimination and location choices in the spokes model. Highly asymmetric location patterns are one outcome if the number of firms is sufficiently high: in that case, one firm supplies a generally appealing product whereas others focus on a specific niche. Moreover, multiple equilibria arise for intermediate values of the number of firms. In this case, the location patterns do not always globally minimize the sum of transport costs: asymmetric configurations distribute more efficiently the cost between firms.     

The corporate image of auditors in a developing audit market within the EU: the case of Spain

This paper examines the images of audit firms in Spain. Spain offers a valuable research context in that it is a relatively new audit market and one where the top company audits are not totally dominated by the large multinational audit firms, allowing for a comparison of the images of such firms against those associated with smaller, national audit firms. The findings of this survey are pertinent given the current level of debate internationally over the role, regulation and quality of auditing services and concerns over the potential impact of recent corporate scandals on auditor reputation.

Our study shows that the images of audit firms in Spain have differed on a number of dimensions, mostly concerned with the pricing of audit services and the spread of audit clients. Significantly, no differences were obtained in relation to the perceived competence or ethical standing of the large multinational and Spanish, national audit firms. The study also shows the areas of the audit firm's corporate image where the actual image of the firm differs significantly from that desired by the management of their clients.     

Immigration and firm productivity: evidence from the Canadian Employer-Employee Dynamics Database

Previous studies on the impact of immigration on productivity in developed countries remain inconclusive, and most analyses are abstracted from firms where production actually takes place. This study examines the empirical relationship between immigration and firm-level productivity in Canada. It uses the Canadian Employer-Employee Dynamics Database that tracks firms over time and matches firms with their employees. The study finds that there is a positive association between changes in the share of immigrants in a firm and changes in firm productivity. This positive effect of immigration on firm productivity is small, but it is stronger over a longer period. The effect tends to be larger for low-skilled immigrants as compared with highly-skilled workers, as firm productivity growth is more strongly associated with changes in the share of recent immigrants (relative to established immigrants), and immigrants who intended to work in non-high skilled occupations (relative to immigrants who intended to work in high-skilled occupations). Those differences are more pronounced in technology-intensive and knowledge-based industries. Immigration is found to have little estimated effects on capital intensity in a firm. Finally, this study finds that high skill and lower skill immigrants have similar effects on average worker earnings arising from the positive productivity effect of immigration, but only skilled immigrants are associated with higher firm profits.

     

Exploration and exploitation and firm performance variability<Emphasis>:</Emphasis> a study of ambidexterity in entrepreneurial firms

A challenge young entrepreneurial firms usually face is reducing variability in firm performance in order to mitigate survival difficulties. This paper suggests ventures should have a clear preference for either exploration or exploitation, because such an approach to ambidexterity reduces variability in firm performance. We specifically concentrate on the moderation effects of firm size and environmental dynamism in a sample of young entrepreneurial firms. We found evidence for the effects of lower performance variability in dynamic environments. This is an important insight, because environmental dynamism is a contingency where performance variance is considered problematic for entrepreneurial firms. Our research has implications for the establishment phase of entrepreneurial firms as it suggests they should carefully consider how much they explore to be as different as possible and how much they exploit to be as effective as possible. This is particularly important when they are younger and exposed to dynamic environments.     

Corporate Governance,Investment, and Firm Valuation in Asian Emerging Markets

We investigate the effects of corporate governance and family ownership on firm valuation through investment efficiency in Asian emerging markets. Using 3 years of time series data from the Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia corporate governance score for 10 Asian emerging markets, we find that good corporate governance leads to better or more efficient investment decisions and eventually to higher firm value. We also find that investors reward firms for improvement in corporate governance. The findings do not hold for Asian firms with a family or concentrated ownership structure. The results are not driven by changes in accounting standards in these markets.     

Strategic behavior in a service industry

A model of service duopoly is formulated, where the arrival of customers and their service time in the firm are stochastic. The firms first choose the service capacity, and given the capacity they then choose the price in a Bertrand competition. Capacity choices have a negative externality on the competitor, since increased capacity in one firm decreases its expected full price (price plus cost of waiting) and leads to a flow of customers from the other firm. If the firms choose capacities strategically, it is optimal to underinvest compared to the non‐strategic case, but this result may arise in different ways. By underinvesting the firms commit themselves to longer queues (lower quality) to relax price competition. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross-sectional differences in the liquidity effects of open market share repurchases

I examine liquidity changes associated with open market share repurchases, with the focus on potential cross-sectional variations of liquidity effects. I hypothesize that a liquidity change, either a decrease or an increase, will be larger in a firm with a higher degree of pre-announcement information asymmetry. Results suggest that the null hypothesis of no liquidity change cannot be rejected. In particular, there is no evidence for cross-sectional variation of liquidity changes across firms with differing degrees of information asymmetry. Special/thanks go to Kim Woo Choong, former chairman of DAEWOO Group, and Park Chung Kil for their support.     

Oligopolies with (Somewhat) Environmentally Conscious Consumers: Market Equilibrium and Regulatory Intervention

We consider a horizontally differentiated duopoly where consumers care about the product's “greenness.” Firms can be asymmetric: they may differ in the product's intrinsic value and may also differ in their chosen level of greenness. We examine the choice of greenness and the implications of various policy interventions. We show that (i) the choices of product greenness are strategic substitutes, (ii) the high‐intrinsic quality firm produces the greener product, (iii) the low‐quality firm's greenness may increase with the cost of its provision or decrease with consumer willingness to pay for it, (iv) a minimum quality standard (MQS) leads the greener firm to lower its environmental quality and can even reduce average quality, (v) greenness is underprovided even if consumers fully internalize the externality, and (v) an MQS can reduce welfare if the greenness of the high‐quality firm exceeds the MQS, even when environmental quality is underprovided. The effects of policy interventions on profits differ qualitatively across polices and firms: A firm that lobbies for one type of intervention may lobby against another similar one, and a firm may lobby for an intervention while its competitor may lobby against it. A subsidy for the development costs of a green product can financially hurt both firms.     

Evolutionary competition in a mixed market with socially concerned firms

In this paper we study an oligopoly market where profit-maximizing firms and socially concerned firms compete in quantities. Confronting remarks by Milton Friedman and Gary Becker, we are using an evolutionary setting to investigate the endogenous choice of the proper objective of business firms and the influence of product differentiation on the long run survival of firms which pursue non-profit motives. We find that firms which consider a combination of profit and consumer welfare can indeed have larger market shares and profits than their profit-maximizing rivals. One insight is that it might pay off for shareholders to consider stakeholder welfare, but that the level of social concern should not be too high. Based on a strategy׳s profitability, we consider asynchronous evolutionary updating with firms selecting Nash quantities or choosing best replies to the expected market quantity. Here we observe that the consumers׳ willingness to pay a price premium for products is crucial for the long run survival of socially concerned firms. Depending on the degrees of product differentiation and social concern, long run outcomes consist either of both types of firms or only one type of firm. If the firms׳ propensity to switch between a social or a profit-maximizing strategy is sufficiently large, steady states are unstable and even complicated dynamics can occur.     

Tax strategies and organisational communication in MNC supply chains: case studies

Communication is a key component of operational efficiency which in turn contributes to a firm’s profitability by reducing costs. In addition taxes are a significant expense for profitable firms. Multiple methods for tax avoidance have been developed by firms and their advisors but the effects on operations are rarely considered. Evidence was found that tax avoidance decisions are made in isolation at the head office and operational monetary and cultural costs are not fully accounted for. Better communication can mitigate these disruptions but it is not a primary concern of central management. Depending on its operational intrusiveness, there is variation in levels of organisational disruption caused by the tax avoidance method implemented. These effects can be far reaching. Careful consideration of organisational costs for each tax avoidance method should be made prior to any being adopted. A framework to help practitioners focus on total costs versus tax savings, is proposed.