Why Does the Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Enhance Firm Value? The Case of Japanese Manufacturing Firms

This paper examines the influence of firms’ reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on firm value, measured by Tobin's q. If the stockholders/investors regard the reduction of GHG emissions as a form of intangible value, the reduction of GHG emissions will enhance firm value. To prove this relation more precisely, this paper analyzes not only the effect of the reduction of GHG emissions on firm value but also that of the market discipline imposed by the stockholders/investors in terms of the reduction of GHG emissions. Using data on 641 Japanese manufacturing firms in the period 2006–2008, the random effect instrumental variable estimate supports the view that firms with strong market discipline imposed by stockholders/investors are more likely to reduce GHG emissions and, consequently, firms that reduce more GHG emissions are more likely to enhance firm value. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Productivity or Discrimination? Beauty and the Exams*

Do good looks make people more productive? An impact of looks on earnings has been found in the empirical literature: plain people earn less than average‐looking people who in turn earn less than good‐looking people. However, an important question remains unanswered: is the impact of beauty due to pure discrimination or productivity? We provide evidence against the hypothesis of Becker‐type discrimination stemming from tastes and in favour of productivity‐related discrimination.     

The Effect of Import Competition on Firm Productivity and Innovation: Does the Distance to Technology Frontier Matter?

How does foreign competition affect growth and innovation in China? Using our unique measures of proximity of Chinese firms and industries to the world technology frontier, we find that despite vast sectoral heterogeneity, Chinese manufacturing industries have undergone rapid technological upgrading over the period of 2000–06. The distance to the world production frontier of firms and industries plays an important role in shaping the nexus between the competition pressure from foreign imports and domestic firms' growth and innovation behaviour. Our results support the theoretical predictions of Aghion et al. (2005, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, pp. 701–728) that import competition stimulates the domestic firms' productivity growth and R&D expenditure if firms and their industries are close to the world frontier, but discourages such incentives for laggard firms and industries. The two forces highlighted by the model operate for imports under the ordinary‐trade regime, for collective and private firms, and for imports originated from high‐income countries. Our findings are robust after controlling the influence of foreign investment, the reverse causality of regressors and the short‐term business cycle fluctuations.     

The Reliability of Impairment Tests： The Case of Vessels

For a shipping company, the vessel is the most valuable and important asset. In most cases, the value of the vessel is the bigger part of total assets. Under International Accounting Standards （IAS） and also United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles （US GAAP） （IAS 36 and Statement of Financial Accounting Standards （SFAS） 144 respectively）, entities are required to conduct impairment tests where there is an indication of impairment of an asset. It is of high importance that the assumptions and the methodology of these tests be right, in order for the results of these tests to be valid. Always, there is the risk that the accountant manipulates the test in order to avoid any impairment losses. Our purpose is to examine the way that the results from these tests are related with market values. Also, we aim to examine under what test assumptions the results from these tests are close enough to market values of vessels.     

After retrotopia? The future of organizing and the thought of Zygmunt Bauman

The main body of work of Zygmunt Bauman concerns his home discipline of sociology, but his insights have been influential also in the field of organization studies. In this text, we provide an overview of the extent of this influence, providing some additional context for positioning the other contributions to this special section. Afterwards, we explore in more detail two notions central for Bauman’s late thought: that of liquidity and retrotopia. The former constitutes the root metaphor for theorizing the current global predicament. In this text, we analyse how two modes of interpreting it, using the assumptions behind Kurt Lewin’s CATS model and the alchemical tradition underpinning Carl Gustav Jung’s conception of archetypes respectively, can help us theorize the alternative modes of organizing and managing encountered in a study of contemporary alternative organizations.These insights form the starting point for our second goal: to explore Bauman’s notion of retrotopia as a potentially fruitful starting point for discussing both the deficiencies of current visions of our future society, and the possibilities and vicissitudes of developing new forms of organizing and managing. Such new forms, both as practice and as theoretical constructs, are urgently needed if we are to face the numerous, and potentially catastrophic global challenges facing our society today.     

Does Co‐authorship Lead to Higher Academic Productivity?

In recent decades, co‐authorship and policies aimed at inducing academic collaboration have increased simultaneously. Assuming that intellectual collaboration is exogenously determined, prior studies found a negative relationship between co‐authorship and productivity. I examine a panel data on economists publishing from 1970 to 2011 to test the causal effect of intellectual collaboration on intellectual output. As characteristics of the individual and her opportunity set are endogenously related to both collaboration and productivity, I instrument the amount of co‐authorship by the common research interest between an author and her potential co‐authors. After controlling for endogenous co‐authorship formation, unobservable heterogeneity and time varying factors, the effect of intellectual collaboration on individual performance becomes positive.     

Do Implementation Processes and Rationales Matter? The Case of Workplace Reforms

This paper draws on a 1995 survey of 141 Canadian firms to address the extent to which the rationales and processes associated with workplace reform programmes matter to their success. Specifically, I explore the extent to which implementation rationales predict implementation processes, whether and how both appear to be associated with managerial evaluations of the effectiveness of workplace reforms, whether these associations are contingent on the intensity with which these reforms are adopted or on establishment size, and whether results are sensitive to the measure of effectiveness employed. Overall, I find that, although implementation rationales and processes may 'matter', the extent to which this is the case is limited and varies depending on intensity of adoption, on establishment size, and on the definition of effectiveness employed. I also find that, while adherence to a 'processually rational' model bears some association with effectiveness, this association tends to be uneven. I conclude that, although implementation rationales and processes may help to account for the uneven diffusion and success of reforms, much may also depend on the context and the actors involved     

Do Market Participants Learn? The Case of the Budapest Stock Exchange

In the paper we consider one of the faster growing Central European emerging markets: the Budapest Stock Exchange (BSE), in order to see whether the market becomes more weak-form efficient over time. The Hungarian exchange is selected because it is the oldest stock exchange operating in the region and, in 1995, it was the first Central European exchange admitted by the London Stock Exchange as a properly regulated stock exchange. As an econometric tool for comparative analysis, we use a Test for Evolving Efficiency (TEE). In a comparison of nine stocks and the market index (BUX) we found that the BSE becomes more mature but the process is surprisingly slow.     

Does citizenship matter? The economic impact of naturalizations in Germany

This paper analyses whether citizenship acquisition affects the labour market performance of immigrants in Germany. The study uses actual micro data from the employment sample of the Institute for Employment Research, which covers more than 80% of the entire labour force in Germany. The econometric analysis has been carried out using panel data techniques, which allow to disentangle the effects of self-selection and legal impact of citizenship acquisition. Estimates from a pooled OLS specification suggest the existence of a wage premium for naturalized immigrants of both genders. Fixed effects estimates for males show an increased wage growth in the years following naturalization, consistent with the argument that naturalization increases the labour market opportunities of immigrants. Results for female employees indicate that the wage premium of naturalized women is solely the result of a positive self-selection process.     

Auditor Independence and the Cost of Capital Before and After Sarbanes–Oxley: The Case of Newly Issued Public Debt

An important aim of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) was to reduce the cost of capital by enhancing auditor independence. However, prior literature has argued that SOX has been ineffective in meeting this objective. We contribute to this debate by first providing evidence suggesting that auditor independence has increased following SOX. Though we posit an inverse relationship between auditor independence and cost of capital, it is an open question whether this relationship has become stronger or weaker following SOX. An examination of this relationship reveals that auditor independence is more strongly related to bond rating and bond yield premium in the post-SOX period relative to the period before SOX. This evidence suggests greater price sensitivity of corporate debt to the level of auditor independence following SOX. We also show that controlling for the effect of auditor independence and other factors, cost of debt decreased following SOX.     

The Productivity of Government Spending in Asia: 1983–2000

Leightner [The Changing Effectiveness of Key Policy Tools in Thailand. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies for East Asian Development Network, EAON Working Paper 19(2002)x0219-6417] develops a new analytical technique, named Reiterative Truncated Projected Least Squares (RTPLS), which produces 1/2 the error of OLS when omitted variables interact with the included independent variable. In this paper, RTPLS is applied to annual panel data on government spending and GDP from 1983 to 2000 for 23 developing Asian and Pacific countries. RTPLS produces estimates for the government spending multiplier for these countries and shows how omitted variables have affected these multipliers across countries and over time.JEL Classification: C13, E62, O23     

How Does Open Innovation Modify the Relationship between Environmental Regulations and Productivity?

With increasingly severe environmental regulations, a pressing issue has been the need for firms to develop efficient strategies to achieve environmental protection and high productivity. Several environmental experts argue that firms can respond to environmental regulations through innovation; however, the question of how to innovate is unanswered in the environmental literature. Therefore, this study focuses on the open innovation strategy approach to respond to environmental regulations and maintain high productivity by incorporating the idea of innovation management. We first divide open innovation strategy into two modes of external technology acquisition: foreign and domestic. Next, we examine these modes' mediation effects on environmental regulations and productivity. In addition, we test the moderating effect of internal R&D on the relationship between external technology acquisition and productivity. Using data on 35 Chinese industrial sectors from 2001 to 2010, the empirical findings show that foreign technology significantly and positively mediates the link between environmental regulations and productivity, while domestic technology does not. Internal R&D investment, as an absorptive capacity, positively moderates the effect of foreign technology; however, it negatively moderates the effect of domestic technology on productivity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Why Are Concavity Conditions Not Satisfied in the Cost Function? The Case of Japanese Manufacturing Firms during the Bubble Period*

This paper examines empirically the reasons why Japanese manufacturing firms frequently fail to satisfy concavity of the cost function in input prices. We focus on the ‘bubble period’ in the 1980s when land was in great demand and land prices soared. By estimating the translog cost function with land as one of production inputs, we find that violation of concavity mainly resulted from weak bank–firm relationship and massive transactions of land. We also demonstrate that elasticities of substitution between land and other inputs are estimated quite differently if the firms violating concavity are not excluded from the analysis.     

Why So Unhappy? The Effects of Unionization on Job Satisfaction*

Using linked employer–employee data we investigate the job satisfaction effect of union membership in Britain. We develop a model that simultaneously controls for the determinants of individual membership status and for the selection of employees into occupations according to union coverage. We find a negative association between membership and satisfaction. However, having accounted for selection effects, we find that the negative association is confined to non‐covered employees. This is consistent with ‘voice’ effects, whereby non‐covered members voice dissatisfaction to achieve union goals, and with the possibility that membership increases preferences for collective bargaining, thus lowering members’ satisfaction in non‐covered environments.     

Do Homeless Shelter Conditions Determine Shelter Population? The Case of the Dinkins Deluge

We study why families enter and leave homeless shelters. After 2 years of decline, the number of homeless families in New York City's shelter system began rising again in summer 1990 and continued to rise until it hit an all-time record high in summer 1993. The conventional wisdom is that a flood of new families were attracted into shelters by the Dinkins administration's aggressive policy of placing homeless families into subsidized housing. We test the conventional wisdom and reject it. Better prospects of subsidized housing increase flows into the shelter system, but this effect is not nearly large enough to offset the first order shelter effect—taking families out of the shelters reduces the number of families in them. Why did the shelter population grow after Spring 1990? A major part of the reason is that the city responded to conventional wisdom and slowed placement into subsidized housing. Other major factors were the 1990–92 recession, falling real welfare benefits and more NYCHA applications, and greater use of more attractive Tier II shelters instead of hotels.     

Productivity changes in pre-crisis Western European banks: Does scale effect really matter?

Insofar as the completion of the Single Market for Financial Services, it has presented new challenges for European Banking industries. In this study, we use a recently developed generalized metafrontier Malmquist productivity index (gMMPI) to provide insights on productivity growth. We extend the gMMPI to broaden the index's capacity by decomposing various sources of productivity change in the metafrontier context. The sample contains commercial banks from 12 Western European countries prior to the recent financial crisis. A key advantage of our extension is that it introduces the role of scale effects. The empirical results show that an average bank's productivity growth arises mainly from technical changes and scale effects. Moreover, smaller and larger banks grow faster than medium ones. In addition, conservative banks tend to grow faster. These findings suggest that a more competitive and integrated financial market induced by financial deregulation is indeed able to improve banks’ productivity.     

Does Project Management Affect Business Productivity? Evidence From Australian Small to Medium Enterprises

A fundamental assumption of project management practice and research is that using project management to achieve organizational objectives improves organizational performance. However, there is little published research that directly questions this assumption. This paper tests the hypothesis that using project management increases the productivity of small to medium enterprises, using data from two longitudinal surveys of Australian businesses with less than 200 staff members. These data were used to create models of the relationship between productivity and business skills using binary logistic regression. The models demonstrate that project management has a significant impact on small to medium enterprise productivity.     

Explaining Total Factor Productivity at Firm Level in Italy: Does Location Matter?

Abstract

This study analyses how firms' internal variables and regional factors affect total factor productivity (TFP) of Italian manufacturing firms. Due to the hierarchical structure of our data, we employ a multilevel model that allows for a clear distinction between firm and region-specific effects. Results refer to 2004–2006 and show, as expected, the importance of firm-specific determinants of TFP. At the same time, they indicate that location matters in the sense that the context where firms operate plays a crucial role in determining the level of TFP. In more detail, we find that the regional endowment of infrastructure, the efficiency of local administration and the investments in R&D exert a positive effect on firms' performance.