学术印记、网络惯例与大学衍生企业产业嵌入

在大学衍生企业创业实践中,与产业主体间缺乏合作默契已成为大学衍生企业向产业网络嵌入的重要阻滞因素。针对该问题,基于网络惯例新视角,从大学衍生企业学术创生背景带来的异质性入手,构建“学术印记—网络惯例—产业网络嵌入”作用模型,探索技术动荡性的调节效应。运用多元回归分析等方法,对379家大学衍生企业调研数据进行实证检验。结果表明,大学衍生企业学术印记对网络惯例建立具有积极促进作用。同时,在向产业嵌入过程中,网络惯例对产业网络嵌入两个维度的作用机制存在差异,与结构嵌入存在倒U型关系,但正向促进关系嵌入。技术动荡性在“学术印记—网络惯例—产业网络关系嵌入”关系中具有正向调节作用。     

中国大学衍生企业绩效的关键影响因素分析

本文基于大学衍生企业的形成和发展机制,识别出大学衍生企业绩效的具体影响因素,然后以武汉地区高校衍生企业的问卷调研为样本进行Logitstic回归分析。结果表明,对大学衍生企业绩效产生决定性影响的因素包括是否引入代理企业家、外部环境对衍生企业的支持力度以及母体大学对衍生企业的支持方式,而技术的领先性、技术发明人的产业经验和其在企业中角色的影响并不显著。     

Spillovers and absorptive capacity in the decision to innovate of Spanish firms: the role of human capital

This paper investigates whether the existence of knowledge spillovers and the capacity of firms to assimilate them, which we relate with R&D intensity and some human resource management practices, are associated with the decision to innovate of Spanish firms. In order to do this, we employ data from the ‘Central de Balances’ database, which covers both manufacturing and services firms during the period 2003–2007, and use an estimator proposed by Wooldridge [2005. Simple solutions to the initial conditions problem in dynamic nonlinear panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity. Journal of Applied Econometrics 20, no. 1: 39–54] for dynamic random effects discrete choice models. The empirical exercise provides evidence on the positive link between spillovers and the innovative behaviour of companies, not just for the knowledge generated in the same industry, but also for that generated in the same region or by the public sector. Moreover, this link is stronger for those firms with a higher capacity to absorb those spillovers. This ability not only works through firms’ R&D capabilities, but also through factors such as the quality of the labour force, the share of temporary employment and the amount of resources spent in training. In addition to these factors, we find that innovation performance exhibits a high degree of inertia. Further, some other observed firm characteristics, such as size, sales growth, export behaviour, sector capital intensity or financial structure variables, are also found to be relevant determinants of the likelihood of innovation.     

Firm growth and liquidity constraints: evidence from the manufacturing and service sectors in Italy

We use a large firm-level panel data set to analyse the relevance of liquidity constraints on firm growth in Italy. In most European countries, mainstream financial institutions are scantly able to provide affordable credit facilities to small firms. Thus, these firms are forced to finance their growth almost exclusively through retained earnings. We estimate a dynamic version of Gibrat-law, incorporating cash flow as a measure of financial constraints, for two different size classes within small and medium size enterprises and for several industries in manufacturing and service sectors. The findings show that, in general, small manufacturing firms have higher growth-cash flow sensitivities with respect to medium firms. Conversely, our results highlight, for the services, a significant heterogeneity in the impact of liquidity constraints on firm growth. In particular, the sensitivity of growth rates to the cash flow appears relatively high for small firms belonging to Knowledge Intensive Business Services. Validation of Gibrat-law in the services suggests that an important group of industries, with a superior capacity of encouraging firm’s competitiveness, need more financial resources to promote their growth and that of the manufacturing sectors with whom they are connected.     

The dynamics of the growth of firms: evidence from the services sector

Using a dynamic panel data model with serial correlation in the error term, the purpose of this paper is to examine if Gibrat’s Law can be rejected for the services sector as it has been for manufacturing. The aim of this paper is also to improve the understanding of the empirical determinants of firm growth by extending the literature to include a new variable related to foreign participation. In addition, and based on recent developments in the growth of firms, our analysis also includes the role of the financial structure. The sample used is an unbalanced panel data set that includes all size classes, including the smallest surviving firms, from the Portuguese service sector over the period from 1995 to 2001. Applying the GMM-system estimator our findings suggest that Gibrat’s Law is rejected for the services firms. In addition, the results also indicate that firm growth is mainly explained by firm size and age. These results have significant policy implications.

Productivity Growth and Input Demand: The Effect of Learning by Doing in a Gold Mining Firm in a Developing Economy

This paper analyzes the effect of learning by doing (LBD) on the firm’s productivity growth and its input demand decisions. The results indicate that LBD is an important determinant of the firm’s productivity growth. The contribution of LBD to the firm’s productivity growth is about 5.6%. Another observation is that LBD has a decreasing effect on the firm’s cost of production – a finding which is consistent with the results of many studies. Also, an increase in LBD measured by cumulative production increases the firm’s demand for capital, and decreases the firm’s demand for labor. Lastly, LBD has a significant effect on the firm’s elasticity of scale. A fundamental message derived from the study is the confirmation that the firms should invest in more large capital equipment, embark on new processing techniques, and create an environment that is conducive to on-the-job learning.     

In-house R&D,external R&D and cooperation breadth in Spanish manufacturing firms: is there a synergistic effect on innovation outputs?

ABSTRACT

This study explores the nature of relationship between in-house R&D, external R&D and cooperation breadth and their joint impact on patent counts as well as technological, product and process, innovations in Spanish manufacturing firms. With regards to patent counts, empirical findings from a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator suggest a complementarity effect of internal and external R&D activities conditional on the breadth of R&D cooperation. Concerning technological innovation, results from dynamic random-effects probit models indicate no synergistic effects. In addition, we find evidence of persistence of all three innovation output measures. Our results suggest policy implications in relation to strengthening firms’ absorptive capacity that could have long-run effects.     

The determinants of efficiency: the case of the Spanish industry

The aim of this paper is to analyse the factors explaining the technical efficiency of Spanish industrial sectors during the period 1991–1994 using the Survey of Business Strategies (SBE) of the Ministry of Industry and Energy. It analyses whether efficiency can be explained by factors external to the firm such as the degree of competition in the markets in which it operates, characteristics of the firm (size, organization, advantages of location, participation of public capital, etc.), as well as the effects of dynamic disturbances that may affect the degree of utilization of the productive capacity.     

The Determinants of Firm’s Growth in the Telecommunication Services Industry: Empirical Evidence from India

The growth and evolution of the industry has an important bearing on the economic development of a country. The extant literature on firm growth provides valuable insights into firm behavior and factors influencing the evolution of the industry over time. The topic becomes even more relevant in the context of the telecommunication industry because of its positive impact on economic growth and productivity, which has been well documented in both the developed and developing country context. Based on the firm-growth literature, this study analyzes the factors influencing the growth of the Indian telecommunication industry using an unbalanced panel of 204 firms across two decades from 2000 to 2020. Dynamic Panel estimation technique (System GMM) is used to take care of endogeneity issues caused by the dynamic nature of firm growth models. Results indicate that the growth of firms in the Indian telecom services industry is explained by systematic factors like size, age, profitability, financial leverage, and trade orientation. The study finds that the larger firms grow at a decreasing rate compared to small firms. The firm's age negatively impacts the growth rate of firms, i.e., younger firms have a faster growth rate than the older ones supporting the case of convergence of firm growth in the Indian telecom services sector. Factors such as lagged R&D intensity, financial leverage, and profitability negatively impact the firms’ growth rate. Export intensity is found to have a negative and significant impact on the growth rate of the firms. The findings have important policy implications in the context of the growth of the telecommunication industry in India, which has witnessed intense competition, steep decline in profitability, and high debt structure over a period of time.

     

Firm selection and industry evolution: the post-entry performance of new firms

A dynamic framework based on the process of firm selection and industry evolution is used to analyse the post-entry performance of new firms. In particular, it is hypothesized that, based on the stylized fact that virtually all new firms start at a very small scale of output, firm growth and survival are shaped by the need to attain an efficient level of output. The post-entry performance of more than 11,000 U.S. manufacturing firms established in 1976 is tracked throughout the subsequent tenyear period. Firm growth is found to be negatively influenced by firm size but positively related to the extent of scale economies, capital intensity, innovative activity, and market growth. By contrast, the likelihood of survival is identified as being positively influenced by firm size, market growth, and capital intensity, but negatively affected by the degree of scale economies in the industry. When viewed through the dynamic framework of firm selection and industry evolution, the empirical results shed considerable light on several paradoxes in the industrial organization literature, such as the continued persistence over time of an asymmetrical firm-size distribution consisting predominantely of suboptimal scale firms, and the failure of capital intensity and scale economies to substantially deter the entry and start-up of new firms.     

Investment-based optimal capital structure

This paper extends the classical capital structure model by introducing the output of firm with ‘AK’ production technology dynamically depends on the endogenous investment decision and capital accumulation. Based on our calibration, it shows that the flexibility of dynamic investment and capital accumulation induces the firm to take the lower leverage at financing time and makes the leverage estimate closer to empirically observed leverage ratios, which provides an effective explanation for the ‘under-leverage puzzle’. In addition, this model predicts that the market leverage behaves in a U-shaped manner with capital liquidity, which provides a novel empirical test.     

A bargaining theory of the firm

Suppose that a firm has several owners and that the future is uncertain in the sense that one out of many different states of nature will realize tomorrow. An owner’s time preference and risk attitude will determine the importance he places on payoffs in the different states. It is a well-known problem in the literature that under incomplete asset markets, a conflict about the firm’s objective function tends to arise among its owners. In this paper, we take a new approach to this problem, which is based on non-cooperative bargaining. The owners of the firm play a bargaining game in order to choose the firm’s production plan and a scheme of transfers which are payable before the uncertainty about the future state of nature is resolved. We analyze the resulting firm decision in the limit of subgame-perfect equilibria in stationary strategies. Given the distribution of bargaining power, we obtain a unique prediction for a production plan and a transfer scheme. When markets are complete, the production plan chosen corresponds to the profit-maximizing production plan as in the Arrow–Debreu model. Contrary to that model, owners typically do use transfers to redistribute profits. When markets are incomplete, the production plan chosen is almost always different from the one in a transfer-free Drèze (pseudo-)equilibrium and again owners use transfers to redistribute profits. Nevertheless, our results do support the Drèze criterion as the appropriate objective function of the firm.     

Rockets and feathers behaviour in the Spanish gasoline and diesel market: New evidence

In this paper we analyse the potential asymmetric response of retail prices for gasoline and diesel‐fuel to changes in oil prices for the Spanish economy and its relation with the so‐called ‘rockets and feathers’ behaviour. We show that the assumption made by previous studies, which use as the key explanatory variable the sign –positive or negative‐ of the change in international oil prices, is inadequate for the Spanish case and the magnitude of the change in international oil prices is also relevant. For small changes in international oil prices there is neither price asymmetry nor rockets and feathers behavior in the retail markets. However, price asymmetries in line with rockets and feathers behavior in retail gasoline and gasoil markets are present when these changes exceed a certain threshold. Following Martín‐Moreno et al. (2018) we first apply an Auto‐regressive Error Correction Model and endogenously estimate the threshold triggering the rockets and feathers behaviour. A time‐varying nature for the dynamic response of retail prices to oil price shocks is revealed when we estimate the TAR‐ECM model using rolling windows. Hence, in a second stage, we use a Markov‐switching estimation of the model to test the robustness of the results given its suitability to changing environments. This study could have relevant policy implications for the Spanish gasoline and gasoil retail markets due to the ongoing debate on the existence of a rockets and feathers behavior in gasoline and gasoil retail markets between the Spanish regulatory body and the oil companies.     

区域创新视角下大学衍生企业发展的影响因素——以日本为例

在以信息化、全球化、网络化为特征的新经济时代,技术和产品的生命周期越来越短。与传统的区域发展要素相比,科学技术知识流动的效率和方向成为了一个国家或区域竞争力高低的决定性要素。因而,大学衍生企业作为知识扩散和应用的结合体近年来备受区域政策制定者的青睐。文章从区域创新的视角出发,从宏观、中观、微观三个层面研究大学衍生企业发展的影响因素。研究表明,大学衍生企业的发展首先受到国家创新战略引领的制约;其次,受到区域技术人才来源环节的畅通及外部支持网络的影响;再次,大学衍生企业的可持续发展最终取决于与其它创新主体之间的网络互动化程度。     

Labour unions and leverage: evidence from firm-level union data

ABSTRACT

Using firm-level labour union data from Japan, this paper investigates the effect of labour unions on firm leverage. We find that as union coverage increases, both the level of and extent of change in leverage decreases. These relations remain robust when a firm falls into deficit. We also find that firms with higher union coverage have a higher interest coverage ratio. In addition, we find that firms with higher union coverage are less likely to choose issuing debt compared to issuing equity when they face financial distress. Our results imply that significant employee influence enhanced by labour unions increases fixed costs, crowds out the firm’s debt capacity and consequently reduces the firm’s leverage.     

Multivariate filter estimation and ARDL model analysis of China’s potential output

In this article, we apply a new multivariate filter approach to estimate China’s potential output. Furthermore, we build an ARDL model to analyse the influence on potential growth caused by important factors that contribute to estimation and China’s development. Our results show that the current economic slowdown is not a cyclical phenomenon and China’s potential growth has declined since 2010. We also show that fixed asset investment and trade, which have a long-run relationship with potential output, exert negative long-run effect on potential growth justifying the implementation of China’s recent supply-side reforms.     

Are there spillover effects of large firms’ growth in supply chain networks? Evidence from the Korean economy

Previous literature has found that inter-firm cooperation leads to higher growth rates for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). However, these studies have focused only on direct effects, such as subcontracting, rather than on spillover effects in supply chain networks (SCNs). Regarding the spillover effects, this article investigates whether a large firm’s growth leads to the growth of the directly and indirectly related SMEs in its SCN, using Korean firm-level data with the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) approach. The estimation results show that increases in the sales of large firms significantly affect the growth rates of the related SMEs. These effects, however, diminish as the relationship with the large firm goes down from the first vendor to the second vendor and from the second vendor to the third vendor. In the case of Korea, when a large firm grows by 1%, the first vendor grows by 0.38–0.44%, but the growth rates of the second and third vendors are only 0.036–0.047% and 0.003–0.005%, respectively. Thus, while there are spillover effects, the effects are weak. We discuss what these findings mean for national economic growth.     

Public R&D subsidies,outside private support,and employment growth

In the aftermath of the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the employment effects of public subsidies have been scrutinized because of new emphasis on public accountability and transparency. In this paper, we investigate conditions in which public subsidies of research and development (R&D) in small firms stimulate employment growth. We find, based on an empirical analysis of employment growth induced by US Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research program awards, that the stimulated employment growth is greater under two conditions: one, the presence of outside investors providing additional funding for the R&D and, two, when an exceptional amount of intellectual property is created by the publicly subsidized R&D. In addition to outside investors, other firms that make commercial agreements with the subsidized firm appear important for the employment growth of the subsidized firm. Cooperation between the small business doing the R&D and other firms is an important determinant of the commercial success of the technologies created with the support of public funds.     

Financial conservatism fosters job creation during economic crises

ABSTRACT

This article aims to analyse the phenomenon of financial conservatism in firms’ capital structures and relate it to their employment variation for a sample of Spanish companies during the 2008–2013 period, characterized by a sharp crisis and very high unemployment rates. Financial conservatism is described as following a low-leverage/high cash no-short-term capital structure policy. We use the noisy selection model that relates growth, age, and size, to which we add a dummy indicating financial conservatism. As the growth of a company is measured as its number of employees’ variation, we are ultimately analysing how financial conservatism affects job creation. The objective of this work is to stress the advantages of a financially conservative policy as the evidence shows that such a policy at a given enterprise is a positive factor for job creation, which in Macroeconomics terms means an improvement in economy’s employment. The average conservative company more likely to foster job creation is a small company belonging to the industry or services sector.     

货币薪酬能激励高管承担风险吗

有关“风险承担”（risk taking）的研究是近年来特别是全球金融危机背景下财务学研究的热点问题之一。本文研究结果表明：（1）货币薪酬激励的增加能提升高管承担风险的水平;（2）最终控制人性质和公司成长性会影响两者之间的关系,在国有企业以及公司成长性较低的公司,货币薪酬激励与风险承担之间的正相关关系较弱;（3）风险承担水平的提高能促进公司绩效的提升;（4）进一步研究发现,风险承担在高管薪酬激励与企业绩效之间发挥中介效用作用。这些结论在采用两阶段最小二乘法（2SLS）和三阶段最小二乘法（3SLS）处理内生性问题等稳健性测试后依然成立。因此,本文从“风险承担”这一新的视角深化了有关高管薪酬激励降低代理问题并提升公司绩效的研究,也为中国上市公司尤其是国有上市公司高管薪酬契约设计的有效性提供了借鉴和参考价值。