A Map Is Not a Territory—Making Research More Helpful for Sustainable Consumption Policy

The need to make consumption patterns more sustainable is widely acknowledged, yet effective policies for sustainable consumption are lacking. This article examines Nordic policy makers' views on why sustainable consumption research is difficult to apply in policy practice. We draw on the knowledge brokering literature to outline how the challenges of knowledge utilization in policy are connected to knowledge communication practices and to the types and scales of policy problems. Our empirical material is based on in-depth interviews with Nordic civil servants working with sustainable consumption issues. Our findings identify problems in sustainable consumption policy that are well documented in other fields, such as policy makers' lack of time and the inconclusiveness of research findings. However, we also identify more fundamental problems, which relate to administrative fragmentation and to the status of social science in policy making, as well as to the linear model of knowledge use in policy making in which administrators are forced to serve as knowledge brokers between researchers and policy makers. Our research suggests that better forms of knowledge dissemination are not sufficient to overcome these problems. New forms of knowledge co-production are needed, in which researchers, administrators, politicians, and other stakeholders work together to solve real-life problems and build up a shared knowledge community. We conclude by highlighting the implications for researchers aiming to promote change toward more sustainable consumption patterns.     

Lifting the hood of supply and demand for trademarks of start-ups: Partial observability estimates

This paper estimates simultaneously the supply and the demand determinants of the trademark adoption decision made by start-ups. We use a partial observability econometric model, as non-adoption is unobserved. Estimation is by maximum likelihood using the partial observability bivariate probit (POBP) model for an unbalanced longitudinal panel of surviving US start-ups (2004–2011). Our model is shown to provide a good explanation of supply and demand determinants of trademark adoption. For example, size, incorporation and expenditure on R&D are important on the supply side; and copyrights, licensing out and being in a high knowledge information sector are important on the demand side.     

Corporate control and the choice of investment financing: the case of corporate acquisitions in India

The market for corporate control offers a rich framework to study the interaction between investment and financing decisions. Do corporations have specific preferences for the means of financing acquisitions, such using cash or equity to pay the claims of the target firm’s shareholders? This study builds a unique sample of 1041 corporate acquisitions over the period 2000–2018 in India, a major emerging economy with fast-growing capital markets. The study investigates separately corporate preferences for the means of payment and the financing sources for acquisitions, using multinomial logit and nested logit models. First, we find that different factors explain the payment and financing decisions. Second, the cash payment decision is best explained by the target’s relative size, greater tender offers, cross-border deals, and cash reserves. Third, the findings are most aligned with pecking order theory and cost of capital considerations.

     

Earnings quality and investment efficiency: the role of the institutional settings

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - The current study examines the association between earnings quality (EQ) and investment efficiency (IE) using the conditional effect of legal origin....