Beta-convergence and sigma-convergence in corporate governance in Europe

This paper tests for beta-convergence and sigma-convergence in the corporate governance models, using a sample of corporate governance ratings for 198 European corporations listed on the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index. A piecewise linear regression is deployed to select a model and the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator is also applied to estimate an exponential model. It concludes that there is statistical evidence of beta- and sigma-convergence within countries and the results suggest that institutional differences between countries are statistically relevant.     

The European Union: Economic prospects,structural reforms and enlargement

On the eve of enlargement of the European Union from fifteen to twenty-five Member States, this article focuses on economic developments in 2003 and prospects for 2004 and 2005 in the European Union, especially in the euro area, the state of play on structural reform, before concluding with some reflections on enlargement.     

Advantages of assembly lines in Sheltered Work Centres for Disabled. A case study

Current practices for the treatment of the physically and/or mentally handicapped prescribe meaningful job activity as a means towards both a more fulfilling life and societal integration. In many countries, these practices have facilitated the development of many Sheltered Work Centres for Disabled.In the case study presented, a reengineering process is done starting from individual workplaces where only certain workers were capable of assembling the entire product, and finishing with an assembly line implementation. It is revealed how the traditional division of work in single tasks, typical in assembly lines, becomes a perfect tool for making certain worker disabilities invisible, providing new jobs for disabled people; always taking into account certain special constraints that are analysed.     

SIX WAYS TO LEAVE UNEMPLOYMENT

This paper uses a unique Portuguese dataset to examine the effect of access to unemployment benefits (UBs) and their maximum potential duration on escape rates from unemployment. In examining the time profile of transitions out of unemployment, the principal contributions of the paper are twofold. First, it provides a detailed state space of potential outcomes: open-ended employment, fixed-term contracts, part-time work, government-provided jobs, self employment, and labour force withdrawal. Second, it is able to exploit major exogenous discontinuities in the maximum duration of unemployment benefits to identify disincentive effects. While confirming strong disincentive effects, it is shown that use of an aggregate hazard function regression model compounds very different and even contradictory effects of the determinants of unemployment.     

Can entrepreneurial firms benefit from product piracy?

We examine the potential benefits of product piracy to entrepreneurial firms. Specifically, we use a resource-based perspective to show that a decrease in the inimitability of an entrepreneurial firm's intellectual property does not necessarily diminish performance when piracy increases the value of this resource, and an information economics perspective to explain why and when imitation can increase the value of an intellectual property resource. This explanation reconciles empirical studies that indicate mixed results. It also expands the resource-based view by suggesting that reducing the value of one resource can directly increase the value of another.     

Does Energy Consumption Respond to Price Shocks? Evidence from a Regression‐Discontinuity Design

We exploit unique features of a recently introduced tariff schedule for natural gas in Buenos Aires to estimate the short‐run impact of price shocks on residential energy utilization. The schedule induces a non‐linear and non‐monotonic relationship between households' accumulated consumption and unit prices, thus generating exogenous price variation, which we exploit in a regression‐discontinuity design. We find that a price increase causes a prompt and significant decline in gas consumption. The results also indicate that consumers respond more to recent past bills than to expected prices, which argues against an assumption of perfect awareness of complex price schedules by consumers.     

Volunteerism,compassion and religiosity as drivers of donations practices

• The topic of donations is one of high relevance and has been widely covered in contemporary marketing literature. It is a topic of interest to both theoreticians and practitioners alike, particularly due to its implicit links to fundraising activities and research. The reality of what makes an individual donor ultimately part with his money and give it away to a nonprofit organization is a hot contemporary topic. This study looks into the role of religiosity as a predictor of donations practices. Also volunteerism and compassion, two acts of pro‐social behaviour are analysed as predictors of donations practices. Using data collected from a survey of 612 charity donors in Portugal, the results show unequivocally that religiosity does influence donations practices, and so being a predictor of donations practices. Moreover, pro‐social behaviour is a predictor of donations practices when in the case of volunteerism, but not in the form of compassion.
• The findings are particularly useful for nonprofit organizations that want to attract and retain individual charitable donors and may also help to increase donation regularity, to obtain higher amounts, and donations both to religious and to secular organizations. Finally, it can be stated that the understanding of religiosity sheds light on knowledge about donations practices, and that this study also makes an important contribution to academia, as it is the first study conducted in Portugal that assesses the drivers of donations practices.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Relationship Between Project Success and Project Efficiency

Many researchers have suggested that meeting time, scope, and budget goals, sometimes called ‘project efficiency,’ is not the comprehensive measure of project success. Broader measures of success have been recommended; however, to date, nobody has determined empirically the relationship between efficiency and overall success or indeed shown whether efficiency is important at all to overall project success. Our aim in this article is to correct that omission. Through a survey of 1,386 projects we have shown that project efficiency correlates moderately strongly to overall project success (correlation of 0.6 and R² of 0.36). Efficiency is shown through analysis to be neither the only aspect of project success nor an aspect of project success that can be ignored.     

Regional entrepreneurship capital and firm production

Certain theories suggest that the capacity of a region to generate new firms, called entrepreneurship capital, has positive spillover effects on the production of the firms in that region. Evidence generated with aggregated data at the regional level supports this prediction. This paper argues that, using aggregated data at the regional level, entrepreneurship capital could be correlated with regional production even if entrepreneurship capital has no spillover effects on firm production. This will not be the case when data at the firm level are used. This paper provides evidence from a sample of 11,276 Spanish firms during the 2004–2012 period. Positive spillovers are estimated in between effects models, but such spillovers are only found in technological firms when within effects models have been estimated. Thus, the regional entrepreneurship capital spillovers are unclear when data at the firm level are used. Plausible interpretations and implications are discussed.