Diversity and business performance: 50 years of research

This study has carried out a review of the literature appearing on diversity in the last 50 years. Research findings from this period reveal it is impossible to assume there is a pure and simple relationship between diversity and performance without considering a series of variables that affect this relationship. In this study, emphasis has been placed on the analysis of results arrived at through empirical investigation on the relation between the most studied dimensions of diversity and performance. The results presented are part of a more extensive research.     

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.     

The importance of packaging in purchase and usage behaviour

This study's primary objective is to analyse how consumers evaluate product packaging in two distinct phases of the consumer decision‐making process: at the moment of acquisition and post‐consumption. The packaging's technical, functional and informative attributes, as well as its influence on satisfaction and loyalty, were evaluated. An empirical study was conducted with a product of immediate consumption, milk, using four versions of packaging and a total sample of 265 family units. The model was evaluated using partial least squares (PLS), and differences were compared using variance analysis. The results demonstrate the most and least valued attributes, the primary differences between the four types of packaging, and the perception generated at each moment. The research provides interesting theoretical and empirical perspectives and has business implications for marketing directors and product managers.     

Women on the Board and Managers’ Pay: Evidence from Spain

The current literature shows great interest in the issue of gender diversity on boards of directors. Some studies have hypothesized a direct relationship between diversity and the value of the firm, but not many examine the intermediate mechanisms that may exert an influence on such relationships. We employ two stages of GMM estimation methodology to exhibit evidences of the relationship between gender diversity and compensation of top managers in the Spanish context. Results show that gender diversity positively affects the effectiveness of boards—in terms of composition, structure, size and functioning—influencing a proper design of top managers compensation linked to company performance. Evidences suggest that legislative actions aimed at increasing the presence of women on boards of directors are justified not only for ethical reasons, but also for reasons of economic efficiency.     

HIGH‐ORDER SHORT‐TIME EXPANSIONS FOR ATM OPTION PRICES OF EXPONENTIAL LÉVY MODELS

The short‐time asymptotic behavior of option prices for a variety of models with jumps has received much attention in recent years. In this work, a novel second‐order approximation for at‐the‐money (ATM) option prices is derived for a large class of exponential Lévy models with or without Brownian component. The results hereafter shed new light on the connection between both the volatility of the continuous component and the jump parameters and the behavior of ATM option prices near expiration. In the presence of a Brownian component, the second‐order term, in time‐t, is of the form , with d₂ only depending on Y, the degree of jump activity, on σ, the volatility of the continuous component, and on an additional parameter controlling the intensity of the “small” jumps (regardless of their signs). This extends the well‐known result that the leading first‐order term is . In contrast, under a pure‐jump model, the dependence on Y and on the separate intensities of negative and positive small jumps are already reflected in the leading term, which is of the form . The second‐order term is shown to be of the form and, therefore, its order of decay turns out to be independent of Y. The asymptotic behavior of the corresponding Black–Scholes implied volatilities is also addressed. Our method of proof is based on an integral representation of the option price involving the tail probability of the log‐return process under the share measure and a suitable change of probability measure under which the pure‐jump component of the log‐return process becomes a Y‐stable process. Our approach is sufficiently general to cover a wide class of Lévy processes, which satisfy the latter property and whose Lévy density can be closely approximated by a stable density near the origin. Our numerical results show that the first‐order term typically exhibits rather poor performance and that the second‐order term can significantly improve the approximation's accuracy, particularly in the absence of a Brownian component.     

Persistence of innovation and firm’s growth: evidence from a panel of SME and large Spanish manufacturing firms

This paper estimates the effect of persistence of innovation on employment in Spanish manufacturing firms during the period 1990–2008. Using GMM-system estimations, we study the importance of persistence of product and process innovation on employment growth according to the size of the firms. The results support that process innovation shows a positive effect on employment, especially for SMEs, while the effect of product innovation is not significant. The study also distinguishes that this effect appears in the contemporaneous year but it increases with the number of lags. This result confirms that compensation effects of process innovation may appear with a certain delay justifying the importance for SMEs of being persistent in innovation strategies to make them compatible with employment growth.     

Exploring the Ethical Dimension of Hawala

The aim of this paper is to explore the ethical dimension of hawala, an ancient informal financial practice rooted in Islamic moral traditions. Widely used in countries with an Islamic background and their diasporas, hawala is considered an important vehicle for the financial and economic development of some less developed countries. Nevertheless, in Western countries, hawala is regarded with suspicion due its controversial ethical nature. Unlike other Islamic financial institutions, the controversial questions are not the legitimacy of profit sources or the interest charged, but rather the lack of transparency that surrounds hawala transactions. Yet, the literature on hawala has neglected its ethical perspective. Our study delves into this dimension with a critical approach, using the Triple Font Theory, grounded on virtue ethics. We conclude that if hawala transactions are carried out with honesty, and fairness, this practice deserves a positive ethical appraisal. However, it is necessary to implement efficient regulatory measures to guarantee that the system is not abused by money launders and criminals. In practice, it becomes imperative to bring over a change in the regulatory approach to hawala toward a more ethically, culturally, and economically sensitive strategy. Thus, future research should focus on how “hyper-norms” or fundamental principles inherent to humanity, which are common to both “formal” and “informal,” “Western” and “non-Western” financial practices, could run the new AML/CTF regulation agenda.