Does Managerial Behavior Determine Farm Technical Efficiency? A Case of Grape Production in an Economy in Transition

This study explores how farmers' managerial behavior in their production planning processes influences the economic performance of their farms, measured through input‐oriented and output‐oriented technical efficiency. A conceptual framework in which differences in managerial behavior were assumed to be due to bounded rationality was developed. The 3‐year means (2006–2008) from a panel data set on grape‐producing family farms in FYR Macedonia were analyzed. Technical efficiency was estimated with the nonparametric data envelopment analysis approach. The impact of farmers' managerial behavior was assessed in a second‐stage regression. The results suggest that bounded rationality in farmers' production planning decisions causes inefficiency. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Least Squares Asymptotics in Spurious and Cointegrated Panel Regressions with Common and Idiosyncratic Stochastic Trends*

This article makes an analytical study of the effects of the presence of both common and idiosyncratic stochastic trends on the pooled least squares estimator. The results suggest that the usual result of asymptotic normality depends critically on the absence of the common stochastic trend.     

Gender and ethnic earnings gaps in seven West African cities

In this paper, we measure, compare and analyse gender and ethnic earnings gaps in seven West African capitals using data from an original series of urban household surveys. Our results show that gender earnings gaps are large in all the cities in our sample with significant variations across cities. Cities with large gender earnings gaps are also where gender education gaps are wider and where the female labour market participation is highest. Decomposition of the gender gaps shows that differences in characteristics explain around 40% of the raw gender gap on average, but this varies somewhat across cities. The results of the full decomposition of the gender earnings gaps suggest that differences in sector allocation contribute, on average, to one third of gender earnings gaps. Gender gaps are very wide in the informal sector and differences in micro-firm characteristics also account for differences in self-employment earnings. In contrast to the large gender earnings gaps measured in the seven cities, majority ethnic groups do not appear to be in a systematically advantageous position on the urban labour markets in our sample of cities, and observed gaps are small compared with gender gaps. Looking at more detailed levels of ethnic disaggregation, ethnic earnings differentials are found to be systematically smaller than gender differentials. Moreover, none of the minority “favoured” groups seem to have any relation to the ethnicity of the Head of State at the time of the survey. Holding productive characteristics constant, some unexplained differences persist however.     

Bridging the gap: How sustainable development can help companies create shareholder value and improve financial performance

This study examines the effect of integrating sustainability into corporate strategy on various aspects of shareholder value creation and financial performance in the British capital market. The employed method is based on the content analysis of corporate disclosures and a new technique for assessing the adoption of the corporate sustainability concept (embracing the environmental, social, and financial aspects of a company's policies at the same time). Using extensive data of FTSE 350 firms covering the years 2006–2012, 65 companies were selected as meeting corporate sustainability criteria. For the above period, we find that these firms were characterized by higher financial risk exposure, lower asset growth rates, lower BV/MV ratios, lower EVA ratios, and higher MVA ratios. Such relations were generally present among different size and industry groupings. The results support the thesis that firms that incorporate sustainability issues into their business operations are better able to leverage their resources toward stronger financial performance and shareholder value creation than other companies. The paper contributes to the literature by offering a more holistic approach to corporate sustainable performance measurement and shedding additional light on its relation to financial performance in the context of the recent global financial crisis and its direct aftermath.     

Sustainability Strategy and Eco‐Innovation: A Moderation Model

This study develops a moderation model to examine the role of a proactive environmental strategy on eco‐innovation. Drawing upon the perspectives of contingency theory, this study argues that the impacts of sustainability strategy on eco‐innovation depend on market demand, innovation intensity and government subsidy. The sample used to test the hypotheses is obtained from the Community Innovation Survey in Taiwan. A total of 2955 manufacturing firms are included in the final sample. A logit moderating regression is adopted to analyze the models. The results reveal that market demand and government subsidy positively moderate the relationship between environmental strategy and eco‐innovation. Specifically, firms are more likely to adopt a proactive environmental strategy to improve eco‐innovation under high levels of market demand and government subsidy. Furthermore, the results indicate that innovation intensity affects the effect of environmental strategy on eco‐innovation, but the direction of the influence varies with different categories of eco‐innovation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

A Dynamic Study on Ecological Disaster,Government Regulation,and Renewable Resources

This article develops a dynamic model to investigate renewable resource markets under different property rights. We find that different property rights regimes in renewable resource markets yield very different equilibria. Under private property rights, the valve point increases with the natural growth rate, productivity, number of firms, and marginal costs. Under common property rights, “the tragedy of the commons” inescapably occurs. This study suggests how to avoid ecological disaster by implementing a set of public policies.     

The relationship between high performance work systems and employee proactive behaviour: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation as mediating mechanisms

Drawing on the contextual perspective, this study provides novel empirical evidence on how the organisational context (specifically, the firm's human resource strategy) has an effect on employee proactivity. We use matched data from managers and employees in 102 Spanish professional service firms to examine how high performance work systems contribute to enhance employee proactive behaviours through two motivational variables: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation. Results of a multilevel study demonstrate that role breadth self‐efficacy mediates between HPWS and employee proactivity, but flexible role orientation does not mediate this relationship.     

A Tutorial on Palm Distributions for Spatial Point Processes

This tutorial provides an introduction to Palm distributions for spatial point processes. Initially, in the context of finite point processes, we give an explicit definition of Palm distributions in terms of their density functions. Then we review Palm distributions in the general case. Finally, we discuss some examples of Palm distributions for specific models and some applications.