A Proposal of an International Environmental Reporting Grid: What Interest for Policymakers,Regulatory Bodies,Companies, and Researchers?: Reply to Discussion of “Mandatory Environmental Disclosures by Companies Complying with IAS/IFRS: The Case of France,Germany and the UK”

This article offers the authors' insights concerning the issues raised by Professor Trevor Wilkins in commentaries on the article “Mandatory environmental disclosures by companies complying with IAS/IFRS: the case of France, Germany, and the UK” (Barbu et al., 2014). As suggested by Professor Wilkins, we demonstrate the utility of the international environmental reporting grid proposed in Barbu et al. (2014, Table 3): (1) for IASB policymakers and other regulatory bodies, (2) for companies to improve their environmental reporting, (3) for further research, and (4) for understanding the economic and financial consequences of IAS/IFRS-compliant environmental information.     

Born to flip. Exit decisions of entrepreneurial firms in high-tech and low-tech industries

This paper examines the way that the exit behavior of entrepreneurial firms is shaped by their innovative capabilities, and the technology environment in which they operate. We distinguish between exit by closing down activity and exit by merger or acquisition (M&A). Using a large sample of Dutch manufacturing firms, we explore the relationship between firm exit, age and innovative capabilities, in high and low innovation intensive industries. We find that for entrepreneurial firms, innovation may go some way towards compensating for the liability of newness, but also makes them more attractive M&A targets. More specifically, entrepreneurial firms in high-tech industries do not seem to improve their chances of survival by innovating; when technological change is rapid, innovation, especially in products, is necessary to participate in the innovation race in an industry, but is not sufficient to guarantee survival. In contrast, in low-tech industries, process innovation is a critical condition for the survival of entrepreneurial firms. In this context, entrepreneurial firms that are able to bring new product ideas, introducing ‘exceptional’ variations into a stable environment, are most likely to exit by M&A, thereby transferring their knowledge and capabilities to the incumbent firms.     

Optimal education and pensions in an endogenous growth model

In OLG economies with life-cycle saving and exogenous growth, competitive equilibria in general fail to achieve optimality because individuals accumulate amounts of physical capital that differ from the one that maximizes welfare along a balanced growth path (the Golden Rule). With human capital, a second potential source of departure from optimality arises, related to education decisions. We propose to recover the Golden Rule of physical and also human capital accumulation. We characterize the optimal policy to decentralize the Golden Rule balanced growth path when there are no constraints for individuals to finance their education investments, and show that it involves education taxes. Also, when the government subsidizes the repayment of education loans, optimal pensions are positive.     

Coalition Formation: The Role of Procedure and Policy Flexibility

A spatial model of coalition formation is used together with data from Dutch elections and theoretical instances to study different procedures of coalition formation. The model shows that procedure plays an important role in reaching a coalition agreement and that political parties do not necessarily benefit from being a first-mover. Moreover, it is shown that a decrease in a party’s flexibility can be (dis)advantageous in coalition negotiations. Furthermore, certain power sharing tactics appear not always to lead to an agreement that is in a party’s advantage. The main message put forward is that the procedure of forming a coalition plays a more important role than is usually acknowledged in literature and practice.     

Trade Impacts of China's World Trade Organization Accession

This study examines China's World Trade Organization (WTO) accession commitments and assesses their implications for China and the world using a model reflecting the importance of duty-free intermediate inputs in China's exports. The WTO agreement built on earlier reforms that introduced competition into the trade regime, eliminated nontariff barriers and exchange rate overvaluation, and reduced tariffs. The reforms associated with accession were conservatively estimated to increase global real incomes by $74 billion per year, with $29 billion accruing to China and the remainder primarily to those countries trading directly with China. Some lower-income developing countries faced greater competition from China in third markets.     

Monitoring the Behaviour of Credit Card Holders with Graphical Chain Models

Consumer credit has become an enormous business in industrialized countries. Recently, finance agencies have started to develop new products aiming not only to widen their portfolio but also to keep active relationships with good clients already taken on file and to prevent bad clients from becoming a loss for the agency. As a result, models for the whole behaviour of the clients are necessary. They involve many related outcome variables, which altogether give a measure of whether the client revealed to be profitable or unprofitable. This paper aims to show the potential of graphical chain models in the described context.     

Implementation of International Environmental Commitments in Countries in Transition

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -     

The structure of production of the Spanish telecommunications sector

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical measures of the returns to scale coefficients, substitution elasticities between capital and labor, their marginal productivities, and the profitability of inputs in the Spanish telecommunications industry. The results of this study indicate that constant returns to scale can strongly be rejected and that the profitability indices of both factors have risen consistently since 1974. Furthermore, it concludes that the company is relatively overcapitalized, a result generally consistent with the Averch-Johnson effect for rate of return regulated monopolies.The author wishes to thank Dr. Boris Bravo-Ureta and Dr. Emilio Pagoulatos for thoughtful comments on an earlier draft. She is also indebted to an anonymous referee for valuable suggestions and to Telefónica de España for providing the data necessary for this study.     

Students' Perception of the Ethical Business Climate: A Comparison With Leaders in the Community

Although undergraduate students are exposed to ethical issues through class assignments, discussions, and readings, they typically do not have first hand experience with business dilemmas. Student opinions on ethical standards and behavior in American business have received scant attention in the literature. The purpose of the study is to provide additional information to both educators and organizations about the ethical perceptions of students. Furthermore, the study contrasts student responses to business and community leaders' responses obtained in a prior study conducted by Touche Ross (1988). The findings from this study are based on an opinion survey about ethics in American business, completed by 476 liberal arts and business students attending a private, religiously affiliated college in New York State. The data indicate numerous differences in perceptions between students and business and community leaders. Differences were also found when students were classified by school (Arts &; Science versus Business) and by gender. Overall, students appear to place a strong value on education. Students are the source of new entrants to the business world and the foundation for ethical structures being built by organizations. The findings from this study should assist both educators and employers in the development of necessary programs to maximize the ethical potential of their constituents.