Sustainable finance and investment: Review and research agenda

Sustainable finance and investment (SFI) is key to fostering sustainable global development. Research in this field has focused on specific topics, such as the financial performance of sustainable investments and companies committed to sustainability. The SFI literature is excessively fragmented, rendering it difficult to identify what constitutes the field and what differentiates it from traditional finance and investment. Based on a systematic literature review of 166 articles, we map and integrate the main elements of the SFI field and identify the most relevant avenues for further research. In this process, we provide a definition of SFI; identify the main players in the field; and describe their profiles, strategies, and outcomes. We also propose a framework for understanding the SFI field and a research agenda. This agenda organizes the main SFI research questions and suggests suitable approaches to address them. We conclude that SFI players have worked together to promote positive social and environmental impacts through their financial and investment activities. However, the under-theorization of the SFI concept, the traditional short-term nature of financial logic, and the lack of evidence on the SFI impacts on society and the environment are the greatest challenges facing the field.     

The Hotelling rule in non-renewable resource economics: A reassessment

Harold Hotelling's 1931 contribution is known for providing a basic principle—the Hotelling rule—to the economics of non-renewable resources. Nearly 90 years later, empirical tests conclude the rule lacks empirical validity, requiring strong amendments to describe the long-term, aggregate behaviour of its target object. On the basis of Hotelling's unpublished archival material, this paper revisits the place given to the Hotelling rule in non-renewable resource economics. Our reconstruction shows that Hotelling's 1931 paper has been misinterpreted: from the outset, the Hotelling rule was not valid for mineral resources. In contrast, the consideration of two inherent geological constraints, alongside exhaustibility, offered the opportunity for an alternative basic framework, capable to generate bell-shaped and U-shaped equilibrium trajectories for supplies and prices, respectively. Inspired by this unknown aspect of Hotelling's work brought to light by our archival investigation, we sketch this alternative basic model, enabling non-renewable resource economics to circumvent the empirical shortfalls of the Hotelling rule.     

Explicit formulas for the minimal variance hedging strategy in a martingale case

We explicitly compute closed formulas for the minimal variance hedging strategy in discrete time of a European option and for the variance of the corresponding hedging error under the hypothesis that the underlying asset is a martingale following a geometric Brownian motion. The formulas are easy to implement, hence the optimal hedge ratio can be employed as a valid substitute of the standard Black–Scholes delta, and the knowledge of the variance of the total error can be a useful tool for measuring and managing the hedging risk.     

The Role of Ownership Concentration and Debt in Downturns: Evidence from Brazilian Firms During the 2008–9 Financial Crisis

This article aims to reconcile conflicting literature about the role of ownership concentration in the responsiveness of stock prices to macroeconomic shocks. We modified a previous theoretical model, adding leverage as a disciplining device. An important implication of our model is that only in deep crises ownership concentration plays a role in attenuating the effect of macroeconomic shock on firm value. We test this hypothesis using a sample of Brazilian firms during distinct phases of the 2008–9 crisis. Our empirical analyzes shows that only in the most critical part of the crisis, ownership concentration reduced the negative effects of the financial crisis.     

Nationalization as Credible Threat Against Collusion

Within a simple model of differentiated oligopoly, we show that tacit collusion may be prevented by the threat of nationalising a private firm coupled with the appropriate choice of the weight given to private profits in the maximand of the nationalised company. This happens because the threat of nationalization eliminates the prisoners’ dilemma usually associated with a Cournot game among profit-seekers. We characterise the properties of such a threat and prove that it may allow the policy maker to credibly deter collusion.     

Hope and positive affect mediating the authentic leadership and creativity relationship

The study analyzes how authentic leadership (AL) predicts employees' creativity both directly and through the mediating role of employees' positive affect and hope. Two hundred and three employees working in Portuguese retail organizations participate in the research. Employees report their hope and positive affective states, as well as the AL of their supervisors. Supervisors report the employees' creativity. The main findings are: (a) AL predicts employees' creativity, both directly and through the mediating role of employees' hope; (b) AL also predicts employees' positive affect, which in turn predicts employees' hope and, thus, creativity. The study enriches the understanding of the processes through which AL improves employees' creativity, and provides valuable insights for both scholars and practitioners. By promoting AL, and employees' hope and positive affect, organizations may increase employees' creative performance, creativity being an important path to organizational performance.     

Business cycle convergence and trade: Brazil and China in a changing world

The recent economic interaction between Latin America and Asia, particularly between Brazil and China, has attracted the attention of the academic world that seeks to understand the effects of this approach in terms of business cycle convergence, economic structure and development trajectory. This paper contributes to this debate, presenting new evidence about the type and quality of this relationship. Our results reveal that Brazil and China present different patterns of relationship between trade and productive specialization: while Brazil has an intra-industry trade pattern, China has an inter-industry trade pattern. We explore some normative implications and future research possibilities.     

How happiness mediates the organizational virtuousness and affective commitment relationship

Recent moral and financial collapse of high profile organizations around the world led the business community, the popular and business press, and researchers to rediscover the worthiness of organizations' virtues. Aiming to contribute to this momentum, this empirical study investigates how perceptions of organizational virtuousness (OV) predict affective well-being (AWB) and affective commitment (AC). Two hundred five individuals participate. The findings show that perceptions of OV predict AC both directly and through the mediating role of AWB. The study suggests that fostering organizational virtuousness (e.g., through honesty, interpersonal respect, and compassion; combining high standards of performance with a culture of forgiveness and learning from mistakes) improves employees' AWB and promotes a more committed workforce. Considering these findings and mirroring the growing contributions of the positive psychology, positive organizational behavior, and positive organizational scholarship movements, the study suggests that a “positive-people-management” perspective should be considered, both by practitioners and scholars.