Private-to-private Corruption

The cases of corruption reported by the media tend almost always to involve a private party (a citizen or a corporation) that pays, or promises to pay, money to a public party (a politician or a public official, for example) in order to obtain an advantage or avoid a disadvantage. Because of the harm it does to economic efficiency and growth, and because of its social, political and ethical consequences, private-to-public corruption has been widely studied. Private-to-private corruption, by contrast, has been relatively neglected and only recently has started to receive the attention it deserves. The purpose of this paper is to offer some thoughts on the nature and importance of private-to-private corruption; the legal treatment it receives in some of the world's leading countries; and the measures that companies can take to combat it, with special consideration of its ethical aspects.     

Employee-owned and capitalist firms: is performance linked to ownership?

This paper does a comparative analysis of the economic performance between employee-owned firms (EOFs) and conventional capitalist companies (non-employee-owned firms, NEOFs). EOFs show good economic performance if the different objectives that distinguish them from NEOFs are considered. These differences stem precisely from the different capital-ownership structures. Nevertheless, the results deteriorate if profitability and productiveness are analysed. The results for productivity differ from theoretical thought which considers that the main differences between these two types of structures should be explained by the double condition people have as both partners and workers in the EOF; this link between company and workers should translate into increased productiveness. The results of the analysis do not empirically demonstrate the positive effects that were expected with an EOF structure. There are, however, sufficient motives for extending the study to the compared analysis of other subjects that work under specific legal regulations and even to the compared analysis of other regulative forms that exist in other Member States of the European Union.     

Sin sectors and negative screening

In this research, I analyse how exposure to sin sectors impacts the financial performance of socially responsible (SR) funds. I also analyse the question of whether or not these funds keep their word and are less exposed to the controversial sectors that they claim to exclude in their prospectuses. Additionally, I analyse how local political and religious factors exert an influence on the exposure of SR funds to sin sectors. Consequently, I analyse a sample comprising 136 SR mutual funds that were domiciled in the U.S. market in the period March 2017–April 2020 and who invest in domestic and global equity, of which 92 implement negative screens on at least 1 of 12 controversial activities. My results show that for seven (three) of the controversial sectors that were analysed, the exposure of SR funds to these sectors jeopardises (improves) their financial performance. Furthermore, SR mutual funds who perform negative screens tend to live up to their name and are less exposed to the sector/s that they claim to exclude. In addition, SR mutual funds managed by companies located in Democrat-leaning states are less exposed to sin sectors, and that the effect of local religiosity depends on the specific sector analysed.     

Familiness,business strategy and stakeholder engagement: The internationalisation of Spanish olive oil mills

Based on social capital theory and the family-firm context, this paper studies familiness' composition and the result of the overlap of the family and firm systems, analysing their influence on the internationalisation strategies of family firms. In this relationship, the stakeholder engagement becomes at the same time an antecedent and a result when developing family businesses' strategies, being one of the most relevant the internationalisation strategies. Prior research focused on familiness as the result of proxy variables such as the percentage of ownership and management in family hands, or business size, instead of as psychological variables resulting from shared organisational culture and social interactions. Through a qualitative study based on 12 interviews of general managers and/or export managers of Spanish family olive oil mills, this study asserts that the level of familiness influences internationalisation strategies, the reasons underlying a business becoming international and its commitment to activities abroad being the role of stakeholders crucial in those interactions. The higher the level of familiness, the more likely the family business internationalisation and the higher their levels of international commitment. Additionally, the higher the concern about their stakeholders, the higher their levels of international commitment. The family businesses' concern for their stakeholders and their international commitment share a reciprocal relationship. The results regarding the relevance of familiness as social capital resources in sustaining competitive advantages support the decision to promote, develop and nurture social capital when a family business goes international.     

Does expenditure in public governance guarantee less corruption? Non-linearities and complementarities of the rule of law

Corruption is an endemic societal problem with profound implications in the development of nations. In combating this issue, cross-national evidence supporting the effectiveness of the rule of law seems at odds with poorly realized outcomes from reforms inspired in the academic literature. This paper provides an explanation for such contradiction. By building a computational approach, we develop three methodological novelties into the empirical study of corruption: (1) modeling government expenditure as a more adequate intervention variable than traditional indicators, (2) generating large within-country variation by means of bottom-up simulations (instead of cross-national data pooling), and (2) accounting for all possible interactions between covariates through a spillover network. Our estimates suggest that, the least developed a country is, the more difficult it is to find the right combination of policies that lead to reductions in corruption. We characterize this difficulty through a rugged landscape that governments navigate when changing the total budget size and the relative expenditure towards the rule of law. Importantly our method helps identifying the—country-specific—policy issues that complement the rule of law in the fight against corruption.

     

The education pillar of the Europe 2020 strategy: a convergence analysis

Empirica - In March 2010, the European Commission launched the Europe 2020 strategy ‘for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’ in the EU. Education is a major pillar of the Europe...