Environmental Motivations: The Pathway to Complete Environmental Management

The aim of this research is to ascertain whether a firm’s environmental motivations may help to predict how complete or incomplete its environmental management will be, understanding incomplete management to be that which neglects one or more of the three keys aspects of such management, namely, monitoring, action and results. We specifically posit that while motivations based on the search for legitimation lead to more incomplete styles of environmental management, competitive motivations entail a more complete management. The analyses conducted with a sample of 1,902 plants provide empirical evidence in favour of such reasoning. The contribution this research makes, therefore, is not restricted solely to showing the effect motivations have on the environmental performance of organisations, as it also introduces a new dimension of environmental management—the degree of completeness, which needs to be considered when understanding and evaluating this effect.     

Uncovering the role of cross-border strategic alliances and expertise decision centralization in enhancing product-service innovation in MMNEs

Research is needed on effective servitization by multinational enterprises. This study examines whether Manufacturing Multinational Enterprises (MMNEs) can obtain better servitization outcomes by partnering with Knowledge Intensive Business Service (KIBS) firms and or by internationalizing their service function. In addition, the paper analyses the centralization of management decisions of human resources as an organizational mechanism to overcome coordination failure between product and service units. Our primary research data contain survey responses from 285 MMNEs collected in cooperation with an industry partner. Results show that cross-border strategic alliances and expertise decision centralization are critical to enhance product-service innovation.     

Labour-market institutions, (un)employment,wages, and growth: theory and data

We analyse the implications of labour-market institutions on wage inequality in favour of skilled labour, on relative unemployment of unskilled labour, and on the economic growth rate in two clusters resulting from 27 OECD countries: Cluster 1, closely related with the Anglo-Saxon model, and Cluster 2, dominated by the Continental-European model. By linking the unskilled wage to the skilled one in Cluster 2, due to the indexation of social benefits to per-capita income, we accommodate the observed paths of the three variables in both clusters between 1991 and 2008: Cluster 1 presents a higher wage inequality in favour of skilled labour, a lower unemployment of the unskilled labour, and a better economic growth rate.     

Inequality Stagnation in Latin America in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis

Between 2003 and 2010, Latin America experienced a solid record of economic growth, coupled with a notable reduction in income inequality. The regional Gini coefficient fell from 0.556 to 0.521 and declined in all 15 out of 17 countries in which frequent data are available. However, previous studies have warned about problems in the sustainability of the decline in income inequality and this study presents evidence of stagnation on this front between 2010 and 2013. The results are robust to various measures of income inequality, but differ across the region. While largely attributable to the recovery from the global financial crisis in Mexico and some countries in Central America, the results are also supported by the demonstrated slowdown in inequality reduction in other countries, including Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia.     

Financial dollarization: The role of foreign-owned banks and interest rates

Why in many economies households and firms borrow and make deposits in foreign currency? Expanding on the existing literature, our framework addresses this question allowing for interest rate differentials and access to foreign funds to play a role in explaining this process of asset substitution or financial dollarization. Using a newly compiled data set on transition economies and employing a standard panel as well as a panel-VAR methodology we find that increasing access to foreign funds leads to higher credit dollarization, while it decreases deposit dollarization. Interest rate differentials matter for the dollarization of both loans and deposits.     

The responsibility of tourism in traffic congestion and hyper-congestion: A case study from Mallorca, Spain

This paper explores the relationship between tourism and traffic congestion and hyper-congestion using the case study of Mallorca (Spain), one of the most important resort destinations in the Mediterranean. After discussing different proxies to capture the associated problems to road traffic congestion, different time series models are estimated including considering the days of the week, holidays and meteorological determinants jointly with a daily indicator of tourist population pressure. Results show how the tourist pressure variable is an important determinant in explaining the different alternative indicators of traffic congestion and hyper-congestion, for different roads. Hence it is possible to classify the roads in terms of usage by tourists in order to anticipate the levels of traffic intensity, especially during peak periods.     

Input,Output, and Environmental Management Productivity: Effects on Firm Performance

Firms invest considerable resources to control any of their operations that may have environmental impacts in an attempt to reduce such impacts but also generate economic value. Various studies of the basic creation or destruction of monetary value through environmental performance offer contradictory evidence. Therefore, the present study proposes a new definition of environmental management as the transformation of inputs (resources assigned) into outputs (valuable results). Both inputs and outputs should be taken into account to explain financial outcomes; further consideration should also include a third aspect, namely, ‘environmental management productivity’, which describes the relationship between the outputs and inputs of environmental management. Empirical analyses of Spanish firms with a certified environmental management system subject to the European Union's CO₂ emissions trading system provide evidence that all three aspects must be considered in combination to achieve a more comprehensive view of the impact of environmental management on financial performance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment