State and religion over time

State and religion, two of the oldest institutions known to mankind, have historically had a close relationship with each other, but the disestablishment of state religions has been one of the most drastic institutional transformations that has taken place in the modern era. We offer a systematic analysis of the development of secular states based on a political economy approach that is centered on the notion of legitimacy. Viewing religion as a legitimizing force for political leaders, we consider the factors affecting the cost and benefits of alternative sources of legitimacy, such as the differential abilities of religious and secular sources to legitimize political rulers and historical inertia that shaped the cost of monitoring legitimizing agents. To examine this argument empirically, we built a cross-national time-series dataset for the relationship between state and religion since the year 1000. We first use the data to examine the evolution of secularism over time and its variation across religious traditions. We then use regression analysis and an instrumental variables approach to identify the influences on the adoption of secular state, such as concentration in the religion market, religious differences between rulers and the general population, historical inertia of a state, and the prevailing political regime. We address endogeneity concerns regarding the relationship between religious concentration and state secularism by exploiting variation among territories in their geographic distance to religious “capitals” of the world as an instrument.     

Green Business Strategies of Exporting Manufacturing Firms: Antecedents,Practices, and Outcomes

This research investigates the drivers that lead exporting manufacturing companies to adopt environmentally friendly actions, exploring green business practices/strategies they conducted and examining the outcomes which resulted from companies' green business activities. This exploratory study particularly focuses on green business strategies of Turkish manufacturing exporters. Thirty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted with executive managers from 22 companies and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results of the study reveal two internal (i.e., capabilities and resources) and four external stimulating forces (i.e., stakeholder pressures, institutional-based, network-based, and external factors) that encourage companies to implement green business operations, which were also classified under six functional themes. This study emphasizes several noteworthy outcomes (i.e., export competitive advantage and export performance). In doing so, the findings of this study provide a holistic insight into green business strategies within the exporting context by outlining both theoretical and managerial implications.     

Regulation fair disclosure and the market’s reaction to analyst investment recommendation changes

Previous research has shown that affiliated analysts (those who are working for investment banks that underwrite securities for companies) have an incentive to provide optimistically biased recommendations from selective information they are given by the firm. In an effort to halt such activities, as of October 2000, Regulation Fair Disclosure (RegFD) prohibits selective disclosure of material non-public information by public companies to privileged individuals (such as favored research analysts) and requires broad, non-exclusionary disclosure of such information. We examine firms’ stock price reactions to investment recommendation changes from affiliated analysts versus unaffiliated analysts from October 1998 to November 2002, around the passage of RegFD. Similar to previous research, we find that investors reacted more significantly to recommendation downgrades by affiliated analysts than to those by unaffiliated analysts prior to the passage of RegFD. However, we find that the difference in the reactions to recommendation changes is not present after the passage of RegFD. We also find that stock price reactions to analysts’ (both affiliated and unaffiliated) recommendation changes decreased significantly after the passage of RegFD. Thus, RegFD appears to have curbed the selective disclosure of information (particularly negative information) by firms to affiliated analysts. Further, the smaller reactions to recommendation changes by all analysts after RegFD may reflect a change in analysts’ behavior (irrespective of information that is available) or a response by corporate managers to withhold information rather than risking a violation of fair disclosure rules.     

The effects of trade exposure on technical efficiency: New evidence from the Turkish rubber industry

When a country's foreign trade regime becomes more open, international trade theory suggests that domestic firms face more competition and start to operate more efficiently to reduce their production costs. This proposition is empirically examined by using plant-level data from the Turkish rubber industry during a period of substantial trade liberalization: technical efficiency levels improved significantly when Turkey's trade regime shifted from a restrictive to a more liberalized one. Incumbent plants located closer to international markets improved technical efficiency more than the other plants. These findings suggest that the improvement in technical efficiency was due largely to trade liberalization.     

Effluent charges on municipal wastewater treatment facilities: In search of their theoretical rationale

The authors wish to thank Wolfgang Ströbele and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft is gratefully acknowledged.     

Implementing budgetary control in the performing arts: games in the organizational theatre

When administrators or political bodies try to enforce implementation of new management control systems on organizations, various forms of conflicts and games may be observed in the implementation process. Different rationalities are brought face-to-face in the discourse on implementation, and the process will be influenced by some form of political behaviour. A political perspective will call attention to such issues as the players, power and games. By adopting the concept of budget games in an analysis of the actions related to the implementation process we try to show how we can gain a better understanding of the behaviour exhibited by the various groups involved and of the outcome of the process. Observations from a case study of the Royal Danish Theatre show how different budget games emerge in a process in which the Theatre, the Danish Treasury Department, and various actors inside and outside the theatre have been engaged over a period of 15 years, in an attempt to implement a new management control system at the theatre. The management control system being implemented is a combination of a new accounting system and a new planning and budget system. First, we will discuss the strengths of the concept of budget games and the possibilities that it offers for a better understanding of organizational actions related to the implementation of budgeting systems. In addition, we will look at reforms in the public sector with a special view to the role of budgetary control systems. A framework for using budget games as an analytical tool in understanding implementation processes is developed and applied to the case. The analysis shows how various budget games emerge in the organizational field. The budget games start when an individual or a group wants to address an issue and encounters opponents. The analysis also demonstrates how one budget game may create a counter-game. Finally, the findings and their implications are discussed. The analysis demonstrates the usefulness of the budget game perspective in understanding the implementation of accounting systems and the behaviour of the various groups involved or af fected by the system.     

On the Double Dividend under Imperfect Competition

We investigate whether, and under which conditions, a revenue-neutral environmental tax reform may yield an employment double dividend, i.e., an improvement of environmental quality and an increase in aggregate employment. Using a model with two market imperfections – a rigid real wage and imperfect competition in one industry – we show that an employment dividend is plausibly obtained. However, for countries where labor taxes are high and households spend a large share of their income in favor of environmentally harmful consumption goods a double dividend can nevertheless not be obtained, for under these conditions environmental quality deteriorates.     

An analysis of Hansen–Scheinkman moment estimators for discretely and randomly sampled diffusions

We derive closed-form expansions for the asymptotic distribution of Hansen and Scheinkman [1995. Back to the future: generating moment implications for continuous-time Markov processes. Econometrica 63, 767–804] moment estimators for discretely, and possibly randomly, sampled diffusions. This result makes it possible to select optimal moment conditions as well as to assess the efficiency of the resulting parameter estimators relative to likelihood-based estimators, or to an alternative type of moment conditions.