The Impact of REO Sales on Neighborhoods and Their Residents

The foreclosure crisis in the U.S. has resulted in a large number of residential REOs. These properties have been found to reduce the value of nearby homes. An unresolved issue is whether these negative spillover effects disappear after the REO is sold. We hypothesize that these effects are greater if the REO is purchased by an investor in comparison to an owner–occupant. In this paper we report the results from estimating the spillover effects of both current and ex–REOs, where the latter are divided into those possessed by owner–occupants and those possessed by investors. The results lend considerable support to our hypothesis.     

A systematic literature review of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition: insights on influencing factors

In the last three decades, research studies investigating how individuals recognize entrepreneurial opportunities have advanced rapidly and have become a key topic in the modern entrepreneurship literature. To advance this important concern further, we present a systematic literature review of the entrepreneurial opportunity research field and its status. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this research suggests that the field is fragmented and empirically underdeveloped. A comprehensive literature analysis shows that only a handful of authors have contributed specifically to developing dialogues related to opportunity recognition and that the topic is considered primarily as an ancillary issue by many authors and academic journals. Based on analyzing 180 articles, we classify existing contributions into six influential factors: prior knowledge, social capital, cognition/personality traits, environmental conditions, alertness, and systematic search. Moreover, by developing a framework, we communicate critical insights regarding the opportunity recognition process. The contribution of individual articles to the proposed factors is presented in a research synthesis table. We conclude by presenting several directions for future research related to opportunity recognition.     

Exploration and exploitation and firm performance variability<Emphasis>:</Emphasis> a study of ambidexterity in entrepreneurial firms

A challenge young entrepreneurial firms usually face is reducing variability in firm performance in order to mitigate survival difficulties. This paper suggests ventures should have a clear preference for either exploration or exploitation, because such an approach to ambidexterity reduces variability in firm performance. We specifically concentrate on the moderation effects of firm size and environmental dynamism in a sample of young entrepreneurial firms. We found evidence for the effects of lower performance variability in dynamic environments. This is an important insight, because environmental dynamism is a contingency where performance variance is considered problematic for entrepreneurial firms. Our research has implications for the establishment phase of entrepreneurial firms as it suggests they should carefully consider how much they explore to be as different as possible and how much they exploit to be as effective as possible. This is particularly important when they are younger and exposed to dynamic environments.     

Analysts' Roundtable on Integrating ESG into Investment Decision‐Making

In this third of the three discussions that took place at the SASB 2016 Symposium, practitioners of a broad range of investment approaches—active as well as passive in both equities and fixed‐income—explain how and why they use ESG information when evaluating companies and making their investment decisions. There was general agreement that successful ESG investing depends on integrating ESG factors with the methods and data of traditional “fundamental” financial statement analysis. And in support of this claim, a number of the panelists noted that some of the world's best “business value investors,” including Warren Buffett, have long incorporated environmental, social, and governance considerations into their investment decision‐making. In the analysis of such active fundamental investors, ESG concerns tend to show up as risk factors that can translate into higher costs of capital and lower values. And companies' effectiveness in managing such factors, as ref lected in high ESG scores and rankings, is viewed by many fundamental investors as an indicator of management “quality,” a reliable demonstration of the corporate commitment to investing in the company's future. Moreover, some fixed‐income investors are equally if not more concerned than equity investors about ESG exposures. ESG factors can have pronounced effects on performance by generating “tail risks” that can materialize in both going‐concern and default scenarios. And the rating agencies have long attempted to reflect some of these risks in their analysis, though with mixed success. What is relatively new, however, is the frequency with which fixed income investors are engaging companies on ESG topics. And even large institutional investors with heavily indexed portfolios have become more aggressive in engaging their portfolio companies on ESG issues. Although the traditional ESG filters used by such investors were designed mainly just to screen out tobacco, firearms, and other “sin” shares from equity portfolios, investors' interest in “tilting” their portfolios toward positive sustainability factors, in the form of lowcarbon and gender‐balanced ETFs and other kinds of “smart beta” portfolios, has gained considerable momentum.     

Valuing Provisioning Ecosystem Services in Agriculture: The Impact of Climate Change on Food Production in the United Kingdom

This paper provides an estimate of the contribution of the ecosystem to the provisioning services generated by agriculture. This is achieved by valuing the changes in productivity generated by a marginal alteration in ecosystem inputs. As an example, we consider the variation in rainfall and temperature projected by the recent UK Climate Impacts Programme. The analysis implements a spatially explicit, econometric model of agricultural land use based on the methodology recently developed by Fezzi and Bateman (Am J Agric Econ 93:1168–1188, 2011). Land use area and livestock stocking rates are then employed to calculate farm gross margin estimates of the value of changes in provisioning ecosystem services. Findings suggest that the variation in ecosystem inputs induced by climate change will have substantial influence on agricultural productivity. Interestingly, within the UK context climate change generates mainly positive effects, although losses are forecasted for those southern areas most vulnerable to heat-stress and drought.     

Is Your Banker Leaking Your Personal Information? The Roles of Ethics and Individual-Level Cultural Characteristics in Predicting Organizational Computer Abuse

Computer abuse (CA) by employees is a critical concern for managers. Misuse of an organization’s information assets leads to costly damage to an organization’s reputation, decreases in sales, and impositions of fines. We use this opportunity to introduce and expand the theoretic framework proffered by Thong and Yap (1998) to better understand the factors that lead individuals to commit CA in organizations. The study uses a survey of 449 respondents from the banking, financial, and insurance industries. Our results indicate that individuals who adhere to a formalist ethical perspective are significantly less likely to engage in CA activities than those following a utilitarian ethical framework. In addition, the results provide evidence that employees with individualistic natures are linked to increased CA incidents, whereas collectivist tendencies are associated with decreases in CA behaviors. Our results also show that collectivism acts as a strong moderator that further decreases the relationships between formalism and CA, and utilitarianism and CA. Finally, we offer detailed suggestions on how organizations and researchers can leverage our findings to decrease CA occurrences.     

Agent based model of a simple economy

This article proposes a model of a simple economy based on a set of agent-based modeling principles. The model is based on the ??trust game?? formulated by Berg et?al. (Games Econ Behav 10:122?C142, 1995), and anticipates a random matching of partners taking in to account adaptive agent behavior. Simulation in the NetLogo programming environment, using profile distributions obtained from empirical studies, has shown the most successful agents to posses low parameters of trust in the role of Sender and high parameters of trustworthiness in the role of Receiver.     

Beitrag von technologischen und strukturellen Veränderungen im Energiesystem der EU-27 zur Erreichung ambitionierter Klimaschutzziele

To stabilise the concentration of GHG (Greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere to a level of 450ppm (parts per million), a strong climate policy in the EU-27 will be required. The target is achievable through a 71% reduction of GHG emissions from 1990 emission levels by the year 2050. With the regionalised Pan-European TIMES energy system model, the role of technologies with regard to efficiency improvement, fuel switching and energy saving measures will be analysed under such an emission reduction target. The Pan-European TIMES model illustrates in detail the whole energy system of the different member states of the EU-27 plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The limited resource and import potentials of different energy carriers, the competition of the use of energy carriers among different sectors and the country specific differences in energy demand will be taken into account. The results show that the energy consumption of the EU is influenced rather by political targets and positions related to climate protection, security of supply and the use of nuclear energy than by the available technological options. Under a climate protection scenario with restricted use of nuclear energy, the most commonly used options are to increase the use of renewable energy in all sectors, produce electricity in combination with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and to increase the use of electricity over other fuel sources in the demand sectors. Furthermore, technological improvements will be required throughout the entire energy system if political targets are to be successfully realised.     

COVID-19 and the power of indigenous,Mexican-origin farmworker families in the US Pacific Northwest

Over the last several years—in the context of US political upheaval, ongoing crises related to climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and an economic downturn—indigenous, Mexican-origin farmworker families in Washington State have engaged more intensely in class struggle through acts of solidarity and forms of collective action, in part through independent labour unions, worker cooperatives and mutual aid. This article chronicles the labour struggles that led to a notion of class rooted in family units of production and that strengthened transnational solidarity in resistance to racist forms of exploitation in the agricultural sector. Class organization rooted in family and solidarity has allowed indigenous agricultural workers in Washington State to face COVID-19 and incidents driven by climate change, which syndemically compounded existing community health crises, from a place of power. Focusing on the experience of farmworker families in Washington State, I outline agricultural employers' exploitation of workers during this period of increased vulnerability and the strength of farmworkers' resolve to take their health and well-being into their own hands.