Corporate governance and regulation: Can there be too much of a good thing?

We investigate how company-level corporate governance practices and country-level legal investor protection jointly affect company performance. We find that in any legal regime there are a few specific governance practices that improve performance. Companies with good governance practices operating in stringent legal environments, however, show a valuation discount relative to similar companies operating in flexible legal environments. At the same time, a stronger country-level regime does not reduce the valuation discount of companies with weak governance practices. Our analysis suggests a threshold level of country development above which stringent regulation hurts the performance of well governed companies or has a neutral effect for poorly governed companies.     

Trade Elasticity,Gravity and Trade Liberalisation: Evidence from the Food Industry

We present an econometric investigation of the trade effect produced by the elimination of tariffs in 18 food sectors for a large sample of developing and developed countries. The standard CES monopolistic competition trade model and the gravity equation were used to estimate trade substitution elasticities, exploring their sensitivity to different estimation methods. Using these elasticities, we simulate the trade effect of the elimination of tariffs, dealing with the problem of uncertainty in the estimated values. Results point to a significant variation in the elasticities estimated by different econometric methods, suggesting that the Poisson pseudo‐maximum‐likelihood estimator significantly inflates their magnitude. Simulation results indicate that trade liberalisation will strongly increase food exports especially from high income and emerging countries, leading to a general loss of market share by developing countries. The simulated trade flows obtained from the econometric approach are quite close to current evidence based on computable general equilibrium models.     

Public awareness promoting new or emerging risks: Industrial accidents triggered by natural hazards (NaTech)

Dramatic natural events recently stroke several countries worldwide. The impact of the natural events on industrial sites often resulted in large releases of hazardous materials, causing severe technological accidents (Natural-Technological or NaTech events). Industrial operators were often found unprepared or off-guard for unannounced events but also when they had received early warnings. Due to these occurrences, public awareness has raised and the issue of NaTech is now considered as an emerging risk. Due to the climate change and increase in the frequency of some categories of natural disasters, the likelihood of NaTech scenarios is growing, thus NaTech may be also considered as a new risk in some areas of the world. In the present study, the process that ended in the awareness of the scientific community and of the general public toward NaTech has been analyzed. Available tools and knowledge gaps in the assessment of NaTech scenarios are evidenced. The analysis is mainly addressed to the potential impact of flood, lightning, and earthquake events on industrial installations where hazardous substances are present, aiming at the identification of strategies to improve the resilience of industrial facilities to technological accidents caused or intensified by natural hazards.     

The relationship between R&D,investment and patents: a panel data analysis

This paper estimates the effect of research and investment activities on patents across countries, industries and over time, using Poisson and negative binomial distribution models. The first result of the paper is the recognition of the importance of investment activities in contributing to technical change. The positive role of research expenditures is also confirmed but its elasticity is found to be lower than in previous studies. Important differences across sectors emerge: research expenditures are found to be more effective in generating patents in science based industries, while investment is particularly significant in supplier dominated and production intensive industries. Finally, in most sectors, the estimated R&D and investment coefficients lie outside the confidence intervals calculated around the pooled coefficients.     

Forward-Looking Belief Elicitation Enhances Intergenerational Beneficence

Environmental and Resource Economics - One of the challenges in managing the Earth’s common pool resources, such as a livable climate or the supply of safe drinking water, is to motivate...     

Should you pay off your mortgage or invest?

The mortgage payoff dilemma affects many retirees that have enough financial assets to pay off their mortgage. I find that, on average, retirees with less than $300,000 in non-housing financial wealth are better off keeping the mortgage and investing.     

Subsidiary’s Network Competence: Finnish Multinational Companies in Russia

We provide clear insights into the key foreign direct investment obstacles for the manufacturing sector in FYR of Macedonia, an EU candidate country. The survey results, based on data for 79 manufacturing companies, revealed that the investors in this particular sector perceive the bureaucratic and administrative constraints, corruption and bribery, and the lack of law enforcement as three major investment obstacles. Furthermore, we found that the perception of the investment obstacles largely differ depending on the industry the companies operate in, the country of origin, and the export orientation. Therefore, we recommend a tailor-made approach in pursuing the national investment promotion policies and strategies.