Output Growth Decomposition in the Presence of Input Quality Effects: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

How do physical capital accumulation and total factor productivity (TFP) individually add to economic growth? We approach this question from the perspective of the quality of physical capital and labor, namely the age of physical capital and human capital. We build a unique dataset by explicitly calculating the age of physical capital for each country and each year of our time frame and estimate a stochastic frontier production function incorporating input quality in five regions of countries (Africa, East Asia, Latin America, South Asia and West). Physical capital accumulation generally proves much more important than either the improved quality of factors or TFP growth in explaining output growth. The age of capital decreases growth in all regions except in Africa, while human capital increases growth in all regions except in East Asia.     

EFFICIENCY AND HYBRIDIZATION IN COOPERATIVE BANKING: THE FRENCH CASE*

ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes how French cooperative banking groups adapted their organization, status and model to develop and grow, until the current financial crisis. It explores how they benefitted from evolutions in cooperative law that lowered financing constraints and increased the scope of their activities, becoming large banking groups, and identifies how these groups tried to develop a model of governance, characterized by internal control, which was partly dedicated to the members, but biased more and more towards the top of the organizational pyramid and to stockholders (the new stakeholders coming from the existence of listed vehicles). While the developing business model for cooperative banks appeared to confer a comparative advantage and was synonymous with efficiency before the financial crisis, it seems that the hybridization of the cooperative model has also been a source of conflict of interest, weakness in strategy and an incentive to increase risk. The third part of the article examines how French cooperative banking groups have been hurt by the recent crisis and whether different organizational and strategic features or choices may explain different levels of resilience to financial turmoil.     

Financial Development Impact on Firm Dynamic Creation: Panel Data Evidence on MENA Countries

Using a panel of 14 MENA countries, this paper investigates and examines whether financial development trains a substantial effect on entrepreneurship development by facilitating the rise of new firms. Generalized Two-Stage Least Squares estimate results with instrumental variables highlight the relevance of developed financial systems for the creation of new firms. In overall, financial development and its component explained by the institutional quality exert a positive and significant effect on new entry density in oil MENA countries compared to non-oil ones.     

The relationship between corporate social performance and earnings management

This study assesses the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and earnings management. Based on a sample of 109 Canadian companies drawn from the Michael Jantzi Research Associates – Canadian Social Investment Database for the years 2004 and 2005, our findings corroborate the multiple objectives hypothesis suggesting that the level of CSP is positively associated with earnings management. Using individual measures of CSP, we find a positive association between firm's CSP ratings related to environment and employees, and the earnings management activities. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial differentiation,divisible consumption and the pro-competitive effect of income

We analyze a spatial differentiation model with divisible consumption under one-stop shopping. Each consumer who visits only one store, chooses the quantities of the goods which maximize his/her utility function under the budget constraint (namely consumption expenditures must equal income minus transportation costs), choosing the store which provides him/her with the largest indirect utility. We derive the equilibrium price when the firms are located at the two extremities of Hotelling’s linear city and show that income increases have a pro-competitive effect.     

Finiteness property in vertically differentiated markets: a note on locally increasing and decreasing returns

Summary. The results previously obtained on the finiteness property in vertically differentiated markets, with cost functions having increasing or decreasing returns, are extended to a much larger class of cost functions with local properties in a vicinity of the zero output. Moreover, existence results are provided to prove that the demonstrated properties have cases of application.Received: 11 June 2001, Revised: 18 February 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: L1, D43.Grateful thanks are due to Jacques-François Thisse, Jean-Jaskold Gabszewicz, an anonymous referee and especially to Jean-Marc Bonnisseau and Xavier Wauthy for very helpful suggestions and discussions. The revision took place partly when the author was visiting CERMSEM, Université de Paris-I, Paris then CORE, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium. Hospitality of both institutions is also acknowledged.     

Evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Content Analysis of United States Magazine Advertising, 1980–2009

There has been widespread and growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR). This study examines how CSR practices have changed, corresponding to the changes in social issues by tracking back to the prevalence of CSR advertising in print magazines from 1980 to 2009 when CSR had thrived. Our findings from content analyses of print CSR advertising with Time Magazine and Better Home and Garden suggest that there are significant relationships between social issues and CSR practices by year, target audiences, and industry types. With recent increasing needs for CSR practices in society, this study lays the theoretical and practical groundwork for strategic CSR communication by documenting historical data on CSR advertising.     

Ethics,Diversity Management,and Financial Reporting Quality

This article proposes and empirically tests a theoretical framework incorporating Reidenbach and Robin’s (J Bus Ethics 10(4):273–284, 1991) conceptual model of corporate moral development. The framework is used to examine the relation between governance and business ethics, as proxied by diversity management (DM), and financial reporting quality, as proxied by the magnitude of earnings management (EM). The level of DM and governance quality are measured in accordance with the ratings of Jantzi Research (JR), a leading provider of social and governance research for institutional investors. This DM score is part of an index developed by JR that investment managers use to integrate DM criteria into their investment decisions. As expected, a negative relation between corporate DM development and financial reporting quality is found while controlling for other factors known in the literatures on governance and accounting choices to affect earnings quality. Despite some caveats presented in conclusion, this study contributes to the ethics, governance, and financial reporting literatures by studying the dynamics between governance and ethics in the prevention of EM.     

Threshold effects in the patent-growth relationship: a PSTR approach for 60 developed and developing countries

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes whether there is a threshold effect in the innovation-growth relationship. Using data from the period 2008–2017, we perform an analysis using 60 countries in the whole sample and a split-sample analysis in which we separate developed countries (36) from developing countries (24). The results for the panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model indicate that there is a threshold effect in the innovation-growth relationship. We find that below the threshold, the effect of innovation measured by the number of patents is not significant for developed and developing countries. However, surpassing the optimal threshold, the effect becomes positive only for the whole sample and developed countries. Furthermore, findings also indicate that research and development expenditure, domestic and foreign investments stimulate economic growth.