Time will tell: interaction effects of franchising percentages and age on franchisor mortality rates

Drawing from franchising and organizational ecology literatures, we hypothesize that franchising provides benefits to franchisors by addressing issues of adverse selection, moral hazard, holdup, obsolescence, and senescence. We assert that, over time, these benefits increase such that the more a franchise chain utilizes franchisees rather than company-owned outlets, the greater the franchising benefits accrue to the franchisor. We test our propositions by studying the mortality rates of 393 franchise organizations in the U.S. automotive products and services sector over the 21-year time period 1985–2005, using proportional hazard analysis. We find that older franchise chains with higher percentages of franchised units have lower mortality rates than older franchise chains with lower percentages of franchised units. We also find that younger franchise chains with higher percentages of franchised units have higher mortality rates than younger franchise chains with lower percentages of franchised units.     

Meta-analysis categorization of EU countries in the context of corporate income tax

The corporate income tax is a corporate tax which aggregates economic, political and social aspects. The paper focuses on identification, analysis and assessment of homogenous EU countries groups, which show the common characteristics in the field of corporate taxation based on the selected segmentation criteria. Within the statistical meta-analysis in this paper some several methodical approaches were used: variants of agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis, k-means method and fuzzy c-means and also multidimensional scaling method are implemented and compared. The purpose of this research is, in the context of theoretical implication to provide a synthesis of knowledge and empirical evidence about selected determinants of corporate taxation, and to verify the applicability of the clustering methods when gaining knowledge in the field of taxation. In the context of practical implication is the main purpose of this research the categorization of European countries into economically meaningful clusters, based on their similarity in corporate taxation, and to assess the convergence of European countries in corporate taxation. Results of provided cluster analysis are five groups of multidimensional objects with distinctive characteristics: nominal and effective corporate tax rate, economic performance and the level of debt.     

Dispersion in Dispersion: Measuring Establishment-Level Differences in Productivity

We describe new experimental productivity dispersion statistics, Dispersion Statistics on Productivity (DiSP), jointly produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Census Bureau, that complement the official BLS industry-level productivity statistics. The BLS has a long history of producing industry-level productivity statistics, which represent the average establishment-level productivity within industries when appropriately weighted. These statistics cannot, however, tell us about the variation in productivity levels across establishments within those industries. Dispersion in productivity across businesses can provide information about the nature of competition and frictions within sectors and the sources of rising wage inequality across businesses. DiSP data show enormous differences in productivity across establishments within industries in the manufacturing sector. We find substantial variation in dispersion across industries, increasing dispersion from 1997 to 2016, and countercyclical total factor productivity dispersion. We hope DiSP will enable further research into understanding productivity differences across industries and establishments and over time.     

The how and why of integrated reporting in a public health care organization: The stakeholders' perspective

Despite the widespread calls for in‐depth case studies on adoption of the International Integrated Reporting Council Framework, in practice, it appears to be underexplored, above all in the public sector. Our aim is to explore how and why a public health care organization (PHO) has chosen to adopt the practice of integrated reporting, and we then delve into whether the PHO's perception of the document's value coincides with that of the stakeholders, who are its recipients. Often, society's perception of value can differ considerably from an organization's. Thus, for our research purposes, a case study was examined, adopting a qualitative approach and action research methodology. Our findings demonstrate the centrality of the value created for patients and of the “normative” scenario that takes place during the implementation of an integrated report in a PHO. Moreover, the concept of legitimacy was found to be virtually synonymous with institutionalization.     

Technology and productivity growth

Business Economics - Establishment-level productivity within narrowly defined industries is widely dispersed. This productivity dispersion may arise because the process of adoption and diffusion of...