The impact of Czech privatization methods on enterprise performance incorporating initial selection-bias correction1

Governments with transitional economies have applied different privatization methods, from an almost free distribution to the direct sale of state assets. While a free distribution was believed to ensure the political feasibility of the programme and its fairness, direct sales, (or more generally, standard privatization methods) had a significant advantage in creating concentrated ownership structures as the prerequisite to corporate control and restructuring. Many economists believe that the two goals of mass privatization, political feasibility and the creation of proper ownership incentives, contradict each other and recent empirical comparisons of enterprises seem to support this view. However, all empirical works have been based on the weak assumption that privatization methods were applied on a randomly selected sample of enterprises, which then allowed for a direct comparison between these enterprises. Our main claim is that governments actually selected enterprises non-randomly and therefore, the resulting selection-bias must be incorporated into the analyses. To show this, we apply a Heckman two-step regression method on a sample of 559 Czech enterprises. The main point of this paper then is that performance is influenced by the selection process and that the combination of vouchers with outsider owners is preferred over 100 per cent voucherization.     

I. Allgemeine Wirstchaftslehre

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Effects of research experience of respondents

Unfavorable past experience as participant in social research may lead subjects to refuse to participate in subsequent investigations or to respond in a biased way. The results indicate that persons with multiple research experience either do participate early in the survey campaign, or probably not at all. Respondents without research experience or without recent research experience are more prone to refuse and need the encouragement of follow-up contacts. Although research experience (as measured by the number of times one has previously participated in research) was related with responses on substantial items significantly more than chance, and thus may cause response bias, the extent of the bias was not large.     

III. Weltwirtschaft und wirtschaft einzlner länderund und gebiete

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Staatslexikon

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Staatslexikon

     

Improving companies' impacts on sustainable development: A nexus approach to the SDGS

Companies play a decisive role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, most of the world's sustainable development challenges are interconnected and systemic in their nature. How can companies ensure that their strategies effectively contribute to sustainable development? This interdisciplinary paper draws from the social-ecological systems, corporate sustainability, and sustainability sciences literatures, in order to introduce a nexus approach to corporate sustainability. A nexus approach induces companies to assess and manage their positive and negative interactions with the SDGs—which may arise directly and indirectly—in an integrated manner. Instead of treating SDGs as isolated silos, a nexus approach aims to advance multiple SDGs simultaneously (creating “co-benefits”) while reducing the risk that contributions to one SDG undermine progress on another (avoiding “trade-offs”). Through managing the interactions between the SDGs, a nexus approach to corporate sustainability enables companies to improve their societal and environmental impacts. This nexus approach is a step towards developing a theory of sustainability management that helps companies improve their impacts on sustainable development. Such systemic corporate sustainability strategies are sorely needed to drive progress towards achieving the SDGs and to safeguard companies from “SDG-washing.”