Boards and Sustainability: the Contingent Influence of Director Interlocks on Corporate Environmental Performance

This paper highlights the importance of a firm's board with respect to sustainability issues by analysing the relationship between director interlocks, i.e. directors who simultaneously belong to the boards of directors of several companies, and a firm's environmental performance. The previous literature has focused on the influence of firm‐level resources on corporate environmental performance. This study utilizes insights from a resource‐based view and research on social capital to demonstrate that the environmental performance of a firm is also influenced by the difficult‐to‐imitate capabilities that are embedded in the network relationships of its directors. Our results support a contingency perspective of the social capital theory that finds that director interlocks are positively connected with the environmental performance of a firm in two specific situations: (1) when the firm is linked to a larger parent company and (2) in cases of low and high levels of interlock diversity. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Downward nominal wage rigidity in Canada: Evidence from micro‐level data

We assess the importance of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) in Canada using employer‐level administrative data from the major wage settlements (MWS) and household‐based survey data from the Survey of Labour Income Dynamics (SLID). MWS data cover large unionized firms in Canada, while SLID is a rich rotating panel representative of the employed population in Canada. Combining both sources of information allows for an extensive analysis of DNWR in the Canadian labour market. We find large shares of wage freezes and smaller shares of wage cuts in both MWS and SLID. Shares of freezes are higher at lower CPI inflation rates, based on provincial data. These observations are consistent with the presence of DNWR. DNWR in Canada appears to be larger than in other countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and European countries. The incidence of DNWR is heterogeneous across firms’ and workers’ characteristics. Wages report less DNWR over longer horizons.     

Urban entrepreneurship through art-based interventions:unveiling a translation process

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the conditions under which urban entrepreneurship can develop through art-based interventions. Drawing on two contrasting case studies (Civic City in France, Fieris Fééries in Belgium) and taking actor-network theory (ANT) as a starting analytical point, we outline the tensions involved in the implementation process of such interventions. We focus on the capacity of urban entrepreneurs to engage different relevant stakeholders (artists, local government and citizens), establish connections between disconnected worlds that are likely to challenge existing institutional structures and eventually create novelty. We identify these actors as ‘translators’. The paper shows that when urban entrepreneurs play an active translation role consistently over time, art-based interventions can have a substantial impact on urban regeneration.     

A nearly optimal auction for an uninformed seller

This paper describes a nearly optimal auction mechanism that does not require previous knowledge of the distribution of values of potential buyers. The mechanism we propose builds on the new literature on the elicitation of information from experts. We extend the latter to the case where the secret information shared by the experts–potential buyers in our model–can be used against them if it becomes public knowledge.     

Does foreign ownership matter?

The paper both compares productivity of Russian firms that have foreign direct investments with productivity of fully domestically owned firms and analyses spillovers from foreign‐owned firms to domestic firms. Foreign firms are found to be more productive than domestic ones, but productivity of the former is negatively affected by slow progress of reforms in the regions where they operate. It is also found that there are positive spillovers from foreign‐owned firms to domestic firms in the same industry, but negative effects on domestic firms that are vertically related to foreign‐owned firms. The stock of human capital in regions where foreign firms operate is one of the factors which help domestic firms to benefit from the entry of foreign firms.     

Researching migrant entrepreneurship communities: a reflection through collaborative (auto)ethnographies

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - In this paper we offer a scholarly reflection about the value of ethnographic methods for studying migrant entrepreneurship; this reflection...     

Unconventional monetary policy and the dollar–euro exchange rate: further evidence from event studies

New evidence is presented on the impact on the US dollar–euro (USD–EUR) exchange rate of the unconventional monetary policy conducted by the US Federal Reserve (FED) and the European Central Bank (ECB). To that end, we employ an event study approach using daily the USD–EUR exchange rate for the period from 2 January 2007 to 31 January 2015. Our results indicate that the announcement and subsequent implementation of such measures by the ECB would have caused in general an appreciation of the dollar, while those by the FED would have caused a depreciation of the dollar.     

The changing composition of academic majors and wage dynamics: Beyond mean returns

This paper studies the effects of the changing composition of academic majors during expansion of higher education on the dynamics of wage distribution. Using a unique dataset constructed from open-ended responses in the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, we conduct a structural analysis of wage distribution dynamics for higher education graduates over 2002–2016. In addition to the standard mean wage estimations across majors we explore within-major and across-cohort variation, as well as major-specific permanent and transitory variance components and their time paths.The results suggest that changing wage inequality among university graduates is due to both changes in skill prices and wage shocks induced by economic fluctuations. Moreover, variation in skill prices relates to equilibrium effects induced by changes in the supply of graduates specialized in different fields. Uneven expansion in certain majors induces labor market saturation and leads to an increase in the wage variance of graduates from the fastest growing majors. The estimation results also show the importance of accounting for within-major heterogeneity across cohorts, which could reflect differences in student ability distribution, changes in academic content, and changes in educational quality over time. Finally, this study suggests that focusing only on mean wage returns, without assessing the distributional implications, might substantially understate the labor market impact of the changing major composition.     

Approximate value-at-risk calculation for heterogeneous loan portfolios: Possible enhancements of the Basel II methodology

This paper presents three possible methods by which the credit value at risk estimates coming from the Basel II IRB approach can be significantly improved upon. The feasibility of the suggested approaches is substantiated by applying it to an exemplary model portfolio.     

Airline Codeshare Alliances

The paper juxtaposes the challenges that airline codeshare alliances create for analytical information systems on the one hand and their motivation from a marketing perspective on the other. The authors review the state-of-the-art literature on potential marketing benefits and analyze the impact on airline planning systems. In this regard, revenue management systems are of particular interest. Based on a simulation study, the authors infer a severe impact of decentralized codeshare controls as currently widely implemented in the industry on revenue management performance. In the scenarios examined, complementary codesharing reduces alliance-wide revenues by up to 1 %. Losses increase when a carrier experiences high local demand or a high degree of codeshare demand, and disseminate over the whole network. Virtual codeshares also cause losses of 0.3 % to 1.5 % depending on the discount level offered by the marketing carrier and on the demand structure. Finally, the authors formulate a set of managerial implications based on these findings.