Europe's Leading Cities – Success Factors and Policy Perspectives

In Europe, economic activity is concentrated more and more in the major urban centres. At the same time, these cities are in a competition with one another. Across Europe they are contending for investors and qualified workers and searching for the most successful path to a dynamic economic future. Which cities in Europe have made the greatest economic progress in the past? What are the factors that have made some cities more successful than others? And what action can cities take to achieve greater economic growth in the future?     

Integrated reporting: an international overview

This article analyses the determinants associated with the use of the Integrated Report (IR) as a corporate reporting model for sustainability information. IRs provide information regarding the use and interdependence of different company resources. The previous literature has identified determinants behind the presentation of IRs at the country level (legal system, investor protection, economic development, cultural characteristics) as well as at the company level (size, industry, verification of the sustainability report). Our work contributes to the literature by using a novel statistical approach that addresses the likelihood of the non‐independence of data: companies in the same country are more similar to one another than are companies from different countries. Our results confirm significant inter‐country variance, which may be partially explained by the existence of specific regulations and the individualism vs. collectivism dimension. Although we confirm the effect of company‐level determinants, our results do not support the role of specific variables tested as determinants.     

Erratum to: Corporate Socially Responsible Initiatives and Their Effects on Consumption of Green Products

This study extends previous literature on the association between Confucianism and corporate decisions by examining Confucianism’s influence on board gender diversity. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms during the period of 2001–2011 and geographic-proximity-based Confucianism variables, I provide strong and consistent evidence to show that Confucianism is significantly negatively associated with board gender diversity, suggesting that the proportion of women directors in the boardroom is significantly lower for firms surrounded by strong Confucianism atmosphere than for firms located in regions with weak Confucianism atmosphere. This finding also implies that Confucian philosophical system has important impacts on business ethics and women’s status in corporate governance. Moreover, GDP per capita, the proxy for economic development level in a province in which a firm is located, attenuates the negative association between Confucianism and board gender diversity. Above results are robust to different measures of Confucianism and board gender diversity and are still valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity between Confucianism and board gender diversity.     

Read my lips: The role of information transmission in multilateral reform design

Context-specific knowledge is crucial to crafting multilateral reform programs. Nonetheless local knowledge often consists of unverifiable information, thus the quality of countries' reports depends on the conflict of interests faced by the recipient and the multilateral. We compare the performance of a “delegation-scheme” against a “centralization-scheme.” We find that recipients' discretion in the choice of reforms (delegation) should only be increased when the countries' local knowledge is strictly more important than the multilateral's information. Conversely, a reduction in the conflict of interests may lead the multilateral in to allowing the recipient less freedom in designing reforms (centralization). Our empirical results support these theoretical predictions.     

Deutsche am Schweizer Arbeitsmarkt

Immer mehr hochqualifi zierte deutsche Staatsbürger arbeiten im Ausland. Dabei hat die Schweiz die USA als Hauptzielland abgel?st. Da der Bedarf an gut ausgebildeten Arbeitskr?ften in der deutschen Wirtschaft steigt, erh?lt die Abwanderung Hochqualifi zierter zunehmende Aufmerksamkeit in der Politik. Dieser Beitrag quantifi ziert die Wanderungsbewegungen in die Schweiz und zeigt, in welchen Bereichen und mit welchen Qualifi kationsniveaus die Deutschen dort besch?ftigt sind.     

Capital Cities in the New EU States—Economic Status Quo and Current Trends

In the course of the economic catching-up process of the new EU states, the capital cities of the countries in central and eastern Europe were the economically most successful regions in their countries. How distinct are economic disparities between the capitals and the rest of the countries today? What were the determinants of the related economic developments? And do current economic trends support the leading position of the capital cities in the new member states?      

Three Simple Techniques to Analyze a Complex Economic Phenomenon: The Case of Profits

This paper seeks to characterize the behavior of profits over the business cycle as a model for analyzing any economic series by a practicing business economist. It addresses three fundamental questions about profits that are common and critical to identifying the behavior of any macroeconomic series—mean-reversion, volatility, and trend. First, does profit growth over time exhibit mean-reverting behavior? Second, how volatile are profits, and does this volatility obscure the message of average profit growth? Third, how can we estimate a long-run trend growth component for profits and thereby separate profit cycles from its long-run trend growth component?     

Does issuing equity help R&D activity? Evidence from unlisted Italian high-tech manufacturing firms

This paper evaluates the causal effect of issuing equities on the probability that a firm engages in R&D activity. Equity is a better source of external finance than debt for innovation. It does not require collateral, does not exacerbate moral hazard problems connected with the substitution of high-risk for low-risk projects, quite common when using debt, and, unlike debt, does not increase the probability of bankruptcy; equity also allows investors to reap the entire benefit of the returns of successful innovative projects. This paper focuses on high-tech firms for which asymmetric information problems are more pervasive. Implementing an instrumental variable estimation, we find that issuing equity increases the probability that the firm has R&D expenditures by 30–40%. We detect considerable heterogeneity in this effect: the impact of issuing equity is significant only for small, young and more highly leveraged high-tech firms. We also find interesting evidence that issuing equity increases R&D expenditures in relation to sales.     

Taxation and Laffer Effects on Employment and Growth

Some dangerous short- and long-term ambiguities of fiscal policies arise from the belief that Laffer effects may be generated from deficit-financed tax cuts able to stimulate aggregate demand. However, even in a supply-side framework, fiscal illusion prevents a rational perception of the effectiveness of Laffer-oriented fiscal measures. The ambiguity of the Laffer effect led to an important series of studies of Francesco Forte, designed to disclose and empirically test its interactions with short- and long-term fiscal policies on gross domestic product (GDP) growth and on other relevant macroeconomic variables. We discuss, under the Laffer perspective, some of Francesco Forte’s studies related to fiscal policy effects on the labour market and GDP growth.