Modeling farmers’ decisions on tea varieties in Vietnam: a multinomial logit analysis

This article analyzes households’ choice on tea varieties in Vietnam by using a multinomial logit model. The modeling takes into account the issue of unobserved individual heterogeneity and the endogeneity of some explanatory variables (use of chemical and organic fertilizers). The results show that important factors influencing the decision to adopt one type of tea varieties include income, age, household size, farming contract, and use of organic fertilizers, but also membership of professional associations such as the Tea Association and the Farmers Union.     

The impact of minimum wages on employment of low‐wage workers

This study provides empirical evidence on the impact of a minimum wage increase on employment of workers in the formal sector who have wages below the minimum level in Vietnam. Using the difference‐in‐differences with propensity score matching and the Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys of 2004 and 2006, the article finds that the minimum wage increase in 2005 reduced the proportion of workers having a formal sector job among low‐wage workers. Most workers who lost formal sector jobs became self‐employed.     

ALTERNATIVE WEIGHTING APPROACHES TO COMPUTING INDEXES OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY

This paper compares the weighting schemes in the traditional, principal component and dynamic factor approaches to summarizing information from a number of component variables. To facilitate the comparison, we propose a framework to discuss the approaches with respect to their implied loadings in a latent variable model. We also propose a way to transform the dynamic factor index into an analogous index which is a weighted average of the components. The framework shows the strengths and weakness of the alternative weighting schemes and the sense in which the dynamic factor approach has the advantage of capturing both the significance and the variability of the components.     

The impact of governance and transparency on firm investment in Vietnam

A large literature asserts a causal relationship between the quality of economic governance and economic performance. However, attempts to establish such a link at an aggregate level have met with considerable methodological criticism. This paper seeks to overcome this limitation. We match a panel of Vietnamese enterprises from 2006 to 2010 with a unique panel dataset measuring sub‐national economic governance to estimate a relationship between local governance and private investment. We do not find a significant relationship between investment and most traditional forms of governance. However, there is one important exception – transparency, especially the public posting of planning documents, is strongly associated with higher investment across a range of different specifications. Our results have significant implications for policy, given the prevailing theory that changes in the quality of local economic governance will spur improved economic performance.     

Involuntary excess reserve and bankers’ remuneration: evidence from Chinese banks

This article analyses the effects of involuntary excess reserves (IER) on bankers’ remuneration and the penalty associated with bank risk-taking if discovered. The study finds that IER help conceal tail risks, improves bankers’ performance and remuneration. However, the risks once discovered result in heavy penalties on bankers’ remuneration. The study extends the agency theory to the context where banks hold large IER.     

Advertising Benefits from Ethical Artificial Intelligence Algorithmic Purchase Decision Pathways

Journal of Business Ethics - Artificial intelligence (AI) has dramatically changed the way organizations communicate, understand, and interact with their potential consumers. In the context of this...     

Innovation in Labour Organisation and Social Conditionality: Implications for Farm Advisory Services

There is growing concern about the evolution of working conditions for employees on European farms. In the new Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), financial support to farmers will soon be subject to a social conditionality clause. As a result of this change in CAP regulations, in this paper we ask if the need for specific advice can already be foreseen? Examining recent investigations that focused on new forms of labour organisations on farms can help to answer this question. Investigations were conducted across France, combining qualitative field studies with a comprehensive analysis of statistical and administrative data. The results show a growing complexity of farm labour organisation that generates needs for new types of advice. In particular, an increasing proportion of the people working on farms are employed by another organisation (foreign and domestic service providers, employers’ alliances, etc.). The administrative data provides strong evidence of the scale of this trend which has little visibility in the agricultural census data. We should therefore be cautious about oversimplified representations of labour patterns at farm level. They can distort policy design, implementation and assessment by overlooking a part of the worker population and needs for new types of advice, including those that will be required to meet social conditionality requirements.     

Cultural distance and cross-border bank linkages

This study investigates the effect of cultural distance on global bank linkages using country-pair data for the period 1990–2013. We followed Schwartz (2006) to measure cultural distance, and employed the number of bank pairs involved in cross-border syndicated lending from the source to target countries as a measure of bank linkages. We found that cultural distance has a negative association with bank linkages. This effect is stronger in countries featuring higher informational asymmetries, as represented by weaker institutions, higher uncertainty, or revolution shocks. Our results hold even when employing alternative measures of bank linkages and cultural distance, and when considering the potential endogeneity of cultural distance.     

Environmental performance,sustainability, governance and financial performance: Evidence from heavily polluting industries in China

This study seeks to contribute to the existing business strategy and the environment literature by examining the effect of governance structures on Chinese firms' environmental performance, and consequently ascertain the extent to which the financial performance–environmental performance nexus is moderated by governance mechanisms. Using a sample of Chinese companies from heavily polluting industries over a 5-year period, our baseline findings suggest that, on average, board size and governing board meetings are positively associated with Chinese firms' environmental performance, whilst board independence and gender diversity have positive, but insignificant association with firms' environmental performance. Our evidence suggests further that the examined internal governance mechanisms have a mixed moderating effect on the link between financial performance and environmental performance. Our findings have important implications for company executives, environmental activists, policy-makers, and regulators. Our results support insights drawn from agency, resource dependence, stakeholder, and legitimacy theories.     

Environmental proactivity,competitive strategy,and market performance: The mediating role of environmental reputation

This article examines the impact of small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) proactive environmental strategy on market performance through the mediating mechanism of environmental reputation. In addition, we investigate the potential moderating role of competitive strategies on the environmental reputation-market performance nexus. Data were collected from 223 SMEs. Using the hierarchical multiple regression analysis, the results show that a proactive environmental strategy positively enhances environmental reputation. Also, the influence of proactively environmental strategy on market performance is mediated by environmental reputation. In addition, our findings show the relationship between environmental reputation and market performance is greater for firms that adopt the differentiation strategy but not significant for firms adopting the low-cost and integrated strategies. Our study offers several theoretical and practical implications.