Where has all the skewness gone? The decline in high-growth (young) firms in the U.S.

The pace of business dynamism and entrepreneurship in the U.S. has declined over recent decades. We show that the character of that decline changed around 2000. Since 2000 the decline in dynamism and entrepreneurship has been accompanied by a decline in high-growth young firms. Prior research has shown that the sustained contribution of business startups to job creation stems from a relatively small fraction of high-growth young firms. The presence of these high-growth young firms contributes to a highly (positively) skewed firm growth rate distribution. In 1999, a firm at the 90th percentile of the employment growth rate distribution grew about 31 percent faster than the median firm. Moreover, the 90−50 differential was 16 percent larger than the 50−10 differential reflecting the positive skewness of the employment growth rate distribution. We show that the shape of the firm employment growth distribution changes substantially in the post-2000 period. By 2007, the 90−50 differential was only 4 percent larger than the 50−10, and it continued to exhibit a trend decline through 2011. The overall decline reflects a sharp drop in the 90th percentile of the growth rate distribution accounted for by the declining share of young firms and the declining propensity for young firms to be high-growth firms.     

Development of a service continance model with IT service antecedents

This study make provides service marketers, particularly those delivering information technology (IT) related service, with insight to the factors that consumers use when evaluating IT services. We develop a service continuance model that includes the antecedents of the consumer׳s decision to continue using information technology (IT) related services in a B2C service environment. Using data from the smart phone service consumers, a covariance-based structural equation modeling analysis is used to test the research model. Results from our empirical study suggest that the association between service usefulness and service continuation intention is fully mediated by service satisfaction. Though both system-service quality and customer-service quality are positively associated with service satisfaction, consumers of IT related services attach greater importance to system-service quality than to custom service quality. Likewise, the indirect path to service continuation intention is stronger in system-service quality than in customer-service quality. Our findings have practical implication for growing market share in IT related services by recognizing the importance of system-service quality in technology service delivery.     

Emptying the future: On the environmental politics of anticipation

Anticipation may be seen as structured by images and representations, an approach that has informed recent work in science and technology studies on the sociology of expectations. But anticipation, as a capacity or characteristic, is not solely manifested in the form of representations, even where such representations of the ‘not yet’ are performative in nature. It also comprises material capacities, technological, biophysical and affective in nature. The politics of anticipation is shaped by how these symbolic and material capacities, and the forms of agency they make possible, are distributed. As anticipation is an environmentally distributed capacity, it is suggested that the politics of anticipation is also an environmental politics. A conceptual framework for analysing anticipation as comprised of environmental capabilities is introduced, and fleshed out using a case study of energy infrastructure planning from the UK. Key elements of this framework include the concepts of anticipatory assemblages and future horizons or ‘styles’ of anticipation. Working through the case study as an empirical example of a conflict concerning the politics of anticipation and of ‘environments’, it is demonstrated how the relationships between styles of anticipation are materially constitutive of such conflicts.     

Herding behavior in the Pakistan stock exchange: Some new insights

This study attempts to examine the presence of herding behavior in the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). The novel contribution of this paper is that it investigates the herding phenomenon from a large number of facets such as herding of firms towards market, herding of firms towards industry portfolios, herding of industry portfolios towards market, herding in mostly traded stocks and in large and small stocks, and herding in the crisis period. For this purpose, we use the herding behavior model of Christie and Huang (1995) on the daily closing prices data of 609 firms listed on the PSX from January 2004 to December 2013. Results show that individual firms do not herd towards market index, except when the market experiences a negative return of 5%. However, when we sort firms into small and large groups based on median market capitalization, results indicate that large firms show herding behavior in extreme market movements. Further, we find that firms in several industries herd towards their industry portfolios. However, we find weak evidence of industry portfolios herding towards the market. We also segregate the impact of financial crisis of 2008 from normal times. These findings support results of our baseline estimation.     

Are the kinship networks a resource or a curse for small firms in post-communist countries? The case of Albania

Cross-sectional data are compiled from the 2002, 2005, 2008 and 2012 World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study databases for Albania. Based on responses from 1169 firms, the entrepreneurs’ kinship networks are found to influence firm activity in a positive and negative way. The positive contribution occurs through employment, be it formal or informal. The persisting impact of the kinship networks fades away, and business and friendship networks have gained importance in recent years.     

Corruption in agricultural processing firms: A comparison of cooperatives and investor-owned firms

This paper examines managerial corruption in cooperatives (co-ops) and investor-owned firms (IOFs), including its impact on prices and farmer welfare. Even when co-op managers have greater incentives to engage in corruption because of the co-op's larger production, the resulting corruption is not sufficient to offset the competitive effect that co-ops exert vis-à-vis IOFs. This conclusion holds regardless of the functional form of the production function, the farm input supply curve, and the demand curve for the processed product. In addition to showing the robustness of the competition effect, the paper provides a highly flexible modeling framework that can be used to examine other co-op behavior questions.     

Successful eco‐innovators: Exploring the association between open inbound knowledge strategies and the performance of eco‐innovative firms

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the association between open inbound knowledge strategies and the performance of eco‐innovative firms in the food and beverage industry. We propose a mixed framework based on the eco‐innovation literature and the open innovation approach. We consider the characteristics in a traditional sector based upon a resource‐based perspective. Three types of firms are distinguished in terms of their sales growth in the Spanish food industry from the least to the most successful eco‐innovators. Using multinomial logistic regression models, it is shown that the diversity of collaborators (breadth of external sources of knowledge) and joint adoption of product and process eco‐innovations are positively associated with the probability of achieving high sales growth. Moreover, we find an inverted U‐shaped relationship between the breadth of the external search and firm performance, but only for the group of the most successful firms. Moreover, operational flexibility, knowledge‐based capabilities and company size are also positively related to the group of successful eco‐innovators.     

Entry and capital structure mimicking in concentrated markets: The role of incumbents’ financial disclosures

We examine whether the public availability of product market incumbents' financial disclosures leads to greater capital structure mimicking of incumbents by entrants. Exploiting a change in disclosure enforcement for German private firms in the mid-2000s, we find entrant-incumbent mimicking rises substantially in concentrated markets once incumbents' financial statements are publicly available. Additional tests exploring potential mechanisms are more consistent with interfirm learning underlying the effect than alternative channels. Our findings shed light on the effects of competitor financial statement disclosure on private firms’ initial financing decisions and highlight how capital structure dependencies among peer firms arise.     

A multivariate time series analysis of energy consumption,real output and pollutant emissions in a developing economy: New evidence from Nepal

Mountain economies will have to play a central role in attaining the global pursuit of green economic growth as crucial bearers of ecosystems goods and services. However, these economies are not adequately represented in the development policy debates in spite of their fundamental importance towards global sustainable development. This study examines the inter relationships between energy consumption, output and carbon emissions in a developing mountainous economy using an augmented Vector Autoregression model. Time-series data over the period 1975–2013 is studied applying a multivariate framework using population and gross fixed capital formation as additional variables for Nepal. Testing for Granger causality between integrated variables based on asymptotic theory reveals a long-run unidirectional Granger causality running from GDP to energy consumption, and a unidirectional Granger causality running from carbon emissions to GDP. We suggest that the government of Nepal can address energy poverty by accelerating the adoption energy conservation policies such as rationing energy consumption and energy efficiency improvements to narrow the energy supply-demand gap. The opportunity to promote the uptake of decentralised off-grid renewable technologies in remote areas and the large scale development of hydropower at the national level also needs to be prioritized. Our results remain robust across different estimators and contributes to an emerging literature on the nexus relationships between energy consumption, income and carbon emissions in mountainous developing economies.