Daily news sentiment and monthly surveys: A mixed-frequency dynamic factor model for nowcasting consumer confidence

Policymakers, firms, and investors closely monitor traditional survey-based consumer confidence indicators and treat them as an important piece of economic information. To obtain a daily nowcast of monthly consumer confidence, we introduce a latent factor model for the vector of monthly survey-based consumer confidence and daily sentiment embedded in economic media news articles. The proposed mixed-frequency dynamic factor model uses a Toeplitz correlation matrix to account for the serial correlation in the high-frequency sentiment measurement errors. We find significant accuracy gains in nowcasting survey-based Belgian consumer confidence with economic media news sentiment.     

政府激励下的建筑废弃物资源化博弈研究

针对中国建筑废弃物持续增多、建筑原料匮乏等问题，运用动态博弈理论，构建建筑企业与建材企业的双寡头博弈市场，建立适应度函数并进行求解，分析政府奖惩制度对博弈双方策略选择的影响，并利用MATLAB软件进行仿真模拟。结果显示：政府因素在促进资源化发展的过程中具有重要作用；不同的奖惩力度对博弈双方策略的选择、演化速度影响不同；合适的政府奖惩力度对资源化发展具有推进作用，单一一方实现资源化会对另一方产生阻碍作用。因此政府需要从补贴和惩处两个方面同时加强管控，才能促使建筑企业和建材企业均选择资源化的策略，从而实现资源化发展。     

Historical social network analysis: Advancing new directions for international business research

Despite repeated calls for incorporating history in IB research, progress has been slow. The few existing IB studies utilizing historical approaches have relied mostly on historical narrative approaches. In addition, there is little methodological guidance on how to use historical methodologies in IB research. This article will highlight a growing methodological approach for consideration, one that demonstrates intersections across multiple disciplines through use of varied techniques, historical analysis and social network analysis (SNA) and source-bases (varied archival sources). This study will demonstrate the richness obtained from utilising historical source collections and the additional perspectives on transnational networks that can be obtained from analysing networks over longer periods. Specifically, we argue that the use of historical mixed methods SNA is suitable in addressing calls for contextual, longitudinal, multilevel, and processual explanations of IB phenomena.     

Managerial firms’ profitability,unions, and environmental taxes

This article examines how determining an optimal environmental tax in a Cournot duopoly with unionized labour markets and managerial firms departing from the strict profit-maximization. It is shown that firm-specific monopoly unions that set wages (1) reduce both the environmental tax and environmental damage and (2) counterintuitively, increase firms’ profitability when the abatement technology is not too “efficient”, and the public evaluation of environmental quality is sufficiently high. Within this framework, the work also develops the endogenous game played by firms that must choose between sales delegation (SD) and profit-maximization. Results show that the SD contract always emerges as the unique, deadlock sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium, thereby solving the (prisoner's) dilemma emerging in the related existing literature assuming a competitive labour market.     

Licensing cost-reducing innovations under supply function competition

In this paper, we study the licensing of cost-reducing innovations in a duopoly under supply function competition. We show that the innovator prefers fixed-fee licensing to no licensing if its cost advantage is not extremely large. Moreover, if its cost advantage is not extremely small, the innovator prefers fixed-fee licensing and mixed licensing to revenue-royalty licensing. This second result arises only because of our assumption that the cost functions are quadratic. We show that if the cost functions are linear and royalty payments are per unit of output, the innovator strictly prefers royalty licensing to fixed-fee licensing. We also show that in our model, consumer surplus is remarkably higher under any type of licensing than under no licensing. However, revenue-royalty licensing is slightly superior for consumers to the other two types of licensing and only so if the cost advantage of the innovator is sufficiently large.     

不同风险特征下国企混改对企业创新绩效的影响——资源效应与制度效应视角

国企混改对创新绩效的影响可以从资源效应与制度效应两个方面加以阐释：一方面，国企通过获得互补性资源提升创新能力；另一方面，国企通过融合非国有股东制度活力激发创新动机。基于2013—2019年A股国有上市公司数据验证混改程度对国企创新效率的影响关系，并证实不同内部经营风险与外部竞争风险下，国有股比例对创新绩效具有差异化影响。结果发现：国有股权比例较低的股权结构，有利于发挥非国有资本的差异化制度优势，国有股权比例较高的股权结构，有利于发挥国有股东的资源优势。国企经营风险过高或市场竞争风险过低，能够强化国有股权与创新绩效的U型关系。分组研究结果显示，国有非制造企业股权与创新绩效呈U型关系，而国有制造企业中二者关系不显著。结论可为分类推进国企混改，提升国企创新绩效提供参考。     

宜控还是宜参？国有股权与民营企业双元创新：逆向混改视角

国有资本逆向入股民营企业追求“国民”间长期合作而不是短期机会主义行为。基于引入国有股权的民营上市公司数据进行实证检验，结果表明，参股性国有股权对民营企业渐进式创新和颠覆式创新均具有促进作用，而控股性国有股权则不利于民营企业双元创新。进一步分析发现，市场化程度越高，参股性国有股权对民营企业双元创新能力的促进作用越强，而控股性国有股权对民营企业双元创新能力的抑制作用越弱。市场化程度对国有股权的创新效应具有“扬长避短”之效。在采用替换核心变量和变量滞后取值等方法进行稳健性检验后，上述结论依然成立。结论可为推进国有资本监管改革和深化混合所有制改革提供理论与实证依据。     

信息获取能力会影响果农的销售渠道选择吗

进入数字经济时代后，信息逐步成为影响农户行为决策的关键因素。本研究基于行为转变理论和计划行为理论，利用来自中国黄土高原优势产区1074 户微观数据，通过运用Ordered Probit 模型，实证检验信息获取能力对果农销售渠道选择的影响，并进一步运用条件混合过程估计法（CMP 方法）对模型进行了内生性检验。研究结果表明：（1）当前，传统销售渠道的中间商（果贩）仍然是果农销售农产品的主要方式；（2）信息获取能力对果农销售渠道的选择有显著正向影响，即信息工具使用水平对果农进入市场壁垒更高的销售渠道具有促进作用；（3）信息获取能力正向显著影响新、中生代苹果户群体对销售渠道的选择。因此，政府应在完善农村信息基础设施和信息服务体系的同时，优化升级农产品流通体系，重点对新生代农户开展信息技术培训，提升其信息获取能力。     

Corporate social responsibility and market entry

Is the decision of firms to pursue social interest and promote social progress philanthropic or motivated by strategic reasons? Using a simple Spence–Dixit entry model game with homogeneous goods, this paper studies the possible anticompetitive effect of the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the form of “consumer friendliness” (i.e., firms’ attention to the welfare of consumers). It is shown that, when the market becomes contestable, the incumbent can select to adopt CSR to hamper to a greater extent the potential entrant, regardless of its choice to engage in CSR activities. In other words, CSR can become a strategic barrier to entry.     

R&D subsidies in a duopoly market with outsourcing to the rival firm

This paper investigates the effects of a public uniform R&D subsidy policy in a downstream duopoly market in which a nonintegrated firm, which faces a lower marginal cost, outsources inputs from its vertically integrated rival. The findings show that, in this market structure, such a policy has relevant effects largely differentiated between downstream competitors, as it can significantly modify the relative market shares and profitability of competing firms. Unlike the standard Cournot setting augmented with R&D, results show that the subsidy policy can have different (counterintuitive) effects on R&D investments, output, and profits of the vertically integrated producer and the vertically separated firm, which hold in both cases of exogenous and endogenous (optimal) subsidy. Our findings offer some testable implications and suggest that a subsidy policy in a market with outsourcing to a rival should also consider the different effects of this approach on competitors.