Is environmental labeling certification a “green passport” for firm exports in emerging economies? Evidence from China

As the demand for more environmentally friendly products continues to increase, environmental label certification (ELC), as a voluntary environmental practice (VEP), has become a commonly used strategy by firms responding the green demands of the international market. While ELC is playing an increasingly important role in global trade, how ELC affects firms’ exports, especially how it affects the exports of those firms in emerging economies, remains unknown. This study explores the impact of ELC on firms’ exports. Insights are provided from resource-based views (RBV) by analysing China's A-share listed manufacturing firms to estimate the impact of China's ELC on exports. Our empirical results show that ELC can promote firms’ exports, because ELC emphasizes firms to reduce pollutant from the source, thereby, brings about cost advantage and green product differentiated advantage to boost high-quality exports. Using a series of robustness tests, we provide corroborating evidence for our hypotheses. The export-enhancing effect of ELC is impacted by the institutional context of emerging economies, as specialized market intermediaries and greater openness to the global market strengthen the export-enhancing effect of ELC. This research not only contributes to the literature, but also provides a reference for policy-makers and managers in using ELC to develop green trade.     

Growth and innovation during economic shocks: A case study for characterising growing small firms

Why do some firms successfully grow while others are severely affected by economic shocks? Does innovation play any role in this? By adopting a multi-theoretical approach, this study explores the characteristics of firms that grew during the Great Recession (2008–2009). The data were collected from 12 small firms located in Finland, Ireland and the UK. Furthermore, this study elaborates the entrepreneurship and management literature by characterising the firms that thrived during the recession. The findings reveal the uniform characteristics of four grower types: gazelles, high relative growers, high absolute growers and high growers of both. It can be concluded that there are more homogeneous characteristics within the grower profiles than across the profiles, suggesting that firms growing during the Great Recession comprise an internally heterogeneous group of businesses. We found that innovation is the only common characteristic of firms that grew during these economic shocks.     

Interdependent capital structure choices and the macroeconomy

This study shows that capital structure choices of US corporations are interdependent across time. We follow a two-step estimation approach. First, using a large cross-section of firms we estimate year-by-year average capital structure choices, i.e., the average firm’s percentage of new funding that is secured through debt, its term composition, and the percentage of new equity represented by retained earnings. Second, these time series are included in a Factor Augmented Vector Autoregressive model in which three factors representing real economic activity, expected future funding conditions, and prices, are included. We test for the interdependence between optimal capital structure decisions and for the influence exerted by macroeconomic conditions on these decisions. Results show there is a hierarchical order in which firms make capital structure decisions. They first decide on the share of debt out of total new funding they will hire. Conditional on this they decide on the term of their debt and on their earnings retention policy. Of outmost importance, macroeconomic factors are key for making capital structure decisions.     

工业机器人应用促进了“两业融合”发展吗?——来自中国制造企业投入服务化的证据

本文利用微观企业数据和区分中国贸易方式的投入产出表,测算了高度细化的企业投入服务化指标,进而考察了工业机器人应用对制造业和服务业“两业融合”的影响。结果表明,工业机器人应用显著促进了中国制造企业的服务增加值率,然而这一促进效应更多是通过推动企业使用国外服务、抑制企业使用国内服务实现的。异质性分析显示,工业机器人应用对“两业融合”的影响主要集中在加工贸易企业、东部地区企业、外资和港澳台企业、劳动密集型和技术密集型企业。从作用机制看,工业机器人应用对“两业融合”的影响主要通过促进技术创新、延长生产链条和提高生产效率来实现,而人力资本投资则存在一定的负向替代作用。最后,本文还讨论了工业机器人应用影响“两业融合”中的“要素替代效应”和“行业扩散效应”。本文结论表明,工业机器人应用对“两业融合”的影响并非是“局部性”的,有必要统筹协调相关政策和制度,更好地促进现代产业体系的加快构建和中国经济的高质量发展。     

The effects of an environmental accountability system on local environmental governance and firms’ emissions

The Chinese central government introduced the environmental accountability system (EAS) policy in 2006 to encourage local governments to execute environmental policies appropriately. However, the effects of this EAS policy have not been investigated at the firm level. In this study, we first measured the environmental governance intensity of local governments by calculating the environment word portion (EWP) of the annual governments’ work reports and found that local governments increased their efforts after the EAS policy implementation. We then constructed a continuous difference-in-difference (DID) strategy to estimate the effect of the EAS on firms’ emission and found that firms significantly reduced their sulphur dioxide (SO₂) emission under the regulation intensity of local governments after the EAS policy. The reductions are mainly because of the private, non-export, labour- and capital-intensive firms. The EAS policy may encourage firms to reduce coal usage, design more products, decrease capacity investment and even withdraw from the market, thus reducing pollutant emission. Finally, we tested firms’ response in various polluting sectors and found that the EAS policy may cause local governments to fail in distinguishing low pollution sectors from high pollution sectors.     

Unveiling the global focus-performance relationship in family firms: The role of the board of directors

Drawing on the resource-based view, this study examines how board composition and board tasks affect the relationship between the firm’s global focus and performance in private family firms. Based on a sample of 234 Belgian private family firms, our empirical analyses reveal that nonfamily involvement in the board attenuates the negative relationship between the firm’s global focus and performance. Furthermore, our results show that the global focus-performance link turns positive at higher levels of board networking and advisory tasks, whereas board control task has no significant effect. Ultimately, these findings underscore the board of directors as a key governance contingency, highlighting its important role in overcoming the challenges of global expansion in private family firms.     

夫妻共同持股、公司治理与家族企业社会责任

婚姻和家庭关系可以通过家庭成员的嵌入而深刻影响家族企业的公司治理及战略决策。文章采用手工搜集的2010-2018年中国A股上市家族企业实际控制人及其配偶持股数据，检验了夫妻共同持股的治理模式对家族企业社会责任的影响。结果发现：相比丈夫单独持股企业，夫妻共同持股家族企业的社会责任表现更差，其CSR总得分与CSR评级均显著更低。机制检验表明，夫妻共同持股时，双方家族成员会更多的介入企业经营治理并担任董监高职务、企业内部控制质量更差、大股东利益侵占更加严重，低效的公司治理水平抑制了家族企业的社会责任表现。文章结论在采用工具变量法、PSM、安慰剂检验、实际控制人婚变等一系列稳健性检验后仍然成立。文章研究表明女性“她力量”未能在家族企业社会责任领域发挥决定性作用。