Towards sustainable supply management: requisite governance and resilience capabilities

Sustainability entails avoiding net harm to natural or social systems while maintaining the buyer firm's economic performance over an extended time. Achieving this balance over the long term, however, may entail trade-offs. Existing literature falters at clarifying the roles of supply management (SM) in achieving effective trade-offs leading to a sustainable competitive advantage. This conceptual study aims to provide such clarification by exploring the necessary role of two contrasting aspects of SM resilience: engineering and ecological in making effective trade-offs. The proposed framework posits SM governance capabilities to determine SM engineering and ecological resilience and, ultimately, effective sustainability-related trade-offs. The study extends existing SM sustainability frameworks by introducing SM engineering and ecological resilience as the imperative of governance capabilities.     

Firm productivity and agglomeration economies: evidence from Egyptian data

This paper attempts to shed the light on the nexus between firms’ productivity and economies of agglomeration in Egypt. Using a large dataset of firms in 342 firms’ four-digit activities in 27 regions (62,108 firms), we introduce three measures of agglomeration which are urbanization or firm diversification measured by the number of firms by governorate, localization and specialization measured by the average productivity by governorate and sector (generating externalities and knowledge spillovers) and finally competition measured by the number of firm operating in the same governorate and the same sector. We find strong evidence for the existence of agglomeration in Egypt after controlling for firm age, location, economic activity and legal status. In the Egyptian context, productivity spillovers gained from agglomeration measures outweighed the negative effects of competition implied by congestion. The latter is chiefly due to the lack of good infrastructure. When regressions are run by firm size, location and activity, our main findings show first that micro and small firms are more likely to benefit from localization and diversification compared to medium and large firms. Service firms benefit more from high level of diversification while manufacturing firms gain more benefits from knowledge spillovers and specialization in Egypt.     

A new look at factors influencing total quality management failure: work process control or workforce control?

By drawing on multi-case data, there is some evidence to suggest that total quality management (TQM) effectiveness can be viewed as a direct function of the controlling mechanisms that senior managers created prior to TQM implementation. More importantly, control tools of TQM were not used by non-managerial employees, with which they could reduce variability or achieve uniformity; rather, they were regarded as a weapon used by their managers against them.     

Shopping online for goods vs. services: where do experiential features help more?

This study investigates how the type of offer sold online (goods vs. services) moderates the relationships between perceived experiential values and customers' attitudes towards the website. A sample of 107 e‐shoppers of services and 110 e‐shoppers of physical goods responded to a survey on their most recent e‐shopping experiences. Results support the majority of hypotheses. It was found that although offering experiential values on the site improves customers' attitudes for both physical goods and services websites, the impact is much stronger in the case of services. Theoretical and managerial contributions are discussed.     

Optimal reserve composition in the presence of sudden stops

We analytically derive optimal central bank portfolios in a minimum variance framework with two assets and transaction demands caused by sudden stops in capital inflows. In this model, transaction demands become less important relative to traditional portfolio objectives as debt to reserve ratios decrease. We empirically estimate optimal dollar and euro shares for 23 emerging market countries and find that optimal reserve portfolios are dominated by anchor currencies and, at current debt-to-reserve ratios, introducing transaction demand has a relatively modest effect for most countries. We find that, in general, the dollar acts as a safe haven currency during sudden stops for country specific and global sudden stops, increasing the optimal share of dollar bonds in central bank portfolios. Correspondingly, our model predicts that dollar shares should decline as debt-to-reserve ratios fall, as observed in recent data. We also find that the denomination of foreign currency debt has little importance for optimal reserve portfolios.     

The dynamics of university-industry-government relationships in Nanoscience: investigating the Triple-Helix differences between Iran and Switzerland

This study aims to find the differences between national and international relationships in Iran and Switzerland’s Nanoscience research between 2008–2015. The results show significant differences some of which are attributed to the general dichotomy of developed-developing countries like stronger University-Industry-Government relations in Switzerland; but others are not, especially those pertaining to bilateral relations. In summary, the Government-Industry relations in Switzerland are generally closer in this field because the emerging characteristics of Nanoscience call for more state intervention, even in the context of developed countries. Greater Government-University relations in Iran can be explained by referring to the structure of national innovation system of this country. However, the no significant differences between University-Industry relations result needs further research so that it may in turn lead to improvements of the triple-helix calculations. Lastly, some theoretical implications and further research directions are suggested at the end.     

Does tick size influence price discovery? Evidence from the Toronto Stock Exchange

We investigate the price discovery role of an exchange‐traded fund and the futures contract for the same market index. We find that the fund predicts the index in the subperiod after but not in the subperiod before a substantial decrease in the minimum tick size. The futures predict the index in both subperiods. The results are consistent with the view that the factors leading to successful price discovery do not depend on zero investment, as in futures markets, but do depend on a small tick size. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:49–66, 2003     

Optimal Entrepreneurial Financial Contracting

This paper studies the optimal financing (capital structure) of entrepreneurial activity in the context of risk-aversion by incorporating the deadweight costs of bankruptcy and taxes. Unlike the extreme debt ratio (corner solution) predicted by scholars using linear models, this paper provides unique interior results for risk-free as well as risky debt, irrespective of corporate taxes. The paper also shows the necessary and sufficient conditions for both forms of debt, and the pareto-optimality of one over the other. The important findings of this paper are: (i) the existence of an equilibrium, where the borrowing interest rate is greater than the lending rate, despite the violation of Fisher separation theorem (1930); (ii) wealth plays a critical role in determining the debt ratio and the equilibrium risk-free rate of interest, complementing the De Meza and Webb (1987 and 1999) studies; (iii) an explanation for the preferred stock and income bond puzzles, extending Fooladi et al. (1991) and McConnell and Schlarbaum (1991).     

Can Loan Valuation Adjustment (LVA) approach immunize collateralized debt from defaults?

This study focuses on structuring tangible asset backed loans to inhibit their endemic option to default. We adapt the pragmatic approach of a margin loan in the configuring of collateralized debt to yield a quasi‐default‐free facility. We link our practical method to the current Basel III (2017) regulatory framework. Our new concept of the Loan Valuation Adjustment (LVA) and novel method to minimize the LVA converts the risky loan into a quasi risk‐free loan and achieves value maximization for the lending financial institution. As a result, entrepreneurial activities are promoted and economic growth invigorated. Information asymmetry, costly bailouts and resulting financial fragility are reduced while depositors are endowed with a safety net equivalent to deposit insurance but without the associated moral hazard between risk‐averse lenders and borrowers.