SPAC merger announcement returns and subsequent performance

Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are created to raise capital and then find non-listed operating companies with which to merge. While most of the extant research has focused on SPAC initial public offerings, we study what happens when SPACs announce business combinations. Our analysis of 236 ‘deSPACs’ completed between January 2012 and June 2021 in the United States documents an average short-term announcement return of +7.4% and a 1-year abnormal return of −14.1% (−18.0% over 2 years) for public investors beginning from the merger announcement. Short-term returns decrease with longer times from initial public offering until announcement.     

ICT diffusion in public administrations and business dynamics: Evidence from Italian municipalities

Public administrations have been adopting information and communication technologies (ICT) to transform their internal organization and provide better public services to citizens and firms. However, the external benefits, despite being deemed relevant, have been empirically overlooked. We first explore the relation between ICT diffusion in public administrations and business demography at the municipal level by studying the Italian context. Our results show that ICT diffusion in the PA contributes to significantly reducing the death rate of firms and boosting their turnover rate. The adoption of ICT in the PA also exerts a positive impact on the firm birth rate, although it is not statistically significant. These results shed light on the importance of promoting e-government and framing coherent digital agendas as public instruments for supporting entrepreneurship and regional economic development.     

Bilateral trade of cultural goods

International trade flows of cultural goods have grown rapidly over the last decades and their liberalization will be an important issue of future multilateral trade negotiations. In this paper, we focus on bilateral trade in cultural goods and investigate its determinants. Furthermore, we use trade in cultural goods as a proxy for countries’ cultural proximity and study if countries with proximate cultural tastes have more intense bilateral exchanges. Our estimations show a positive and significant influence of cultural flows on overall trade, suggesting that regulations fostering domestic cultural creation might have impacts going beyond what is generally expected.     

Signaling in science-based IPOs: The combined effect of affiliation with prestigious universities,underwriters, and venture capitalists

This paper studies the combined effect of affiliation with prestigious universities, underwriters, and venture capitalists on the valuation of biotech ventures at IPO and their post-IPO performance. We argue that affiliation to a prestigious university provides the affiliated firm with a quality signal in the scientific domain. The pure quality signaling effect of the affiliation is isolated from the substantive benefits it provides by performing a difference-in-difference approach based on the scientific reputation of scientists in firms' upper echelons. The signal is stronger the weaker is the scientific reputation of scientists of the focal IPO-firm and is additive to those provided by prestigious venture capitalists and underwriters. Results for a sample of 254 European biotech ventures that went through an IPO between 1990 and 2009 confirm our predictions.     

The state-of-the-art and future research directions in bequest fundraising by nonprofit organizations: A systematic literature review

The topic of fundraising is garnering increased attention from nonprofit practitioners due to the worldwide growth of the nonprofit sector and the subsequent competition for private funds. Despite this surge, academic literature on fundraising and bequest fundraising, in particular, has remained mainly limited to narrow aspects of the discipline. Based on a systematic review of literature published over the past 25 years, we synthesize various research perspectives into a comprehensive framework of studies linking the different issues highlighted by the authors. The purpose of this article is to consolidate the state of academic research on bequest fundraising by not-for-profit organizations. The literature review underscores how research efforts have not paid much attention to bequest fundraising from the NPO's perspective, although as it has become an increasingly important source of income for charitable organizations. The majority of studies focus on the Donor's perspective, striving to understand what drives the desire to leave a charitable bequest. The findings of the SLR show a gap in the knowledge of NPOs' internal mechanisms concerning the particular topic of charitable bequests; from these insights, the future research directions are proposed.     

Extinction accounting and accountability: Empirical evidence from the west European tissue industry

Recently, human activities are more and more invasive with respect to biodiversity. Several studies highlighted the key role played by accountants in contributing to the development of tools able to support company in assessing, reporting, and disseminating, as well as accomplishing, the preservation of natural species and ecosystems (King and Atkins, 2016). Corporate reporting of environmental information might increase the credibility of forest certifications, given that some scholars argued that certified forests are not often run, in a sustainable way. Moreover, certifications sometimes cover harmful forest practices (Elad, 2014) and do not ensure a good quality of environmental reporting and performance. The research question therefore intends to explore how extinction accounting and accountability (EAA) is able to reflect ex post the company's business strategy and, at the same time, influence ex ante its formulation by easing the prevention of deforestation risk and addressing the issue of credibility through specific actions. In more detail, the “Emancipatory Framework for Extinction Accounting and Accountability” (EFEAA) (Atkins and Maroun, 2018) was tested using content and interpretative analyses based on the reports inherent to top four companies working in West Europe in the tissue industry, where the preservation of forest heritage is a “compulsory route” for assuring the business sustainability, in terms of both raw material renewal and brand reputation. The findings highlighted the first attempt to carry out a qualitative research over the management of forest issues. In our study, companies tend to report advantages arising from the use of forest, but this kind of disclosure is too generic without providing evidence over the ecosystem services forests produce. Moreover, firm size affects the quantity and the quality of disclosure. At last, managerial implications and future research avenues are outlined and discussed.     

Completing the technology transfer process: M&As of science-based IPOs

This paper investigates the valuation and merger and acquisition (M&A) dynamics of the population of 254 biotech firms that went public in Europe between 1990 and 2009. Among these, we identify a high proportion (40%) of firms affiliated with a university or another public research organization. After controlling for intellectual capital and other possible determinants, we find that affiliation with a university is recognized as beneficial by investors. This affiliation enhances the valuation of the firms and the probability of being targeted in subsequent M&As, particularly in cross-border deals. We conclude that following the initial public offering acquisitions by incumbent firms are mechanisms to finalize the technology transfer process started in a research institute. Our findings allow us to derive implications for venture investors, academic entrepreneurs, university managers, and policymakers.