The impact of direct environmental,social, and governance reporting: Empirical evidence in European-listed companies in the agri-food sector

Companies are continuously pressured for the dissemination of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information, because of the constant debate on the issue of corporate sustainability, considered a critical and very important topic for society; despite this pressure, ESG's disclosure practices vary considerably from company to company, both in quantity and quality. The study aims to address the issue and verify the effectiveness of ESG reporting through the influence that the ESG disclosure has on profitability and value of listed European agri-food companies. The results obtained, studying a sample of 57 European-listed companies (EU28) in the agri-food sector observed in the period 2010–2018, show that the ESG disclosure practices of the companies impact corporate profitability; specifically, evidence is provided for the existence of a positive relationship between profitability and disclosure practices of strictly environmental and social information and a negative effect between company market value and disclosure practices relating to governance. These results suggest that greater transparency and accountability help to improve business profitability.     

How did the Great Recession Affect Gender Disparity in Europe? An Analysis by a Multidimensional Deprivation Approach

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses how the Great Recession affected the gender disparity in material and social deprivation in Europe. We propose multidimensional non-monetary indexes of absolute and relative (i.e. using peer comparisons) deprivations estimated on data from the European Quality of Life Survey for the waves 2007 and 2011. We find that the Great Recession decreased gender disparity over all the dimensions of deprivations. By applying a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, we estimate that this decline of gender gap has depended on a reduction of the difference in characteristics between genders that has more than offset an increase of gender discrimination.     

A fresh look at fiscal multipliers: one size fits it all? Evidence from the Mediterranean area

Following the adoption of important fiscal stimuli to fight the recent crisis, a large literature estimated fiscal multipliers. Focusing on an area particularly appealing, given its diversity and the diversity of the response of countries that compose it to the current crisis, namely the Mediterranean area, we unveil major disparities regarding the significance, sign and size of fiscal multipliers depending mainly on the economic characteristics, the type of multiplier, the time span and the type of fiscal stimulus. Evidence of such important heterogeneities highlights the need for better cooperation among countries, particularly regarding the design of fiscal policy. Failing to do so might divert public resources to ineffective fiscal policies in some countries, or, on the contrary, deprive other countries of potentially high benefits of appropriate fiscal policies, including a reliable tool for exiting the current crisis.     

Household Management Systems and Women’s Decision Making Within the Family in Europe

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes household management systems and their effect on intrahousehold gender differences in decision making in thirty European countries. The study considers five domains that reflect two types of decisions – time-consuming and frequent decisions like everyday shopping versus infrequent but important decisions like borrowing money or purchasing consumer durables. In time-consuming activities, the gender gap favors women in each system; for infrequent decisions, the gender gap is dependent on the way money is managed and the biggest gap is found in systems where resources are not pooled. This paper also investigates the role of distribution factors in shaping decision-making behavior. For time-consuming decisions, the higher the income (and education) of the woman compared to the man, the less likely she is to make the decisions. For infrequent activities, the higher the income of the woman compared to the man, the more likely she is to make the decisions.     

Asymptotic arbitrage with small transaction costs

We give characterizations of asymptotic arbitrage of the first and second kind and of strong asymptotic arbitrage for a sequence of financial markets with small proportional transaction costs λ _n on market n, in terms of contiguity properties of sequences of equivalent probability measures induced by λ _n -consistent price systems. These results are analogous to the frictionless case; compare (Kabanov and Kramkov in Finance Stoch. 2:143–172, 1998; Klein and Schachermayer in Theory Probab. Appl. 41:927–934, 1996). Our setting is simple, each market n contains two assets. The proofs use quantitative versions of the Halmos–Savage theorem (see Klein and Schachermayer in Ann. Probab. 24:867–881, 1996) and a monotone convergence result for nonnegative local martingales. Moreover, we study examples of models which admit a strong asymptotic arbitrage without transaction costs, but with transaction costs λ _n >0 on market n; there does not exist any form of asymptotic arbitrage. In one case, (λ _n ) can even converge to 0, but not too fast.     

Output effects of fiscal stimulus in Central and Eastern European countries

In spite of the rapidly growing research on fiscal multipliers over recent years, little evidence has been so far accumulated in developing and emerging economies. This paper investigates the nature and the size of fiscal multipliers in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Unlike most of the existing literature, we draw upon a panel vector error correction model, which appropriately captures the common long-term path of CEE countries, while allowing for different short-run dynamics, in an integrated setup. Our main results show that the spending multiplier is positive, but low on average. Moreover, its sign, significance and magnitude vary across CEE. Finally, both impulse and cumulative fiscal multipliers are sensitive to a wide range of CEE characteristics, including the exchange rate regime, the level of economic development, the fiscal stance and the openness degree.     

Interessenvertretung auf Medienmärkten aus Akteursperspektive

Given the rising importance of political advocacy in the media sector, both with respect to national and transnational (EU) media policy making, this article focuses on media lobbyists as a specific group of media policy actors. Based on existing research addressing lobbying in policy making in general, the article first discusses in how far media lobbyists are characterized by distinct attributes (e.?g., due to the societal function of media and the actors’ privileged access to the public). Empirically, the paper relies on structured interviews with nine German media lobbyists examining their professional identity and working practices. Results confirm findings from studies on lobbyists in general (e.?g., with respect to necessary professional skills, experts’ career and academic background) whereby media lobbyists’ privileged access to the public cannot be confirmed. Overall, this study’s findings shed light on a so far neglected group of actors in media policy making.     

Economic vulnerability and regional implications of a low carbon emissions future

Climate change, as well as associated mitigation efforts, will substantially disrupt some economies. Seemingly inevitable market and policy changes will push economies to transition away from reliance on industries with higher carbon emissions and bring transient economic impacts, especially in regions that are currently heavily reliant on such industries. This situation is not unusual in a global context. To underpin better‐informed decisions that enable a smoother economic transition to a low‐emissions future, we developed a ‘latent economic vulnerability to emissions reduction’ (LEVER) index, which maps and explores regions that are more likely to be economically impacted from climate change mitigation. Thus, this paper provides an analysis and discussion of the potential regional implications of a future low‐emissions economy, with the analysis contextualised for the state of Queensland, Australia. Given this case study, the economic impacts and future of coal‐fired power stations, coal mining and renewable energy are discussed.  The LEVER index weighs the risk of high carbon economic exposure against the variability in carbon economic resilience from employment in low‐emission sectors across local economies. We find that between 3 and 6 per cent of Queensland regions are assessed as having a very high latent economic vulnerability to increased decarbonisation of industrial activities. To promote a smoother transition, these regions will require targeted investments and strategies to enable their transition towards lower carbon‐intensive systems, while maximising economic and social outcomes.