The origins of agricultural inheritance traditions

We investigate the origins of agricultural inheritance traditions, equal partition and primogeniture. Our case study is the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Our empirical findings suggest that rural inheritance traditions were primarily determined by geography. First, fertile soils allowed splitting of the land among siblings for longer and with fewer conflicts, and hence we find more equal partition in areas with higher soil quality, especially at elevation levels conducive to intensive agriculture. Second, geography determined the settlement pattern. Areas that were settled before the Middle Ages, when land was abundant and free, are more likely to apply equal partition today. In areas that were largely uninhabited until the Middle Ages, primogeniture is the norm. We argue that these areas were deforested with the obligation of primogeniture, imposed by feudal lords.     

The scope and scale of the informal food economy of South African urban residential townships: Results of a small-area micro-enterprise census

Growing urbanisation in South Africa is reflected in burgeoning Working class and informal township settlements on the fringes of its major towns and cities. Paired with this is an increasing reliance on cash as the primary means of economic transaction, which has in turn stimulated the growth of micro-enterprise business activities within the township context. This article discusses the findings of an eight-township small-area census which occurred between 2010 and 2013 in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Durban townships representing 250 000 residents. The researchers were able to establish the scope and scale of informal food and drink retailing in these localities. Of the 10 049 micro-enterprises located in the study, some 3966 (or 39% of the total) trade in food. These include enterprises in primary production, fresh produce retailing, grocery retailing from house and spaza shops, and informal foodservice enterprises. Food is the basis for much township informal business and plays an important role in making food increasingly affordable and locally accessible, and in creating cash employment. The article builds on the knowledge base of the township informal economy role in bolstering food security needs for the marginalised.     

Institutional context as a moderator of the relationship between board structure and acquirer returns

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the supervisory role of the board of directors in the context of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). We focus our study on the European case, for which there is no previous exhaustive evidence on this topic. Using information on 985 mergers and acquisitions carried out over the period 2003–2016 by companies in the major European countries, we analyze the influence of supervisory capacity of the board (small size, higher proportion of outsiders and separated Chairperson-CEO positions) on acquirer returns, differentiating between Anglo-Saxon and continental European contexts. Our results confirm that the effectiveness of corporate governance practices depends strongly on their fit with the broader institutional context. Specifically, we find that a smaller size of the board of directors and the separation of the positions of Chairperson and CEO lead to higher acquirer returns in European Anglo-Saxon countries. By contrast, we do not find evidence that any proxy of supervisory capacity of the board significantly improves acquirer returns in the rest of countries.     

Assessing the effects of policies on China’s outward foreign direct investment

This paper discusses the determinants of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) with a special focus on the role of government policy. In particular, we investigate the types of policies that are most influential in promoting OFDI. Our main contribution is to analyse, for the first time, China’s OFDI policies by means of quantitative indicators. We refine policies definitions and distinguish between Regulation Policies, Service Policies, Promotion Policies and Supervision Policies, and we develop a methodology for collecting, screening and coding policies; then we create new indices to capture different types of policies. We find that Regulation Policies, Service Policies and the general attitude of the government have significant effects on China’s OFDI at the national level.     

异质机构持股、政府补贴与企业技术创新

机构投资者与政府补贴等优惠政策作为企业经营的重要资本来源和制度保障，势必对企业技术创新产生重要影响。以我国沪深两市战略性新兴上市企业2010-2015年面板数据为研究样本，对异质机构持股、政府补贴与企业技术创新的关系进行实证分析。结果发现：机构持股对企业技术创新没有显著影响，政府补贴可以促进机构持股对企业技术创新尤其是实质性技术创新产生显著正向影响；基金持股对企业技术创新存在显著负向影响，券商持股与QFII持股对企业技术创新分别存在不显著和显著正向影响；政府补贴能够降低基金持股对企业技术创新的负向影响，有效促进基金持股对企业技术创新的正向影响，并通过调节作用促进券商持股和QFII持股对企业技术创新产生更加显著的正向效应；政府补贴对基金持股与企业非实质性技术创新关系的正向调节作用更加显著，对券商持股和QFII持股与企业实质性技术创新关系的正向调节作用更加显著。     

地区关系文化与企业创新

作为中国文化的重要组成部分，关系文化在制度改革进程中，促进了体制约束或资源匮乏背景下的企业创新行为。然而，浓重的地区关系文化犹如无形的制度牢笼，束缚着企业创新活动。利用中国内地120个城市工业企业数据，实证考察了地区关系文化对企业创新的影响。结果显示，地区关系文化对企业创新具有显著促进作用。随着地区关系文化的发展，企业创新活动将受到抑制，两者呈现显著倒“U”型关系。进一步研究表明，地区关系文化对企业创新的倒U型效应仅在规模较大的企业中显著；相较于国有企业，该效应在非国有企业样本中更显著；企业是否属于高技术行业则对两者关系无实质性影响。     

Goals versus institutions: the development of performance measurement in the Swedish university sector

This paper contrasts goal-directed and institutional approaches to the development of performance measurement (PM) in the Swedish university sector, which has been subject to increasing emphasis on management by objectives since the early 1990s. We adopt a macro perspective, focusing on recent changes in PM related to governmental control of universities and colleges and combine an extensive review of archival data with interviews in our empirical analysis. It is concluded that although the goal-directed model cannot be completely rejected as a heuristic informing recent changes in PM, a process-orientated institutional perspective considerably enriches the analysis by making it less static and more contextually informed. In particular, the latter perspective better explains the evolution of loose couplings between formally stated goals and performance indicators and between different systems for PM by directing attention to the complex interplay between conflicting constituent interests in the evolution of resource and cost allocation practices and quality control procedures. However, our empirical analysis also leads us to reconsider the conceptions of loose coupling as either a “given” feature of institutionalised organizations or an outcome of more pro-active resistance at the micro level prevailing in much earlier work in institutional theory.     

Decoupled earnings: An institutional perspective of the consequences of maximizing shareholder value

Recent accounting scandals have brought focus on the role of management in financial statement manipulation. This focus on micro-behavior does not capture the complexities of earnings management. Taking an institutional rather than agency theory approach, earnings management is posited as a decoupled behavior. A behavior that results from not only agency-based motivations of self-interests, but also regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive legitimacy pressures. Conformity to the central logic of “maximizing shareholder value” found in the “US financial market” institutional field provides the context in which to explore earnings management as a decoupled behavior. Insights for earnings management include the blending of agency and institutional theory perspectives to gain a more complete understanding of the behavior and the positing of a continuum of earnings management conducive to this merger. Institutional theory benefits from exploring the nesting in multiple institutional fields.     

合并会计的经济学思考

在合并会计的研究中引入现代经济学理论 ,可以使我们以开阔的理论视野 ,重新审视合并会计的理论和实务问题。本文在这方面进行尝试 ,以现代经济学为指导 ,重点讨论了合并会计的目的——原则和合并会计制度等问题。     

Capital market trading volume: an overview and some preliminary conclusions

This paper suggests an explanation for the heavy trading volumeobserved on the US capital markets, the world's largest. Heterodoxeconomic theory puts much of this volume down to speculation.Mainstream theory tends to support this thesis, either directlyor indirectly, by giving space to the idea that trading activityis for the most part exogenous to the functioning of the capitalmarkets. The central hypothesis of this paper is that the tradingvolumes observed are an endogenous feature of the capital markets,because they are to a great extent determined by the needs ofthe institutional investors who predominate on these markets.This endogeneity of trading is posited in connection with theemergence of a new ‘core–satellite’ paradigmin institutional investment, a development that essentiallymanifests the asset-management industry's transformation froma small industry serving a few wealthy clients to a mass industryserving large sections of the population.