Doing more and doing better are two different entities: Different patterns of family control and environmental performance

Family firms bear two types of agency costs, including type I and type II agency problems, in corporate environmental practices: (1) Outside executives at family firms hesitate to engage in environmental strategies, which can lead to drops in profits; (2) Controlling families employ opportunistically environmental management to achieve their interests. We argue that a primary cause for the agency problems lies on ineffective internal corporate governance at family firms, which can cause loss of managerial (or power) balance between outside executives and family executives. Our findings show that family firms with ownership and strategic control (FSC), which family executives and outside executives monitor and constrain each other, can achieve the highest environmental performance. Moreover, external controls, including product market competition and provincial environmental regulations, substitute effective internal control of FSC. The environmental performance premium of FSC is more prevalent when the production market competition is lower. Family firms with ownership, operational, and strategic control (FOSC) can achieve higher environmental performance within a province with more stringent environmental regulations.     

Does local government competition aggravate haze pollution? A new perspective of factor market distortion

Haze pollution has become a new threat to China's sustainable development, but it may be that local government behaviour can play an important role in the prevention and control of pollutants. A dynamic spatial autoregressive (SAR) model is used to study the relationship between local government competition and haze pollution. To further explore the indirect impact of factor market distortion on haze pollution and control potential endogeneity problems, a newly developed intermediary effect model that incorporates the characteristics of the generalized method of moments (GMM) is utilized to explore how factor market distortion indirectly affects haze pollution. The research results show that regional haze pollution in China is characterized by significant spatial correlation, and local government competition has a positive impact on haze pollution; that is, local government competition exacerbates haze pollution. In general, local government competition not only directly leads to an increase in haze pollution but also further intensifies it by distorting the local factor market, and the intermediary role of factor market distortion is approximately 7.04%. The results of the regional inspection found that competition among local governments in the eastern region did not lead to haze pollution, and distortion of the factor market did not exist as an intermediary effect. However, both direct and intermediary effects are significant in the central and western regions. Therefore, an official performance appraisal system that includes ecological constraints should be established to guide the benign transformation of local government competition, and an environmental management mechanism must be developed for joint prevention and control to reduce haze pollution. In addition, the free flow of factors and marketization are equally important.     

失败学习对企业绩效的影响机制研究

已有文献认为失败学习对企业绩效具有重要作用，但失败学习通过何种途径促进企业绩效提升的研究并不完善。基于失败学习理论，引入资源拼凑和机会识别作为中介变量，构建失败学习影响企业绩效的多路径模型，探索失败学习对企业绩效的驱动路径及内在机理。实证结果表明：失败学习对企业绩效具有显著积极作用，资源拼凑和机会识别分别在失败学习与企业绩效之间起中介作用，资源拼凑和机会识别在失败学习对企业绩效驱动过程中存在链式中介作用，战略柔性能够强化资源拼凑与企业绩效之间的关系，并正向调节资源拼凑的中介作用。研究结论拓展了失败学习对企业绩效的影响路径，对企业复苏和成长具有重要启示。     

Noise traders,firm-specific uncertainty and technical trading effectiveness

This is the first study to document evidence of technical trading effectiveness at firm level in the Chinese A-share market by investigating the relationship between excess profits of technical trading rules and firm-specific characteristics. Our results reveal that firms with higher excess profits from technical trading have more noise traders and higher institutional ownership and that those firms tend to be growth firms with lower liquidity and higher firm-specific uncertainty. Further analysis shows that the profitability of technical trading rules is unsustainable and the excess profits of the highest technical trading profit quintile portfolio disappear in the following year.     

普惠金融发展的地区差异、收敛性及影响因素研究*——基于中国省级面板数据的检验

本文利用2005—2016年省级面板数据，对我国各地区普惠金融发展水平进行测度，并在此基础上探讨其收敛性及影响因素。结果表明：（1）我国普惠金融发展水平在考察期内总体偏低，并且呈现出显著的地区差异性。（2）绝对β收敛在全国、中部和西部均存在，而东部不存在；条件β收敛在全国、东部和西部均存在，而中部不存在。（3）政府干预程度、市场化程度、人力资本质量、非正规金融以及外商直接投资对普惠金融发展均具有重要的影响。     

Co-movement in Stock Prices in Emerging Economies: The Case of the Caricom Region

The Grand Anse Declaration of 1989 recognised the need for financial integration within the emerging economies that comprise the CARICOM region, as a way of furthering the wider process of economic integration and, indeed, economic development in that region. Using co-movement as a measure of financial integration, this paper investigates the co-movement in stock prices among the Barbados, the Jamaica and the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchanges, the three major exchanges within the CARICOM region. It also examines how integrated these exchanges are with the New York Stock Exchange. The GARCH-Copula methodology and, to a lesser extent, estimated correlation coefficients, are used to attain this objective. There appears to be co-movement in stock prices and returns within the CARICOM stock markets and significant dependence structures between the returns of the three CARICOM stock markets. However, there is considerably less evidence of integration between the CARICOM markets and the New York Stock Exchange.     

The importance of consumer multihoming (joint purchases) for market performance: Mergers and entry in media markets

Consumer “multihoming” (watching two TV channels, or buying two news magazines) has surprisingly important effects on market equilibrium and performance in (two‐sided) media markets. We show this by introducing consumer multihoming and advertising finance into the classic circle model of product differentiation. When consumers multihome (attend more than one platform), media platforms can charge only incremental value prices to advertisers. Entry or merger leaves consumer prices unchanged under consumer multihoming, but leaves advertiser prices unchanged under single‐homing: Multihoming flips the side of the market on which platforms compete. In contrast to standard circle results, equilibrium product variety can be insufficient under multihoming.     

Measuring Inflation Anchoring and Uncertainty: A U.S. and Euro Area Comparison

We use several U.S. and euro‐area surveys of professional forecasters to estimate a dynamic factor model of inflation featuring time‐varying uncertainty. We obtain survey‐consistent distributions of future inflation at any horizon, both in the U.S. and the euro area. Equipped with this model, we propose a novel measure of the anchoring of inflation expectations that accounts for inflation uncertainty. Our results suggest that following the Great Recession, inflation anchoring improved in the United States, while mild de‐anchoring occurred in the euro area. As of our sample end, both areas appear to be almost equally anchored.