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Both theoretical and empirical research studies the factors influencing firms' location choices. This paper presents a new viewpoint by considering relationship continuity to explain small‐scale relocations and relocations of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), which represent the majority of firms. The influences of firms' relationships with financing institutions are studied using a two‐stage nested logit model. Consequently, the positive effect of relationships on location choices is revealed and the factors preventing firms from moving are described. The model is valid for estimating relocations to medium‐sized cities, and the influences on shrinking firms as opposed to expanding firms are especially strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several aspects of the growing market for energy-related collaboration between pulp and paper industries (PPIs) and energy service companies (ESCOs) in Sweden were investigated through in-depth interviews with PPI and ESCO managers. Aspects of concern are the different forms of co-operation established, the managers' views on the recent changes made regarding competence and business focus, the managers' views on the opportunities and risks with energy related co-operation and the implications for sustainable industrial energy management. The study shows that there is a mutual belief among PPI and ESCO managers that co-operation can provide opportunities for improved competitiveness through a more rational distribution of competences between companies. The main two barriers against the utilization of this potential are that ESCOs must prove that they can bring added values other than capital to pulp and paper mills, and the lack of competition between external energy service providers. Furthermore, we argue that adding aspects related to competence and inter-firm partnering can improve the existing theory surrounding barriers and opportunities for sustainable industrial energy management in manufacturing industries. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular economy (CE) has garnered increasing attention in political circles and practitioner literature thanks to its potential to overcome the harmful consequences of linear patterns of growth. Nonetheless, the adoption of sustainable practices entails a holistic approach requiring businesses to make significant changes to their production, technologies and stakeholder management. These challenges resulted in limited progress in terms of the practical implementation of CE. This paper addresses the need for more literature focused on the pragmatic aspects of applying this paradigm to incumbent firms. The author presents the journey that Lucart S.p.A., a major European tissue paper manufacturer, has undertaken between 2014 and 2020 to apply CE principles to its practices. Insights from the transformation process, reconstructed through interviews with the firm's management and environmental impact data, suggest that to succeed it takes innovating (plants, products and marketing strategies) and setting up supply chains that reconcile environmental and economic sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2007 the English and Scottish Law Commissions published the consultation paper Insurance Law – Non-disclosure and Breach of Warranty (hereafter LCCP) which sets out in detail the Commissions' provisional proposals for the reform of insurance contract law with particular reference to the key areas of utmost good faith, warranties and agency. This article analyses, from a critical standpoint, the LCCP's principal conclusions and recommendations. It begins by noting, as a means of demonstrating that the current reform process should be informed by modern industry practices, that the ways in which modern insurance contracts are concluded differ significantly from those when insurance law was last reviewed by the Law Commission in 1980. The article then discusses the dichotomy between consumer and business insurance given that this distinction underpins the LCCP and its approach towards reforming the pre-contractual duty of good faith. By way of backdrop to the analysis, we consider the approach taken towards reforming the law governing intermediaries acting for prospective assureds during the disclosure process. Finally, the proposed rules for warranties and similar terms are examined. It is argued that the proposal to retain continuing warranties in business insurance contracts will, if implemented, represent a missed opportunity to rid insurance contracts of terms long criticised as draconian and disproportionate in their effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Papers in Regional Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using a rich sample of firms in 14 EU countries from 2000 to 2016, we confirm increases in productivity dispersion, wage dispersion and superstar firms. Beyond reaffirming an incomplete pass‐through from productivity to wages, we present novel empirical evidence of an even weaker pass‐through in industries dominated by superstar firms. This effect is observed in both the lower and upper parts of the productivity and wage distributions, and is stronger for tradable (versus non‐tradable) sectors and markets with low (versus high) collective bargaining power. These findings point to different mechanisms, consistent with theoretical work and various underlying structural changes in the economy. This paper is part of the Economica 100 Series. Economica, the LSE "house journal" is now 100 years old. To commemorate this achievement, we are publishing 100 papers by former students, as well as current and former faculty. Angelos Theodorakopoulos graduated from the LSE with an MSc in 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of hiring migrants on firms' imports using a rich employer–employee dataset from the Netherlands for 2010–17. We use an instrumental variables strategy, and find that firms that employ migrants from a high‐income country are more likely to import from that country. Our benchmark specification indicates that a one standard deviation increase in the share of migrant workers from a certain country raises their employer's probability of importing from those workers' origin country by 6.6 percentage points, explaining half of the average probability of importing from a given country. This result is robust to a battery of sensitivity checks, and the effects are driven largely by migrants working in trade intermediaries that import final goods and inputs. Our results suggest that migrants help to erode informational barriers and enable their employers to source goods from abroad. This paper is part of the Economica 100 Series. Economica, the LSE "house journal" is now 100 years old. To commemorate this achievement, we are publishing 100 papers by former students, as well as current and former faculty. Aksel Erbahar graduated from the LSE in 2010 with an MSc in Economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We experimentally investigate behavior in sequential one-shot transactions which are governed by non-binding contracts. In a second, incomplete information treatment, contracts are binding for some players. While according to traditional game-theoretical analysis no trade is expected in the first treatment, full trade should result in the latter. However, we find that trade is even higher in the non-binding contract treatment. On the one hand, non-binding contracts—although they are cheap talk—do guide behavior, especially at the beginning of a business relationship, while reciprocal reactions prevail later on. On the other hand, in the treatment with binding contracts cooperative behavior appears to be crowded out. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While focusing on residual control rights, the property rights theory of the firm overlooks that the legal protection of each party's input shapes its ex post bargaining power. To evaluate this issue, we assume that the property rights on the inputs are selected by a legislator to maximize full investment and, conditional on this goal being reached, minimize inefficient deviations to intermediate investment profiles. Our model delivers three key novel implications. First, the strength of a party's property rights is related negatively to the strength of its residual control rights and determines entirely its ex ante incentives to invest. Second, the legislator tends to protect a firm less when its default payoff under its preferred ownership structure is larger and when its contribution to the relationship is the greatest. Finally, the extent of integration falls weakly with the default payoffs and displays an inverted U‐shaped link with the intensity of the downstream firm's investment activity. Crucially, these predictions are consistent with the relationships between proxies for the strength of the downstream firms' property rights and firms' presence in the value chain, and measures of asset specificity and R&D intensity for 119 countries observed over the 2006–18 period. This paper is part of the Economica 100 Series. Economica, the LSE "house journal" is now 100 years old. To commemorate this achievement, we are publishing 100 papers by former students, as well as current and former faculty. Carmine Guerriero completed his MSc at the LSE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to examine the impact of government environmental concerns on green innovation and whether this has a "leverage effect" or a "crowding‐out effect." This study employs a two‐way fixed‐effects model to conduct an empirical test using panel data from 2010 to 2020 on Chinese firms listed in heavy‐polluting industries. The results suggest that an increase in government environmental concerns can promote corporate green innovation. However, government environmental concerns primarily stimulate strategic innovation rather than substantive innovation. After a series of robustness and endogeneity tests, the conclusions of this paper still hold. Corporate green innovation induced by government environmental concerns is not the "leverage effect" superimposed on existing innovation activities but the "crowding‐out effect" of other technological innovation. The heterogeneity tests in this paper indicate that the impact is more pronounced for firms with poorer environmental conditions, stronger political connections, and richer executive backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting a theoretical framework from social narrative therapy, this paper examines how new realities are being constantly created as the corporate narrative is rewritten or 're‐storied' through engagement between NGO–therapists and corporate–clients. Detailed interviews are conducted with 21 NGOs operating in a developing economy and working with local and multi‐national companies. The research reveals how the relationship between NGOs and companies has shifted from an adversarial one (reported in earlier studies) to one characterised by constructive dialogue, facilitation and mediation. The engagements have 'therapeutic' properties and offer one solution for tackling the impacts which modern business practices are having on biodiversity. An extensive review of narrative and social constructionist perspectives across business ethics, organisations and accounting is beyond the scope of this paper. The discussion and analysis are limited to the application of narrative approaches to counselling to NGO–company relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper introduces the special issue on “Implementing Operations Strategy for Competitive Advantage.” We initiated the call for papers for this special issue with this question: “How do we identify, promote, and implement transformational initiatives that put into place operational capabilities that provide new sources of firm-level competitive advantage?” Collectively, these papers provide insight into how important operations can be to a company's success, while also reinforcing how important it is for operations to be integrated with other functions, internally, to achieve that success, as well as externally with suppliers. Before introducing the papers included in the forum, the authors provide thoughts on operations strategy research, drawing from the past and looking forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the paper `Modelling Policy Issues in a World of Imperfect Competition,' by Egbert Dierker and Birgit Grodal. Goal of the paper; Information on issues addressed in the paper; Reasons for the praise given to the paper; Criticism of the relationship of the resolution to other literature.

In critically analysing eight research papers about competence development in organizations, it is found that systemic models, methods and approaches have a great deal to offer in the field of competence development in SMEs. However, the proposed methods and approaches are still rather tentative and theoretically based. Hence, they need to be further empirically tested and adapted to practical use. It is also desirable to further develop and elaborate all the ideas raised in the papers in order to bring them to full maturity. Finally, in order to meet all the requirements in the European Commission's ADAPT programme, further research and development is needed concerning how to combine and extend the original methods discussed in this analysis. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past few years have witnessed a proliferation of corporate net zero emission targets. Despite their growing prominence, little is known about firms' motives for, strategies towards and response pathways of net zero. This paper seeks to narrow the current gap in understanding through an analysis of 30 interview responses. We find evidence that net zero targets have been propelled by a combination of institutional and competitive pressures. Yet firms' response to these pressures, in terms of the substantivity of their commitments and strategic positioning in relation to net zero, has varied significantly. Whilst identifying a role for firm‐specific factors, we also draw attention to the importance of sectors in understanding variations in corporate responses. A further contribution of the paper is to map out different temporal trajectories of strategic positioning and offer insights into the factors that lead firms to remain static or change their position towards net zero over time. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for both future scholarship and the contribution of net zero commitments to public climate goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a framework for studying repeated matching markets. The model departs from the Gale–Shapley matching model by having a fixed set of long‐lived players (firms) match with a new generation of short‐lived players (workers) in every period. I define history‐dependent and self‐enforcing matching processes in this repeated matching environment and characterize the firms' payoffs. Firms fall into one of two categories: some firms must obtain the same payoff as they would in static stable matchings, and this holds at every patience level; meanwhile, repetition and history dependence can enlarge the set of sustainable payoffs for the other firms, provided that the firms are sufficiently patient. In large matching markets with correlated preferences, the first kind of firms corresponds to "elite" firms that make up at most a vanishingly small fraction of the market. The vast majority of firms fall into the second category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of government bailouts have been extensively examined in the literature. This paper is one of the first to empirically examine the bailout funds established in China in 2018, which aimed to mitigate firms' liquidity squeeze risk caused by share pledges. Utilising a hand‐collected dataset of government bailout funds, this paper finds that stock prices increased when government introduced the bailout fund plan, especially for non‐state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) and firms with small size and share pledges. Long‐term performance of bailed out firms increased as well. Overall, our results provide new evidence that government bailouts have positive effects on financial markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project portfolio selection (PPS) is a complex problem faced by major companies whenever there are multiple funding opportunities with insufficient budget to fund them all. In this paper, we present our work on a PPS decision support tool that has become a fundamental part of the project portfolio decision process at Intel Corporation across its largest product and market divisions. The paper builds on a previous publication that outlines the decision support tool's bicriteria optimization model by providing a solution procedure that is capable of solving real‐life PPS problems within time frames acceptable to decision makers, as well as providing further details on the data collection and the decision‐making process. We also report on various analysis and visualization tools that have been built to allow decision makers to interact with promising solutions provided by the decision support tool. One of the contributions of the paper is to present a typology of the important dependencies between projects that needs to be considered, and provide details on how they are incorporated in the decision support tool's optimization engine. We discuss important implementation details on the decision‐making process and the agents involved, and conclude by describing real‐life experiences on how the framework can enable intuitive decision‐making when choosing portfolios that best satisfy the organization's business goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper provides novel evidence of the moral hazard problem in environmental insurance by investigating the effect of environmental liability insurance (ELI) on firms' environmental performance. Using the staggered adoption of ELI policies in China as a quasi‐natural experiment, we employ a difference‐in‐differences setup based on a comprehensive firm‐level data set. We find that the adoption of ELI policies significantly reduces firms' efforts in treating water pollution. The negative estimate indicates a moral hazard problem and is the opposite of the positive estimates found mainly in studies that focus on US firms. We further find that the negative effect is lessened for firms in strictly supervised regions and for firms with strong environmental awareness. This paper is one of the first to evaluate environmental insurance in developing economies and provides novel evidence on moral hazard in environmental liability insurance markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on the diffusion of the 'resource-based view of the firm' into academic and practitioner thought. The contributions of many people are noted. In closing, I offer some speculations about the future use of these ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms in transition economies often suffer financial constraints. In initial public offerings (IPOs), however, many newly listed Chinese firms raise funds in excess of what is originally planned. This paper examines whether these excess IPO funds are wasted on value‐destroying spending or enable firms to take growth opportunities. After controlling for the endogeneity issue, we find that Chinese firms with excess IPO funds have better post‐IPO operating performance, especially those with limited financing channels. In revealing the mechanism, we find that excess IPO fundraising alleviates financial constraints and reduces the cost of debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors influencing the adoption of environmental innovations towards a circular economy (CE) by the EU firms, with special focus on technological capabilities and external support. A multivariate probit model is specified to allow the distinction between three types of eco‐innovative practices: Reduce, Recycle, and Redesign technological processes. Using a novel taxonomy based upon the distinction between narrowing, closing, and slowing loops in the use of resources, we find that financial and technological capabilities are essential drivers for all types of CE actions in the European firms. Similar findings are found for the public funding support but only when the firms are recycling (closing resource loops) and redesigning (slowing resource loops). Knowledge from private companies (pecuniary mode) is relevant to Reduce and Recycle strategies. These two eco‐innovative practices are also shown in firms with a wide external knowledge network. Results also show that there is an inverted U‐shaped relation between the diversity of collaboration and the circular Redesign of products. The paper ends up with some implications for practitioners and policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational change research to date has tended to proliferate on a conceptualization of change as a deliberate process driven by rational and formal strategic planning and fuelled by the expansion of exploitative resources. This conceptualization entails that change is essentially a process of reproduction in that it occurs along existing (incremental and cumulative) trajectories. Prompted by the need to manage increasingly complex and uncertain environments and foster progress towards sustainable development, the question of what are the exploratory forces that stimulate the capacity of business organizations to engage in discontinuous shifts towards new (flexible and creative) trajectories, without excessively disrupting existing ones, has comparatively been neglected. This paper contributes to address gaps in existing research by exploring how organizational change in response to complexity is framed in the literature on business model innovation. Three core categories of constraints to change are identified: relational flaws, functional flaws and the lack of moral motives; and three interacting forces that can be harnessed to overcome these constraints are suggested: sociability, agility and moral inclusivity. The resulting framework has broad implications for organizational change theory, practice, policy and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of market power on income disparities when firm‐specific parameters are considered to test how they shape the gap between capital and labor earnings through their pricing decisions. The dataset consists of 2895 UK manufacturing and services firms over 2010–2019. The results provide the following insights: (a) There is a strong positive association between market power and income disparities across the market, (b) liquidity constraints exert a positive effect on the asset‐based disparities ratio, but a negative effect on the profit‐based ratio. The robustness of the results is also checked when market‐specific characteristics are included in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on social capital theory, this paper aims to investigate the impact of member enterprises of alien merchant chambers on enterprise innovation, within A‐share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges of China from 2010 to 2020. Additionally, the study seeks to explore the role played by social capital resulting from participation in these alien merchant chambers. Furthermore, we delve into the moderating effects of the number of alien merchant chambers and the degree of marketization in the enterprise's location. Moreover, we analyze the influence of heterogeneity in firm ownership and firm type. Our findings reveal that member enterprises of alien merchant chambers can increase their social capital and consequently promoting innovation; both the quantity of alien merchant chambers and the level of marketization in an enterprise's location positively influence this enhancement. Furthermore, the impact of state‐owned enterprises and non‐high‐tech enterprises on enterprise innovation, following their engagement with alien merchant chambers, surpasses that of non‐state‐owned enterprises and high‐tech enterprises. This research bridges the gap in understanding the corporate governance implications of alien merchant chambers, provides empirical evidence concerning Chinese alien merchant chambers, and addresses inquiries regarding the influence of merchant chambers' social capital. Additionally, it proposes a novel approach for listed companies to overcome resource constraints and to collaboratively pursue development, especially in light of the challenges posed by the COVID‐19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, academics and managers have been very interested in understanding how firms develop alliance capability and have greater alliance success. In this paper, we show that an alliance learning process that involves articulation, codification, sharing, and internalization of alliance management know-how is positively related to a firm's overall alliance success. Prior research has found that firms with a dedicated alliance function, which oversees and coordinates a firm's overall alliance activity, have greater alliance success. In this paper we suggest that such an alliance function is also positively related to a firm's alliance learning process, and that process partly mediates the relationship between the alliance function and alliance success observed in prior work. This implies that the alliance learning process acts as one of the main mechanisms through which the alliance function leads to greater alliance success. Our paper extends prior alliance research by taking a first step in opening up the ‘black box’ between the alliance function and a firm's alliance success. We use survey data from a large sample of U.S.-based firms and their alliances to test our theoretical arguments. Although we only examine the alliance learning process and its relationship with firm-level alliance success, we also make an important contribution to research on the knowledge-based view of the firm and dynamic capabilities of firms in general by conceptualizing this learning process and its key aspects, and by empirically validating its impact on performance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores changes in organizational structure and distinguishes between units' origins. Unit reconfiguration is the addition of units to, deletion of units from, and recombination of units within the firm. This study compares the reconfiguration of internally developed vs. acquired units, explores what forms of unit recombination are common, and observes whether firms pursue recombination before divestiture. Theoretical support is drawn from the dynamic capabilities perspective, research on modular organizational systems, and strategy–structure literature. The findings are that acquired and internally developed units serve different roles in the process of change, and that firms perceive reconfiguration to be beneficial. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the paper "The Roles of Performance Measures and Monitoring in Annual Governance Decisions in Entrepreneurial Firms," by Ellen Engel, Elizabeth A. Gordon and Rachel M. Hayes presented at the 2001 Journal of Accounting Research Conference. The paper suggests that entrepreneurial firms' corporate governance decisions are sensitive to the information environment facing the firm during initial public offerings (IPOs). The discussion looked at how boards of IPO firms manage the transition in chief executive officers (CEO) equity incentives as the firm goes public. Of all the governance decisions made by boards, the authors suggest that CEO equity ownership is one of the most important.

This paper explores the impact of auditing firms on the implementation of the new Chinese Accounting Standards for Enterprises 22 (new CAS 22), which converges with IFRS 9. We find that the Big4 firms focus on fair value measurement and application of the expected credit loss (ECL) impairment model, whereas the LocalTop6 firms primarily focus on the classification of financial assets. The results indicate that effective implementation of the new standards mainly depends on standardized procedures and professional techniques of auditing firms, as the Big4 firms exhibit better implementation of the new standards in terms of items that generate greater risk and uncertainty than do local large auditing firms in China. In addition, we further test how cross‐listing affects the role of auditing firms in implementing the new standards and find that the Big4 firms play a more significant role for A‐share only companies than A + H companies. The findings reveal the challenges associated with implementation of IFRS 9‐based new CAS 22 in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, supporting schemes have been legislated by several governments to encourage private investors in installing renewable energy resources (RER). In such cases, the supportive policies are mainly enacted based on the either investor or distribution companies' standpoint. In this paper, a distribution network expansion planning (DNEP) framework with the cooperation of residential private investors (RPI) is proposed. Due to the presence of a couple of main participants, the proposed framework is arranged in a bi‐level framework, where the RPI participation is optimized at the upper level, and the system structure is determined at the lower level. In order to assess the profitability of the project from the investors' attitude, payback period years (PBY) is utilized. Meanwhile, due to the presence of uncertainty resources, fuzzy clustering method (FCM) is developed to catch the intermittency of the problem. The proposed framework is implemented on a real 81 bus distribution test system in Iran. Moreover, the existing scheme in Iran and also a modified plan are investigated to make cost‐effective decisions. Finally, sensitivity analysis is performed to reach a more beneficial result. Obtained results demonstrated how distribution companies can utilize the potential of residential customers in long‐term planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing whether a company is sustainable or not is challenging for investors. For this reason, it is particularly important how companies integrate and manage sustainability. This paper primarily aims to investigate the effects of implementing environmental, social and governance (ESG) key performance indicators (KPIs) in the internal management system (IMS) on ESG performance. Further, the effect of a consistent use of ESG KPIs in the IMS and the management compensation scheme (MCS) on ESG performance is examined. Using hand‐collected data of the largest German‐listed companies, this study employs t tests for differences in means and ordinary least square (OLS) regressions to study these associations. The results indicate that the implementation of ESG KPIs in the IMS increases ESG performance. In addition, the performance for environmental and social sub‐dimensions is enhanced. No significant influence of a consistent use of ESG KPIs in the IMS and the MCS on ESG performance is observed. The results highlight that implementing ESG KPIs in the IMS is a practical approach to manage sustainability and to increase ESG performance. Our findings have practical and theoretical implications for researchers, regulators and companies considering the integration of sustainability and further communicating transparently and strengthening investor trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the writings of Peter Lloyd, one of Australia's best-known economists, who has been elected Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia. It notes the importance of his work, mostly done jointly with Herbert Grubel, on intra-industry trade, and his extensive contributions to trade theory. In addition there have been many papers on the global trading system and regionalism, and on the Australian and New Zealand economies. It describes his approach to economics and his many professional activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the sample of Chinese listed firms from 2003 to 2019, this paper investigated the herd behaviour in cross-border mergers and acquisition (CB M&A) decisions using ordinary least-squares (OLS) and feasible generalised least squares (FGLS) models. It was found that the Chinese listed firm CB M&A location decisions were similar to the choices made by other firms in the same industry in the previous year, with the bellwether firms in high industry market positions being the key reference objects. The herd behaviour was found to be more pronounced when the firms were younger and smaller, there was strong internal industry competition, estranged bilateral political distances, and poor host country governance. The quantification of the economic consequences of the herd behaviour revealed a negative effect on the short-term performances after the CB M&As but improved firm performances over the long term, with these improvements being more significant when the herd behaviour was led by bellwether firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an innovative perspective on engaged scholarship as multiple, cumulative interactions between academia and external organizations in the business and policy realms. A definition of longitudinal immersion is positioned relative to the extant literature on academic engagement as a dialectic relationship between academic research and the praxis of business and society. Using a case study of a specific academic theoretical concept, we seek to demonstrate how over a period of some 25 years the ideas and practice of deep structural sustainability have co-evolved through a process of reflexivity. Drawing from critical management studies and design science we give a different perspective on the processes and mechanisms of engagement and the question of the nature of impact. Notwithstanding the challenges thus presented to researchers in nurturing the ability for informed creativity, it is concluded that future opportunities for engagement and impact may be captured by a longer-term, value-driven and less episodic approach to the entire research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We widen the scope of the impact debate by extending Boyer's theorization of scholarship through Denyer, Tranfield and van Aken's CIMO framework to propose relational management education as an intervention that creates the generative mechanism of co-production and subsequent impact. In so doing, we propose a new conceptualization of academic impact that occurs through teaching and is situated within a community of inquirers. We offer a critique of current thinking, dominated by the idea that the research paper is the most appropriate unit of analysis by which to measure the excellence and impact of research. We examine the notion of the gap between academics and practitioners and argue that the impact agenda should be widened to include a consideration of how management academics can become impactful through their teaching of practitioners, broadly defined to include the whole range of learners associated with business schools. We propose that for management research to have the potential to change these practitioners, an engagement with knowledge is needed, and that this involves more than translation but the creation of new ideas. Such impact can be brought about by a disruption of, and challenge to, thinking engendered by an approach to management education that we term relational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides the first estimates of the extent of common ownership of competing firms in Australia. Combining data on market shares and substantial shareholdings, we calculate the impact of common ownership on effective market concentration. Among firms where we can identify at least one owner, 31 per cent share a substantial owner with a rival company. Analysing 443 industries, we identify 49 that exhibit common ownership, including commercial banking, explosives manufacturing, fuel retailing, insurance and iron ore mining. Across the Australian economy, common ownership increases effective market concentration by 21 per cent. Our estimates imply that if listed firms seek to maximise the value of their investors' portfolios, then they place the same value on $3.70 of their competitors' profits as on $1 of their own profits. We discuss the limitations of the available data, and the potential implications of common ownership for competition in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing (QE) on the cost of bank loans and documents large heterogeneous effects across different firms. In QE1, the average loan spread is 22.7 percent lower compared to the non‐QE period. This effect falls in QE2 and OT and then rises in QE3 and the tapering period. The rates of riskier loans are restrained more than less risky loans during QEs as banks take more risks by offering lower rates to attract risky borrowers. The Fed mortgage‐backed securities purchases have a larger impact in narrowing the borrowing cost difference between riskier and safer loans than the Fed Treasury purchases. Our results are robust to borrower, year‐quarter and bank fixed effects. Overall, our findings support that the risk‐taking channel of QE plays a significant role in the corporate bank loan market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the urgency of decarbonising, the shipping sector has demonstrated a slow‐paced response to climate change challenges. Some frontrunner firms are engaged in sustainability‐oriented innovation processes. However, there is limited knowledge of how such processes emerge and contribute to societal sustainability transitions and what the role of technology is in companies' (re)orientation towards sustainable business models. This study contributes to filling these gaps through a comparative case study of the ongoing innovation process within an incumbent and a newcomer firm developing wind‐powered energy solutions for deep‐sea transportation. The study's findings bear implications for theory and practice. This paper's combination of a dynamic capabilities approach and a multi‐level perspective from sustainability transitions research is a conceptual novelty, enabling an understanding of the activities involved in the (re)orientation process towards sustainable business from a company's perspective, as well as broader societal and sustainability needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines differences in announcement day effects among firms engaged in voluntary sell-offs. While, on average, an initial sell-off announcement results in a significant positive excess return, not all divestiture announcements are accompanied by positive price movements. Dividing the sample into two subsamples based on whether the transaction price is announced shows that the announcement day effect is significantly positive for the price group but not statistically different from zero for the no-price group. In addition, a positive relation is found between the relative size of the sell-off and the announcement day return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tool of analysis most often applied to the behavior of financial institutions has been portfolio theory. The inadequacy of this approach stems from the total omission of production and cost constraints under which financial firms operate, and thus the role of these constraints in determining the equilibrium output mix and the scale size of the financial firm. Although various studies have proposed to describe the operations of the financial firm (mostly commercial banks) by utilizing the concepts of the theory of the firm, thus correcting the deficiencies of portfolio analysis, they have not been completely successful in developing an adequate model of the banking or other financial firm [3; 16; 17; 19; 27]. The lack of success of previous studies in developing a positive theory of the financial firm can be attributed to the incomplete application of the essential elements of the theory of the firm to financial institutions. Specifically, previous writers have failed to: (1) appropriately classify outputs and inputs of the financial firm by failing to consider the criteria on which the financial firm makes economic decisions, and (2) analyze the technical aspects of production and cost for the financial firm. The purpose of this paper is to develop a model within which the role of production and cost can be analyzed and the behavior of the financial firm understood within the context of a profit maximizing producer rather than, as viewed from the portfolio approach, as a rational investor. The analysis presented in this paper shows the following: (1) contrary to existing literature, in order to develop a positive theory of price and output decisions of the financial firm, explicit concepts of outputs and inputs of the financial firm must be developed and these concepts must be consistent with the criteria on which the firm's economic decisions are made; (2) by carefully analyzing the technical aspects of the financial firm's production process, a m... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores and extends the theory of the demand for money by firms. Existing models fail to explain the high levels of deposits held by firms. Such large balances are usually explained by the existence of compensating balance arrangements in this country. However, the traditional theory of compensating balances views the practice as irrational if it results in an increase in firms' balances. The paper presents a transactions demand theory of firms' demand for money. It is demonstrated that compensating balance arrangements are a rational response to the prohibition on the payment of interest on demand deposits in this country. With compensating balances the firm and the bank, taken together, are better off than in the absence of such practices. The savings in transaction cost to the firm resulting from increased balances is greater than the opportunity cost of the additional reserves which the bank must hold. Furthermore, optimal balance requirements result in optimal money demand identical to that in a system with no restriction on the deposit rate. Thus, the same result is achieved by paying an optimal cash deposit rate and an optimal implicit deposit rate through services. Although the framework developed applies to compensating balance requirements on loans, only compensating balances held in payment for services is analyzed in this paper. The impact of optimal requirements can be incorporated easily in the tradition transactions money demand models. This modification would be expected to improve significantly these models' predictions of firms' money demand. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this analysis for macroeconomic analysis and for the regulation of interest rates on demand deposits. It is demonstrated that optimal compensating balance requirements subvert the objective of this regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his fundamental works and Douglas Vickers integrates the production, investment and financing decisions of the firm into a useful and illuminating model. He deals with uncertainty using risk-adjusted capitalization and interest rates, assumes constant business risk and treats financial risk as a function of leverage. This paper extends Vickers' analysis by allowing business risk to depend on production and investment decisions. In particular, it derives a criterion for investment decisions under general uncertainty and market organization conditions when business risk is subject to control. In his fundamental works and Douglas Vickers integrates the production, investment and financing decisions of the firm into a useful and illuminating model. He deals with uncertainty using risk-adjusted capitalization and interest rates, assumes constant business risk and treats financial risk as a function of leverage. This paper extends Vickers' analysis by allowing business risk to depend on production and investment decisions. In particular, it derives a criterion for investment decisions under general uncertainty and market organization conditions when business risk is subject to control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the link between related and unrelated diversification and human resource management (HRM) controls. The paper presents a model proposing that the type of corporate (macro) controls used by related or unrelated firms implies a relative emphasis on either flexibility or fit among HRM practices in that related firms emphasize flexibility and unrelated firms emphasize fit. This emphasis on flexibility or fit, in turn, has implications for the use of HRM (micro) controls such as clan, behavior, and outcome controls such that related firms exhibit the use of all three types of HRM controls, while unrelated firms exhibit a relative emphasis on the use of outcome controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates interrelationships of product design, organization design, processes for learning and managing knowledge, and competitive strategy. This paper uses the principles of nearly decomposable systems to investigate the ability of standardized interfaces between components in a product design to embed coordination of product development processes. Embedded coordination creates 'hierarchical coordination' without the need to continually exercise authority--enabling effective coordination of processes without the tight coupling of organizational structures. We develop concepts of modularity in product and organization designs based on standardized component and organization interfaces. Modular product architectures create information structures that provide the 'glue' that holds together the loosely coupled parts of a modular organization design. By facilitating loose coupling, modularity can also reduce the cost and difficulty of adaptive coordination, thereby increasing the strategic flexibility of firms to respond to environmental change. Modularity in product and organization designs therefore enables a new strategic approach to the management of knowledge based on an intentional, carefully managed loose coupling of a firm's learning processes at architectural and component levels of product creation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a rigorous analysis of two-tiered financial reporting regimes within a formal economic framework. The objective of the paper is to inject discipline into the debate over the implications of allowing two-tiered financial reporting. Some proponents of two-tiered reporting appear to be arguing that less sophisticated investors will be helped by introducing this regime. We model a securities market where both sophisticated and unsophisticated investors trade on the basis of information obtained by processing and analyzing a full set of financial statements and a summary annual report. The analysis examines the impact of summary reporting on investor profitability, decisions to become informed, and market liquidity. We show that two-tiered reporting can actually be detrimental to investors with low information-processing sophistication. This result can be expressed either in terms of expected trading profits or in terms of the equilibrium number of unsophisticated traders. By formally modeling the information characteristics of summary financial reports and mapping the impact of these characteristics into market behavior,: this paper illustrates the nature and importance of underlying assumptions and demonstrates that care must be exercised in assessing the consequences of introducing such a reporting structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper develops a simple model of corporate ownership structure in which costs and benefits of ownership concentration are analyzed. The model compares the liquidity benefits obtained through dispersed corporate ownership with the benefits from efficient management control achieved by some degree of ownership concentration. The paper reexamines the free-rider problem in corporate control in the presence of liquidity trading, derives predictions for the trade and pricing of blocks, and provides criteria for the optimal choice of ownership structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the returns earned by subscribing to initial public offerings of equity (IPOs). Rock (1986) suggests that IPO returns are required by uninformed investors as compensation for the risk of trading against superior information. We show that IPOs with more informed investor capital require higher returns. The marketing underwriter's reputation reveals the expected level of "informed" activity. Prestigious underwriters are associated with lower risk offerings. With less risk there is less incentive to acquire information and fewer informed investors. Consequently, prestigious underwriters are associated with IPOs that have lower returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]