Motivated by the growing attention on climate change and the ethical role that board characteristics and ownership may play in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, this paper investigates the ...relationship between institutional ownership and GHG emissions. Using an extensive dataset from the UK and the USA, we show that institutional ownership is associated with less GHG emissions – a one standard deviation increase in the proportion of institutional ownership reduces carbon emissions by 1.02 metric tons. Our findings are robust when using alternative measures, econometric specifications and several approaches to address endogeneity. Further, we find no evidence for a stronger effect in the UK compared with the USA, as expected from our discussion of the governance contexts in the two countries. We also test the possible channel (i.e. exit and selection) through which institutional investors affect GHG emissions. In a set of additional analyses, we show that litigation risk and board gender diversity moderate the relationship between institutional ownership and GHG emissions. Finally, we also document a positive effect of the stewardship codes on the relationship between institutional ownership and GHG emissions. Our findings make significant theoretical and regulatory contributions.
Abstract
Through a survey and analyses of observational data, we provide systematic evidence that institutional investors value and demand climate risk disclosures. The survey reveals the investors ...have a strong demand for climate risk disclosures, and many actively engage their portfolio firms for improvements. Empirical analyses of holdings data corroborate this evidence by showing a significantly positive association between climate-conscious institutional ownership and better firm-level climate risk disclosure. We establish further evidence of institutional investors’ influence on firms’ climate risk disclosures by examining a shock to the climate risk disclosure demand of French institutional investors (French Article 173).
Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.
We study the local effects of new market-rate housing in low-income areas using microdata on large apartment buildings, rents, and migration. New buildings decrease rents in nearby units by about 6% ...relative to units slightly farther away or near sites developed later, and they increase in-migration from low-income areas. We show that new buildings absorb many high-income households and increase the local housing stock substantially. If buildings improve nearby amenities, the effect is not large enough to increase rents. Amenity improvements could be limited because most buildings go into already-changing neighborhoods or buildings could create disamenities such as congestion.
Based on panel data from 2010 to 2019, this study examines the relationship between defense science and technology innovation and high‐quality economic development at the provincial level in China. ...Using the gray correlation analysis method of panel data and an evaluation index system of high‐quality economic development, we calculate the gray correlation coefficient and decompose its time‐series gray correlation degree and cross‐sectional. Our findings indicate that the correlation between defense science and technology innovation and high‐quality economic development in China is generally stable during 2010–2019. However, Beijing stands out as an exception with a correlation coefficient of less than 0.5. Furthermore, there is regional gray correlation heterogeneity with the smallest correlation degree found in the eastern region and the largest in the northeast region. Based on our results, we propose three countermeasure suggestions: first, to balance national defense construction and economic construction; second, to optimize national defense science and technology strategy according to local conditions; and third, to effectively utilize industrial structure advantages. In summary, our study contributes to the literature by highlighting the relationship between defense science and technology innovation and high‐quality economic development in China. Our findings provide implications for policymakers and practitioners to make informed decisions in achieving sustainable and high‐quality economic development.
The rapid growth of leverage is one of the risk factors for China's economy. To explore social credit's impact on corporate leverage's growth rate, we conduct the staggered difference‐in‐difference ...(DID) approach based on a quasi‐natural experiment of the social credit system reform. Our findings indicate that social credit significantly suppresses the growth rate of corporate leverage, which remains robust after some robustness checks. In addition, this effect can be attributed to alleviating agency costs and information asymmetry. Finally, our analysis reveals that the above effects are significant only for firms with poor corporate governance, high bankruptcy risk, low investment efficiency, and a low proportion of tangible assets. In summary, our study provides micro‐level evidence on the economic consequences of social credit system reform in China and policy insights on how the government can effectively control the growth rate of corporate leverage to prevent risk.
When crises such as disease outbreaks occur in low-income countries, the global response can influence the output of researchers in the most affected locations. This paper investigates the impact of ...the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic on publication outcomes of endemic country scientists. Driven by collaborations with high-income country scientists in Ebola publications, endemic country scientists with relevant experience increase their publication output. However, the productivity of scientists without relevant experience falls, driving a reduction in non-Ebola publications. Any benefits arising from increased visibility during the epidemic does not appear to spill over to non-Ebola or Africa-led research in the long run.
We show how to use commuting flows to infer the spatial distribution of income within a city. A simple workplace choice model predicts a gravity equation for commuting flows whose destination fixed ...effects correspond to wages. We implement this method with cell phone transaction data from Dhaka and Colombo. Model-predicted income predicts separate income data, at the workplace and residential level, and by skill group. Unlike machine learning approaches, our method does not require training data, yet it achieves comparable predictive power. We show that hartals (transportation strikes) in Dhaka reduce commuting more for high model-predicted wage and high skill commuters.
Could airlines manage their excess capacity? This is a timely question, considering the likely growth in demand in the post‐pandemic period. As capacity reflects competitive priorities, business ...models can account for excess capacity. This study examines the impact of business models on excess capacity. The results show that capacity utilization decreased by 7%, although technical efficiency increased by 6%. As excess capacity differs across business models, airlines adopting the full‐service airline business model have higher capacity utilization than their competitors. This can be explained by the actions taken by full‐service airlines after the 2008 financial crisis.
Abstract This paper analyses the effect of trade policy uncertainty in a customs union on export‐platform foreign direct investment (FDI). First, I develop a partial equilibrium framework with ...heterogeneous firms based on the proximity–concentration trade‐off that involves trade policy uncertainty about trade costs inside a customs union. Second, I derive an empirical equation that I test by exploiting the 2016 Brexit referendum as a natural experiment and using data on manufacturing greenfield FDI projects. The results show that trade policy uncertainty impacted negatively the decisions of firms to invest in export‐platform activities in the UK following the Brexit referendum. Moreover, I find that extra‐EU manufacturing firms preferred EU countries as opposed to the UK for new investments after the 2016 referendum.
This study analyses whether the decision to work while sick can be linked to workload fluctuations. Drawing on data collected from professional football, we exploit the dynamics of a season and use ...additional (national and international) cup games conducted in the second half of a season as a source of exogenous variation. We find robust evidence that players are 6.3 percentage points more likely to return from injuries earlier than expected when their teams are exposed to a high workload. The effect is driven by players who are more important to their teams and those who are less vulnerable to injuries. Finally, we find that presenteeism comes at the cost of an early comeback significantly shortening the time until the next injury by approximately 16 days.
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