Using China's stock market as the testing venue, this study examines how corporate transparency helps explain the sensitivity of stock prices to general investor sentiment. We find that firms with ...low corporate transparency, measured by a battery of proxies including state ownership, the prevalence of related party transactions, accrual-based earnings management, audit opinions, and the quality of audit firms, are more affected by investor sentiment than are firms with high corporate transparency. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of corporate transparency in mitigating the effects of investor sentiment on stock prices.
Data, as supplemental material, are available at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1911
.
This paper was accepted by Brad Barber, finance.
Abstract
This paper examines the role of local politicians’ patronage connections to top political leaders (i.e., the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China) in privatization outcomes. We ...find that connected local politicians are more likely to sell state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to corrupt buyers at substantially discounted prices. The SOEs purchased by corrupt buyers engage in significantly more fraudulent and corrupt activities following privatization and thus perform worse. For identification, we use the mandatory retirement ages of Central Committee members in a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. When local politicians lose their connections because Central Committee members step down after reaching mandatory retirement ages, we find a 14.4 percentage point drop in the likelihood of choosing corrupt buyers and a 90.13% drop in price discounts for privatization sales. Consequently, the privatized SOEs experience jumps in efficiency gains after the age cut-offs for mandatory retirement.
By leveraging the quasi-natural experiment of the passage of the Environmental Protection Tax Law in late 2016 in China that imposed a pollution tax (green tax) on firms, we examine the impact of ...this tax on the green investments of heavy-polluting firms. Our difference-in-differences results show that the green tax enhances green investments of heavy-polluting firms. Specifically, firm-level green investments of heavy-polluting firms increased by approximately 38% after the green tax than before the green tax relative to an average firm. The findings are robust to a propensity score matching method, fixed-effects models, placebo tests, dynamic effect analysis, and after excluding alternative explanations. Additional analysis suggests that the positive effect of the green tax on green investments is more pronounced for large firms, state-owned firms, and firms with high analyst following. Collectively, we find a green tax policy contributes to green investments.
Solvay Bertrams, Kenneth; Coupain, Nicolas; Homburg, Ernst
01/2013
eBook
Ernest Solvay, philanthropist and organizer of the world-famous Solvay conferences on physics, discovered a profitable way of making soda ash in 1861. Together with a handful of associates, he laid ...the foundations of the Solvay company, which successfully branched out into other chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals. Since its emergence in 1863, Solvay has maintained world leadership in the production of soda ash. This is the first scholarly book on the history of the Solvay company, which was one of the earliest chemical multinationals and today is among the world's twenty largest chemical companies. It is also one of the largest companies in the field to preserve its family character. The authors analyze the company's 150-year history (1863–2013) from economic, political and social perspectives, showing the enormous impact geopolitical events had on the company and the recent consequences of global competition.
This paper investigates the profitability determinants of small- and medium-sized enterprises in high-tech industries. Literature review suggests that innovator position, market awareness, niche ...operation, and internationalization should have positive impacts on SMTEs' profitability. However, the empirical results partially agree with, and partially dissent from, the propositions.
Central to the book's content is its focus on where privatization stands today and what are the next frontiers, the why and how behind countries who privatize certain industries, whether ...privatization works as an economic tool and important insights relevant to financial institutions such as how to value privatized industries, how share offerings differ from private offerings, how countries go about harnessing private capital, etc. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance/0195150627/toc.html
PurposeThis article aims to investigate the organisational implications of adopting Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies, giving specific attention to operations. The paper addresses these implications ...in two directions: organisational prerequisites for, and consequences of, I4.0 technologies.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on a multiple case study of Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in manufacturing. Ten case studies have been developed through interviews, company visits and secondary data collection.FindingsThe multiple case study results show that: (1) a lean organisational structure supports effective adoption of I4.0 technologies; (2) introducing such technologies is linked to developing a new kind of job profile (i.e. the “Autonomous Operative Job Profile”); and (3) higher levels of technology adoption create a higher need for non-technical competences.Research limitations/implicationsA limitation of this research relates to the highly heterogeneous maturity levels of the sampled companies, due to the relative newness of the I4.0 paradigm. Future research could, therefore, longitudinally analyse the technology integration process within organisations.Practical implicationsThis research provides preliminary evidence about how organisations and technologies co-evolve, thus suggesting that managers should co-design these areas. It also demonstrates the extreme importance of designing a structured process and a clear set of human resource management tools to favour SME organisational development.Originality/valueThe study is built upon a conceptual framework derived from the sociotechnical perspective that analyses the interconnections between technology implementation and organisational change. From the results, three research propositions are derived to be tested on a larger scale.
Entrepreneurs generally lack the marketing capabilities necessary to bring their new product to market. To engage the resources required to do this, they must somehow place a value on the enterprise. ...However, all of the methods of valuation currently available are based on the use of historical or current revenues, and therefore are not applicable to an entrepreneurial enterprise with a first-time product. In Valuing an Entrepreneurial Enterprise, Audretsch and Link present a valuation method uniquely tailored to emerging technology-based ventures that have no revenue history to lean on. Unlike many traditional methods, theirs does not take into account the track record of companies and products similar to that being valuated. Instead, it draws on economic theory to formulate a solution to the problem. The book develops conceptual ground, including trends in entrepreneurship, models of innovation, and the economics of standards and entrepreneurship policy. The authors review the traditional valuation methods and illustrate them numerically with case studies to show how the traditional approach produces an incorrect valuation. The core of the book presents the new methodology and demonstrates how it avoids the pitfalls of past approaches. The authors also show how public policy on technology and infrastructure changes valuations of start-up firms in areas such as stem-cell products and renewable fuels projects. Valuing an Entrepreneurial Enterprise will serve as a valuable resource for advanced students, economists, financial planners, and valuators interested in new valuation methods and the theory behind them, as well as those interested in entrepreneurship. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/management/9780199730377/toc.html
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