dealing with cultural differences in environmental management exploring the cep cfp relationship abstract despite numerous attempts to agree on the nature of the relationship between environmental and financial performance controversial results still exist in the literature this discrepancy suggests that we must enlarge the spectrum of analysis to understand when it pays to be green the way in which society takes a stance on environmental responsibility is deeply bounded to the cultural lenses through which it sets its priorities a cultural perspective can help explain the capacity for social phenomena to shape behaviour we consider how the contextual environment of culture thus far neglected might moderate the corporate environmental performance corporate financial performance relationship and thus influence firms capacity to offset the costs of environmental management by using a sample of 954 companies we contribute to the long running debate showing how the effect of cultural influence can overcome the hurdle of contrasting results and offer novel insights for both academia and practitioners

racing to the bottom and racing to the top the crucial role of firm characteristics in foreign direct investment choices this study builds on the pollution haven and induced innovation arguments as explanations for firm behavior with regard to international environmental management and argues both need to be integrated this implies that foreign direct investment is capable of facilitating a race to the bottom and a race to the top simultaneously using novel and detailed data we test whether environmental capabilities and weaknesses and other characteristics affect us firms foreign direct investment choices in chinese provinces with more or less stringent environmental regulation this enables a more detailed analysis by allowing country regulation to vary spatially and over time our study finds that heterogeneity in capabilities and firm size jointly determine foreign direct investment and in doing so shows the simultaneity of a race to the bottom and to the top specifically firms with environmental capabilities invest in more stringently regulated regions and firms with weaknesses are less likely to target such regions these diverging effects are both moderated by firm size which further amplifies each of them our findings underscore the need to integrate pollution haven and induced innovation arguments in a joint analysis they furthermore show the relevance of methodological choices when testing hypotheses integrating the above arguments empirically

emission standards and stochastic waste load empirical work regarding the impact of environmental regulations on firm behavior has been developed under the assumption that emissions of pollutants are deterministic the implication is that the regulation is effective only when the constraint is exactly satisfied in real life however it is seldom the case that emission constraints are exactly satisfied the purpose of this paper is to find out whether regulation schemes are ineffective or whether the structure is an optimal reaction to random fluctuations in emissions the swedish pulp and paper industry is used as an empirical illustration

evaluation of investor behaviour in urban regeneration the financing of urban regeneration and levering of private sector investment remains a major policy issue this article utilising the results of a behavioural survey analyses the motivations of

abatement investments and green goodwill this paper develops and estimates a dynamic model that links profits to green goodwill assuming that abatement investments generate green goodwill and using data from the swedish pulp industry we are able to test the effects of green goodwill on firm level output price and profits the results suggests that swedish pulp plant output prices and profits may be positively related to changes in green goodwill furthermore no evidence is found to support the existence of adjustment costs due to abatement investments

the role and behaviour of commercial property investors and developers in french urban regeneration the experience of the paris region summary this paper provides an analysis of the factors underlying private investment decisions concerning property development with specific reference to urban regeneration in the french context it is based on the results of a behavioural survey and mca analysis of the behaviour patterns and motivations of active private investors and developers in the french commercial property markets and their involvement in french urban regeneration initiatives the pattern of investment and development activity over the 1997 2002 french property market recovery period has been studied and a typology of actors set up based on their investment policy for these property markets the findings indicate that property investors in urban regeneration essentially seek speculative developments and short term investments

the potential impact of social accountability certification on marketing a short note social responsibility sa 8000 registration certification is a response by the business community to address consumer and investor perceptions of the importance of emerging global social issues such as child labor worker rights discrimination compensation etc as more u s and european firms outsource production to less developed nations social environmental and reputational issues have become more important sa8000 is a series of behavioral standards that represents a comprehensive and potentially global corporate social responsibility registration system that provides a standard of socially responsible treatment of workers this paper explores how sa8000 adoption may impact a firm s marketing activities

occupier requirements in commercial real estate markets changes in the business environment associated with globalisation innovation in information and communications technologies and the drive towards more flexible production systems should be reflected in changes in occupational requirements for property although much research assumes that property as a derived demand will simply be supplied in response to changed demand in practice the institutional structure of the market can act as a constraint on the provision of appropriate space empirical research into new working practices and their impact on the property portfolio suggest that change is muted and gradual in part this reflects resistance to the adoption of working practices in part it reflects the inertia of a traditional model of property procurement however there is growing evidence of innovation in the nature of provision and more active and strategic management of the property resource research in this area as in many other areas of real estate is hampered by lack of reliable and a

implementation in differential information economies abstract we consider the problem of implementation of social choice correspondences in differential information economies we provide necessary conditions for implementation and slightly stronger conditions which are sufficient to guarantee implementation

reexamination of stock price reaction to environmental performance a garch application abstract this paper examines how the corporate environmental performance of a firm evaluated by the nikkei environmental management ranking survey affects the ranked firms stock price using the market model that accounts for generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch effects accordingly we compare the results of the egarch model with that of ordinary least squares ols for a period of eight years and for each year the obtained results indicate that the stock prices of firms ranked above thirty in nikkei environmental management ranking have risen fallen or remained constant on the event day the findings based on the analysis by the period of eight years suggests that market reaction to corporate environmental performance has a positive effect for the higher frequency of ranking and a negative effect for the lower frequency of ranking

a meta analytical evaluation of sustainable city initiatives the role of the city in environmental management is increasingly coming to the fore a central element in creating urban environmental sustainability is the adoption of appropriate energy policies since most environmental externalities in cities are directly or indirectly related to energy use the current practice demonstrates an overwhelming variety of initiatives and policies so that the actual success of such strategies in a cross sectional comparative perspective is hard to evaluate in this context this paper offers an application of meta analysis as this approach is an interesting analytical contribution towards a better understanding of the critical success factors of urban energy policies the paper starts with a general overview of the issue of urban sustainability and sets out the importance of energy policies at the urban level it continues by offering a methodological framework for the assessment of critical factors related to the performance of sustainable energy strategies using a dat

how green management influences product innovation in china the role of institutional benefits does being green facilitate product innovation this study examines whether green management in firms operating in china fosters radical product innovation to a greater extent than it does incremental product innovation and investigates the underlying institutional mechanisms involved in the relationship between green management and product innovation the findings show that green management is more likely to lead to radical product innovation than to incremental product innovation moreover government support as a formal institutional benefit more strongly mediates the effect of green management on radical product innovation than its effect on incremental product innovation whereas social legitimacy as an informal institutional benefit more strongly mediates the effect of green management on incremental product innovation than its effect on radical product innovation these findings provide important implications for explaining how firms employ green management to facilitate product innovation 2014 springer science business media dordrecht

a real options approach to abatement investments and green goodwill in this paper we adopt the green goodwill argument as to why firms voluntarily invest in abatement capital we investigate the effects on the abatement investment decision of changes in uncertainty about future green goodwill competitor abatement investments regulations etc using a real options framework our results indicate that increased uncertainty about consumers willingness to pay for green products in the future discourage voluntary abatement investments the model also suggests that voluntary abatement investments are promoted by an increased threat of regulation and competitor abatement investments furthermore the benefit cost ratio of the abatement investment project at the point where it is optimal to invest is independent of what regulatory regime stringent or lenient the firm operates in we also conclude that despite the fact that voluntary abatement investment exists there may still be room for environmental policy

do esg controversies matter for firm value evidence from international data the aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between environmental social and governance esg controversies and firm market value we use a unique dataset of more than 4000 firms from 58 countries during 2002 2011 primary analysis surprisingly shows that esg controversies are associated with greater firm value however when interacted with the corporate social performance csp score esg controversies are found to have no direct effect on firm value while the interaction appears to be highly and significantly positive building on this evidence we attempt to explore the channels through which csp may enhance market value conducting sample split analysis indicates that higher csp score has an impact on market value only for high attention firms those firms which are larger perform better located in countries with greater press freedom more searched on the internet more followed by analysts and have an improved corporate social reputation thus our findings provide new insights on the role of firm visibility through which firms can profit from their csp

stock price responses to the eco points programme for electrical household appliances evidence from japan abstractthis article examines the japanese government s project for green consumer electronics to promote business through the use of eco points and its economic impact on consumer electronics firms stock prices there has been little research on the economic effect of this project in order to achieve our aim we employ event study methodology our results show that stock prices responded positively to programme adoption thereby indicating that the programme had positive effects on the related firms performance the results also show that the programme s economic effects gradually decreased over each subsequent programme extension this probably occurred because the programme targeted durable goods which consumers do not replace frequently

effects of pollution control on industry productivity a factor demand approach four major manufacturing industries are examined the abatement effect on capital and labor productivity are determined from parameters of a system of factor demand equations which allow for disequilibrium in factor markets the system is estimated for each industry with annual time series data from 1960 to 1980 abatement requirements were found to retard both average capital productivity and average labor productivity in three of the four industries paper chemicals and primary metals for several industries in which factor productivity was slower after 1973 environmental controls accounted for a significant proportion of that slow down

erratum standards versus standards the effects of different pollution restrictions when economists refer to pollution standards they almost universally mean uniform restrictions on pollution emissions e g william j baumol and wallace e oates 1975 ch 13 susan rose ackerman 1973 david besanko 1978 however in practice standards take many forms not only emissions restrictions but restrictions on pollution per unit of output or per unit of an input restrictions on the use of a polluting input or mandated use of a particular pollution control technology these specifications of regulations will have a variety of effects on a firm s resource allocation decisions for instance allowing pollution per unit of output as the standard instead of directly restricting the level of pollution gives the firm some choice in addition to reducing pollution it can increase its output to dilute the pollution this paper examines the effects of five different forms of pollution standards on input decisions the level of production and firm profits the results show that the different standards by providing firms with different incentives change the firm s allocation decisions and affect the relative profitability of the standards section i reviews the existing literature on the incentives of different instruments the following section describes the model to be used five different forms of pollution constraints are individually examined in section iii using a graphical approach their relative effects as well as some special cases are assessed in section iv finally section v raises the case of different standards when firms are not identical

environmental regulations and productivity growth the case of fossil fueled electric power generation this paper measures and analyzes the effect of sulfur dioxide emission restrictions on the rate of productivity growth in the electric power industry over the 1973 79 business cycle a firm specific measure of regulatory intensity is developed which depends on the severity of the emission standard the extent of enforcement and the unconstrained emission rate relevant to each utility the results indicate that emission regulations result in significantly higher generating costs primarily from the increased use of low sulfur fuels the average rate of productivity growth was reduced by 0 59 percentage points per year for constrained utilities

the costs of water pollution regulation in the pulp and paper industry this paper studies plant level data on actual and permitted levels of water pollution emissions for the pulp and paper industry there is widespread and substantial overcompliance with the relevant regulations aggregate bod emissions in 1992 were only 50 of the amount allowed overcompliance appears to imply a zero marginal abatement cost and its prevalence therefore has the potential to substantially change the debate over the costs of regulation we show instead that plants incurred substantial costs to overcomply marginal abatement costs were roughly 13 000 ton in 1992 we discuss possible explanations for costly overcompliance and their implications for estimation

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

drivers of corporate environmentalism the case of the polish economy in transition abstract at the beginning of the 1990s the central and eastern european cee countries went through significant changes that were supposed to mould them into liberal market democracies those changes that took place in the legal institutional market and civil society fields have also significantly affected the sphere of environmental protection and management clark and cole 1998 as a result also corporate behaviour towards the natural environment has changed significantly apart from changes determined explicitly by legal developments poland has witnessed a rapid increase in voluntary corporate initiatives protecting the natural environment such as iso 14001 environmental management systems ems the purpose of this study is to uncover the drivers of corporate environmentalism as well as its specificity and dynamics during the transition period in poland in order to reach this goal 283 polish based companies were surveyed the conducted study showed that they tended to go green in order to improve their environmental performance and meet the ever changing environmental regulations expecting to capitalise on this type of corporate activity the latter was reflected in the corporate expectation to enhance their image surprisingly the research revealed that the importance of strictly economic drivers such as cost reduction and the market share was rather minor the findings also show that the pressure from various stakeholder groups was of little importance

beyond the question does it pay to be green how much green and when abstract this research investigates the relationship between green management and performance in italian firms the analysis compares innovation and productivity of firms with similar features but different environmental activities firms are matched on a rich set of covariates extending the coarsened exact matching to survey data matched data are analysed with parametric and non parametric tests and endogenous treatment regression the analysis shows that the relationship between green management and performance is u shaped green firms are performing no better than firms with no environmental activity especially in energy intensive sectors among green firms more advanced environmental management is associated with higher performance overall the results suggest that green management has strong sectoral patterns and no linear relationship with performance findings suggest that green managers should pursue a comprehensive environmental management system sectoral specific policies to promote environmentally friendly activities are needed when green activities are not paying off

success factors for agricultural biogas production in sweden a case study of business model innovation as government officials policymakers and the general public increasingly express their concern about global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions scientists search for alternative sources o

undominated nash implementation in bounded mechanisms we study implementation in undominated nash equilibrium by bounded mechanisms an undominated nash equilibrium is a nash equilibrium in which no agent uses a weakly dominated strategy a mechanism is bounded if every dominated strategy is dominated by some undominated strategy we identify necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for such implementation these conditions are satisfied in virtually all economic environments and are also satisfied by interesting correspondences from the social choice literature for economic settings we provide a particularly simple implementing mechanism for which the undominated equilibrium outcomes coincide with those obtained from the iterative elimination of weakly dominated strategies

institutions in british property research a review this paper surveys approaches to the study of institutions as used in recent commercial property research in britain institutional analysis can be approached from mainstream economics power str

administrative costs and instrument choice for stochastic non point source pollutants this paper extends the empiricalanalysis of non point source pollution to thecase where the pollutant is stochastic andalternative regulatory instruments havedifferent administrative costs it also appliesa method of stochastic programming whereemissions are log normally distributed forthe kennet catchment in south west england werank a range of policies in terms of abatementcosts alone and total costs abatement andadministrative costs on the basis ofabatement costs alone a uniform emission taxis the cost minimising policy but on the basisof total cost a nitrogen input tax is theleast cost policy furthermore the policyranking based on total costs changes as thereliability standard increases

the economics of corporate social responsibility a firm level perspective survey this paper analyzes the economics of corporate social responsibility csr as a private response to market imperfections in order to satisfy social preferences depending on whether they affect regulation competition or contracts market imperfections driving csr decisions are classified in three categories public goods and bads and altruism imperfect competition and incomplete contracts we successively present these drivers of csr decisions and highlight the nature of incentives external or internal at work and the testable and tested hypotheses in the reviewed studies we finally review the link between csr and financial performance as well as between csr and social and environmental performance a twofold discrepancy appears in the literature opening future research paths a disconnection between our understanding of csr drivers and csr impacts and a knowledge gap between csr financial and social consequences the latter having received little attention

sustainability and the anchoring of capital negotiations surrounding two major urban projects in switzerland theurillat t and crevoisier o sustainability and the anchoring of capital negotiations surrounding two major urban projects in switzerland regional studies this article deals with the anchoring of mobile financial capital in the city and urban sustainability illustrated by a case study in the swiss context it develops the theory that new forms of negotiation are appearing around urban projects development construction firms are playing a central role they are capable of evaluating and translating the multiple dimensions of a project and certain sustainability challenges into financial terms in a way that permits the anchoring of capital in the city in parallel the issue of sustainability depends greatly on the capacity of the local actors to negotiate with the promoters of urban projects

total quality environmental management and total cost assessment an exploratory study abstract this study addresses one of the major perceived barriers to total quality environmental management tqem total cost assessment tca managers have difficulty assessing the impact of tqem programs because of the lack of appropriate measures in order for tqem investments to be given serious consideration a process is required for measuring monitoring and evaluating tqem by appropriately including all the environmental costs and savings for each investment option after reviewing the background of tqem and frameworks for capturing environmental costs an opportunity emerges for research involving the use of tqem and tca this research presented in this study develops a framework for identifying and formulating a set of cost measures associated with tqem investments the framework serves as a basis for comparing environmental cost measures used among several large us companies two major outputs yielded by this research are 1 a catalog of the various cost measures and procedures used to implement and carryout a tqem tca and 2 the tqem tca framework itself the catalog and framework will be important for later empirical assessment and modeling of tqem

can sustainability enhance business district attractiveness a survey of corporate property decisions in france this paper analyses the rising importance of sustainable principles in property decisions and its impact on attractiveness for business districts in france a behavioural survey of a large sample of corporate property managers and a multiple correspondence analysis highlight key factors indicating the influence of sustainable principles alongside more traditional determinants of territorial attractiveness this approach enables the drawing up of a typology of companies according to the influence of sustainability issues showing the rise in importance placed on sustainability in location decisions made by listed companies companies that own their head offices and companies located in the main business districts of the paris metropolitan area

swedish industry and kyoto an assessment of the effects of the european co2 emission trading system we assess the effects on swedish industry input demands and output of different climate policy scenarios connected to energy policy induced by the kyoto protocol we use a unique dataset containing

urban regeneration and the development industry healey p 1991 urban regeneration and the development industry reg studies 25 97 108 this paper examines a key assumption of urban policy in britain in the 1980s this assumption is that urba

the kilometer tax and swedish industry effects on sectors and regions an introduction of a kilometer tax for heavy goods vehicles can be constrained by the risk of that higher production costs than competitors in other countries will negatively affect regions and industries of policy concern we estimate factor demand elasticities in the swedish manufacturing industry using firm level data for the 1990 to 2001 period on input prices and quantities the results show that the introduction of a kilometer tax for heavy goods vehicles decreases transport demand and increases labour demand the effects are less pronounced in terms of changes in output though some industries e g wood pulp and paper can be expected to be affected more than others due to their dependence on road freight transport the regional dimension regarding the consequences of a kilometer tax seems to be small or even nonexisting

development cultures and urban regeneration the importance of levering private finance and investment into urban regeneration is a central consideration of policy attention has focused on institutional investors motives for holding regeneration investments and on how they might be encouraged to put more money into inner city areas the paper argues that while helpful the impact of such an approach upon urban regeneration will be limited this is because by definition institutional investors are only interested in institutional property and buildings which do not conform to this frame of reference will not be of interest to them however other actors see things differently independent developers embrace the challenge presented by fringe locations mixed uses and the local urban culture and aesthetic and translate these characteristics into development values urban policy needs to address the contrasting ways in which the nature construction and application of investors strategic rationality intercept with local development conditions in particular greater emphasis should be given to encouraging independent locally based forms of property investment and development

pollution accumulation and abatement policy in a supply chain abstract this paper seeks to determine how the double marginalization phenomenon affects the tradeoff between polluting emissions and abatement activities related to pollution accumulation in a supply chain composed of one manufacturer and one retailer the environmental consequence of this inefficiency which emerges in a non cooperative vertical setting governed by a single parameter contract is overlooked in the literature on pollution control in the setup of a two stage game we investigate the impact of double marginalization for non cooperative equilibrium to check whether there are differences between dynamic and strategic effects of double marginalization on pollution accumulation both the open loop and feedback nash equilibria are derived over a finite time horizon with the cooperative solution as a benchmark

the roles of stakeholder support and procedure oriented management on asset recovery abstract as the management of returned products is fast becoming a business trend caused by pressure for compliance asset recovery is increasingly viewed as a fertile area for firms to reduce cost and improve quality environmental management is a viable approach for chinese manufacturers to respond to the escalating international quest for conserving the environment to tackle the problem of rising raw material costs and to improve product quality by analyzing returned products to reach the goals of cost reduction and product quality improvement manufacturers need to understand how asset recovery can be leveraged through procedure based practices and stakeholder support to enhance performance product type characterized by different levels of demand uncertainty and time to market may affect the outcomes of asset recovery adoption and should also be taken into account drawing on the environmental management and business logistics literature we provide empirical insights on asset recovery adoption using survey data collected from export oriented chinese manufacturers we find that asset recovery and stakeholder support are complementary in strengthening manufacturers financial performance regardless of product type in addition the performance impact of asset recovery can be substantial when manufacturers environmental management practices are less procedural allowing flexibility in the logistics management of product flows

the environmental and macroeconomic effects of socially responsible investment abstract we analyze the effects of socially responsible investment and public abatement on environmental quality and the economy in a continuous time dynamic growth model featuring optimizing households and firms environmental quality is modeled as a renewable resource consumers can invest in government bonds or firm equity since investors feel partly responsible for environmental pollution when holding firm equity they require a premium on the return to equity we show that socially responsible investment behavior by households partially offsets the positive effects on environmental quality of public abatement policies

political uncertainty and asset valuation evidence from business relocations in canada abstract quebec s drive for sovereignty from canada has been the source of political uncertainty for decades in canada this paper studies empirically stock market s reaction to the announcements of business relocations from the province of quebec to other provinces within canada similar announcements about toronto are used for control empirical results show that the market s reaction to the announcements of business relocations a from quebec is positive b from toronto is negative and c to toronto is positive the difference in abnormal returns between the quebec and toronto samples is positive and significant

evolutionary framework design in formulation of decision support models for production emissions and net profit of firm implications on environmental concerns of supply chains abstract there have been increased investments in cleaner technologies and adoption of a voluntarily limit on transportation emissions by the global firms to handle the environmental concerns of supply chains and to increase demand for finished goods consequences are the reduction in net profit for the firm to address this trade off between the net profit and environmental concerns the formulation and optimization of a compact model are needed development of these models requires a thorough understanding of the nature of the impact of three inputs investment coefficient penalty per unit emission and customer s emission elasticity on production emissions and net profit past studies revealed that a compact model comprising the interactive effect of these inputs on the production emissions and net profit is not yet formulated therefore this study illustrates the development of an evolutionary framework of an advanced multi gene genetic programming in the formulation of functional expressions for the net profit and production emissions based on the three inputs investment coefficient penalty per unit emission and customer s emission elasticity of the monopolist firm the sensitivity and parametric based 2 d analysis determine the relationships and found that the penalty per unit emission is dominant input for reducing emissions and maintaining net profit simultaneously the contribution of this work lies in designing of an evolutionary framework in the development of empirical explicit expressions which can easily be optimized analytically to keep production emissions and net profit balanced

gains from corporate headquarters relocations evidence from the stock market abstract this paper provides empirical evidence on investors perceptions of the relative advantages and costs of spatial agglomeration specifically we examine the stock price effects of headquarters relocations the stock market reaction is significantly positive when relocation decisions are attributed to cost savings indicating that cost savings available at less centralized locations outweigh any loss of enhancements associated with spatial clustering at urban centers in contrast decisions prompted by managerial self interest and desire for luxurious offices elicit an adverse reaction from investors

agglomeration and dispersion of high order service employment in the montreal metropolitan region 1981 96 much of the recent urban literature on suburban employment centres has neglected the role of high order services perhaps the principal component of edge cities in the creation of the evolving multinucleated metropolitan structure this paper specifically explores the role of high order services in this process we use employment by place of work data at the census tract level to examine the changing intrametropolitan geography of employment in four finance insurance and real estate fire services and eight business services in the montreal area over the period 1981 96 we find evidence of central business district cbd decline in relative but not absolute terms the resulting decentralisation has clearly assumed the form of polycentricity rather than of generalised dispersion in spite of recent advances in telecommunications technologies agglomeration economies continue to exert an important impact upon intrametropolitan location

what determines the inclusion in a sustainability stock index a panel data analysis for european companies this paper examines the determinants of the inclusion of european companies in the dow jones sustainability world index and the dow jones stoxx sustainability index in doing so the paper contributes to the micro econometric literature analyzing the determinants and economic effects of sustainability performance in three respects first it examines a broad measure of corporate sustainability behavior and thus does not only apply narrow measures of environmental performance such as toxic releases which is common in other studies second the paper examines the effect of internal assessment processes regarding corporate sustainability performance by an independent financial service institution finally it analyzes the influence of unobserved heterogeneity in the framework of panel data models the analysis shows that the probability for an inclusion in the sustainability indexes strongly decreases if a company does not respond to the written survey of the assessing institution furthermore time invariant random effects and an autoregressive structure in the stochastic components are important factors in contrast a significant influence of past economic performance cannot be confirmed robustly

environmental safety stock the impacts of regulatory and voluntary control policies on production planning inventory control and environmental performance abstract this paper analyzes the impacts of different pollution control policies on a firm s decisions of production planning and inventory control based on a stochastic model with both demand and environmental uncertainties we derive the optimal policies of production planning and inventory control under both regulatory and voluntary pollution control approaches and investigate their operational and environmental effects we establish that the conventional wisdom which suggests that reduction of environmental waste at the end of a production process also decreases the stock and throughput levels of a production system is not necessarily true rather a regulatory environmental standard that limits the total amount of waste may induce the firm to raise its planned stock level which would lead to a higher expected amount of environmental wastes before the standard is enforced as well as environmental risks at other stages of the production process the additional planned stock level which is termed environmental safety stock can be reversed by using the voluntary control approach that provides the firm with the flexibility to occasionally exceed the environmental standard we also conduct numerical experiments to analyze the effects of different values of model parameters under different control approaches the analytical results provide new insights to the impacts of a firm s production and inventory decisions on the natural environment as well as to the choices of pollution control approaches by decision makers in both the private and public sectors

the impact of environmental management on firm performance environmental management has the potential to play a pivotal role in the financial performance of the firm many individuals suggest that profitability is hurt by the higher production costs of environmental management initiatives while others cite anecdotal evidence of increased profitability a theoretical model is proposed that links strong environmental management to improved perceived future financial performance as measured by stock market performance the linkage to firm performance is tested empirically using financial event methodology and archival data of firm level environmental and financial performance significant positive returns were measured for strong environmental management as indicated by environmental performance awards and significant negative returns were measured for weak environmental management as indicated by environmental crises the implicit financial market valuation of these events also was estimated cross sectional analysis of the environmental award events revealed differences for first time awards and between industries first time award announcements were associated with greater increases in market valuation although smaller increases were observed for firms in environmentally dirty industries possibly indicative of market skepticism this linkage between environmental management and financial performance can be used by both researchers and practitioners as one measure of the benefits experienced by industry leaders and as one criterion against which to measure investment alternatives

environmental regulation cost and industry structure changes nonstationary markov analyses are used to investigate impacts of environmental regulatory costs associated with compliance on changes in market structure in pulp and paper industries results show environmental regulation expenditures have statistically significant effects on the probabilities of capacity moving to a larger company size category so industry structure is affected by environmental regulation however counter to expectations results further show consolidation occurs with higher probability when environmental costs are falling rather than when they are rising policy analyses that presume immediate policy responses to cost changes or that industry structure is unchanged may yield time inconsistent policy conclusions

performance versus design standards in the regulation of pollution abstract this paper presents a model of pollution regulation in an oligopolistic market two forms of regulation are considered performance standards which regulate pollution directly by an upper limit on emissions and design standards which regulate pollution indirectly by a minimum usage requirement of an enissions control input equilibria under each regulatory regime are characterized a welfare analysis reveals that performance standards are preferred to design standards if the objective is minimization of emissions plus pollution damage costs however the comparison is indeterminate if the regulator s objective is total surplus less pollution damage an equivalence between emissions taxes and performance standards is established so the above welfare comparisons also apply to emissions taxes versus design standards

building cities on financial assets the financialisation of property markets and its implications for city governments in the paris city region the 2008 global financial meltdown has redirected attention to the entwinement of financial markets and the urban built environment against that background recent works in urban political economy have focused on how city governments support the rent maximisation strategies of landowners thereby reinforcing the increasing tendency to treat land as a financial asset harvey 1982 2006 however this perspective paradoxically understates the importance of market finance actors neglecting to demonstrate how in practice such financial investors who have been shown to adopt selective investment practices shape urban redevelopment projects in this article the role of financial investors is analysed through a case study of a large scale redevelopment project on the outskirts of the paris city region city of saint ouen the analysis of negotiations over urban design and economic development issues raised by property developers seeking to fashion commercial properties as investment assets reveals the unevenness of a local authority s ability to implement an agenda that potentially diverges from the expectations of financial investors accordingly given the growing importance of investors in the ownership of the built environment the article considers urban redevelopment as the outcome of power relations that originate in the circulation of investors expectations these expectations are met through translating market finance categories risk return and liquidity into elements of the urban fabric this bears substantial consequences for policy making given the current context of austerity as municipal authorities are increasingly constrained to rely on property markets urban redevelopment projects are thereby increasingly shaped to provide investment assets for financial investors

increasing forest conservation in norway consequences for timber and forest products markets this paper analyses the impacts on timber and forest products markets of increasing forest conservation in norway a partial equilibrium forest sector model is applied to analyse effects on roundwood and forest products prices quantities and trade of four alternative conservation extents these alternatives are based on a recent biological analysis of the conservation needs in order to protect biodiversity in norway roundwood prices are projected to increase moderately when conservation increases domestically only since the norwegian forest industry substitutes imported fibre for domestic the impacts on roundwood prices are more substantial if also norway s forest products trading partners increase the forest conservation if forest owners voluntarily conserve forests subject to an economic compensation which currently is the most likely policy in norway the model results imply that forest owners on average are better off with increased conservation domestic sawnwood production is projected to reduce when assuming increasing forest conservation while the production level in the pulp and paper industry is almost unaffected in the short run finally increasing demand for forest products as a result of environmental good will may increase roundwood prices and harvest levels in unaffected forest areas significantly

pollution and corporate valuation evidence from china environmental pollution brings severe challenges in the context of a high growing economy of china pollution events bring serious ecological cost to the environment direct costs from sanction an

public disclosure programs vs traditional approaches for environmental regulation green goodwill and the policies of the firm abstract a public disclosure program pdp is compared to a traditional environmental regulation exemplified by a tax subsidy in a simple dynamic framework a pdp aims at revealing the environmental record of firms to the public this information affects its image goodwill or brand equity and ultimately its profit a firm polluting less than its prescribed target would win consumer s sympathy and raise its goodwill whereas it is the other way around when the firm exceeds its emissions quota the evolution of this goodwill is assumed to depend also on green activities or advertising expenditures within this framework we analyze how a pdp affects the firm s optimal policies regarding emissions pricing and advertising as compared to a traditional regulation we show that advertising acts as a complementary device to pricing and that emissions are increasing in goodwill the role of a standard or target level for emissions turns out to be totally different under both policy regimes in the case of a tax subsidy approach this target level only acts as constant who increases or decreases profit by a fixed amount but it does not affect the policy of the firm on the contrary if a pdp is implemented the target value for emissions enters in an important way in the goodwill accumulation mechanism and determines how the firm reacts to the regulation and what is the time path for the economic and environmental variables moreover this value is also crucial to determine the possibility that a pdp is profit improving a policy implication of this fact is that regulators should be particularly careful in fixing the emission standard when a pdp is applied the theoretical results are complemented with a numerical illustration

organizing product oriented environmental management from a firm s perspective environmental characteristics of products are increasingly investigated much research focuses on environmental implications of design decisions and on methods to determine and influence products environmental impacts less attention is paid to the organizational consequences of such insights this paper aims to contribute to this discussion by describing and analyzing organizational aspects of product oriented environmental management poem from an individual firm s perspective important motives for firms to engage in poem are addressing stakeholder interests and obtaining a competitive advantage specific capabilities are required to organize poem in the process of building such capabilities managerial decision makers play an important role two case studies from the chemical industry provide interesting viewpoints on the organization of poem creating sufficient flexibility a broad involvement across functions and a managerial ability to identify and build the required capabilities are proposed as important factors in the process of organizing poem

simultaneity modeling analysis of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis has been recognized in the environmental economics literature since the 1990 s various statistical tests have been used on time series cross section and panel data related to single and groups of countries to validate this hypothesis in the literature the validation has always been conducted by using a single equation however since both the environment and income variables are endogenous the estimation of a single equation model when simultaneity exists produces inconsistent and biased estimates therefore we formulate simultaneous two equation models to investigate the ekc hypothesis for fifty six countries using annual panel data from 1990 to 2012 with the end year is determined by data availability for the panel to make the panel data analysis more homogeneous we investigate this issue for a three income based panels namely high middle and low income panels given several explanatory variables our results indicate that there exists a bidirectional causality between economic growth and pollution emissions in the overall panels we also find that the relationship is nonlinear and has an inverted u shape for all the considered panels policy implications are provided

reviewing the business case for corporate social responsibility new evidence and analysis this study complements previous empirical research on the business case for corporate social responsibility csr by employing hitherto unused data on corporate social performance csp and proposing statistical analyses to account for bi directional causality between social and financial performance by allowing for differences in the importance of single components of csp between industries the data in this study overcome certain limitations of the databases used in earlier studies the econometrics employed offer a rigorous way of addressing the problem of endogeneity due to simultaneous causality although the study s results provide no evidence that there is a generic or universal business case for csr they indicate that there is a strong link between single stakeholder related issues of csr and financial performance however the analysis does not establish causality within these relationships

quality awards and the market value of the firm an empirical investigation this paper empirically investigates the impact of winning a quality award on the market value of firms by estimating the mean abnormal change in the stock prices of a sample of firms on the date when information about winning a quality award was publicly announced we note that the abnormal returns generated by the quality award winning announcements provide a lower bound for the impact of implementing an effective quality award improvement program our results show that the stock market reacts positively to quality award announcements statistically significant mean abnormal returns on the day of the announcements ranged from a low of 0 59 to a high of 0 67 depending on the model used to generate the abnormal returns the reaction was particularly strong for smaller firms mean abnormal returns ranged from low of 1 16 to a high of 1 26 and for firms that won awards from independent organizations such as malcolm baldrige philip crosby etc mean abnormal returns ranged from a low of 1 31 to a h

event study methodologies and the size effect abstract this study of 862 press recommendations demonstrates that the size effect can distort longer term performance measures and hence event studies relative to similar sized companies post publication performance is neutral however market adjustments the capm and market model with equally or capitalization weighted indexes all produce biased results event studies are most exposed to such bias when the measurement interval is long event securities differ systematically in size or weighting from the index constituents the size effect is large and or volatile and when capm type methodologies are used these distortions are avoided by explicitly controlling for size

informal regulation of pollution in a developing country evidence from india abstract recent policy discussions recognise the limitations of formal regulations to stem pollution in developing countries as a result there is a growing interest in the potential of informal regulations to achieve environmental goals in india many polluting industries fall under the rubric of the unorganised sector in such a context localised pollution may be influenced by discussions and reports on pollution in the vernacular press this study attempts to test the hypothesis that the press can act as an informal agent of pollution control this hypothesis is tested using monthly water pollution data from four hot spots in the state of gujarat india for the period 1996 to 2000 the results show that the press can function as an informal regulator if there is sustained interest in news about pollution however not all pollution agents are affected by pollution news press coverage appears to mainly influence industrial estates with a mix of small medium and large industries

market reactions to corporate environmental performance related events a meta analytic consolidation of the empirical evidence research on the relationship between corporate environmental performance cep and corporate financial performance cfp has consistently grown and is gaining widespread attention given the vast body of cep cfp studies recently scholars have begun to take stock of the cumulative results however no study so far has meta analyzed the findings yielded by event studies assessing the stock market reactions to corporate environmental performance related events cep related events this paper sets out to close this gap by synthesizing previous empirical results regarding the stock market impact of positive and negative cep related events results indicate a positive relationship across studies in terms of positive market reactions to positive events and negative reactions to negative events furthermore the findings show that the market reactions are stronger for negative events than for positive events i e asymmetry in the stock market reaction finally this study examines whether methodological artifacts i e differences in the study designs may explain the differences in the findings of the analyzed event studies

the reputational penalties for environmental violations empirical evidence abstract this paper examines the sizes of the fines damage awards remediation costs and market value losses imposed on companies that violate environmental regulations firms that violate environmental laws suffer statistically significant losses in the market value of firm equity the losses however are of similar magnitudes to the legal penalties imposed and in the cross section the market value loss is related to the size of the legal penalty thus environmental violations are disciplined largely through legal and regulatory penalties not through reputational penalties

stock dividends stock splits and signaling this paper provides evidence that firms signal their private information about future earnings by their choice of split factor split factors are increasing in earnings forecast errors after controlling for differences in pre split price and firm size furthermore price changes at stock dividend and split announcements are significantly correlated with split factors holding other factors constant and with earnings forecast errors these correlations suggest that management s choice of split factor signals private information about future earnings and that investors revise their beliefs about firm value accordingly the analysis also suggests however that announcement returns are significantly correlated with split factors after controlling for earnings forecast errors this suggests that earnings forecast errors measure management s private information about future earnings with error that split factors signal other valuation relevant attributes or that a signaling explanation is incomplete researchers have long puzzled over the role of stock splits and stock dividends a stock dividend or split increases the number of equity shares outstanding but has no effect on shareholders proportional ownership of shares it is therefore puzzling that firms engage in these transactions and even more so that stock prices rise on average when these transactions are announced as grinblatt masulis and titman 1984 document the significant positive announcement effects led grinblatt masulis and titman hereafter gmt to hypothesize that firms signal information about their future earnings or equity values through their split decisions to date this hypothesis has met with limited support gmt conclude that the announcement returns cannot be explained by forecasts of imminent increases in cash dividends because they observe similar stock price behavior in firms that do not pay dividends our study provides further evidence on the signaling hypothesis by testing whether stock dividends and splits convey information about future earnings and by testing whether the split factor itself is the signal the notion that the split factor may act as a signal has institutional as well as theoretical support practitioners have long contended that the purpose of stock splits is to move a firm s share price into an optimal trading range baker and gallagher 1980 who surveyed chief financial officers of firms that split their shares report that 94 of their sample indicated their stock splits moved their

property in a global risk society towards marketing research in the office sector this paper suggests that the current uncertainty hovering over the property industry is not simply the result of an internal economic dynamic dooming the industry to damaging booms and slumps rather the novel sense of risk colouring contemporary development activities is the consequence of wider cultural technical and commercial shifts from which property development is not immune the current supply oriented interests of property research predominantly concerned with the collection and analysis of statistical data are unable to respond to these wider questions simply creating more data banks will not help the paper argues that in order to understand the shifting nature of demand property research needs to complement econometric modelling with a more occupier focused marketing research one that is sensitive to the dynamics of the risk society we now inhabit accordingly the paper provides a detailed account of structured market research which should form part of a broader property research agenda in particular structured demand analysis is shown to provide a framework for understanding the complex dynamics of the demand market so demonstrating how the supply industry can improve its efficiency the paper suggests that the scale of the latest property crash offers an opportunity for the industry to improve the efficiency of supply by blending intimate knowledge of changing market demand with established dynamics of provision such a research strategy may provide the key to a more stable mutually profitable property business appropriate to a rapidly changing world economy of risk

the location decision and employment suburbanization the paper develops a theoretical analysis of a profit maximizing firm s behaviour in determining output and location in order to explain the suburbanisation of employment this is done by deriving the supply curve of a firm whose locational choice is restricted to two locations the city centre and the suburbs the form of this supply curve indicates that at low levels of production the city centre is optimal but above a critical level of production optimality shifts to the suburbs particularly where residential suburbanization of the labour force has also occurred

cycles and steps in british commercial property values this paper examines cyclical behaviour in commercial property values over the period 1956 to 1996 using a structural times series unobserved components approach the influence of the transition to short rent reviews during the late 1960s and the short and long term impacts of the 1974 and 1990 property crashes are also incorporated into the analysis via dummy variables it is found that once these variables are taken into account a fairly regular cyclical pattern can be discerned with a period of about 7 8 years furthermore the 1974 and 1990 property crashes are shown to have had a major long term impact on property value growth presumably via their influence on investors expectations

the impact of environmental regulations on industry productivity direct and indirect effects abstract the paper develops an approach to measuring the impact of environmental regulations on total factor productivity growth which is less restrictive than a simple growth accounting approach environmental regulations have a direct impact on productivity growth due to the diversion of resources toward required abatement capital there can be a further indirect effect however as conventional inputs and production processes are changed in response to requirements to purchase abatement capital we estimate this indirect effect using a flexible functional form cost function total factor productivity and the direct and indirect productivity effects of environmental regulations are presented for five polluting industries we find that the indirect effect can be either positive or negative and in all industries is energy using the net impact of environmental regulations on total factor productivity growth is fairly small given that these are the most polluting industries they account for about 10 30 of the productivity decline of the 1970s in these industries

on some recent results in incomplete information implementation this paper provides a review of some recent results on implementation in incomplete information environments this literature is concerned with characterizing the class of social choice functions that can be implemented as equilibrium outcomes of appropriately constructed games different game forms normal and extensive forms and different equilibrium concepts nash equilibrium sequential equilibrium etc lead to different characterizations the discussion focuses on the key difficulties that arise in implementing social choice functions in incomplete information environments and describes some of the alternative characterizations