public information as a deterrent to environmental infractions past studies of the impact of publicly announced violations of environmental laws on the market value of the offending firms have yielded equivocal results a particularly troubling aspect of this research is whether the market imposes a reputation penalty for such violations this article uses the event study methodology to estimate the effect of announced environmental infractions on the market returns of the violators stockholders experienced significant negative abnormal returns in the event window cross sectional analysis showed these cumulative losses to be a function of firm size type of legal action and specific toxin the reputation component of abnormal returns was influenced by these factors as well

productivity and unemployment over the business cycle abstract the low correlation between cyclical unemployment and productivity over the post war period hides a large sign switch in the mid 1980s from significantly negative the correlation became significantly positive using a search model of unemployment with nominal rigidities and variable labor effort i show that technology shocks can generate a positive unemployment productivity correlation whereas non technology shocks i e aggregate demand shocks tend to do the opposite in this context i identify two events that can quantitatively explain the increase in the correlation i a sharp drop in the volatility of non technology shocks in the mid 1980s and ii a decline in the response of productivity to non technology shocks which from procyclical became acyclical in the last 25 years

corporate socially responsible initiatives and their effects on consumption of green products corporate social responsibility csr research has focused often on the business returns of corporate social initiatives but less on their possible social returns we study an actual company consumer partnership csr initiative promoting ecologically correct and conscious consumption of bottled mineral water we conduct a survey on adult consumers to test the hypotheses that consumer skepticism toward the company consumer partnership csr initiative and the moral emotion of elevation mediate the relationship between company csr motives perceived by consumers and consumer behavioral responses following this csr initiative favorable consumer behavioral responses in turn relate positively to consumer support of other green products the results provide scholars and managers with means of improving their understanding and handling of company consumer partnership csr initiatives

a behavioral theory of r d expenditures and innovations evidence from shipbuilding i base an integrated model of innovation development and launch on the behavioral theory of the firm this model specifies that research and development expenses are increased when low performance causes problemistic search and when excess resources cause slack search innovations generated by search are launched if low performance gives managers high risk tolerance using data from shipbuilding firms i show that high performance reduces r d intensity and innovation launches and high slack increases r d intensity as predicted

the effect of clean water regulation on profitability testing the porter hypothesis previous theoretical research provides opposing arguments regarding the effect of environmental regulation on profitability this study provides empirical evidence on this debated effect by testing the strong version of the porter hypothesis we employ panel data analysis to examine the effect of water regulation as measured by permitted wastewater discharge limits on the profitability of publicly held firms operating within the chemical manufacturing industries we find that tighter water regulation meaningfully lowers profitability by reinterpreting profitability in terms of sales and costs the results demonstrate that tighter water regulation increases costs conditioned on a given level of sales

pollution prevention strategy a study of indian firms abstract strategy that targets pollution prevention shall be the first one among sustainability strategies to be implemented to achieve early cost advantages and mitigate litigation risk this article aims to isolate pollution prevention strategy pps from other similar sustainability strategies and provides an independent scope of pps a questionnaire based survey was conducted among 689 managers of 60 indian firms known for their orientation towards sustainability factorial analysis delivered five factors highlighting the composition of associated variables descriptive statistics was used to understand the relative importance of various aspects of pps and status of implementation of this strategy in indian firms the results show that firms are paying higher attention to structured waste management and the priority is early cost advantages hence prefer less investment prone processes modifications the initiatives are geared mainly due to short term advantages than top management commitment and pro activeness to comply with environmental regulations firms believe in developing expertise and deploying standard practices it is evident that firms specifically train employees for pps implantation but lags in empowerment of employees resources allocation cross functional team formations and rewards for the employees also pps strategy is implemented as stand alone strategy and lacks the integration with core corporate strategy the study adds to existing literature by segregating pps from other similar strategies like product stewardship and cleaner technology tested measure of pps shall help managers to assess their performance to achieve pollution prevention goals further the paper discusses some important managerial implications

a comparison of models of long term inflationary expectations abstract this paper compares several models of long term inflationary expectations including time series models models drawn from interest rate relationships and a structural model developed from a portfolio balance framework their within sample performance over 1961 1974 and out of sample performance over periods covering 1975 1982 are compared evaluation criteria include accuracy of forecasts and ability to capture changes in the trend of long term inflation the structural model is judged best its forecasts are generally the most accurate and it performs well in periods of rising and falling inflation an attribute not present in other models

asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage given incomplete factor markets appropriate time paths of flow variables must be chosen to build required stocks of assets that is critical resources are accumulated rather than acquired in strategic factor markets barney barney j 1986 strategic factor markets expectations luck and business strategy management sci october 1231 1241 sustainability of a firm s asset position hinges on how easily assets can be substituted or imitated imitability is linked to the characteristics of the asset accumulation process time compression diseconomies asset mass efficiencies inter connectedness asset erosion and causal ambiguity

relative price variability inflation and the allocative efficiency of the price system abstract this paper develops a theory of the relationship between aggregate and relative price variability based on the inability of people even in a rational world to identify permanent changes in relative demands whether caused by real or by monetary variability and relative productivities as soon as they occur the theory implies that the variance of the rate of inflation and the variance of relative price change are positively related although expectations are rational and markets always clear production decisions respond sluggishly to changes in relative prices temporary shocks to relative demands cause prolonged changes in the structure of production available information is used so as to maximize the efficiency of the price system however this efficiency decreases when any of the underlying variances increases this decrease is more pronounced when the production lag is longer

the relationship between relative prices and the general price level it is very nearly a truismi amaong neoclassical economists that the public is wont to confuse changes in the general price level with relative price changes correspondingl y one might speak of the independence between the two as one of the central postulates of the neoclassical tradition william stanley jevons was aml ong the first to identify this basic dichotomin economic life as well as to attempt to explain the ordinary citizen s seenming incapacity to understand it

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

is price flexibility destabilizing sluggish wages and prices are generally the culprits in keynesian models of unemployment and business fluctuations price flexibility in standard fix price models would restore the economy to full employment this line of reasoning has often been at the heart of proposals to reform institutions in order to restore flexibility to wages and prices there is however a strand of macroeconomic thought that questions the wisdom of too much price flexibility john maynard keynes raised the issue in chapter 19 of the general theory by noting that a deflation could raise real interest rates and thereby impede a return to full employment in his 1975 paper keynesian models of recession and depression james tobin develops this point in a formal model low prices work to move the economy to full employment but falling prices to the extent that they lead to expectations of deflation raise the real interest rate through the mundell effect and move the economy away from full employment instability is likely to occur if expectations of inflation adjust rapidly to actual inflation and the real interest rate effect is large our historical experience does include significant episodes where either reductions in inflation or actual deflation were accompanied by high real interest rates although other factors could be responsible the experiences of the great depression the latin american countries in the late 1970 s and the united states in the early 1980 s all add surface plausibility to the real interest rate deflation link and thus to one aspect of the keynes tobin story recently bradford de long and lawrence summers 1984 have argued that the decrease in the variance of output following world war ii can be largely attributable to the decrease in wage and price flexibility in the postwar era the reason output fluctuations are smaller today is precisely because the keynes tobin destabilizing mechanism is less operative today this paper examines whether increased price flexibility can be destabilizing in a version of john taylor s contract model 1979 1980 extended to include real interest rate effects taylor s model includes both backward and forward elements in wage setting behavior and thus permits some rationality in the wage setting process we find that even with this limited degree of rationality increased wage flexibility leads to a decrease in both the variance of output and the variance of prices nicholas carlozzi and taylor 1983 introduce the real rate of interest into a staggered contract framework and discuss in general terms and through simulations the effects that changing real rates may have on the system they do not however study the effects of potential instability through increases in wage flexibility or provide any analytical results they provide an extensive discussion of the implications of alternative policy rules on the stochastic behavior of the economy we first add the real interest rate to the standard taylor model and derive the solution and prove key analytical results these results are further buttressed by simulations

a resource based perspective on corporate environmental performance and profitability drawing on the resource based view of the firm we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship with the returns to environmental performance higher in high growth industries we tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 finns over two years using independently developed environmental ratings results indicate that it pays to be green and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth we conclude by highlighting the study s academic and managerial implications making special reference to the social issues in management literature

corporate social strategy competing views from two theories of the firm this paper compares two theories of the firm used to interpret firms corporate social strategies in order to derive new insights and questions in this research area researchers from many branches of strategic management agree that firms can strategically allocate resources in order to achieve both long term social objectives and competitive advantage however despite some progress in investigating corporate social strategy studies rely on fundamentally diverging theoretical approaches this paper will identify compare and begin to integrate two competing theories of the firm implicit in corporate social strategy scholarship the resource based and behavioural theories of the firm i discuss the implications of these two theories for both researchers and practitioners on key debates within corporate social strategy and conclude by suggesting several fruitful avenues for future research based on the emerging integration of these two theories of the firm within the strategy literature

investment and the behavioral theory of the firm evidence from shipbuilding investment in production assets is a strategic decision that results from organizational search and risk taking the behavioral theory of the firm predicts that performance below the aspiration level and slack resources initiate organizational search risk theory predicts that performance below the aspiration level increases risk tolerance this paper integrates these theories to form a theory of problem and slack driven strategic change and applies it to the growth of production assets the predictions are tested by analyzing the growth of production assets in the japanese shipbuilding industry yielding clear evidence that high performance causes low asset growth but no effect of slack copyright 2003 oxford university press

a resource based view of the socially responsible firm stakeholder interdependence ethical awareness and issue responsiveness as strategic assets in recent years the resource based view of the firm has made significant headway in explaining differences in interfirm performance however this perspective has not considered the social and ethical dimensions of organizational resources this paper seeks to provide such an integration using kuhn s three stage model of adaptive behavior the resource worthiness of stakeholder management business ethics and issues management are explored the paper concludes by drawing on prospect theory to understand the reasons for this conceptual lacuna

on the real effects of short and long run inflation and relative sector price variability some empirical evidence using the kalman filter this paper evaluates empirically the effects of sector relative price variability and short run and long run inflation on the growth rate of real output in the united states since 1947 also permanent and transitory estimates are constructed to evaluate the effects of unanticipated movements in sector relative price on the growth rate of real output the results show a statistically significant inverse relationship beween the growth rate of real output and transitory sector relative price variability and anticipated long run inflation and a direct relationship between the growth rate of real output and unanticipated short run inflation

the effectiveness of hiring credits this article analyses the effectiveness of hiring credits using comprehensive administrative data we show that the french hiring credit implemented during the great recession had significant positive employment effects and no effects on wages relying on the quasi experimental variation in labour cost triggered by the hiring credit we estimate a structural search and matching model simulations of counterfactual policies show that the effectiveness of the hiring credit relied to a large extent on three features it was non anticipated temporary and targeted at jobs with rigid wages we estimate that the cost per job created by permanent hiring credits either countercyclical or time invariant in an environment with flexible wages would have been much higher

the importance of nongovernmental organizations ngos in global governance and value creation an international business research agenda the emergence of organized civil society and of nongovernmental organizations ngos as organizational manifestations of broader social movements has dramatically altered the global political economic landscape the increasing global reach of ngos challenges established international business ib research and highlights opportunities for broadening and adapting extant paradigms in the field in this article we introduce the concept of ngos and contrast them with their private sector firm and public sector government counterparts within the context of ib we discuss factors giving rise to ngos as important organizational entities that participate in global value creation and governance and identify limits to their efficacy and viability we identify important questions raised by incorporating ngos into our conceptualization of global context and we challenge three basic tenets of ib theory the definition and dynamics of an institutional field the relevance centrality of a firm government i e two sector bargaining model and the pre eminence of the firm as the global organization of interest within the field we conclude by offering suggested research directions that should serve as catalysts for this new and potentially rich area of future ib research

strategic corporate social responsibility and economic performance this article proposes a novel corporate social responsibility csr index based on a data envelopment analysis dea model acknowledging the argument that companies might favour those csr dimensions that provide strategic competitive advantages we argue that the index can capture companies strategic approach to csr furthermore our findings reveal a neutral relationship between this strategic csr index and economic performance as measured by return on assets roa and tobin s q when controlling for firm unobserved heterogeneity and past economic performance by contrast an equally weighted index of the same csr indicators is found to be negatively related with roa which reinforces our claim that this specific dea based index is a measure of strategic csr

technology shocks and monetary policy assessing the fed s performance abstract the purpose of the present paper is twofold first we characterize the fed s systematic response to technology shocks and its implications for u s output hours and inflation second we evaluate the extent to which those responses can be accounted for by a simple monetary policy rule including the optimal one in the context of a standard business cycle model with sticky prices our main results can be described as follows first we detect significant differences across periods in the response of the economy as well as the fed s to a technology shock second the fed s response to a technology shock in the volcker greenspan period is consistent with an optimal monetary policy rule third in the pre volcker period the fed s policy tended to overstabilize output at the cost of generating excessive inflation volatility our evidence reinforces recent results in the literature suggesting an improvement in the fed s performance

environmental innovations and profitability how does it pay to be green an empirical analysis on the german innovation survey much of the empirical literature analysing the relation between environmental innovation and competitiveness has focused on the question whether it pays to be green we differentiate between different types of environmental innovations which will be disentangled in those aiming at reducing the negative externalities and those allowing for efficiency increases and cost savings what we analyze is at first the extent to which these two typologies have impacts on firms profitability with opposite signs and secondly whether the motivations driving the adoption of those innovations make the difference in terms of economic gains we find empirical evidence that both the typology of environmental innovation and the driver of their adoption affect the sign of the relationship between competitiveness and environmental performance the empirical strategy is based on a sample of german firms and makes use of a merge of two waves of the mannheim innovation panel in 2011 and 2009 that allow overcoming some endogeneity issues which may arise in a cross section setting

corporate perceptions of the business case for supplier diversity how socially responsible purchasing can pay in exploring corporate perceptions of the business case for supplier diversity sd this paper reports on a cross national study of large purchasing organisations lpos that had introduced or were in the process of introducing purchasing initiatives aimed at ethnic minority businesses embs the research investigates how lpos portray the benefits of this form of socially responsible purchasing and suggests a business case construct based on four component elements it also highlights a number of contextual factors that appear to have shaped business case rationales the paper concludes with a discussion of issues of cost and contingent influences affecting sd programmes and points to possible areas for future research

understanding the gains from wage flexibility the exchange rate connection we study the gains from increased wage exibility and their dependence on exchange rate policy using a small open economy model with staggered price and wage setting two results stand out i the impact of wage adjustments on employment is smaller the more the central bank seeks to stabilize the exchange rate and ii an increase in wage exibility often reduces welfare and more likely so in economies under an exchange rate peg or an exchange rate focused monetary policy our ndings call into question the common view that wage exibility is particularly desirable in a currency union

effect of announcements of withdrawal from south africa on stockholder wealth in this study we analyzed investor reaction to corporate announcements of withdrawal from south africa to determine whether such announcements increased or reduced firms market value we also exa

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

an evaluation of the forecast performance of alternative models of inflation the forecast performances of three groups of models of the inflation process are evalu ated in this paper ra tional expectations models with instantaneous market clearing monetarist models and expectations augmented phillips curves the dynamic simulations performed for the intervals between 1977 and 1984 are somewhat discouraging for all three theories the variation in forecasting performance within model groups often exc eeded the variation in performance across model groups nevertheless the philli ps curve formulation rarely performed worse than the other two models and in th e 1981 to 1984 period it performed substantially better than the alternative mod els of inflation copyright 1987 by mit press

assessing the relationship between economic and ecological performance distinguishing system levels and the role of innovation in this article we critically discuss the different perspectives that are currently in use for assessing the relationship between ecological and economic performance based on a review of the literature we propose that research up till now has made use of four distinct system boundaries the firm markets production and consumption systems and economic systems making these boundaries explicit is helpful in interpreting the mixed results that have been obtained we describe the consequences of the choice for each of these system boundaries and look at implications for innovation we also argue that the production and consumption system boundary offers potential for further advances in the field and deserves more attention in future research

the effects of a money financed fiscal stimulus abstract i analyze the effects of a money financed fiscal stimulus and compare them with those resulting from a conventional debt financed stimulus i study the effects of both a tax cut and an increase in government purchases with and without a binding zero lower bound zlb on the nominal interest rate when the zlb is not binding a money financed fiscal stimulus is shown to have much larger multipliers than a debt financed fiscal stimulus that difference in effectiveness persists but is much smaller under a binding zlb nominal rigidities are shown to play a major role in shaping those effects

i didn t know and i was only doing my job has corporate governance careened out of control a case study of enron s information myopia this paper discusses internal dynamics of the firm that contribute to the failure of knowledge conditions using the enron scandal as a case study ability of the board to effectively monitor conduct at operational levels includes various dynamics senior management being isolated from those at operational levels individuals pursuing subgoals that are contrary to overall corporate goals information flow along a narrow linear channel that effectively forecloses adverse information from getting to senior management a corporate culture of intimidation discouraging open expressions of doubt or skepticism resulting in reluctance to challenge senior officials and pushing the limits of ethics and the law

corporate social responsibility product differentiation strategy and export performance this article argues that corporate social responsibility csr may contribute to product differentiation in export markets and thus improve export performance we test this argument by observing a period of decreasing export competitiveness in a leading emerging economy brazil using a large scale survey design with 252 questionnaires completed by medium and large sized brazilian exporters we used structural equations modelling to test our hypotheses the results suggest that csr product differentiation predicts export performance better than product quality differentiation and almost as well as product innovation differentiation multi group analysis further revealed that the positive and significant effect of csr product differentiation on export performance is likely to be contingent on the number and type developing vs developed of countries that are targeted our study contributes to the literature on csr and export performance by developing and empirically validating a model that explains under which conditions csr based product differentiation may lead to improved export performance

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

labor supply factors and economic fluctuations we propose a new v ar identication scheme that enables us to disentangle labor supply shocks from wage bargaining shocks identication is achieved by imposing robust sign restrictions that are derived from a new keynesian model with endogenous labor force par ticipation according to our analysis on us data over the period 1985 2014 labor supply shocks and wage bargaining shocks are important drivers of output and unemployment both in the short run and in the long run these results suggest that identication strategies used in estimated new keynesian models to disentangle labor market shocks may be misguided we also analyze the behavior of the labor force participation rate through the lenses of our model wend that labor supply shocks are the main drivers of the participation rate and account for about half of its decline in the aftermath of the great recession

sectoral employment variability and unexpected inflation this paper considers the relationship between the variability of sectoral employment and unexpected inflation the framework used is a multisector version of friedman s well known model of the business cycle the model suggests that sectoral employment variability is a quadratic function of unexpected inflation and the rate of growth in real gnp the model is tested using annual u s data on sectoral employment in the nonagricultural economy from 1901 to 1978 inflationary surprises and the rate of real growth are found to explain between 60 and 85 of the variability in relative sectoral employment performance

the potential of environmental regulation to change managerial perception environmental management competitiveness and financial performance abstract this research presents an overview of where the gaps in the literature exist in relation to the link between environmental regulation and proactive environmental management and competitiveness and incorporates them in a whole model different papers have highlighted only partial aspects of these relationships specifically this research evaluates the relationship between managerial perception and the different styles of environmental regulations command and control versus voluntary norms the mediator role of environmental management in the link between environmental regulations and competitiveness the effect of competitiveness on financial performance and the two way relationship between proactive environmental management and financial performance finally this paper uses statistical evidence to test and estimate causal relationships through a structural equation modelling of 208 firms affected by ippc law in spain there is a lack of systematic statistical evidence on this topic in the literature which mainly focuses on case studies the results show that when environmental regulation stems from command and control legislation its influence on managerial perception and proactive environmental management is not significant however when environmental regulation stems from voluntary norms its effects are positive moreover investment in proactive environmental management contributes to increasing the competitiveness of the firm cost and differentiation competitive advantage have a positive impact on financial performance finally the link between proactive environmental management and financial performance may follow different paths 1 neither direct nor single because it can depend on competitive advantage and 2 direct because there is a significant two way relationship between these variables proactive environmental management influences financial performance and financial performance influences proactive environmental management

towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm this paper outlines a theory of the multiproduct firm important building blocks include excess capacity and its creation market imperfections and the peculiarities of organizational knowledge including its fungible and taut character a framework is adopted in which profit seeking firms are seen to diversify in order to avoid the high transactions costs associated with using various markets to trade the services of various specialized assets neoclassical explanations of the multiproduct firm are shown to be seriously deficient

the dynamic effects of neutral and investment specific technology shocks the neoclassical growth model is used to identify the short run effects of neutral technology shocks which affect the production of all goods homogeneously and investment specific shocks which affect only investment goods the real equipment price crucial for identifying the investment shocks experiences an abrupt increase in its average rate of decline in 1982 so the analysis is based on a split sample on the basis of the preferred specification the two technology shocks account for 73 percent of hours and 44 percent of output s business cycle variation before 1982 and 38 percent and 80 percent afterward the shocks also account for more than 40 percent of hours and 58 percent of output s forecast errors over a three to eight year horizon in both samples the majority of these effects are driven by the investment shocks

notes for a new guide to keynes i wages aggregate demand and employment i revisit the general theory s discussion of the role of wages in employment determination through the lens of the new keynesian model the analysis points to the key role played by the monetary policy rule in shaping the link between wages and employment and in determining the welfare impact of enhanced wage exibility i show that the latter is not always welfare improving