a comparison of managers perceptions of short termism in sweden and the u s u s and u k firms have been thought to invest in a more short term manner than japanese and german firms this article uses a questionnaire and interviews to compare u s and swedish top executiv

are winners promoted too often evidence from the nfl draft 1999 2012 i introduction recruiting new employees is a costly activity for firms firms must advertise the position review resumes interview job candidates and ultimately make hiring decisions given the costs associated with the search firms may seek ways to reduce the burden of recruitment for example firms may send representatives to university job fairs at their employees alma maters or offer bonuses to current employees that refer qualified applicants to the firm as a result of these recruitment methods qualified applicants from certain institutions or without the right connections may find it difficult to secure employment at a particular firm if firms associate characteristics of the institution of the referring employee with the job candidate then cost reducing hiring procedures may result in statistical discrimination as a consequence high ability applicants without connections might have lower initial placements than their more connected equals these hiring practices likely have little impact on the firm s productivity due to their ability to replace underperforming employees yet the overlooked job candidates may suffer from reduced earnings over their lifetime due to their initial position in the labor market 1 evaluating claims of statistical discrimination based on institutional affiliation in most labor markets is a difficult task often times firms do not subject applicants to prescreening exams to measure ability and if they do the exam is likely a small component of the selection process thus it is usually not possible to determine if a particular employee was hired due to his or her ability or institutional affiliation if firms do subject workers to testing they are likely hesitant to hand over their human resources data owing to these data limitations several authors have turned to the world of high stakes athletic competitions where highly detailed individual level data are readily available data from professional sports leagues have provided several authors the opportunity to examine other forms of discrimination such as the existence of racial wage gaps kahn 1991 1992 2000 kahn and sherer 1988 mccormick and tollison 2001 to study the effects of statistical discrimination on job placement and long run career outcomes i follow a similar approach by studying a novel setting in professional sports the national football league nfl draft process every spring college football players declare for the nfl draft as a part of the draft the players are subjected to a battery of physical and mental tests at the nfl combine at the combine players are tested on speed agility strength and other measures of their overall athletic ability in addition to these formal tests professional scouting services rank the players by position according to their ability witnessed during their collegiate career individual pro days hosted at their home universities and tryouts at nfl team facilities these scouting services make these data available to teams and fans for a fee but are not affiliated with the nfl or any member organization as teams employ their own scouts 2 prior to joining the nfl players compete in college on teams that have different levels of success team level success is measured every week from beginning to the end of the college season resulting in a final ordinal ranking of all teams in the national collegiate athletic association ncaa for a given division examining players entering the nfl makes it possible to determine if players from recently successful institutions are given better job opportunities than equally skilled players from less successful institutions to measure the impact of being affiliated with a winning program on draft position i correlate the ranking of an individual s college team in the year prior to their entry in the draft with their nfl draft pick position one major concern is that there is unobserved player ability that is correlated with their team ranking

stimulating different types of eco innovation in the uk government policies and firm motivations in this paper we adopt a recent oecd framework and examine the role of external policy tools and internal firm specific factors for stimulating three different types of eco innovations that range on a spectrum of lower to higher technological and environmental impacts end of pipeline pollution control technologies integrated cleaner production technologies and environmental r d using a novel firm level dataset from a defra survey we estimate a tobit model which provides empirical evidence showing that these eco innovations are motivated by different external policy tools and internal firm specific factors our findings indicate that end of pipeline technologies and integrated cleaner production technologies are mainly driven by equipment upgrade motives with a view of improving efficiency while environmental regulations are effective in stimulating the end of pipeline technologies and environmental r d interestingly alongside government induced regulations we find that market factors mainly motivated by cost savings are effective in driving environmental r d finally iso14001 certification is effective in strengthening the positive impact of environmental management systems on both end of pipeline technologies and environmental r d while csr policies have no significant impact on motivating any of the eco innovations

why market valuation indifferent indexing works using market values for indexing gives more portfolio weight to the stocks with positive price errors and less portfolio weight to the stocks with negative price errors market valuation indifferent indexing such as equal weighting or weighting by number of employees number of customers or sales relies on averaging over hundreds of stocks to give equal weight to the two groups

responsible investing of pension assets links between framing and practices for evaluation despite the increase in the acceptance of responsible investing ri in general allianz in www allianzglobalinvestors com 2010 the global community is still witnessing unprecedented levels of practices that can only be categorized as unsustainable it appears then that either the inroads made by the ri community have not kept up with the increase in unsustainable practices or that the ri process itself has been ineffective at producing meaningful change the current study aims to investigate the practices used by pension plan sponsors to determine how they may enable or interfere with the adoption of implementation of ri we adopt framing theory benford and snow annual review of sociology 26 611 639 2000 specifically the idea that particular frames find alignment when they resonate with their targets by either bridging extending amplifying or transforming a domain we extend research to include understudied practices by performing an analysis of 60 public pension funds in canada we find evidence of disconnect between the financial frame which dominates practices for compliance and evaluation and the social frame of ri as a source of change if the aim of ri is to produce long term change then a consideration of whether it aligns with extant practices is critical we discover a variety of frame alignment tactics already employed in practice we also find that even within the dominant financial frame opportunities for frame extension amplification and transformation do exist and examine how these are more or less possible depending on how the asset management structure is designed

when ownership structure matters a review of the effects of investor horizon on corporate policies this paper surveys the literature on the impact of investor horizon on corporate policies while the desire to encourage long term investor ownership is shared among managers boards and policy makers how greater long term investor ownership benefits corporate decisions and ultimately firm performance is still under academic investigation the contribution of this paper is twofold the paper s first contribution is providing an up to date review of theoretical and empirical findings this paper introduces the groups of long term and short term investors and the related classification methodologies and investor horizon proxies used to form them it further reviews the determinants of an investor s horizon then this paper organizes the literature on the impact of investor horizon on corporate policies around three main channels the short term pressure hypothesis the monitoring hypothesis and the catering hypothesis the paper s second contribution is identifying six major challenges ahead that need to be addressed to improve the understanding of the impact of long term short term investor ownership on corporates policies these challenges represent opportunities for further research

why do manufacturing facilities introduce environmental management systems improving and or signaling performance abstract in this paper we explore the motivation for the introduction of environmental management systems and their certification a distinction is drawn between their role in bringing about better compliance or improved performance and as external indicators of good environmental practices to both other market participants and regulatory authorities drawing upon a database of approximately 4000 facilities in seven oecd countries empirical evidence is found for the role that both factors play in encouraging the adoption and certification of ems s but that the relative importance of different factors varies according to facility size

retrospective evaluation of appliance price trends abstract real prices of major appliances refrigerators dishwashers heating and cooling equipment have been falling since the late 1970s despite increases in appliance efficiency and other quality variables this paper demonstrates that historic increases in efficiency over time including those resulting from minimum efficiency standards incur smaller price increases than were expected by the department of energy doe forecasts made in conjunction with standards this effect can be explained by technological innovation which lowers the cost of efficiency and by market changes contributing to lower markups and economies of scale in production of higher efficiency units we reach four principal conclusions about appliance trends and retail price setting 1 for the past several decades the retail price of appliances has been steadily falling while efficiency has been increasing 2 past retail price predictions made by the doe analyses of efficiency standards assuming constant prices over time have tended to overestimate retail prices 3 the average incremental price to increase appliance efficiency has declined over time doe technical support documents have typically overestimated this incremental price and retail prices 4 changes in retail markups and economies of scale in production of more efficient appliances may have contributed to declines in prices of efficient appliances

an economic perspective on experience curves and dynamic economies in renewable energy technologies this paper analyzes dynamic economies in renewable energy technologies the paper has two contributions the first is to test the robustness of experience in solar photovoltaic solar thermal and wind energy to the addition of an explicit time trend which has been done in experience studies for other industries but not for renewable energy technologies estimation is carried out on the assumption that cumulative capacity industry production average firm production and electricity generation affect experience and thus the fall in price the second contribution is to test the impact of r d on price reduction in general cumulative experience is found to be highly statistically significant when estimated alone and highly statistically insignificant when time is added to the model the effect of r d is small and statistically significant in solar photovoltaic technology and statistically insignificant in solar thermal and wind technologies

assessing social capital small and medium sized enterprises in germany and the u k social capital can be considered to be the product of co operationbetween various institutions networks and business partners it haspotential as a useful tool for business ethics in this article weidentify categories pertinent to the measurement of social capital insmall and medium sized enterprises smes by drawing on three differentsectors one business to business service one business to customerservice and one manufacturing we have enabled the consideration ofsectoral differences we find sector to play an important part inrelation to business practices and social capital our inclusion of smesfrom germany and the united kingdom has called attention to cultural institutional and economic aspects of two regions of europe and how theycan influence sme social capital social capital is found to beinfluenced by context and in particular institutional arrangements inanalysing the data we note particular areas of interest from the pointof view of smes and social capital as being formal engagement networking within sectors networking across sectors volunteerism andgiving to charity and finally a focus on why people engage we concludethat there is a considerable amount of further research needed on socialcapital sme s and business ethics

value destruction and financial reporting decisions the comprehensive survey reported here allowed analysis of how senior u s financial executives make decisions related to performance measurement and voluntary disclosure chief financial officers were asked what earnings benchmarks they cared about and which factors motivated executives to exercise discretion even sacrifice economic value to deliver earnings these issues are crucially linked to stock market performance the results show that the destruction of shareholder value through legal means is pervasive perhaps even a routine way of doing business indeed the amount of value destroyed by companies striving to hit earnings targets exceeds the value lost in recent high profile fraud cases

a synthetic stock flow consistent macroeconomic model of financialisation this article is centred around the notions of shareholder value orientation and financialisation shareholder value orientation is reflected by a high dividend payout ratio applied by firms and the reluctance of firms to finance physical investment via new equity issues financialisation is the more general development towards an increased importance of the financial sector of the economy relative to the non financial sector in this article a synthetic stock flow consistent model is developed that attempts to encompass some important recent works on the effects of financialisation this includes contributions from the fields of mainstream information economics and post keynesian economics we conduct simulations reflecting increased shareholder value orientation and show that the results are consistent with important stylised facts copyright the author 2008 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

towards sustainable consumption and production competitive pricing of modular products for green consumers abstract concern for unsustainable development has peaked and promoting and devising sustainable production and consumption is vital therefore via an analytical model we examine the impact of modularity and consumer sensitivity to sustainability on the pricing decisions of two competing firms consider an environmentally conscious green consumer who will buy one of two available horizontally differentiated products a modular product m manufactured by firm m or a standard product s manufactured by firm s firm m can take advantage of its modular production technology and product return policy for such a consumer driven demand setting we develop a model and solve to optimality a single stage non cooperative game where both firms simultaneously set their competitive prices in addition to analytical expressions for the optimal prices and the profits for both firms we provide structural results and numerical examples to render practical insights the refund rate has a strong impact on profits sensitivity of product greenness can be increased by conscientious advertising and the reusability of modular parts encourages lower pricing and higher market share we assert that modularity is a strong concept and practice in developing sustainable products and thereby in production which in turn may enhance sustainable consumption this study s findings have direct implications for reverse supply chain management and firms should take these findings into account early in the product design phase

choosing the devil you don t know evidence for limited sensitivity to sample size based uncertainty when it offers an advantage many decision makers seek to optimize choices between uncertain options such as strategies employees or products when performance targets must be met attending to observed past performance is not enough to optimize choices option uncertainty must also be considered for example for stretch targets that exceed observed performance more uncertain options are often better bets a significant determinant of option uncertainty is sample size for a given option the smaller the sample of information we have about it the greater the uncertainty in two studies choices were made between pairs of uncertain options with the goal of exceeding a specified performance target information about the options differed in the size of the sample drawn from them sample size and the observed performance of those samples the proportion of successes or hits in the sample we found people to be sensitive to sample size based uncertainty only when differences in observed performance were negligible we conclude that

corporate social responsibility sustainable water use freshwater scarcity is no longer limited to sub saharan developing countries also in western society access to unlimited amounts of freshwater is not assured at all times it has been argued and laid down in many national legal systems that access to freshwater is a basic human right what if corporate freshwater use threatens to interfere with this human right the main focus of the article is to explore the role of today s companies in relation to freshwater a number of tools have been developed to attend to the necessity to reduce corporate use of freshwater the article discusses specialised water reporting instruments such as the 2007 global water tool and the water footprint calculation method in addition attention is paid to a ceres report 2010 revealing that the majority of the 100 world s leading companies in water intensive industries still has weak management and disclosures of water related risks and opportunities to obtain concrete information about corporate water strategies and practices an explorative analysis was conducted on 20 dutch multinational companies the article highlights various innovative practices in sum it is demonstrated that companies are expected to bear responsibility for their impact on water resources in particular when it influences public access to water in areas with freshwater scarcity and or weak government notwithstanding the critical conclusions of the ceres report it is interesting to see an evolution in corporate research concerning sustainable water use and the development of greener products and greener ways of production

will affirmative action policies eliminate negative stereotypes a key question concerning affirmative action is whether the labor market gains it brings to minorities can continue without it becoming a permanent fixture in the labor market the authors argue that this depends on how the policy affects employers beliefs about the productivity of minority workers they study the joint determination of employer beliefs and worker productivity in a model of statistical discrimination in job assignments the authors prove that even when identifiable groups are equally endowed ex ante affirmative action can bring about a situation in which employers correctly perceive the groups to be unequally productive ex post copyright 1993 by american economic association

the economics of short term performance obsession in theory discounted cash flows dcfs set prices in well functioning capital markets in practice investment managers attach substantial weight in stock selection to short term performance particularly earnings and tracking error corporate executives blame this behavior for their own obsession with short term earnings are stock prices likely to allocate financial resources efficiently when short term earnings dominate investment decisions can investment managers who identify stocks as mispriced on a dcf basis earn excess returns this article explains why maximizing long term cash flow is the most effective way to create value for shareholders and charts a course for alleviating the obsession with short term performance

price competition short termism and environmental performance this paper studies the relationships between the intensity of price competition time horizon and environmental performance we hypothesize that more intense price competition discourages environmental performance by inducing short termism in companies we test the hypotheses on a sample of 3152 companies from twelve european countries using structural equation modeling test results show that price competition significantly shortens the time horizon that companies apply in strategic decisions and that long time horizon significantly increases their environmental performance however the net negative effect of the intensity of price competition on environmental performance is small in absolute terms the policy implication is that there is no serious dilemma between fostering environmental performance on one hand and increasing consumer surplus by encouraging price competition on the other hand

calvin s restrictions on interest guidelines for the credit crisis calvin s view on the legitimacy of interest has had a great impact on the economic development of western society although calvin took a fundamentally positive attitude to interest he also proposed several restrictions on the charging of interest in this article we investigate the relevance of these restrictions to the current credit crisis we find that each of them provides a relevant interpretation of what went wrong in the buildup of the credit crisis and gives directions to improve policies of banks and governments as well

the learning curve in the production of semiconductor memory chips the relevance of the learning curve in the production of semiconductor memory chips is examined it is shown that the learning curve differs across quite similar products such as distinct types of memory chips on the other hand the learning curve does not show significant variation over successive generations of the same type of memory chip it is then shown thatthe interpretation given to the heterogeneity of learning by the effects across chip types and especially the importance of economies of scale is consistent with some stylized facts from the industry

the impact of r d on innovation for wind energy in denmark germany and the united kingdom this paper examines the impact of public research and development r d support on cost reducing innovation for wind turbine farms in denmark germany and the united kingdom uk first we survey the literature in this field the literature indicates that in denmark r d policy has been more successful than in germany or the uk in promoting innovation of wind turbines furthermore such studies point out that subsidy induced capacity expansions were more effective in the uk and denmark in promoting cost reducing innovation than in germany the second part of the paper describes the quantitative analysis of the impact of r d and capacity expansion on innovation this is calculated using the two factor learning curve 2flc model in which investment cost reductions are explained by cumulative capacity and the r d based knowledge stock time series data were collected for the three countries and organized as a panel data set the parameters of the 2flc model were estimated focusing on the homogeneity and heterogeneity of the parameters across countries we arrived at robust estimations of a learning by doing rate of 5 4 and a learning by searching rate of 12 6 the analysis underlines the homogeneity of the learning parameters enhancing the validity of the 2flc formulation

analyzing price and efficiency dynamics of large appliances with the experience curve approach large appliances are major power consumers in households of industrialized countries although their energy efficiency has been increasing substantially in past decades still additional energy efficiency potentials exist energy policy that aims at realizing these potentials faces however growing concerns about possible adverse effects on commodity prices here we address these concerns by applying the experience curve approach to analyze long term price and energy efficiency trends of three wet appliances washing machines laundry dryers and dishwashers and two cold appliances refrigerators and freezers we identify a robust long term decline in both specific price and specific energy consumption of large appliances specific prices of wet appliances decline at learning rates lr of 29 8 and thereby much faster than those of cold appliances lr of 9 4 our results demonstrate that technological learning leads to substantial price decline thus indicating that the introduction of novel and initially expensive energy efficiency technologies does not necessarily imply adverse price effects in the long term by extending the conventional experience curve approach we find a steady decline in the specific energy consumption of wet appliances lr of 20 35 and cold appliances lr of 13 17 our analysis suggests that energy policy might be able to bend down energy experience curves

renewable energy technology diffusion an analysis of photovoltaic system support schemes in medellin colombia abstract colombia s electricity mix is dominated by hydropower which constitutes over 65 percent of the installed capacity the country has important potential for introducing solar photovoltaic sources into its electricity generation mix given its high average annual insolation however there is a lack of incentives and support schemes for alternative renewable energy technologies this paper analyzes the diffusion of a photovoltaic system in colombia with a focus on medellin colombia s second largest city a diffusion model is constructed based on the classic bass diffusion theory where the adoption rate is a function of awareness raising campaigning and social interaction the model incorporates both subsidy and feed in tariff policies policy implementation scenarios and the effects of policy mixes are analyzed results show that a 50 percent subsidy for investment together with a usd 0 30 kwh feed in tariff rate jointly provide the highest marginal increase in diffusion rate however given the cheapness of the country s current hydroelectric resources photovoltaic system diffusion might remain a challenge for both the government and private sectors for the foreseeable future

incorporating experience curves in appliance standards analysis the technical analyses in support of u s energy conservation standards for residential appliances and commercial equipment have typically assumed that manufacturing costs and retail prices remain constant during the projected 30 year analysis period there is however considerable evidence that this assumption does not reflect real market prices costs and prices generally fall in relation to cumulative production a phenomenon known as experience and modeled by a fairly robust empirical experience curve using price data from the bureau of labor statistics and shipment data obtained as part of the standards analysis process we present u s experience curves for room air conditioners clothes dryers central air conditioners furnaces and refrigerators and freezers these allow us to develop more representative appliance price projections than the assumption based approach of constant prices these experience curves were incorporated into recent energy conservation standards for these products the impact on the national modeling can be significant often increasing the net present value of potential standard levels in the analysis in some cases a previously cost negative potential standard level demonstrates a benefit when incorporating experience these results imply that past energy conservation standards analyses may have undervalued the economic benefits of potential standard levels

uncertainty hiring and subsequent performance the nfl draft in this article we analyze the impact of uncertainty on the hiring process we show the connection between models of statistical discrimination where uncertainty can work against groups that have less reliable indicators of future productivity and models of option value where uncertainty about future productivity can be beneficial for these groups these models generate hypotheses about the relationship between ex ante hiring patterns and ex post productivity this is applied to the market for nfl football players we provide various estimates of nfl success which suggest that statistical discrimination and option value influence choices in this market

explaining experience curves for new energy technologies a case study of liquefied natural gas many new energy technologies seem to experience a fall in unit price as they mature in this paper we study the unit price of liquefying natural gas in order to make it transportable by ship to gas power installations all over the world our point of departure is the experience curve approach however unlike many other studies of new energy technologies we also seek to account for autonomous technological change scale effects and the effects of upstream competition among technology suppliers to our surprise we find that upstream competition is by far the most important factor contributing to the fall in unit price with respect to the natural gas business this may have implications for the future development in prices as the effect of increased upstream competition is temporary and likely to weaken a lot sooner than effects from learning and technological change another more general policy implication is that while promoting new energy technologies governments must not forget to pay attention to competition policy

chronic bias in earnings forecasts whatever the source or explanation of bias in forecasts of company earnings if such bias persists it is potentially discoverable and exploitable by investors this research addresses 1 whether characterizing forecasts as if they were a homogeneous group with respect to bias is accurate or useful and 2 whether a long term record of forecast errors contains information useful in predicting subsequent errors we found that earnings forecasts are heterogeneous with respect to direction and degree of bias we also found evidence of extremes in optimism and pessimism and that extreme errors tend to persist in the same direction which suggests certain potentially profitable trading strategies

biased screening and discrimination in the labor market the traditional economic analysis of discrimination is based on gary becker s study of taste discrimination by employers employees and consumers more recent work by kenneth arrow 1972 1973 has attempted to interpret intergroup wage differences in an alternative framework as a rational reaction to uncertainty in labor markets his model of statistical discrimination demonstrates that when the screening process used to determine a worker s qualifications is costly and prior expectations of productivity differ across race or sex groups then wage differentials may arise between workers of identical productivity by implicitly assuming a perfect screening process arrow ignores a potentially important source of wage differentials namely the fact that the screening process might be a more reliable predictor of productivity for one group than for another our paper generalizes the arrow model in two ways first in contrast to arrow we assume that all groups have identical distributions of productivity secondly the screening process used by the firm to determine an applicant s productivity is biased in the sense that a members of various groups may pass the test in different proportions despite their identical productivity distributions and b the predictive power of the test might vary across groups our objective is to analyze the effects of these types of biases in the screening process on the wage differentials between different population groups

does corporate social performance pay back quickly a longitudinal content analysis on international contractors corporations in all parts of the world have begun to develop an increasing awareness of the importance of corporate social responsibility csr most csr research suggested that corporations which effectively address social responsibilities are more competitive despite this benefit many corporations in the construction industry still neglect engaging in csr practices in addition past empirical research on the association between corporate social performance csp and corporate financial performance cfp produced inconsistent results in response to these academic and practical gaps this study seeks to clarify the short term relationship between csp and cfp so as to address the popular concern as to whether csr activities will yield immediate results to elucidate the nature of this relationship this study leverages a modified content analysis method to review csr reports of corporations in the top international contractors list of engineering news record in particular a semantic labeling program is applied in content analysis to measure csp quantitatively the semantic longitudinal data from 2009 to 2014 reveals a negative association between csp and cfp within the six years in construction industry this study provides practitioners with a new basis for evaluating their short term business plans related to csr and assists international contractors in determining whether investment in csr focused strategies is financially viable findings indicate that international contractors should prioritize the csr issues which they intend to focus on so as to minimize their financial risks and maximize future csr performance

the corporate social performance financial performance link strategic managers are consistently faced with the decision of how to allocate scarce corporate resources in an environment that is placing more and more pressures on them recent scholarship in strategic management suggests that many of these pressures come directly from sources associated with social issues in management rather than traditional arenas of strategic management using a greatly improved source of data on corporate social performance this paper reports the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance corporate social performance csp is found to be positively associated with prior financial performance supporting the theory that slack resource availability and csp are positively related csp is also found to be positively associated with future financial performance supporting the theory that good management and csp are positively related 1997 by john wiley sons ltd