do non socially responsible companies achieve legitimacy through socially responsible actions the mediating effect of innovation this study investigates the effects on organization s financial performances of first the extent to which the organizations are involved in controversial business activities and second their level of social performance these companies can be considered non socially responsible given the harmful nature of the activities they are involved in managers of these companies may still have incentives to pursue socially responsible actions if they believe that engaging on those actions will help them to achieve legitimacy and improve investors perception about them we develop a comprehensive methodology to investigate these corporate social performance csp related effects in a complex but specific setting to this end we analyze a sample of 202 us firms for the period 2005 2008 using a novel method in this area partial least squares our results indicate that contrary to the general findings in prior literature companies involved in controversial business activities which engage in csp do not directly reduce the negative perception that stakeholders have about them instead we found evidence of a positive mediation effect of csp on financial market based performance through innovation

implications of bid design and willingness to pay distribution for starting point bias in double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys we examine starting point bias in double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys we investigate 1 the seriousness of the biases for the location and scale parameters of the willingness to pay wtp in the presence of starting point bias 2 whether or not these biases depend on the distribution of wtp and on the bid design and 3 how well a commonly used diagnostic for starting point bias a test of the null that bid set dummies entered in the right hand side of the wtp model are jointly equal to zero performs under various circumstances monte carlo simulations suggest that the effect of ignoring starting point bias depends on the bid design and on the true distribution of wtp a well balanced symmetric bid design may result in very modest biases even when the anchoring mechanism is very strong the power of bid set dummies in detecting starting point bias is low they tend to account for misspecifications in the distribution assumed by the researcher for the latent wtp rather than capturing the presence of starting point bias

the influence of collective action on the demand for voluntary climate change mitigation in hypothetical and real situations in this experiment we investigate determinants of the individual demand for voluntary climate change mitigation subjects decide between a cash prize and an allowance from the eu emissions trading scheme for one ton of co2 that will be deleted afterwards we vary the incentives of the decision situation in which we distinguish between real monetary incentives and a hypothetical decision situation with and without a cheap talk script furthermore decisions were implemented either as purely individual or as a collective action using majority voting we observe a significant hypothetical bias in the demand for voluntary climate change mitigation in case of the individual decision situation this bias is caused solely by subjects with low income collective decision making affects demand positively in the hypothetical decision situation only

is protection for sale evidence on the grossman helpman theory of endogenous protection grossman and helpman 1994 present a theory of endogenous protection by explicitly modeling government industry interactions for which mere black box models previously existed they obtain a ramsey pricing type solution to the provision of protection which emphasizes the role of inverse import penetration ratios and import elasticities on the lobbying side the model makes predictions about lobbying competition and lobbying spending according to deadweight costs from protection the model not only makes for richer theory in terms of rigor and elegance but its predictions are directly testable whether the grossman helman model stands up to real world data is investigated in this paper predictions from both the protection side and lobbying side are tested using cross sectional u s nontariff barrier data we also compare the second generation grossman helpman model with a more traditional specification our results call for serious consideration of this model in the political economy literature

willingness to pay for voluntary climate action and its determinants field experimental evidence the determinants of individual voluntary climate action vca in combating climate change and its potential scale are frequently debated in public but largely underresearched we provide estimates of the willingness to individually reduce eu greenhouse gas emissions by one ton using the european union emissions trading scheme estimates are derived from an online field experiment with a large highly heterogenous and internet representative sample of voting aged germans jointly estimating willingness to pay wtp non indifference to vca and prior knowledge we uncover important determinants of preferences for vca such as education the information structure among the population and exogenous environmental conditions

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

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

collective choice in the commons experimental results on proposed allocation rules and votes we analyse and empirically examine a multi level common pool resource cpr game consisting of a collective choice level game and an operational level game in the collective choice game participants anonymously propose allocation rules to be used in the operational game and vote anonymously on the proposed rules majority and unanimity rules are investigated our major finding is that both types of voting rules substantially increase efficiency relative to a baseline with no opportunity for collective choice but the distributional consequences of the rules differ to understand the process by which efficiency is improved better we examine four predictive theories related to proposals votes and outcomes

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

a comprehensive review for green product term from definition to evaluation nowadays interest in corporate environmental strategies shifts from cleaner processes to the holistic nature of green products the relevant literature argues that firms have the opportunity to pioneer through green product innovation allowing them to differentiate and thus gain competitive advantage environmental burden of products during their entire life cycle is undeniable due to the weakness of the existing literature that inadequately addresses a commonly accepted green product definition as well as the thereby caused inconclusive academic empirical results on firms competitiveness there are many cases of businesses greenwashing behavior the overall contribution of this exploratory paper on determining and evaluating the degree of greenness of a product is twofold first starting with a systematic literature review authors further contribute by proposing an integrative definition that addresses the so far existing terminological gap next after reviewing the existing environmental assessment tools authors based on the developed definition and in accordance to its dynamic dimension contribute to the existing methodology as the paper reveals issues that need to be considered in the evaluation of green products

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

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

lobbying costs and trade policy abstract we study how endogenous lobbying costs influence trade policies although in practice lobbying expenditures far exceed campaign contributions the literature on the political economy of trade policy has focused on the latter in this paper we develop a model in which informational lobbying costs play a role in determining the structure of protection in the model special interest groups can choose to send a signal to the policymaker regarding some information they possess and the policymaker observes the signal before setting the trade policies we find that lobbying expenditures directly affect the equilibrium policies in order to test the predictions of the model we collected data on lobbying expenditures from the center for responsible politics as well as data on trade and industry characteristic variables for the united states from other sources we perform a structural estimation of the equilibrium trade policies and find support for our model the empirical evidence indicates that lobbying expenditures play an important role in explaining the variation of protection across sectors moreover the model leads to considerably lower and more reasonable estimates of the weight that the government places on social welfare relative to political contributions

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

industrial determinants of anti dumping in brazil protection competition and performance an analysis with binary dependent variable and panel data abstract this article investigates how sectorial characteristics determine the probability of industries receiving an anti dumping ad duty delving into the economic literature on the political economy of protection market competition and trade reform in brazil by focusing on when the ad was granted the article concentrates on the objective economic motivations for an industry to claim protection and which are instrumental to the decision of the trade defense authority the empirical strategy involves a panel of 93 industrial sectors from 1996 to 2007 to create four groups of explanatory variables collective action competition economic performance factors of production trade coefficients reflecting their structural characteristics market competition economic performance and political mobilization the econometric specifications apply binary dependent variable models logit with cluster robust and population averaged error correction the results show that structure of trade imports volume and tariffs economic performance productivity and investments and factor content labor and natural resources influence the probability of the ad political economy characteristics captured by interactive terms are also influential in determining the measure

exploring factors that influence social retail investors decisions evidence from desjardins fund most studies on the choices motivations and behavior of investors consist of segmentations focused on socio demographic characteristics such as age income education level etc such approaches seem to simplify even mutilate reality by aggregating data about observable variables and considering investors as homogeneous groups these perspectives are inspired by a scientific approach that consists of separating in order to better understand the observed phenomena by considering individual as a homo economicus that is to say a rational and autonomous individual who makes decisions motivated by material gains these studies fail to recognize all the complexity that shapes human behavior this paper argues that to understand the behavior and choices of investors in regards to socially responsible investing sri we must consider social investors as complex individuals in addition we should take into account influence that the institution may exercise throughout the role of advisors and sri promotion strategies our research builds on a multidimensional approach that explores to what extent demographic environmental social and governance esg issues the trade offs between financial return and social values the attitudes and the role of the institution throughout the role of the advisor and sri promotion strategies influence the decisions of individual social investors moreover it adopts a more open approach by exploring the characteristics and behaviors of individual social investors in relation to those of conventional investors our research provides evidence from the desjardins fund qualitative and quantitative data gathered by desjardins from online surveys are subjected to bivariate and multivariate analyses and are complimented by ten semi structured interviews with managers analysts and advisors who provided further insight into sri investment behavior and choice the results show that while demographic characteristics still remain important in understanding the behavior and attitudes of social investors it is their social values esg issues financial return considerations and the role played by the institution in mediating investment decisions that are significantly associated with sri portfolios our research highlights the complexity surrounding the phenomenon of sri and has several implications both in terms of theory and practice

protection for sale in a developing country democracy vs dictatorship for a genuine small open economy that has experienced both dictatorship and democracy we find support for the predictions of the grossman helpman 1994 protection for sale model in contrast to previous studies we use various protection measures including tariffs the direct measure of the theoretical model and perform both single year and panel regressions using turkish industry level data the government s weight on welfare is estimated to be much larger than that on contributions more importantly we find that this weight is generally higher for the democratic regime than for dictatorship

shareholder value stakeholder management and social issues what s the bottom line we test the relationship between shareholder value stakeholder management and social issue participation building better relations with primary stakeholders like employees customers suppliers and communities could lead to increased shareholder wealth by helping firms develop intangible valuable assets which can be sources of competitive advantage on the other hand using corporate resources for social issues not related to primary stakeholders may not create value for shareholders we test these propositions with data from s p 500 firms and find evidence that stakeholder management leads to improved shareholder value while social issue participation is negatively associated with shareholder value copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

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

dea environmental assessment on u s industrial sectors investment for improvement in operational and environmental performance to attain corporate sustainability abstract environmental assessment has recently become an important business concern because consumers are interested in environmental protection they try to avoid purchasing products from dirt imaged companies which do not pay attention to environmental protection even if their prices are much less than the ones produced by green imaged companies thus a green image is very important for corporate survivability in a global market this study considers corporate sustainability indicating that companies need to consider both economic prosperity and pollution prevention in their operations to discuss the issue from corporate strategy for modern business this study discusses a use of data envelopment analysis dea for environmental assessment by focusing upon research and development r d strategy as well as technology innovation and selection for reduction of undesirable outputs e g co 2 emission this type of research has never been explored in previous studies it is easily envisioned that the proposed dea environmental assessment will guide corporate leaders in identifying how to invest for technology innovation to reduce an amount of undesirable outputs to discuss the practicality this study applies the proposed approach to 153 observations on s p 500 corporations in 2012 and 2013 the empirical investigation confirms that investors pay more serious attention to company s green image and the reality for a long run sustainability than profitability in a short run concern furthermore the energy sector is the best investment target among seven industrial sectors examined in this study the measurement of corporate sustainability can serve as an empirical basis in selecting what type of technology is fitted for a specific industry

corporate social responsibility and family business in spain despite the economic relevance and distinctiveness of family firms little attention has been devoted to researching their nature and functioning traditionally family firms have been associated both to positive and negative features in their relationships with the stakeholders this can be linked to different orientations toward corporate social responsibility thus this research aims to identify the approaches that spanish family firms maintain about social responsibility based on the model developed by quazi and o brien journal of business ethics 25 33 51 2000 an empirical study carried out for 112 spanish family firms gives support to our initial assumption about these organizations not being a homogeneous group in terms of their orientation towards corporate social responsibility the differences in perceptions do not seem to be associated to biographical characteristics these results lead to some relevant academic and practical implications that suggest interesting lines for future research

lobbying and asymmetric information informational lobbying the use by interest groups of their alleged expertise or private information on matters of importance for policymakers in an attempt to persuade them to implement particular policies is often regarded as an important means of influence this paper analyzes this phenomenon in a game setting on the one hand the interest group is assumed to have private information which is relevant to the policymaker whilst on the other hand the policymaker is assumed to be fully aware of the strategic incentives of the interest group to mis report or conceal its private information

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

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

clarifying the epistemology of corporate sustainability abstract business research is placing increasing focus on the relationship between the natural environment and the political concept of sustainable development within this nexus one area labelled corporate sustainability emphasizes the interactions between economic environmental and social values the need to consider multiple values has contributed to a blur in the conceptual landscape this is partly due to the fact that authors often address epistemological challenges on an implicit level moreover hidden ideologies e g the profit maximization paradigm can explain the conceptual obscurity the contribution of this article is twofold firstly a conceptual framework is developed based on the dichotomy of positivism and constructivism a relation is established between these epistemological positions and the analytic treatment of environmental and social values the framework can be applied to increase transparency on epistemological challenges and thereby strengthening construct validity in the field secondly an analysis of the most influential literature from the last 50 years shows that there is a trend of clustering theoretical positions and value constructs without any critical awareness of their philosophical assumptions the authors hope that acknowledgement of a multi paradigmatic approach can help to clarify the epistemology of the research area by establishing pluralism as an explicit position

using contingent valuation to explore willingness to pay for renewable energy a comparison of collective and voluntary payment vehicles abstract this study uses a split sample dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey of 1574 u s residents to explore willingness to pay wtp for renewable energy under collective and voluntary payment vehicles and under government and private provision of the good we also evaluate the impact of participation expectations on stated wtp we find some evidence that when confronted with a collective payment mechanism respondents state a somewhat higher wtp than when voluntary payment mechanisms are used similarly private provision of the good elicits a somewhat higher wtp than does government provision we also find that contingent valuation responses are strongly correlated with expectations for the wtp of others our results shed light on strategic response behavior and the incentive compatibility of different cv designs and offer practical insight into u s household preferences for how to support renewable energy

the corporate social performance content of innovation in the u k this article investigates the influence of innovation on the relationship between corporate strategy and social issues specifically we employ firm level data for a large sample of u k companies drawn from a diverse range of industrial sectors to investigate given innovation the determinants of both the probability that the innovation brings reduced environmental impacts and or improved health and safety and the strength of this effect in this connection we find evidence of a dichotomy between product and process innovations and roles for firm size industrial sector a foreign market presence access to various information sources e g universities and government research organisations and the extent to which activities are constrained by regulation furthermore we find a tendency for the influences of many of these factors to vary between older and newer firms

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

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

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

applying gri reports for the investigation of environmental management practices and company performance in sweden china and india the relationship between environmental management practices emps and company performance has recently been debated in literature and is of interest for both industrial managers and political decision makers this paper investigates the relationship between emps and firm performance in manufacturing companies in sweden china and india with the content analysis of global reporting initiative gri reports and financial reports of sample companies the levels of emps and the companies financial performances were coded further statistical assessment was conducted in order to identify patterns and correlations the results indicate that only selected emps have been employed differently in three different countries most emps clearly do not have a positive correlation with the financial performance i e employing emps does not necessarily improve the economic consequence of companies nevertheless a number of emps do have a strong correlation with improving innovation performance in various companies it is also interesting to note that a negative correlation exists between the environmental standard for suppliers and sales growth this is possibly due to increasing operational costs and a delay in market acceptance this research illustrates the possibility of using standard environmental data from gri reports as a resource for future studies of emps in order to improve long term financial performance this study also suggests that innovation should gain a substantial amount of attention when emps are employed

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

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

causes of the eu ets price drop recession cdm renewable policies or a bit of everything new evidence the price of eu allowances euas in the eu emissions trading scheme eu ets fell from almost 30 tco2 in mid 2008 to less than 5 tco2 in mid 2013 the sharp and persistent price decline has sparked intense debates both in academia and among policy makers about the decisive allowance price drivers in this paper we examine whether and to what extent the eua price drop can be justified by three commonly identified explanatory factors the economic recession renewable policies and the use of international credits capitalizing on marginal abatement cost theory and a broadly extended data set we find that only variations in economic activity and the growth of wind and solar electricity production are robustly explaining eua price dynamics contrary to simulation based analyses our results point to moderate interaction effects between the overlapping eu ets and renewable policies the bottom line however is that 90 of the variations of eua price changes remains unexplained by the abatement related fundamentals together our findings do not support the widely held view that negative demand shocks are the main cause of the weak carbon price signal in view of the new evidence we evaluate the eu ets reform options which are currently discussed

the transfer and application of product service systems from academia to uk manufacturing firms the servicisation of many advanced economies is thought by many commentators to provide opportunities to move society away from unsustainable patterns of production and consumption the concept of the product service system pss has been conceptualised in academic circles to assist in the attainment of such desirable futures this paper reports the findings of research conducted as part of the solid project which considered the transfer and application of the pss concept from academia to industry in the united kingdom it draws upon theories from evolutionary economics to provide a rationale for the transfer of the pss concept and the role of this in achieving desirable technological change the paper also identifies an appropriate methodology to transfer the pss concept from uk academic circles to industry and the factors which impact upon and importantly lead to the successful completion of this process the combination of theoretical insight with case study research is used to develop a framework that could help uk based intermediaries to complete the transfer of the pss concept this is seen as an integral part of public policies aimed at stimulating sustainable patterns of production and consumption

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

willingness to pay for carbon offset certification and co benefits among high flying young adults in the uk voluntary carbon offsets represent a growing share of the carbon market as a whole and have the potential to contribute to meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets and reducing anthropogenic climate change certain offset project types may also deliver co benefits including safeguarding or promoting biodiversity supporting human development and poverty reduction and enabling market and technology development in low carbon sectors these co benefits might encourage consumers to participate in the voluntary offset market depending on their effects both on consumers willingness to pay wtp for offsets and on implementation costs however the offset market is not yet sufficiently developed to give a clear indication of consumer wtp for offsets with varying attributes this exploratory stated preference study therefore uses a choice experiment to estimate wtp for certified and uncertified offsets with or without these specific co benefits in an aviation context it is to the best of our knowledge the first to do so our results suggest that uptake of voluntary offsets may be encouraged by investing in projects with co benefits and by emphasising those co benefits to consumers they also suggest that certification regimes will add value to offsets helping compensate for increased costs provided that consumers are made fully aware of them

do investors value a firm s commitment to social activities previous empirical research has found mixed results for the impact of corporate social responsibility csr investments on corporate financial performance cfp this paper contributes to the literature by exploring in a two stage investor decision making model the relationship between a firm s innovation effort csr and financial performance we simultaneously examine the impact of csr on both accounting based financial health and market based tobin s q financial performance measures from a sample of top corporate citizens we find that 1 a firm s social responsibility commitment csr contributes to its financial performance 2 after controlling for investment in innovation activities csr continues to have a positive impact on a firm s financial performance 3 the customer dimension of csr has a positive effect on both cfp measures whereas the employee dimension indicates a significant impact only on financial heath and 4 the community relation dimension of csr only affects the market based cfp measure of firms with high innovation intensity

wage premia price cost margins and bargaining power in belgian manufacturing abstract an asymmetric nash bargaining model as developed by j svejnar 1986 is empirically tested on industry wage negotiations in belgium union s relative bargaining power emerges from this model as the fraction of firm s profits per worker which the unions are able to capture in excess of the alternative wage the estimates of the bargaining power coefficients for blue as well as white collar workers reject the symmetric split the difference outcome determinants of the cross industry variation of bargaining power are explored as well

an experimental test of warm glow giving abstract this paper reports the results of an experimental test of the warm glow hypothesis a participant is presented with the opportunity to contribute from her own endowment to a charity of choice the experiment is designed so that a pure altruist has no incentive to donate the amount the designated charity will receive is preset any contribution by the participant crowds out dollar for dollar giving by the proctor we find that participants on average donated 20 of their endowments and that approximately 57 of the participants made a donation

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

the impact of environmental performance on firm performance short term costs and long term benefits abstract we examine the intertemporal effect of environmental performance on financial performance and propose a method to assess the environmental performance in a fuller manner based on the weighting various pollutants according to their dangerousness to environment using our improved measures of environmental performance applied to the firm level data from the czech republic the results suggest that while the effect of environmental performance on financial performance is negative for environmental performance lagged by 1 year lag it becomes positive for 2 years lag as a consequence our findings indicate that porter hypothesis holds in the long run

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

willingness to pay for curbside recycling with detection and mitigation of hypothetical bias in this article we estimate willingness to pay for curbside recycling using a unique data set we also test for and detect significant hypothetical bias using stated and revealed preference data a short scripted cheap talk statement is used to mitigate the bias and provide more efficient estimates of the welfare impacts of curbside recycling programs copyright 2003 oxford university press

the structure of motivation for contingent values a case study of lake water quality improvement abstract critics of the contingent valuation cv method have argued that individuals apply noneconomic motives in responding to cv questions implying that elicited values are not valid measures of the economic benefit of environmental improvement this study examines the role of such motives by using measures of attitude and motive strength to interpret willingness to pay wtp values for a set of nested environmental goods with potential use and nonuse benefits motivational structure is found to be more complex than suggested by the simple distinction between valid economic theoretic and noneconomic motives social motivations possibly associated with the benefit of contributing to a public good rather than the benefits of the good itself are potentially relevant to the wtp decision but do not give rise to separable values the strength of perceived personal responsibility for provision of the good is significantly associated with wtp but also with the theoretically desirable property of enhanced scope sensitivity wtp is not found to be associated with the extent to which the individual feels under some general moral obligation to contribute to good causes motives arising from ethical concerns for the environment and altruism are also potentially relevant to wtp but are closely related to underlying motives associated with existence and personal use values respectively it is suggested that the cv debate should be informed by further empirical investigation of the extent to which motives for wtp can be treated as separable

protection for sale or surge protection this paper asks whether the results obtained from using the standard approach to testing the influential grossman and helpman protection for sale pfs model of political economy might arise from a simpler setting a model of imports and quotas with protection occuring in response to import surges but only for organized industries is simulated and shown to provide parameter estimates consistent with the protection for sale framework this suggests that the standard approach may be less of a test than previously thought

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

environmental ethics and information asymmetry among organizational stakeholders this paper addresses the conflicting environmental interests of a firm and the community an important stakeholder the short term profit maximization objective of a firm may stand in contrast with what the community wants a safe and clean environment this paper argues that the information regarding the environmental impact of a firm s products processes and waste may be asymmetrically distributed between the firm and the community the resultant information asymmetry may influence the probability of a firm acting opportunistically and ultimately a firm s ethical behavior the paper identifies information asymmetry between a firm and community as well as that within the community the perceived information asymmetry across various community segments may perhaps be a determinant of environmental discrimination the paper further contends that information asymmetry may diminish in the long run finally it examines the implications of information asymmetry for firms and government policy

inducing innovation in the environmental technology of oligopolistic firms this paper characterizes environmental regulations which induce polluting bertrand competitors to invest efficiently in environmental r d post innovation benefits to raising rivals costs provide firms with incentives to innovate although optimal behavior cannot be elicited with pollution taxes alone an optimum can be achieved by combining emission taxes with environmental performance standards that are higher for firms which reveal superior environmental technologies faced with this policy successful innovators voluntarily reveal their technological discovery to the government despite the apparent regulatory penalty that results implications for automotive fuel regulation are discussed

further tests of entreaties to avoid hypothetical bias in referendum contingent valuation abstract over estimation of willingness to pay in contingent markets has been attributed largely to hypothetical bias one promising approach for avoiding hypothetical bias is to tell respondents enough about such bias that they self correct for it a script designed for this purpose by cummings and taylor was used in hypothetical referenda that differed in payment amount in comparisons with behavior observed in otherwise identical real payment referenda the script worked remarkably well at higher payment levels dropping the likelihood of a yes vote to the level obtained in separate sample real referenda but less well at a lower payment level the repeated success of the script at higher payment amounts is a clear sign that additional research is warranted research that will bring us a more complete understanding of how the entreaty works this research may need to explore its workings at the individual respondent level

endogenous lobby formation and endogenous protection a long run model of trade policy determination this paper provides a theory of lobby formation within a framework in which trade policy is determined through political contributions under certain conditions free trade turns out to be an equilibrium outcome either when the government has a high affinity for political contributions or when it cares a great deal about social welfare moreover greater inequality in asset distribution results in a greater number of lobbies and in most cases more protection for each of these lobbies furthermore industries with higher levels of capital stock fewer capitalists more inelastic demand and smaller geographical dispersion are the ones that get organized

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

dynamic incentives by environmental policy instruments a survey abstract in this paper i survey and discuss recent developments on the incentives provided by environmental policy instruments for both adoption and development of advanced abatement technology a main conclusion to be drawn from the literature is that under competitive conditions market based instruments usually perform better than command and control moreover taxes may provide stronger long term incentives than tradable permits if the regulator is myopic if the government can anticipate new technology or is able to react on it optimally regulatory policies by virtue of administered prices taxes and policies by setting quantities issuing tradable permits are almost equivalent the literature also shows that under competitive conditions there is no difference between auctioning permits and grandfathering moreover timing and commitment of environmental policy is not crucial for adoption under competitive conditions commitment has positive incentive effects however if an r d sector has market power in the presence of market imperfections the ranking of the different policy instruments is ambiguous

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

information transmission and inefficient lobbying abstract in a seminal paper grossman and helpman 1994 introduced a framework to understand how lobbying influences the choice of import export tariffs in this paper we extend their analysis and assume that lobbies have private information to analyze the effects of information transmission in a grossman and helpman lobby game information transmission leads to two agency costs one refers to the cost of signaling and the other to the cost of screening the lobby s competitiveness the signaling cost reduces distortions resulting from the screening cost on the other hand distortions from the screening cost enhance the signaling cost the two combined effects generate more distortions in the political game than each effect separately tariff protection and lobbies rents are lower than those found in grossman and helpman s truthful equilibrium therefore information transmission may improve welfare through the reduction of rent seeking activities

using ex ante approaches to obtain credible signals for value in contingent markets evidence from the field while contingent valuation remains the only option available for measurement of total economic value of nonmarketed goods the method has been criticized due to its hypothetical nature we analyze field experimental data to evaluate two ex ante approaches to attenuating hypothetical bias directly comparing value statements across four distinct referenda hypothetical cheap talk consequential and real our empirical evidence suggests two major findings hypothetical responses are significantly different from real responses and responses in the consequential and cheap talk treatments are statistically indistinguishable from real responses we review the potential for each method to produce reliable results in the field

the role of technological change for a sustainable development technological change has become a major focus in environmental policy as well as in energy and climate policy indeed there is a growing body of knowledge about how and in which direction technological change might have an impact on environmental resource constraints and how environmental policy might have an impact on this direction in this article we introduce the contributions to this special issue showing how they add to recent developments in the field of economics of technological change and sustainability we also discuss potential avenues for future research

the demand for climate protection empirical evidence from germany abstract an experiment designed to find the real demand for climate protection was conducted among a sample of the residential population in mannheim germany participants were offered the opportunity to contribute to climate protection by purchasing european union allowances which were then withdrawn from the european emissions trading scheme our experiment showed a median willingness to pay wtp of zero and a mean wtp of approximately 12 t co 2

bargaining power and wage employment contracts in a unionized industry input and output data are used in conjunction with negotiated wages and employment to estimate a fully specified bargaining model between a labour union the international woodworkers of america and representatives from the british columbia wood products industry bargaining powers are modelled as functions of exogenous variables believed to have influenced the parties relative strike costs the estimated bargaining powers are plotted over time and compared to the proportion of rents captured by each party parameters of the union utility function and the firms technology are also estimated and hypothesis tests are conducted on various aspects of the model there are still relatively few studies in which fully specified models of bargaining between labour unions and firms are estimated this reflects both the extensive data requirements and the complexity of the models involved a fully specified model includes a representation of the firms objectives and technological constraints the union s goals and constraints and the bargaining structure furthermore even when micro data are available usually more than two parties are involved i e firms will negotiate with several unions and each union will have to deal separately with the many firms operating within the industry this complicates the modelling of the bargaining setting considerably in this study data on the wood products industry in british columbia canada are analyzed during the period under study 1963 1983 negotiations in this industry were highly centralized in fact the bargaining setting can be described as a bilateral monopoly between the international woodworkers of america iwa a powerful and stable union and the forest industrial relations an employer association representing firms in the industry this data set includes information on outputs and nonlabour inputs thus allowing the calculation of profits and the joint determination of output and other inputs along with employment and wages a structural model with four dependent variables wages employment output and a materials and supplies input is estimated firms are assumed to maximize profits and union objectives are modelled by a ces utility function with employment and the difference between union wages and alternative wages as arguments given a representation for the firms technology and the union preferences a

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

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