wheat from chaff meta analysis as quantitative literature review abstract this paper presents and develops a quantitative method of literature reviewing and evaluating empirical research meta regression analysis or mra economics is theory driven yet we must learn empirically if economics is to advance mra offers a more objective statistical method to summarize our empirical knowledge and to explain the wide study to study variation in economic research mra is used to assess the evidence for ricardian equivalence and its findings are contrasted to those of conventional narrative review furthermore mra establishes a platform from which to distinguish genuine empirical effect from the exploitable specification error that infests applied econometrics

market wide attention trading and stock returns abstract market wide attention grabbing events record levels for the dow and front page articles about the stock market predict the trading behavior of investors and in turn market returns both aggregate and household level data reveal that high market wide attention events lead investors to sell their stock holdings dramatically when the level of the stock market is high such aggressive selling has a negative impact on market prices reducing market returns by 19 basis points on days following attention grabbing events

sustainable development and corporate performance a study based on the dow jones sustainability index the goal of this paper is to examine whether business performance is affected by the adoption of practices included under the term corporate social responsibility csr to achieve this goal we analyse the relation between csr and certain accounting indicators and examine whether there exist significant differences in performance indicators between european firms that have adopted csr and others that have not the effects of compliance with the requirements of csr were determined on the basis of firms included in the dow jones sustainability index djsi and specific accounting indicators were applied to measure performance for the purposes of this study we selected one group of firms belonging to the djsi and another comprised of firms quoted on the dow jones global index djgi but not on the djsi the sample was made up of two groups of 55 firms studied for the period 1998 2004 empirical analysis supports the conclusion that differences in performance exist between firms that belong to the djsi and to the djgi and that these differences are related to csr practices we find that a short term negative impact on performance is produced

toward a unified theory of the csp cfp link this article proposes a unified theory of the relationship between corporate social performance csp and corporate financial performance cfp the theory provides a framework for rationalizing the various and contradictory findings in past empirical research the theory is based on the parallels between the business and csr domains and thus draws on models from economics

the financial performance of a socially responsible investment over time and a possible link with corporate social responsibility this paper empirically examines the financial performance of a uk unit trust that was initially conventional and later adopted socially responsible investment sri principles ethical investment principles comparison is made with three similar conventional funds whose investment objectives remained unchanged analysis techniques employed in previous studies find similar results mean risk adjusted performance is unchanged by the switch to sri with no evidence of over or under performance relative to the benchmark market index by any of the four funds more interestingly changes in variability of returns over time are also modelled using generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity models not previously applied to sri funds so far as is known results show a temporary increase in variability of returns followed by a return to previous levels after around 4 years evidence shows the increased variability to be associated with the adoption of sri rather than with a change in fund management possible explanations for the subsequent reduction in variability include the spread of corporate social responsibility activities by firms and learning by fund managers in addition to reporting on a previously unobserved phenomenon this paper raises questions for further research

home market vs vote market effect location equilibrium in a probabilistic voting model abstract this paper considers the location of manufacturing activities when regional policies are endogenous we find that once the political economy of regional policy is explicitly taken into account regional population size has an ambiguous effect on the level of regional subsidy even though it plays a key role in determining the equilibrium spatial allocation of industry in particular the final allocation of firms depends both on the relative economic strengths of the two regions as predicted by more orthodox economic geography models as well as by their relative political strengths

a decade s debate on the nexus between corporate social and corporate financial performance a critical review of empirical studies 2002 2011 abstract theoretical discussions and empirical studies on the nexus between corporate social responsibility corporate social performance and corporate financial performance have never ceased since the origin of the concepts the development trajectories of such studies should be articulated with a view to informing practical corporate social responsibility applications and theoretical studies in the future this paper presents a critical review of relevant empirical research articles on the nexus between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance published during the ten year period from 2002 to 2011 using mixed methods of content analyses and statistical analyses the paper reviews 84 empirical studies of this kind published during the period the results indicate that despite the enormous amount of previous studies the corporate social performance and corporate financial performance nexus is a line of inquiry that remains inconclusive the pattern of corporate social performance corporate financial performance relationship research in the decade examined has shifted towards exploring the linkages between specific aspects of the two constructs the positive relationships between these specific aspects in dual directions are confirmed by most of the studies examined in this paper the paper also examines the impact of time and space change on the corporate social performance corporate financial performance nexus the findings show that researchers have gradually recognized that the relationship is not static but changes over time furthermore the paper finds that corporate social responsibility has been increasingly debated in developing countries and in specified industrial settings the review concludes that to explore the corporate social performance corporate financial performance nexus by contextualizing it in a specified community and or examine its dynamics is a promising research area that can yield significant academic and practical values

profit maximisation vs agency an analysis of charitable giving by uk firms the charitable giving of a large sample of publicly quoted uk firms is analysed within a model that explores the profit maximisation and managerial utility enhancement motives for giving the empirical method draws a distinction between the decision to participate in giving and the determination of the amount of corporate contributions firm size and advertising intensity are found to be positively associated with the probability of participation in giving stricter corporate governance and the rate of directors remuneration are negatively related to the probability of participation among givers the rate of giving is related positively to r d intensity the rate of directors remuneration and corporate profitability and negatively to firm indebtedness

investor attention overconfidence and category learning abstract motivated by psychological evidence that attention is a scarce cognitive resource we model investors attention allocation in learning and study the effects of this on asset price dynamics we show that limited investor attention leads to category learning behavior i e investors tend to process more market and sector wide information than firm specific information this endogenous structure of information when combined with investor overconfidence generates important features observed in return comovement that are otherwise difficult to explain with standard rational expectations models our model also demonstrates new cross sectional implications for return predictability

on the determinants of corporate social responsibility international evidence on the financial industry this article sets out to undertake a thorough point by point examination of the theory postulated by campbell 2007 in which an attempt is made to specify the conditions under which corporations may or may not act in socially responsible ways in order to ensure the overall reliability of our study and to attempt to provide a new understanding of and greater insights into whether corporate social responsibility csr is affected by financial and institutional variables we empirically investigate a total of 520 financial firms in 34 countries between the years 2003 and 2005 our empirical findings are i firms with larger size are more csr minded and the financial performance and csr are not related ii firms would actually act in more socially responsible ways to enhance their competitive advantages when the market competitiveness is more intense iii financial firms in countries with stronger levels of legal enforcement tend to engage in more csr activities however interestingly and rather strikingly those firms in countries with stronger shareholder rights tend to engage in less csr activities and iv self regulation within the financial industry has a significantly positive effect on csr with firms being found to act in more socially responsible ways in those countries which have more cooperative employer employee relations higher quality management schools and a better macroeconomic environment

social relationship of a firm and the csp cfp relationship in japan using artificial neural networks as a criterion of a good firm a lucrative and growing business has been said to be important recently however high profitability and high growth potential are insufficient for the criteria because social influences exerted by recent firms have been extremely significant in this paper high social relationship is added to the list of the criteria empirical corporate social performance versus corporate financial performance csp cfp relationship studies that consider social relationship are very limited in japan and there are no definite conclusions for the studies in the world because of scant data and the inappropriate methods especially for supporting linear hypothesis which these studies are based on in this paper the csp cfp relationship is analyzed by an artificial neural networks model which can deal with a non linear relationship using 10 year follow up survey data

investor attention and market microstructure this paper develops the first economic model to study the impact of investor attention on the market microstructure in the kyle s 1985 setup our model strongly supports the empirical observation that higher investor attention leads to higher stock market volatility the first special case with one fully and one limited attentive traders explains that higher attention leads to higher trading intensity of retail investors market liquidity and stock market volatility the second special case with one fully inattentive and one limited attentive traders explains how investor attention affects buying and selling

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

virtuous nexus between corporate social performance and financial performance a study of construction enterprises in china abstract although business and society are thought in a vicious relationship for diminishing trust among stakeholders a few studies indicate the existence of a reciprocal nexus between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance known as the virtuous cycle despite of some empirical studies in developed countries little research has been conducted concerning the assumption in emerging markets where large companies have more responsibilities to create positive and sustainable shared values this paper aims to explore the nexus between social performance and financial performance of chinese companies for their global influential social and environmental impacts together with increasing awareness of corporate social responsibility csr a two step longitudinal design including cross lagged correlation analyses and longitudinal path analyses is applied to examine the overall and decomposed links it is found the virtuous cycle does exist in the overall and in most decomposed links within the context of large construction companies in china these findings are beneficial for interested policy makers corporate managers and the public to create shared value on csr and therefore contribute to csr improvements analysis results indicate a one year time lag to be appropriate for examining the lead lag relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance the research also inspires a potential generalisation of the virtuous cycle by similarly examining it in other industries or other countries with diverse csr contexts

corporate philanthropy in the u k 1985 2000 some empirical findings this paper briefly reviews the theories that seek to explain the phenomenon of corporate charitable donations and then provides a review of the empirical issues that have arisen in previous studies in this area the findings of an analysis of charitable donations data from the entire u k ftse index for the years 1985 2000 are then reported these findings include the observation of a time related increase in charitable donations which is compared with an earlier study to give a 24 year history of charitable donations in the u k the findings note little responsiveness of the monetary value of charitable donations to the economic performance of firms an international comparison over time against u s trends is also reported and shows how u s corporations have traditionally been more generous than u k firms but that the trend in the u s is downwards membership of a u k based tithing club the percent club is shown to be associated with higher profit performance against non members members charitable contributions against profit are shown to be higher than the ftse mean although short of the 0 5 target figure in cash terms the paper concludes with a brief discussion of these findings in relation to the theoretical positions advanced for corporate philanthropy

overconfidence on public information abstract this work sets the market maker as overconfident and shows that this will lead to a higher informed trading intensity a more efficient market a larger informed profit and a lower adverse selection

does energy efficiency affect financial performance evidence from chinese energy intensive firms energy intensive firms are confronted with increasing pressure to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption this paper explores the relationship between the energy efficiency and financial performance of a sample of firms in china based on a panel dataset for the period 2010 2014 six financial indicators representing the benefits of different stakeholders are used in the analysis our empirical results show that energy efficiency is positively related to return on equity return on assets return on investment return on invested capital and return on sales but has no significant relationship with tobin s q in addition we examine the interaction effect between energy intensity and firm growth and find that firm growth helps to enhance the positive relationship between energy intensity and financial performance our findings provide incentive for firms to be proactive in their efforts towards energy conservation and emissions reduction

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

editor s choice financial attention this paper investigates financial attention using novel panel data on daily investor online account logins we find support for selective attention to portfolio information account logins fall by 9 5 after market declines investors also pay less attention when the vix volatility index is high the level of attention and the attention return correlation are strongly related to investor demographics gender age and financial position wealth holdings using a new statistical decomposition we show how aggregate and individual household trading are related to investor attention

ethical commitment financial performance and valuation an empirical investigation of korean companies a variety of stakeholders including investors corporate managers customers suppliers employees researchers and government policy makers have long been interested in the relationship between the financial performance of a corporation and its commitment to business ethics as a subject of research the relations between business ethics and corporate valuation has yet to be thoroughly quantified and investigated this article is an effort to amend this inadequacy by demonstrating a statistically significant association between ethical commitment and corporate valuation measures consistent with anecdotal evidence we have found a significant association between the ethical commitment of korean companies and their valuation on the korean stock market however the result reveals that the association between ethical commitment and financial performance is not significantly supported

corporate social responsibility and corporate performance evidence from a panel of us listed companies we investigate whether inclusion and permanence in the domini social index dsi affects corporate performance on a sample of around 1000 firms in a 13 year interval by controlling for size industry business cycle and time invariant firm idiosyncratic characteristics our results find partial support to the hypothesis that corporate social responsibility is a move from the shareholders wealth to a multi stakeholders welfare target on the one side permanence into the domini index di is shown to increase reduce significantly total sales per employee returns on equity but not when large and r d investing firms are excluded from the sample on the other side lower returns on equity for domini firms seem nonetheless to be accompanied by relatively lower conditional volatility and lower reaction to extreme shocks with respect to the control sample an explanation for these findings suggested by the inspection of domini criteria is that social responsibility implies on the one side decisions leadi

renewable energy policies and contradictions in causality a case of next 11 countries abstract numerous studies on the causal relationship between economic growth energy consumption and carbon dioxide co2 emissions have shown divergence in policy recommendations which arises mainly due to the choice of methodology and the period of study this inconclusiveness in policy prescriptions might turn out to be critical when the renewable energy policies of the developing nations are considered our study analyses the causal relationship between economic growth carbon emissions fossil fuel and renewable energy consumption in next 11 countries during the period of 1990 2016 along with conducting parametric and non parametric causality tests together introducing the geweke 1982 causality test in the literature of energy economics we attempt to establish a wholesome aspect of policy design by comparing and complementing results of different causality analysis and how the causality directions should comply with the context setting our empirical evidence confirms that robust renewable energy policy can be designed by complementing the various causality test results rather than focusing on one particular causality test

a study of management perceptions of the impact of corporate social responsibility on organisational performance in emerging economies the case of dubai although a number of studies have shown that corporate social responsibility csr activities often lead to greater organisational performance in western developed economies researchers are yet to examine the strategic value of csr in emerging economies using survey data from 280 firms operating in dubai this study examines the link between csr activities and organisational performance the results show that csr has a positive relationship with all three measures of organisational performance financial performance employee commitment and corporate reputation these results reinforce the accumulating body of empirical support for the positive impact of csr on performance and challenge the dominant assumption that given the weak institutional framework in emerging economies csr activities drain resources and compromise firms competitiveness

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