exploring the antecedents of logistics social responsibility a focus on chinese firms fundamental research funds for the central universities 2010221025 2011221016 national natural science foundation of china 70802052 academic outstanding youthful research talent plan of fujian province ja10001s national research foundation for doctoral program of higher education of china 20100121120013 national ministry of education of china humanities and social science 10yjc630010 ncet 10 0712

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

exploring the notional property developer as a policy construct this paper explores how far policy makers understand the structure of the development industry the perceived characteristics of developers and the extent to which such actors can be considered policy responsive if these matters are poorly understood the effectiveness of planning policy may be undermined especially where the private sector is responsible for undertaking most development the paper is based upon empirical research on the scottish executive s perceptions of and policy stances towards developers between 1999 and 2007 it finds that the executive appeared to have only limited understanding of what drives the development process or motivates individual developers and seemed unfamiliar with important differences within the industry sectorally and geographically instead the notional property developer was incorrectly conceived as a malleable and potentially compliant partner with shared objectives to the state the paper calls for a more thorough understanding of the development industr

different shades of green global oil and gas companies and renewable energy abstract the long term energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy raises critical questions about the future of oil and gas firms this study asks why some oil and gas firms are committed to renewable energy while others continue to maintain a distinct fossil fuels focus with little or no investment in renewable energy the analysis reveals that there is a wide range in the degree to which oil and gas firms have invested in renewable energy some firms have no investments and others have investments in multiple renewable energy technologies across many countries we examine a combination of country based institutional factors and firm based knowledge and experience factors that could impact oil and gas firms decisions to invest in renewable energy activity regulative and normative pressures impacted renewable energy investments as did environmental citizenship and the degree of internationalization the study s integration of country level factors with firm level experiences provides insights into how firms are dealing with the energy transition by examining areas such as sustainability and regulatory policy the paper sheds light on the ways in which scholars can tap into measures and methods that can extend traditional ib research

stakeholder pressures as determinants of csr strategic choice why do firms choose symbolic versus substantive self regulatory codes of conduct to encourage corporations to contribute positively to the environment in which they operate voluntary self regulatory codes src have been enacted and refined over the past 15 years two of the most prominent are the united nations global compact and the global reporting initiative in this paper we explore the impact of different stakeholders pressures on the selection of strategic choices to join srcs our results show that corporations react differently to different sets of stakeholder pressures and that the src selection depends on the type and intensiveness of the stakeholder pressures as well as the resources at hand to respond to those pressures our contribution offers a more specific and finely variegated analysis of firm stakeholder interactions

collective learning in global diffusion spreading quality standards in a developing country cluster this research analyzes how foreign organizational practices diffuse among indigenous enterprises in a developing economy it highlights the collective knowledge building process as central for understanding diffusion based on a longitudinal case study of a cluster of dairy producers in nicaragua a representative low income country it looks at cross border diffusion in conditions that differ significantly from advanced economies the current literature that highlights institutional pressures driving global spread of practices has limits for capturing a significant dynamic caused by increased integration of markets and production by focusing on production organization and practices in a late developing context this paper explains the intertwined process of spreading new standards and changing existing local practices by elaborating the relationship among building collective capabilities learning and standards diffusion this study enriches current views on institutional effects and adds to the practice based literature as well as to the work on developing economy firms in organizational research

wage differentials between the public and private sectors abstract public sector employment and the tax pressure has grown very rapidly in denmark in recent years this paper discusses a new policy option for government using its role as a dominant employer to reduce relative public sector wages the paper contains an empirical analysis of wage differences between the public and the private sectors in denmark using a longitudinal data set covering the years 1976 1985 fixed effect regressions show that a wage twist policy of this type has been used in these years one of the consequences of a wage twist policy in the public sector is recruitment and retention problems for public employees

being good while being bad social responsibility and the international diversification of us firms this paper contributes to the discussion on international diversification and corporate social responsibility csr by suggesting that firms can be simultaneously socially responsible and socially irresponsible to test our assertions we analyze data from 222 publicly traded us firms from 1993 to 2003 the findings support our hypotheses and have significant implications for the way in which we conceptualize csr

assessing participation in voluntary environmental programmes in the developing world the role of fdi and export orientation on iso14001 adoption in thailand empirical assessments of the determinants of firm participation in voluntary environmental programmes veps in the developing world are largely absent from the environmental regulation literature leaving a number of important factors unique to such countries unexplored this article examines these factors namely the roles played by foreign direct investment fdi and export orientation in addition to factors deemed important in the industrialized world context to the problem of iso14001 adoption in one developing nation thailand we make use of unique primary data from 494 firms and focus on three important industries the resource based food and beverages industry the labour intensive textiles and wearing apparel industry and the more high technology electronics and electrical appliances industry we find that fdi plays a role in iso14001 adoption especially fdi from organization for economic co operation and development oecd and iso14001 rich countries other important determinants include fi

job queues and the union status of workers this paper develops a model of the determination of the union status of workers that allows for the possibility of queuing for union jobs the empirical results derived using a sample from the university of michigan panel study of income dynamics are supportive of the queuing hypothesis the no queue model can be rejected using a likelihood ratio test this suggests that a simple probit or logit model for union status is misspecified because it is not based on any consistent behavioral theory an important implication of the model is that because most new entrants to the labor market prefer union jobs but cannot get them and because accrual of nonunion seniority makes workers progressively less likely to desire union jobs the union status of workers is largely determined by their success in being selected from the queue early in their working life

environmental management under subnational institutional constraints this study uses the institutional perspective to examine the interaction effects between the subnational institutional context and firm level parameters on corporate environmental behaviors based on a unique cross sectional data set of private firms compiled from three different sources in china our results suggest that both enforcement stringency of environmental regulations at the provincial level and private firms foreign ownership negatively affect compensation fees which are levies charged for firms emissions enforcement stringency also moderates the firm level relationship between foreign ownership and compensation fees but such a cross level moderating effect holds only for private firms with non hmt hong kong macau or taiwan investments

effects of local legitimacy on certification decisions to global and national csr standards by multinational subsidiaries and domestic firms we explore the impact of local legitimacy on the imitation of certification by subsidiaries of foreign multinational enterprises and domestic firms we propose that mne multinational enterprise subsidiaries and domestic firms differ in their propensity to imitate geographically proximate firms when deciding whether to adopt national vs global csr corporate social responsibility certifications for two reasons first there are differences in the legitimacy they can expect to gain in different communities from adopting these certifications second there are differences in their knowledge about the local legitimacy of these certifications we test our hypotheses by studying the decisions of automotive suppliers in mexico to certify either to iso 14001 a global certification or to clean industry a national certification we find that geography matters mne subsidiaries imitate national certifications by geographically proximate firms to overcome a liability of foreignness while domestic firms imitate global certifications by proximate firms to overcome the disadvantages of localness we explore the implications of our findings for institutional theory and future research

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

hourly earnings in the united states another look at unionization schooling sickness and unemployment using psid data this paper makes use of panel data to consider the effects of unionization schooling sickness and unemployment on individual earnings our results may be summarized as follows the unionization effect is around 15 20 this measure is consistently estimated controlling for both fixed individual attributes and serially uncorrelated measurement error sickness has little immediate impact but there is some indication that after 4 years earnings have fallen permanently by around 8 consequent on a 10 week spell of sickness a spell of unemployment on the other hand leads to a sharp fall in earnings but this effect decays rapidly leaving the possibility of a small permanent impact finally controlling for all fixed individual attributes we are unable to pin down the schooling effect with any accuracy owing to the absence of instruments that are both valid and effective within the data set

the effect of sustainability standard uncertainty on certification decisions of firms in emerging economies voluntary sustainability standards that establish global rules for firms environmental and or social conduct and allow for verification of firm compliance via third party certification hold the promise to govern firms sustainability conduct in a globalizing world economy however the recent proliferation of competing and overlapping global sustainability standards that have been developed by various stakeholders with different agendas creates uncertainties for firms that likely reduce their propensity to adopt any standard without widespread adoption these standards cannot effectively govern firm conduct and in contrast create barriers for firms access to export markets we suggest that the uncertainties associated with competing standards and the effect of these uncertainties on standard certification decisions are especially large for firms in emerging economies because these firms lack access to information about current and future standards and the resources to obtain certifications to multiple standards we theoretically propose and empirically identify three distinct sources of sustainability standard uncertainty i diversity of customer requirements ii dynamism of customer requirements and iii the unpredictability of the future evolution of standard and propose that each of these sources reduces firms propensity to obtain certification to any standard our empirical results based on certifications to food safety standards by a sample of 97 mexican food exporting firms confirm that three distinct sources of sustainability standard uncertainty exist and that all of them negatively impact certification we discuss ethical implications and offer recommendations for both suppliers as well as standard setting organizations

cultural explanation of regional property markets a critique in a recent paper in this journal simon guy and john henneberry 2000 proposed an institutional approach to property markets that emphasises exceptional behaviour on the part of particular market agents using this cultural approach they claimed to have evidence that london based property investors deliberately underinvest in british property outside southern england this paper criticises their dismissal of pre existing economic and institutional property market analysis and questions the validity of their empirical conclusions

unionism and wages a longitudinal analysis the impact of unionism on relative wage rates is a topic of long standing interest in labor economics over the years researchers have used a variety of approaches to estimate the wage advantage associated with union membership initially researchers compared the average wages of union and nonunion workers in specific sectors such as an industry this approach has the obvious limitation of not accounting very well for the various quality or productivity differences that exist among workers differences that command compensating wage payments more recent studies have used cross section wage regressions to control for these other determinants of wages and thereby improve estimates of the union wage effect using large microeconomic data files containing detailed information on characteristics of individual workers numerous studies have estimated wage regressions that include controls for worker characteristics education experience etc and a dichotomous variable indicating union membership status as explanatory variables 2 the coefficient of the union membership variable in these regressions is taken as an estimate of the average impact that unionism has on wage rates controlling for measured differences in characteristics among workers unfortunately the wage regression approach does not completely resolve the problem of standardizing the union nonunion wage comparison for differences in worker quality even with detailed microdata on the characteristics of individual workers it is simply not possible to specify a set of variables that completely captures all worker specific differences in productive ability some aspects of human capital are too subtle to be operationally specified and included in a wage regression although they are recognized and paid for by employers to the extent that these unmeasured worker specific differences are correlated with union membership the wage regression will incorrectly attribute a relative wage impact to unionism 3 an alternative measurement approach that has several advantages over the wage regression is to compare the wage received by the same worker as a union and nonunion member in the past data limitations have prevented researchers from making such a comparison since only a small portion of workers change union status in a given period an unusually large longitudinal file is needed to yield a sufficient number of observed changes for a meaningful analysis 4 recently however large longitudinal data files on individuals participating in the current population survey have become available this paper uses these data to estimate the impact a change in union status has on the worker s wage the

an evolutionary approach to understanding international business activity the co evolution of mnes and the institutional environment this paper examines the co evolution of mne activities and institutions external and internal to the firm we develop a theoretical framework for this analysis that draws on the more recent writings of douglass north on institutions as a response to complex forms of uncertainty associated with the rise in global economic interconnectedness and of richard nelson on the co evolution of technology and institutions we link historical changes in the character of mne activities to changes in the institutional environment and highlight the scope for firm level creativity and institutional entrepreneurship that may lead to co evolution with the environment we argue that the main drivers for institutional entrepreneurship are now found in the increasing autonomy of mne subsidiaries thus mne agency derives from more decentralized forms of experimentation in international corporate networks which competence creating nodes of new initiatives can co evolve with local institutions unlike most other streams of related literature our approach connects patterns of institutional change in wider business systems with more micro processes of variety generation and experimentation within and across individual firms this form of co evolutionary analysis is increasingly important to understanding the interrelationships between mne activities and public policy

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

business ethics and finance in greater china synthesis and future directions in sustainability csr and fraud following the financial crisis and recent recession the center of gravity of global economic growth and competitiveness is shifting toward emerging economies as a leading and increasingly influential emerging economy china is currently attracting the attention of academics practitioners and policy makers there has been an increase in research interest in and publications on issues relating to china within high quality international academic journals we therefore organized a special issue conference in conjunction with the journal of business ethics jbe in lhasa tibet on may 19 20 2014 on business ethics in greater china past present and future the papers for the special issue focused on the intersection of ethics and finance and fit within one of the three themes environment and sustainability corporate social responsibility and fraud within these themes issues of intellectual capital protection gender equality political connections regional development investor protection corporate stewardship trust and corruption and corporate transparency each play a significant role in this paper we survey these studies and the related literature to provide a comprehensive coverage of business ethics and finance issues that affect china

does parents money matter abstract this paper asks whether parents income per se has a positive impact on children s abilities previous research has established that income is positively correlated across generations this does not prove that parents money matters however since income is presumably correlated with ability this paper estimates the impact of parents income by focusing on income variation due to factors union industry and job loss that arguably represent luck i find that changes in parents income due to luck have a negligible impact on children s human capital for most families although parents money does matter for families whose father has low education

do corporate global environmental standards create or destroy market value arguments can be made on both sides of the question of whether a stringent global corporate environmental standard represents a competitive asset or liability for multinational enterprises mnes investing in emerging and developing markets analyzing the global environmental standards of a sample of u s based mnes in relation to their stock market performance we find that firms adopting a single stringent global environmental standard have much higher market values as measured by tobin sq than firms defaulting to less stringent or poorly enforced host country standards thus developing countries that use lax environmental regulations to attract foreign direct investment may end up attracting poorer quality and perhaps less competitive firms our results also suggest that externalities are incorporated to a significant extent in firm valuation we discuss plausible reasons for this observation

aids is not a business a study in global corporate responsibility securing access to low cost hiv medications at the end of the 1990s brazil was faced with a potentially explosive hiv aids epidemic through an innovative and multifaceted campaign and despite initial resistance from multinational pharmaceutical companies the government of brazil was able to negotiate price reductions for hiv medications and develop local production capacity thereby averting a public health disaster using interview data and document analysis the authors show that the exercise of corporate social responsibility can be viewed in practice as a dynamic negotiation and an interaction between multiple actors action undertaken in terms of voluntary csr alone may be insufficient this finding highlights the importance of a strong role for national governments and international organizations to pressure companies to perform better

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

globalization and the environment determinants of firm self regulation in china critics assert that globalization is detrimental to the environment because it encourages location of polluting industries in countries with low environmental regulations we suggest that globalization might also have positive environmental effects because global ties increase self regulation pressures on firms in low regulation countries using survey data from firms in china we find that multinational ownership multinational customers and exports to developed countries increase self regulation of environmental performance

determinants of international standards in sub saharan africa the role of institutional pressure from different stakeholders abstract international environmental and quality standards in africa are seen as being driven by pressure from international markets and importers this study presents a conceptual framework where other stakeholders and plant resources are included in the argument for standards we argue that among other stakeholders international banks as creditors are important determinants international banks most of which are committed to sustainable practices facilitate the diffusion of standards they also perform sustainability related risk analysis urging customers to demonstrate corporate social responsibility our results also suggest that foreign ownership plant size and business communications through company website are important for the adoption of standards in africa

spillover effects of economic globalization on co2 emissions a spatial panel approach abstract this paper investigates the spatial effects of economic globalization on co2 emissions in a panel of 83 countries over the period 1985 2013 we apply the spatial panel method to address the problems of spatial dependency and the spillover effect among neighboring countries first the estimation results verify the existence of the spatial correlations in co2 emissions across nations second we find that the indirect effect of economic globalization on co2 emissions is so significantly negative to overcome the positive direct effect which implies a negative and significant total effect so our results suggest that being surrounded by highly globalized countries has a positive effect on the environmental quality finally we also find strong evidence for the inverted u shaped ekc relationship between co2 emissions and income

health and wage a simultaneous equation model with multiple discrete indicators in this article we propose all econometric approach for estimating the simultaneouls effects of health and wages in a structural equations framework in the theoretical works of grossmana 1972a 1972b health is viewed as anl elldogen1oulsly determined capital stock the demand for health should rise with the wage rate as the rate of return to health investment increases with wage onl the other hand better health should raise market productivity and hence wages since health capital is an abstract theoretical concept it can hardly be measured quantitatively however most population surveys include various health indicators these indicators are usually discrete variables in the empirical work of grossman and benham 1974 these qualitative indicators are treated as continuous variables and two stage least squares estimation techniques are used this specification raises various econometric problems see e g goldberger 1964 pp 248 255 domencich and mcfadden 1975 and nerlove and press 1973 a satisfactory specification should take into account the discrete nature of the indicators our specification generalizes the dummy variables simultaneous equations system of heckman 1978 the measurement models of joreskog and goldberger 1975 and is closely related to the models of muthe n 1976 1979 muthen studies full information maximum likelihood procedures for estimation except for very simple cases this does not generally yield feasible or tractable procedures in this article we introduce a tractable procedure for statistical estimation and testing this specification and the estimation procedure is then applied to study the joint dependence of health and wages another departure of our approach from others is that we will test and correct the possible incompatibility of the various health capital indicators in the population surveys one may have subjective health indicators such as self evaluation of health which may reflect different populations perception of health we propose a statistical procedure for testing measurement compatibility and if required for correcting this problem this article is divided into two parts initially we describe the model specification estimation and statistical tests in a general simultaneous equation model with multiple discrete indicators in the second part of the paper we consider specification of a simultaneous equation model for health and wages the model

the adoption of voluntary environmental management programs in mexico first movers as institutional entrepreneurs this article analyzes the adoption of voluntary environmental management programs by firms operating in mexico mexican firms can obtain national certification clean industry and or international certification iso 14001 based on institutional entrepreneurship theory we posit that the role played by first movers as institutional entrepreneurs is crucial if these programs are to become established with sufficient strength and appeal this understanding is especially important in an environment where more than one program can be adopted we tested several hypotheses on the behaviors of 1328 facilities operating in mexico half of which 664 had certified environmental management programs of the 664 certified facilities 217 were classified as early adopters three variables predicted the likelihood of a facility being an early adopter 1 connected to international market 2 in the maquila sector and 3 linked to an industry association that offers free resources

an embarrassment of riches confronting omitted variable bias and multiscale capitalization in hedonic price models abstract many researchers have addressed concerns of omitted variable bias in hedonic price models through the use of spatial fixed effects we argue that this approach does not consider the biases introduced by effects that overlap the zone of capitalization for nonmarket goods we show this bias can dominate the usual omitted variable bias using data on developer provided open space we control for multiscale capitalization and omitted variables simultaneously by extending the hausman taylor estimator where the panel component of the estimator is defined over repeated transactions within neighborhoods rather than the traditional definition following a unique cross sectional unit through time

the longitudinal structure of earnings losses among work limited disabled workers this paper asks what are the dynamic effects of disability on earnings unlike most of the previous literature it uses panel data and fixed effects methods are used to assess how the earnings of disabled workers depart from expected levels over many years before and after the date of onset of their disability the paper also examines how worker characteristics affect earnings losses from disability with particular attention paid to the age at which the person suffers onset disabled men are found to experience sharp drops in earnings that predate the measured date of onset earnings recover rapidly soon after onset with much of the immediate reduction made up in the first two post onset years a modest downward trendfollows resulting in significant long term losses in expected annual earnings of about 12 percent per year being older at onset nonwhite more chronically disabled and less educated cause the losses from disability to be larger and the recovery smaller a large portion of these differences across groups appear to derive from industry affiliation after onset the paper argues the facts are all consistent with a simple human capital explanation of the disability process

labour market discrimination on the basis of health an application to uk data an analysis of wage discrimination is carried out on the basis of health on uk data with a number of important modifications first selection is controlled for into both health and labour market status second the direct effect of health upon productivity is accounted for and third discrimination is examined with regard to participation as well as wages the question of selection into health status is found to be of little empirical importance but taking account of selection into labour market status and the direct impact of health upon productivity leads to a fall in measured discrimination the paper finds similar results with regard to participation it is also examined whether these effects differ across age and gender

an assessment of the association between renewable energy utilization and firm financial performance contemporary research highlights multiple societal and environmental benefits in addition to potential economic advantages associated with renewable energy re utilization as federal and state incentives for investments in re technologies become more prevalent re sources represent increasingly viable alternatives to established fossil fuel energy re utilization is recognized as a key component of green product innovation that helps firms reduce the environmental impact of production processes and diminish their ecological footprints and energy consumption yet despite consistent evidence that corporate sustainability initiatives are favorably associated with firm performance the limited research that examines associations between re initiatives and firm performance yields mixed results and an explicit link has yet to be established drawing on the natural resource based view of the firm we examine the association between re utilization and firm financial performance over time annual roi tobin s q and operating margin for large u s firms identified as exceptional users of re in the epa s fortune 500 top green power partners list are compared with their respective industry medians over a 7 year period 2007 2013 and post hoc bootstrapping and sensitivity analyses are performed to further validate the study findings our research advances current knowledge about the influence of re utilization by demonstrating that top re user firms consistently generated superior financial performance compared to their industry competitors as such the study findings lend credence to the existence of a business case that complements the societal and environmental benefits of re utilization

whether top executives turnover influences environmental responsibility from the perspective of environmental information disclosure we have empirically examined the relationship between top executives turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility by identifying the influence of ten specific turnover reasons resulting in the chairman s departure and two important types of chairman s succession using a sample of 782 manufacturing listed companies across 3 years in china we find that the corporate environmental responsibility is negatively associated with the involuntary and negative turnover i e dismissal health and death and forced resignation and positively associated with improving corporate governance and not associated with the normal turnover i e retirement and contract expiration and the types of chairman s succession i e independence and internal or external promotion our study significantly contributes to research in environmental disclosure by revealing the relationship between chairman s turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility a feasible way is suggested to regulators and other stakeholders in monitoring or assessing the possible abnormality of environmental responsibility when firms experience involuntary and negative chairman s turnover in the emerging economies

the impact of iso 9000 diffusion on trade and fdi a new institutional analysis the effects of iso 9000 diffusion on trade and foreign direct investment fdi have gone understudied we employ panel data reported by oecd nations over the 1995 2002 period to estimate the impact of iso adoptions on country pair economic relations we find iso diffusion to have no effect in developed nations but to positively pull fdi i e enhancing inward fdi and positively push trade i e enhancing exports in developing nations

irreversible investment real options and competition evidence from real estate development abstract we examine the extent to which uncertainty delays investment and the effect of competition on this relationship using a sample of 1214 condominium developments in vancouver canada built from 1979 1998 we find that increases in both idiosyncratic and systematic risk lead developers to delay new real estate investments empirically a one standard deviation increase in the return volatility reduces the probability of investment by 13 percent equivalent to a 9 percent decline in real prices increases in the number of potential competitors located near a project negate the negative relationship between idiosyncratic risk and development these results support models in which competition erodes option values and provide clear evidence for the real options framework over alternatives such as simple risk aversion

evaluation of sustainability practices in the united states and large corporations a survey based research study was conducted to analyze sustainability practices of large u s corporations in their domestic and international operations large u s corporations were slow to address global environmental challenges but a majority of them now demonstrate a clear understanding of their responsibilities most large u s corporations are proactively involved in sustainability and environmentally friendly measures and their involvement at home is more intense than abroad analyses revealed that u s corporations engage in eight activities related to sustainability investing in energy efficient methods generating electricity from solar power generating electricity from wind power using biofuels trading carbon credits supporting environmental organizations generating electricity from biomass and generating electricity from hydropower of these only generating electricity from biomass and hydropower were not significantly different with respect to u s corporations foreign and domestic implementation this paper represents the first attempt to determine whether and how u s corporations efforts to promote sustainability differ with respect to their operational locus domestic or overseas

a picture of job insecurity facing british men this paper considers three aspects of the job insecurity facing british men in the last two decades the probability of becoming unemployed the costs of unemployment in terms of real wages losses and the probability that the continuously employed will experience substantial real wage losses the first of these has not risen in the last two decades the second has risen by around 50 percent and the third has risen particularly for the top skill groups

openness and the politics of potable water improving access to potable water has become an increasingly urgent concern for developing nations in the current era of globalization according to standard wisdom if developing countries undertake certain domestic reforms such as investing in infrastructure and engineering then safe and clean drinking water will improve this analysis uncovers however that in addition to such domestic efforts one of the greatest factors affecting water uncertainty is in fact internationally induced trade surprisingly both scholars and practitioners have neglected the potential impacts of expanding trade on access to potable water this analysis is the first large n cross national study of water that focuses on the interplay of trade and politics both international and domestic as the primary driving forces behind improvements in or constraints to water access the author hypothesizes that growing export pressures are constraining drinkable water in poor countries but a particular domestic condition can mit

spatial dynamics and heterogeneity in the cyclicality of real wages neither the issue of how local and aggregate labor markets interact over time nor the issue of how heterogeneity by education race and other factors interacts with these spatial dynamics has prev

residential water demand in the northwest of spain a panel of monthly aggregate data from the northwest of spain is used to estimate domestic water demand functions under linear and non linear tariffs price billing climatic and sociodemographic variables are used as explanatory variables the use of intraannual data constitutes a relevant contribution in the european context overall marginal price elasticity estimates lie between 0 12 and 0 17 summer only elasticities and elasticities associated with uses beyond the effectively free allowances seem significantly higher climatic variables significantly affect monthly use although probably less than in other wealthier and drier areas domestic water use appears to be a normal good

response error and the union wage differential broad variation in estimates of the union wage gap has perplexed labor economists one specification error that is consistent with the observed variation is measurement error in reported union status this article applies results of bollinger 1996 to estimate a range for the union wage gap both a cross sectional model and a fixed effects model are estimated in order for the true coefficient in the fixed effects model to be bounded below the true coefficient in the cross sectional estimates measurement error would have to be less than 0 8 the difference between the fixed effects estimates and the cross sectional estimates is primarily due to measurement error rather than to unobserved heterogeneity an examination of differences in returns to union membership by industry occupation and educational level shows that these differences are largely robust to measurement error many of these differences would be found even if error rates were as high as 10 or more an array of empirical estimates for the union wage differential has resulted from the variety of approaches to estimation lewis 1986 reviews the vast literature that attempts to estimate the union wage effect two extremes are represented by mincer 1983 who estimates the wage differential to be 0 01 while farber 1990 reports an estimate of 0 26 clearly specification error is the root cause of these differences the literature has focused upon unobserved heterogeneity in worker status as the main specification error frequently estimation approaches based on within estimators applied to fixed effects models using panel data are used to account for the possibility of unobserved heterogeneity as would be predicted by unobserved heterogeneity lewis 1986 p 94 reports that the panel wage gap estimates surveyed in the chapter on the average are roughly half as large as the corresponding cross section estimates this is often taken as evidence for bias in the cross section estimates due to the presence of fixed effects however these results are also consistent with measurement error in the report of the union status indeed chapter 5 in lewis 1986 focuses upon this possibility the difference might be the result of union status measurement error p 94 this article applies results of bollinger 1996 to compare the effect of measurement error on cross sectional estimates and panel estimates of the union wage differential bollinger 1996 establishes bounds for the slope coefficients of a linear regression when a binary regressor is thought to have measurement error the results here do not identify a point estimate of the union wage differential they relax many of the assumptions that are required to obtain the point estimates these bounds serve the purpose of sensitivity analysis as called for by leamer 1985