the influence of csr on firm value an application of panel smooth transition regression on taiwan abstractprevious studies on the relationship between corporate social responsibility csr and firm value generally belong to one of the two opposing schools of thought the social impact hypothesis and the shift of focus hypothesis this study however proposes that the relationship between csr and company value is non linear and neither wholly positive nor negative we employed the corporate social responsibility index crsi to test this hypothesis the panel smooth transition regression pstr model was used to analyse listed taiwanese firms from 2010 to 2012 and calculate the value transition threshold of csr using csri as the transition variable we then applied pstr to determine whether csri shows a two regime non linear relationship as inferred by our model empirical findings show that the threshold value of csri is 13 082 thus we concluded that investment in csr does not contribute to enhancing company value until it exceeds the value transition threshold

unemployment hysteresis and the natural rate hypothesis i introduction rod cross et al university of st andrews ii reflections on hysteresis and the natural rate 1 the irrelevance of the natural rate lawrence summers harvard university 2 on the history of hysteresis rod cross university of st andrews iii the characteristics of the unemployed 1 unemployment vacancies and the long term unemployed peter smith l b s paul levine south bank polytechnic alan budd l b s 2 characteristics of the long term unemployed evidence from the labour force survey stephen creigh department of employment 3 is unemployment irreversible peter r hughes department of employment gillian hutchinson queen mary college london iv analysis of hysteresis effects 1 union activity and wage employment movements assar lindbeck institute for international studies university of stockholm and dennis snower birkbeck college london 2 a simple model of imperfect competition with walrasian features huw dixon birkbeck college london 3 unemployment and worker quality simon price university of bristol 4 screening in labour markets with heterogeneous workers inge schnell university of bonn and l s e iv hysteresis effects and the explanation of aggregate unemployment 1 testing for multiple natural rates of unemployment in the british economy alan carruth university of kent and andrew oswald centre for labour economics l s e 2 why is wage inflation in britain so high stephen nickell university of oxford 3 phillips curve estimates incorporating a natural rate with hysteresis effects david coe o e c d 4 hysteresis and european unemployment olivier blanchard m i t and lawrence summers harvard university 5 the natural rate empirical fact or theoretical straitjacket tim jenkinson merton college oxford iv panel discussion the implications of hysteresis effects for unemployment policy 1 david stanton employment market research unit department of employment 2 charles adams i m f 3 marcus miller university of warwick 4 peter mcgregor fraser of allander institute university of strathclyde

the determinants of equilibrium unemployment in britain a lot of energy is currently being expended in trying to understand what has been happening to unemployment in britain and the rest of the developed world in this paper we look at this question in the british context by trying to confront some possible explanations with the data since the data we use are quarterly over rather a short period we are setting the explanations a very hard test most explanations tend to be rather casual and the theories underpinning them ill developed thus for example the so called real wage argument is based on the idea that real wages affect labour demand and that the equilibrium real wage bears some relatively stable relationship to output per head but how stable is not clear thus whether or not we can expect a well defined stable ceteris paribus dynamic relationship between real product wages as a proportion of output per head and unemployment is equally unclear so if such a relationship does not show up in a quarterly regression model this may not be that serious for the theory nevertheless we must look for the relationship for how else are we ever to discriminate between a plethora of conflicting views the primary emphasis in this paper is on the secular factors affecting unemployment rather than the cyclical variables consequently we shall not be concerned with developing a coherent theory of cyclical fluctuations and in the empirical work we shall control for the cycle simply by making use of those exogenous or predetermined variables which other work in this field suggests are important 2 the remainder of the paper is set out as follows the next section is concerned with specifying a model which generates a definition of equilibrium unemployment the outline of this model is a pair of equations determining the flows into and out of unemployment and these are specified in section ii which looks closely at the possible variables involved section iii then deals with the results and presents some general conclusions

differentiated contracts heterogeneous borrowers and the mortgage choice decisions previous analyses of mortgage choice assume that adjustable rate mortagages are standard contracts and estimate bivariate models the authors estimate a multinomial logit model that explicitly treats mortgages as differentiated contracts and provides insights on several important issues the impact of price variables differs significantly across alternative mortgage contracts borrower heterogeneity particularly mobility influences the type of contract chosen and borrowers respond to market conditions as expected when choosing between alternative mortgage contracts copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

getting into the energy efficiency scene does corporate social responsibility matter for energy efficiency in smes a growing body of literature argues that improving energy efficiency is an essential step that firms must take to mitigate climate change issues it is assumed that corporate social responsibility

environmental disclosure and stock market liquidity evidence from arab mena emerging markets abstractthe objective of this study is to examine the impact of environmental disclosure levels on the stock market liquidity of arab middle eastern and north african mena companies for that a self constructed disclosure index was applied to the annual reports for the years 2010 2011 and 2012 and the bid ask spread was used as a proxy for stock market liquidity results indicate that levels of environmental disclosure in mena companies are quite low in addition using a sample of 276 firm year observations multivariate analysis shows that the higher the level of environmental disclosure provided in the annual reports the lower the spread between the market bid and ask prices thereby indicating an increase in stock market liquidity

the dynamics of unemployment structural change and unemployment flows in this paper we attempt to explain the inflows onto and the outflows from the unemployment stock in spite of great interest in explaining unemployment very little work has been done using time series data on flows 1 it is useful to think of the labour market as being in a perpetual state of flux with people moving from job to job from jobs to unemployment and from unemployment to jobs an analysis of flows allows us to study the dynamics of the labour market and provides us with useful insights which may be clouded by studying unemployment stocks our model explaining the flows is based on cost minimising firms and individuals searching for jobs 2 we postulate an economy consisting of two types of firms expanding firms that hire and declining firms that fire changes in aggregate demand tastes and technology lead to changes in the distribution of firms and hence to the flows section i considers the empirical specification and discusses the results for great britain for the period 1967 iii to 1980 ii to anticipate our results we find that inadequate aggregate demand is a crucial determinant of the growth of unemployment in britain

the causes of unemployment in france a flow approach a flow model is used to identify the causes for rising unemployment in france between 1978 and 1990 two flow equations are estimated as functions of exogenous factors such as aggregate demand factor costs structural shifts and long term factors and then used in simulations for the level of unemployment it is shown that the main reason for high unemployment in france is a slow down in the demand for labour due to high labour and energy costs in the early 1980s and to tight aggregate demand over the whole period change in the labour supply have had an increasing impact in recent years

corporate responsibility in scandinavian supply chains this article examines corporate responsibility in the supply chains of four of the largest scandinavian multinational corporations ikea nokia novo nordisk and statoilhydro and offers two key findings first these scandinavian companies have all implemented responsible supply chain practices where suppliers in developing nations and the communities of these suppliers are engaged as key stakeholders and treated as partners second these supply chain practices all share the common bond of having honesty and the establishment of trust based relationships at their foundation as a result these scandinavian companies have developed a cooperative advantage in their ability to form successful long term partnerships in their respective supply chains

the rise of unemployment in france whereas the french unemployment rate had remained less than 2 per cent throughout the postwar years up to 1967 it has since increased having been pushed by an irresistible trend to 2 7 per cent in 1972 4 1 per cent in 1975 5 2 per cent in 1978 7 3 per cent in 1981 and 9 7 per cent in 1984 annual averages ilo definitions the size of the labour force had hardly increased before 1962 during the past 20 years its growth has been slowly accelerating but has remained moderate 0 8 per cent per annum between 1975 and 1982 on the other hand employment increased steadily from 1962 up to the first oil shock but has been roughly constant since then see figure 1 my survey of the analysis of these features and of their explanation will follow traditional lines it will first consider the evolution of the labour force as well as changes in the volume structure and nature of the supply of labour the second section dealing with the demand for labour will pay particular attention to changes in the economic and institutional environment of firms section iii will examine what can be said about a possible increase in frictional

the relationship between disclosures of corporate social performance and financial performance evidences from gri reports in manufacturing industry whether the corporate social performance affects the financial performance is still unclear in many manufacturing companies we commonly expect on one side that profitable corporations have stronger incentives to reveal information on the social performance in order to improve their publicity on the other hand companies may face the fear of rising costs due to corporate social responsibility csr activities with increasing concerns of csr it is timely to investigate the relationship between the disclosure of corporate social performance and the financial performance in this paper with the above study objective we use global reporting initiative gri reports of 75 sample companies collect evidences by applying the method of structured content analysis of the cases and attempt to identify this relationship the corporate social performance is measured by the indicators according to the gri guidelines i e within the categories of labor practices and decent work human rights society as well as product responsibility financial performance is measured by return on equity sales growth and cash flow sales ratio using statistical evaluation methods our results indicate that the categories of human rights society as well as product responsibility display a significant and positive correlation with the return on equity same conclusion also holds for many csr indicators nevertheless when examining the csr practices across different manufacturing sectors we have not observed significant differences the study results are important for understanding the development and implementation of csr practices in the manufacturing industry

sectoral shifts and cyclical unemployment a substantial fraction of cyclical unemployment is better characterized as fluctuations of the frictional or natural rate than as deviations from some relatively stable natural rate shifts of employment demand between sectors of the economy necessitate continuous labor reallocation since it takes time for workers to find new jobs some unemployment is unavoidable this paper presents evidence that most of the unemployment fluctuations of the seventies unlike those in the sixties were induced by unusual structural shifts within the u s economy simple time series models of layoffs and unemployment are constructed that include a measure of structural shifts within the labor market these models are estimated and a derived natural rate series is constructed

interest rate variations mortgage prepayments and household mobility the volatility of interest rates and the deregulation of the mortgage lending sector have meant that many homeowners also own mortgages at terms more favorable than current interest rates this paper presents a model of residential mobility decisions and an empirical analysis that evaluates the importance of the ownership of these mortgages upon the mobility of homeowners the results based upon proportional and nonproportional hazard models indicate that these effects are quite large the empirical analysis distinguishes between different regulatory regimes that govern the assumption of existing mortgages and indicates the implications of these findings for the pricing and valuation of mortgage backed securities copyright 1987 by mit press

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

transmission of csr requirements in supply chains investigating the multiple mediating effects of csr activities in smes in recent years scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the separate areas of corporate social responsibility csr and supply chain management scm however little scholarly attent

the rise and fall of the arm an econometric analysis of mortgage choice this paper estimates an empirical model of the choice between adjustable and fixe d rate mortgages using a large national database compiled by the nat ional association of realtors the explanatory variables in the probi t choice equation include borrower characteristics regional dummies the frm rate and the frm arm rate differential since the intrerest rate on the mortgage not chosen is unobserved this rate must be est imated in a way that eliminates selectivity bias simulation of the e stimated choice equation provides insight into the origin of the arm revolution copyright 1988 by mit press

adverse selection in a model of real estate lending we provide a rationale for the presence of points in mortgage loan contracts our analysis builds on two key features first insurance markets are unavailable for labor income second the due on sale clause allows banks to offer loan contracts which partially insure against fluctuations in labor income if explicit prepayment penalties are prohibited by law points serve effectively as prepayment penalties we also examine environments where such penalties are not prohibited and show that points will be used if interest rates cannot depend on the size of the loan conventional home mortgage contracts contain a vast array of contingent clauses the most controversial of these is the due on sale clause that gives the lender the contractual right to declare the loan fully payable if all or part of the mortgaged property is sold dunn and spatt 1985 argue that the due on sale clause can provide insurance to the borrower they consider an environment where individuals face uninsurable risk in their income if incomes are high when borrowers move they will prefer a contract which imposes a prepayment penalty when they sell their property in return for a subsidy perhaps in the form of lower interest rates when they stay dunn and spatt characterize the optimal contract when the income of borrowers is unobservable to the lender however all borrowers are ex ante identical in this paper we examine a market where individuals differ in the riskiness of their potential gains from selling their property if this information is private to the borrower the kind of insurance arrangement described above must be modified to deal with the obvious selection problems that arise any lender must therefore ensure that any insurance contract offered to individuals with riskier income streams does not offer so much insurance at such a favorable price that individuals with less risky income also accept the same contract the classic analysis of this type of problem is by rothschild and stiglitz 1976 and our analysis follows theirs in order to focus attention on the nature of the adverse selection problem we assume two types of individuals both types have the same expected income stream for simplicity we assume that type i individuals do not

estimating unemployment inflows outflows and long term unemployment in britain using the cointegration approach a model is estimated of flows into and out of unemployment using the johansen multivariate cointegration approach and uk data for the period 1974q4 to 1993q3 two long run equilibrium relationships are obtained covering the outflow rate and unemployment duration which include variables such as the replacement ratio structural change and output a unique feature of the model is that it allows the inflow rate to determine the outflow rate and vice versa this is argued to be important given the common european stylized fact that inflows and outflows are both countercyclical and strongly correlated thus if firms and workers are heterogeneous hiring and firing is contemporaneous necessitating the type of model estimated here some interesting results include the finding that output is not important in determining the outflow rate and that the speed of adjustment of the outflow rate to changes in its underlying equilibrium is slow in contrast the proportion of long term unemployed is positively re

choosing between fixed and adjustable rate mortgages note introduction in recent years mortgage borrowers have been given a wide variety of financing methods from which to choose e g guttentag 1983 barnett and mckenzie 1984 examples include assumptions adjustable rates shared appreciation growing equity and numerous others by far the dominant two have been the standard fixed rate and the adjustable rate mortgage beginning with regulation changes in 1979 adjustable rate mortgage lending at first was fairly restricted but with the major deregulation change in 1981 the types of adjustable rate mortgages have proliferated 2 now lenders have the flexibility to use numerous indexes including inflation and disposable income indexes make interest rate changes independent of payment changes and allow negative amortization the purpose of this paper is to examine the choice between fixed and adjustable rate mortgages 3 two views have dominated the theoretical literature one that emphasizes the irrelevance of borrower characteristics in the mortgage choice decision given the prices and terms of the contract and one that focuses on the potential impact of borrower characteristics assuming asymmetric information 4 this paper is the first to examine empirically the impact of pricing and borrower characteristics on the choice of mortgage contract

aggregate supply and demand factors in oecd unemployment an update unemployment in the oecd countries has continued to rise to unprecedented levels the eec countries which on average ended the turbulent 1970s with an unemployment rate of close to 7 per cent are now in the mid 1980s approaching an 11 per cent level the united states is virtually the only country for which the changes in unemployment during the 1970s have not been systematically upward and for which the 1984 rate was more or less back to where it had been both ten years and five years earlier see figure 1 the reasons for the sustained increase in unemployment during the 1970s as well as the possible reasons for differences in patterns across industrial countries have been studied but question marks undoubtedly remain our own emphasis in an earlier study has been on the combination of the great supply shocks of the previous decade and the contractionary macro policy response of most oecd countries to these shocks as well as on the more recent policy coordination problem between the united states and europe with a few more years that have elapsed and quite a few percentage points of additional unemployment there is obviously room for both an update and a reappraisal starting from a fairly conventional aggregate supply as and aggregate demand ad macro framework an increase in unemployment may come

the rise in unemployment a multi country study one of the most remarkable features of recent economic history has been the remorseless rise in unemployment throughout the industrialized countries however while the trend to higher unemployment is universal the experience of individual countries also differs widely the increase is especially marked within the european community where unemployment rates rival those reached in the interwar years by contrast in the scandinavian countries and japan unemployment is lower and has risen very much less experience in the united states lies somewhere between these extremes and in the last few years unemployment there has fallen sharply

why does unemployment persist the main movements of unemployment correspond to fluctuations in the short run nairu around a stable long term nairu these supply side fluctuations have two main origins i variations in the number of insiders involved in wage setting ii variations in the effectiveness of the unemployed outsiders as potential job seekers the evidence of micro studies suggests that ii is more important than i and this also helps to explain the widespread shift outwards in the u v curve to derive these arguments rigorously the paper presents a simple model of efficiency wages another of collective bargaining and finally a fully dynamic model with labour market flows

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

fixed rate or index linked mortgages from the borrower s point of view a note when will borrowers choose fixed rate mortgages and when will they prefer index linked mortgages baesel and biger bb 1 proposed a model that answers this question according to the bb model a borrower s preference depends on the difference in interest rates between the fixed and index linked mortgages and on the covariance between the borrower s labor income and the rate of inflation the purpose of this note is to propose a more complete model of borrower preferences the novelty of the model lies in the inclusion of the value of the house net of mortgage obligation in the terminal wealth of the borrower this inclusion leads to differences between this model and the bb model in the identification of the cases where borrowers will prefer fixed or index linked mortgages

csr disclosure and sustainable supplier management a small to medium sized enterprises perspective the respective literatures on corporate social responsibility csr disclosure and sustainable supplier management have grown in recent years but little scholarly attention has been paid to the li

a review of theories of the firm and their contributions to corporate sustainability corporate sustainability has arisen as an alternative to traditional short term profit oriented ap proaches to managing the firm by holistically balancing economic environmental and social issues in the present generation and for future ones although a number of theories of the firm have been pro posed within recent decades their application to corporate sustainability has been limited this paper presents an overview of the most widely used theories of the firm such as the stockholder theory the aggregate theory the contractual theory the resource based view and the stakeholder theory and analyses their contributions to corporate sustainability from an interpretative perspective the discus sion highlights the point that each of the theories on its own is limited in addressing sustainability s four dimensions i e the economic environmental social and time nonetheless each theory or group of theories has a particular perspective or principles that can contribute to one or more of the four dimensions the authors of this paper propose a sustainability oriented theory of the firm which is built upon elements of those theories as they relate to corporate sustainability this new theory can be useful in providing the firm s leaders and all of its stakeholders with a more complete vision of its ob ligations opportunities relations and processes that the firm should address as it engages in helping to make societies become more equitable and sustainable in the short and long terms