the impact of institutional and social context on corporate environmental social and governance performance of companies committed to voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives abstract using a neo institutional framework this paper discusses the role of national specific social cultural legal regulatory and economic differences when determining the way that companies committed to a specific voluntary corporate social responsibility csr initiative operate in different sustainability dimensions the differences between companies environmental social and governance esg performance of the companies operating in the three countries with highest number of firms committed to the united nations global compact ungc spain france and japan is assessed through a multidimensional hj biplot technique which is a statistical technique that provides a joint graphical representation in a low dimensional euclidean space usually a plane of a multivariate data matrix this research contributes to the existing literature providing quantitative evidence of how different country specific social and institutional schemes influence companies esg performance the main results reveal the existence of two clusters of companies behaving in different ways with regard of sustainability issues first spanish and french companies exhibit similar levels of social and corporate governance performance higher than those of japanese firms second japanese firms seem more committed to environmental issues than spanish and french companies these results confirm that the different countries with different institutional backgrounds induce different priorities among their firms in terms of esg performance even under a common commitment to the same principles of adopted csr initiative

β convergence and the cyclical dynamics of uk regional house prices the potential convergence of regional house prices in the uk is examined in contrast to the existing literature which focuses upon stochastic convergence the present paper considers alternative f

differing house price linkages across uk regions a multi dimensional recursive ripple model the aim of this study is to determine the nature of the relationship between house prices of different types of housing across the uk regions we use an autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to determine the long run relationships between house prices as well as an error correction model to estimate the short run dynamics between house prices the data include house prices across the regions of great britain and for new old and modern houses the results suggest that house price shocks ripple across regions although the nature of the relationship varies across housing types we further simulate the impact of house price shocks and reveal a complex structure whereby a house price shock in region a impacts upon prices in other regions which in turn feedback into region a in a recursive ripple

are there asymmetries in uk consumption a time series analysis in this paper we use time series techniques in order to test for asymmetric dynamics in uk consumption the notion that fluctuation over the business cycle are asymmetric has been put forward at various times in the last century nevertheless the most common representations of aggregate time series in macroeconomies are usually smooth and sluggish the use of time series methods should be considered as only the first stage of an empirical investigation of asymmetries it is also essential to develop economic models of asymmetric behaviour and to employ tests of asymmetric adjustment at the level structural realtionship

sustainable cities do political factors determine the quality of life abstract the implementation of urban sustainability practices is affected by political obstacles and diverse political ideologies may defend different city models sustainable policy design could also be affected by several factors that cause the deflection of resources initially allocated to other groups that are contrary to the concerns pursued and have the power to veto sustainable plans by exerting pressure on the party in power in this sense the aim of this paper is to show the impact that political factors have on cities sustainability and the effect of both on cities economic development to do so we used the 78 spanish cities with a population over 100 000 studied by merco spanish corporate reputation monitor as regards their levels of sustainability for the fiscal years 2008 and 2009 both relationships have been tested empirically through two dependence models using linear regression techniques the results obtained show that political competition improves cities sustainability while a leftist ideology has an inverse impact on the other hand a significant direct relationship has been observed between urban sustainability and municipal economic activity

common trends and common cycles the existence of a serial correlation common feature among the first differences of a set of i 1 variables implies the existence of a common cycle in the beveridge nelson stock watson decomposition of those variables a test for the existence of common cycles among cointegrated variables is developed the test is used to examine the validity of the common trend common cycle structure implied by flavin s excess sensitivity hypothesis and campbell and mankiw s mixture of rational expectations and rule of thumb hypothesis for consumption and income linear independence between the cointegration and the cofeature vectors is exploited to decompose consumption and income into their trend and cycle components copyright 1993 by john wiley sons ltd

taking stock a critical assessment of recent research on inventories empirical and theoretical aspects of inventory behavior became hot topics in the 1950s and early 1960s no one seemed to notice the tension that was developing between the emerging macroeconomic and microeconomic views of inventories macroeconomists routinely thought of inventories as a destabilizing factor yet the prevailing micro theory viewed inventories as a stabilizing factor it was a fascinating question that was barely explored instead somewhat inexplicably interest in inventories dried up as if inventories were of minor economic significance and little intrinsic interest by the early 1980s then economists once again knew something they had known in the 1950s that inventory investment is of first order importance in business cycles but they were also beginning to realize that the standard production smoothing buffer stock model of inventories was in deep trouble this paper focuses on developments since that realization

government spending and budget deficits in the industrial economies fiscal policy nouriel roubini and jeffrey sachs this paper examines the evolution of the size of government and of budget deficits in oecd economies we highlight the rapid increase in government spending in the 1970s the sharp rise in budget deficits and public debt after 1973 and the reversal in these trends in the 1980s the increase in the size of government was associated in part with the slowdown in growth after 1973 but also reflected gradual adjustment of the ratio of spending to output towards a long run target which depends on political and institutional characteristics of the economy the political orientation of the government the degree of wage indexation and the degree of stability of the political system such factors also explain the size of budget deficits when faced with an adverse shock subsequent deficit reduction requires a measure of political consensus we note that such consensus is hard to achieve in multi party coalitions in consequence countries with such a political structure tended in consequence countries with such a political structure tended toin consequence countries with such a political structure tended to experience much more rapid increases in their debt gnp ratios

a dynamic model of housing production abstract this paper derives the optimal development strategy for a housing producer with perfect foresight in a steady state environment where dwellings deteriorate as they age under the assumption of zero demolition costs the optimal strategy is an infinite sequence of identical buildings building abandonment is shown to be possible with positive demolition costs a solution highlighting the model s spatial properties is computed using cobb douglas functions

a qualitative response analysis of uk firms employment and output decisions this paper investigates firms employment and output decisions and presents some empirical evidence concerning the rationality of firms expectations the dymanic model is based on the assumptions of convex adjustment costs and monopolistic competition in the product market the results are obtained using categorical information on individual firms contained in business surveys collected by the confederation of british industry ordered probit models are used to estimate the employment and output equations we find that expected demand is a critical determinant of firms decisions the effect of changes in cost conditions is not as well determined and the data are not consistent with the rational expectations hypothesis

corporate social responsibility theories mapping the territory the corporate social responsibility csr field presents not only a landscape of theories but also a proliferation of approaches which are controversial complex and unclear this article tries to clarify the sit uation mapping the territory by classifying the main csr theories and related approaches in four groups 1 instrumental theories in which the corporation is seen as only an instrument for wealth creation and its social activities are only a means to achieve economic results 2 political theories which concern themselves with the power of corporations in society and a responsible use of this power in the political arena 3 integrative theories in which the corporation is focused on the satisfaction of social demands and 4 ethical theories based on ethical responsibilities of corporations to society in practice each csr theory presents four dimensions related to profits political performance social demands and ethical values the findings suggest the necessity to develop a new theory on the business and society relationship which should integrate these four dimensions

the interrelationship between price and output decisions and investment decisions microfoundations and aggregate implications abstract this paper develops a model of firm behavior in which both price and output decisions and investment decisions are made the model permits an analysis of the dynamics of inventory and capital accumulation on price and output behavior there are two main results 1 short run price and output levels will differ from long run levels as desired stocks of inventory and capital diverge from actual levels 2 the size of the elasticities of price and output to changes in demand and cost variables depends on the speed with which gaps between desired and actual stocks are closed through investment

the impact of demand and price expectations on the behavior of prices the effects of demand and price expectations on price behavior are analyzed using data from the manufacturing sector and a model formulated to pinpoint the demand oriented factors affecting prices and to incorporate price expectations as a direct influence on price behavior the expected normal demand is seen to have a strong and systemic influence on price behavior the expected normal level of new orders is found to be an adequate measure with sector data in general although some industries require more specification the effects of inventories and unfilled orders on prices are sporadic and across sectors and industries demand oriented forces are concluded to perform as well statistically as cost push determinants expectations concerning the current normal industry price level have a significant and consistent impact on price behavior this supports the idea that firms setting prices take into account their estimates of competitor s prices future price expectations appear to have little effect on current price information 15 references

a disaggregated analysis of asymmetrical behaviour in the uk housing market potential asymmetrical adjustment in uk house prices is considered the present analysis extends previous research in a number of crucial ways first a seminal examination of asymmetry in regionally disaggregated uk house prices is undertaken secondly data are examined which are further disaggregated according to the age or vintage of the housing stock however the major development concerns the application of a non parametric testing approach to detect cyclical asymmetry in contrast to previously employed tests in the economics literature the triples test employed possesses high power and is not sensitive to outliers it is found that extensive asymmetry is present in uk house prices with cyclical peaks typically being greater in magnitude than corresponding troughs the implications of these findings for the comparison and construction of economic theories of the housing market the specification of econometric models and the construction and implementation of economic policy are noted

semiparametric estimation of selection models some empirical results among the central theoretical developments in the econometric analysis of nonexperimental microeconomic data has been the analysis of selectivity bias following the work of james heckman 1974 statistical techniques were developed in the 1970s to consistently estimate the parameters of these models one potential drawback to the application of these techniques is their sensitivity to the assumed parametric distribution of the unobservable error terms in the model in recent years a number of estimation methods for selection models have been developed which do not impose parametric forms on error distributions these methods are termed semiparametric since only part of the model of interest the regression function is parametrically specified while the statistical theory of these semiparametric estimators has received much attention practical applications of the methods are lacking an exception being the paper by joel horowitz and george neumann 1987 in this paper we use semiparametric methods to reanalyze data on the labor supply of married women first studied by thomas mroz 1987 using parametric methods the object of this reanalysis is to determine whether mroz s results are sensitive to his parametric assumptions

the effects of government housing policies in a vintage filtering model abstract long run and short run effects of low income government housing policies are examined in a model that treats housing as a durable good which declines in quality over time short run and long run market equilibria are characterized rent subsidies are analyzed in detail and results for other policies are presented

a new perspective on the ripple effect in the uk housing market comovement cyclical subsamples and alternative indices an alternative perspective is provided on the existence of a ripple effect in the uk housing market in contrast to previous studies the analysis involves consideration of information on the changes in house prices to which the hypothesis of house price diffusion posited by the ripple effect relates rather than their levels in an examination of changes in house prices in london relative to other regions of the uk directional forecasting methods are employed to establish the extent of the relationship between geographical proximity and comovement across the three month window provided by quarterly data consequently the analysis provides a direct examination of the ripple effect which refers to changes in prices rather than the convergence of levels which has become a feature of the empirical literature the literature is extended further by both the application of dating techniques to perform the analysis across cycles and phases of cycles recovery and recessionary periods in the uk housing market

determinants of corporate social disclosure in spanish local governments this paper contributes to previous country level analyses of non financial reporting in the public sector by studying public transparency in relation to sustainability as well as by assessing the determinants of sustainability disclosure practices in spanish municipalities we have carried out a content analysis of the websites of 102 spanish local governments subsequently we have employed different statistical techniques biplots and dependence models to analyse the extent of disclosure and to determine the impact of certain contextual and political factors on transparency in matters of sustainability when compared to the amount of information that is revealed concerning financial issues disclosure practices regarding social and environmental information are rather scarce we have also observed that several political factors more specifically the presence of conservative governments and political rivalry may become genuine barriers to municipal transparency based on these findings we can make two policy recommendations first it seems necessary to establish national policies laws or recommendations that generate similar levels of transparency among local governments in order to avoid social dilemmas in this sense similar accountability processes limit non sustainable behaviours playing a similar role to that of markets for the private sector second accountability processes should focus on the addition of information concerning social and environmental actions and on informing of the effects of municipalities on them going beyond the strictly economic dimension

politics of environmental law political ideology elitism or urban rural interests this paper examines a number of demographic aspects in congressional districts and states that played important roles in a series of congressional votes on environmental issues in 2000 these characteristics include urbanization or population density education income race and employment our findings are mixed while we find some evidence at least in senate votes that population density is a positive predictor of pro environment votes we also find that things commensurate with the environmental kuznets curve such as income education and lifestyle also play an important role in environmental voting

the role of the board of directors in disseminating relevant information on greenhouse gases in today s world the corporate image of the largest companies is closely linked to their performance in the field of corporate social responsibility and the disclosure of information on that topic specifically on climate change since the board of directors is the body responsible for this process the aim of this article is to show the role that companies boards of directors play in the accountability process vis a vis stakeholders in relation to one specific aspect which has enormous significance in environmental information practices used to monitor greenhouse gas emissions in order to achieve this we shall verify certain business characteristics in addition to the size and activity of the board of directors and we shall take different dependence models into consideration these models will include variables related to the level of independence and diversity of the board of directors which interact with dummy variables representing the company s litigation risks regarding environmental behavior and the institutional macro context of the organization s country of origin the results make it clear that boards of directors are basically focused on the traditional responsibility of creating economic value instead of dealing with today s broader business world concepts which include social responsibility this focus therefore does not favor the accountability process before other stakeholders if this makes it more difficult to protect the interests of shareholders

rational expectations and the smoothing properties of inventories of finished goods abstract this paper formulates and estimates a dynamic rational expectations equilibrium model of inventories of finished goods and employment of labor the view that the primary role of inventories of finished goods is to act as a buffer stock in the face of fluctuating demand is examined both the model and estimation results indicate that this is the case because of differences in the costs involved for firms in changing their inventory stocks and labor force in addition to providing some new evidence on the behavior of inventories of finished goods and employment the paper illustrates a technology for maximum likelihood estimation of structural parameters under the hypothesis of rational expectations

spatial aspects of housing quality density and maintenance this paper is concerned with how housing quality maintenance and structural density and household income vary over location when the housing stock is durable these issues have been investigated before but the models employed have been restrictive for example in brueckner 1981 maintenance expenditures are constrained not to vary through time in sweeney 1974a 1974c the maintenance technology is defined in a way which does not allow upgrading or even holding housing at constant quality and in ho man and pines 1982 there is no clear distinction between construction and maintenance and their model describes a long run accumulation of housing capital as a process of gradual upgrading a similar approach can be found in the nonspatial model of von rabenau 1976 in an earlier paper amott et al 1983 adp hereafter we extended the analysis of landlord builder behavior by allowing the unrestricted construction maintenance policy in this paper we use the model of adp to investigate some spatial aspects of the filtering process in a stationary state housing market in the process we examine the robustness of some results in the literature

statistical properties of uk house prices an analysis of disaggregated vintages the statistical properties of uk house prices are considered at a disaggregated level where disaggregation occurs according to the age or vintage of the housing given the frequency of transactions in the housing market and the sophistication of the estate agent system it might be expected that the series would share long run relationships and be subject to common short run shocks it is found via conventional techniques that both the long run and short run relationships are less pronounced than might be expected however by extending recent research concerning the testing of common features commonality in the short run cycles of the house price series is uncovered albeit with a partial lag despite this the cycles are shown to differ in terms of their asymmetric behaviour

spatial housing economics a survey this introduction to the virtual special issue surveys the development of spatial housing economics from its roots in neoclassical theory through more recent developments in social interactions modelling and touching on the role of institutions path dependence and economic history the survey also points to some of the more promising future directions for the subject that are beginning to appear in the literature the survey covers elements of hedonic models spatial econometrics neighbourhood models housing market areas housing supply models of segregation migration housing tenure subnational house price modelling including the so called ripple effect and agent based models possible future directions are set in the context of a selection of recent papers that have appeared in urban studies nevertheless there are still important gaps in the literature that merit further attention arising at least partly from emerging policy problems these include more research on housing and biodiversity

disequilibrium dynamics an empirical study despite the amount of attention devoted in economics to the study of equilibria the process by which an equilibrium can be attained is not well understood stephen smale 1977 called this the fundamental problem of economic theory this paper explores the microeconomics of the adjustment process by examining empirically the disequilibrium behavior of firms implications for the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics are stressed the data from german industry describe the month by month price and output changes of individual firms as well as the firms own assessments of the levels of their inventories and unfilled orders because the data are qualitative use is made of the multivariate conditional logit model developed by marc nerlove and s james press 1973 1976 and extended by kawasaki and zimmermann section i discusses the underlying model of firm behavior and the significance of the inquiry for macroeconomics in section ii the econometric techniques are briefly described in section iii the empirical results are summarized and interpretations of the results are offered in section iv

business cycle asymmetry a deeper look this paper distinguishes two types of asymmetry in business cycles deepness and steepness deepness is defined as the characteristic that troughs are further below trend than peaks are above most previous research has focused exclusively on steepness which refers to cycles in which contractions are steeper than expansions a test for deepness is proposed and applied to u s post war quarterly unemployment real gnp and industrial production evidence of deepness is found for unemployment and industrial production while the evidence for real gnp is weaker previous evidence of steepness in unemployment is confirmed

price and output adjustment in a model with inventories econometric evidence from categorical in this paper we investigate the role of inventories in the adjustment process of prices and output in response to demand and cost shocks using the qualitative information contained in business surveys of u k firms the discussion is organized around a model based on the assumption of monopolistic competition and which permits a production smoothing role for inventories the econometric results suggest that the stock of inventories has no impact on output decisions the effect on pricing decisions is weak at best anticipated demands shocks are the main factor accounting for output changes while both cost and demand shocks are important determinants of prices coauthors are fabio schiantarelli jon breslaw and william low copyright 1993 by mit press