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

investor flows and the 2008 boom bust in oil prices this paper explores the impact of investor flows and financial market conditions on returns in crude oil futures markets i argue that informational frictions and the associated speculative activity may induce prices to drift away from fundamental values and may result in price booms and busts particular attention is given to the interplay between imperfect information about real economic activity including supply demand and inventory accumulation and speculative activity in oil markets furthermore i present new evidence that there were economically and statistically significant effects of investor flows on futures prices after controlling for returns in the united states and emerging economy stock markets a measure of the balance sheet flexibility of large financial institutions open interest the futures spot basis and lagged returns on oil futures the largest impacts on futures prices were from intermediate term growth rates of index positions and managed money spread positions moreover my findings suggest that these effects were through risk or informational channels distinct from changes in convenience yield finally the evidence suggests that hedge fund trading in spread positions in futures impacted the shape of term structure of oil futures prices this paper was accepted by wei xiong finance

risk spillovers between oil and stock markets a var for var analysis abstract this article investigates the risk spillover effect between oil and stock markets using a novel multivariate quantile model i e the var for var approach and pseudo impulse response functions we explore the risk spillover at different quantiles using daily data over the period from january 4 2000 through august 31 2018 our results indicate the asymmetry in spillover effect which is significant at upside quantiles but not significant at downside quantiles based on subsample analysis we find that the risk spillover becomes stronger after 2008 financial crisis while before the crisis the spillover effect is very weak the international evidence shows that the asymmetric risk spillover can also be found in other six major stock indices of the g7 group

the determinants of an environmentally responsive firm an empirical approach abstract our empirical results indicate that a firm s formulation of an environmental plan is positively influenced by customer pressure shareholder pressure government regulatory pressure and neighborhood and community group pressure but negatively influenced by other lobby group pressure sources and a firm s sales to asset ratio firms which view environmental issues as important in the next 5 years are also more likely to have a plan relative to the manufacturing sector firms in the natural resource sector are more likely to formulate environmental plans while firms in the service sector are less likely to have plans our results provide insight into how firms react to environmental issues they also offer policymakers a list of determinants which can be used either as an alternative or complement to environmental regulation

does oil move equity prices a global view many studies indicate that oil price shocks have an adverse effect on real output and hence an adverse effect on corporate profits where oil is used as a key input the present study examines whether and to what extent the adverse effect of oil price shocks impacts stock market returns to this end we analyse 35 datastream global industry indices for the period from april 1983 to september 2005 our findings indicate that oil price rises have a negative impact on equity returns for all sectors except mining and oil and gas industries generally these results are consistent with economic theory and evidence provided by previous empirical studies little evidence of any asymmetry is detected in the oil price sensitivities in light of our findings we recommend that international portfolio investors consider hedging oil price risk

oil price shocks and their short and long term effects on the chinese economy a considerable body of economic literature shows the adverse economic impacts of oil price shocks for the developed economies however there has been a lack of empirical study of this kind on china and other developing countries this paper attempts to fill this gap by answering how and to what extent oil price shocks impact china s economy emphasizing on the price transmission mechanisms to that end we develop a structural vector auto regressive model our results show that an oil price increase negatively affects output and investment but positively affects inflation rate and interest rate however with the differentiated price control policies for materials and intermediates on the one hand and final products on the other hand in china the impact on real economy represented by real output and real investment lasts much longer than that to price monetary variables our decomposition results also show that the short term impact namely output decrease induced by the cut of capacity utilization rate is greater in the first one to two years but the portion of the long term impact defined as the impact realized through an investment change increases steadily and exceeds that of short term impact at the end of the second year afterwards the long term impact dominates and maintains for quite some time

japan s policy to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds factors that facilitate industry participation in voluntary actions abstract existing research on business participation in voluntary environmental programs emphasizes a variety of explanations including regulatory pressure and incentives market pressure self regulation and firm size however most of this literature focuses on cases from north america and europe the contribution of this research is to examine how well this literature applies to a different geographical region and policy context by examining the case of japan s recent policy mix to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds following revisions to japan s air pollution control law the scientific and policy significance of this case includes a high level of private sector voluntary participation and a sizable reduction in volatile organic compound emissions 44 1 percent moreover the case is related to the major global air pollution priorities of particulate matter and ozone since volatile organic compounds are important precursors of these two secondary pollutants this was also the first case in japan s environmental policy to use a combination of regulatory and voluntary approaches this study draws upon records of official policy discussions data related to relevant industry associations and other primary source documents to test hypotheses on participation in voluntary programs for two relatively large emitting industries with high emission capture rates in japan the chemical and printing industries the results indicate that explanations for the participation of japanese firms are largely consistent with arguments based on north american and european cases regarding regulatory pressure and incentives market pressure and self regulation but only partially consistent regarding the role of firm size the analysis shows that there were similarities and differences in the factors influencing the participation of the two industries which were partly related to industrial associations and industrial structure in addition the results highlight the importance of two points which are less emphasized by existing literature the business government bargaining process and how to maintain the credibility of regulatory threats and avoid regulatory capture several policy implications for the design of voluntary approaches are presented

modeling systemic risk and dependence structure between oil and stock markets using a variational mode decomposition based copula method abstract this study combines the variational mode decomposition vmd method and static and time varying symmetric and asymmetric copula functions to examine the dependence structure between crude oil prices and major regional developed stock markets s p500 stoxx600 djpi and tsx indexes during bear normal and bull markets under different investment horizons furthermore it analyzes the upside and downside short and long run risk spillovers between oil and stock markets by quantifying three market risk measures namely the value at risk var conditional var covar and the delta covar covar the results show that there is a tail dependence between oil and all stock markets for the raw return series by considering time horizons we show that there is an average dependence between the considered markets for the short run horizons however the tail dependence is also found for the long run horizons between the oil and stock markets with the exception of the s p500 index which exhibits average dependence with the oil market moreover we find strong evidence of up and down risk asymmetric spillovers from oil to stock markets and vice versa in the short and long run horizons finally the market risk spillovers are asymmetric over the time and investment horizons

low carbon growth for indian iron and steel sector exploring the role of voluntary environmental compliance abstract india s move towards low carbon growth will be successful only when the industries assume responsibilities of climate change previous studies argue that voluntary compliance by firms being business led initiative is appropriate for developing nations however provides little empirical evidence the present study investigates the role of voluntary compliance in improving firms environmental performance in indian iron and steel sector using sample of 76 firms over years 2006 07 to 2011 12 environmental performance is measured by co2 emissions in absence of emission data at firm level we quantify co2 emissions from energy consumption using intergovernmental panel on climate change ipcc reference approach voluntary compliance is indicated by presence of voluntary environmental management standards iso 14001 the study finds that 33 of sample firms comply with iso 14001 further the empirical results based on panel data econometric suggests that there is a significant positive relationship between voluntary compliance and improvement in environmental performance even after addressing simultaneity issues and including other firm characteristics thus voluntary compliance may be used as supplementary policy tool to achieve low carbon growth in industries additionally there is a need to disseminate information about iso 14001 by government as well as firms to create awareness

third party certification and the effectiveness of voluntary pollution abatement programs evidence from responsible care we analyze whether third party certification has been successful in improving the performance of voluntary pollution abatement in the responsible care rc program which made certification mandatory from 2005 onward we use facility level panel data from 821 plants between 1996 and 2010 and exploit the change in the program requirements to estimate the causal impact of third party certification on participating facility emissions compared to non rc plants in the u s chemical industry we address endogenous selection into rc via instrumental variables and explore heterogeneity in the treatment effect we find that on average there is no statistically discernible effect of third party certification on facility emissions and that this result is robust to a variety of models that correspond to different assumptions related to identification jel q53 q58 l60

oil prices inflation and interest rates in a structural cointegrated var model for the g 7 countries sharp increases in the price of oil are generally seen as a major contributor to business cycle asymmetries moreover the very recent highs registered in the world oil market are causing concern about possible slowdowns in the economic performance of the most developed countries in this paper a structural cointegrated var model has been considered for the g 7 countries in order to study the direct effects of oil price shocks on output and prices and the reaction of monetary variables to external shocks our results can be summarized as follows i a stationary money demand as suggested by the classic theory of money can be identified for most countries ii according to the estimated coefficients of the structural part of the model for all countries except japan and u k the null hypothesis of an influence of oil prices on the inflation rate cannot be rejected inflation rate shocks are transmitted to the real economy by increasing interest rates iii impulse response analysis suggests for most countries the existence of an instantaneous temporary effect of oil price innovations on prices iv impulse response functions indicate different monetary policy reactions to inflationary and growth shocks v the simulation exercises directed to estimate the total impact of the 1990 oil price shock indicate that for some countries u s a significant part of the effects of the oil price shock is due to the monetary policy reaction function for other countries canada france and italy however the total impact is offset at least in part by an easing of monetary conditions

corporate strategy and international environmental policy this paper analyzes the interactions between international environmental policy and multinational corporate strategy the main contribution is building a new conceptual framework to analyze the type of corporate strategy developed in the presence of both national an international environmental regulations this framework distinguishes between firm level compliance with environmental obligations and the development of resource based green capabilities it also classifies major environmental regulations and incorporates a discussion of public policy

oil prices and stock market in china a sector analysis using panel cointegration with multiple breaks this paper investigates the relationship between oil prices and the chinese stock market at the sector level in a panel cointegration and granger causality framework the major sectors in china are studied using data collected from july 2001 to december 2010 when the effects of cross sectional dependence and multiple structural breaks are taken into account the panel cointegration relationship between oil prices and stock prices is confirmed at the disaggregated sector level the results indicate that there is some evidence of structural breaks in the interaction between oil prices and chinese sectoral stocks the long run estimates suggest that the real oil price has a positive effect on sectoral stocks in the long run the granger causality tests demonstrate a unidirectional short run granger causality relationship running from oil prices and sectoral stocks to the interest rate for 2001 07 2005 10 there is also a unidirectional long run granger causality running from sectoral stocks to the interest rate for 2001 07 2005 10 and 2005 12 2007 06 however the long run granger causality is bidirectional between oil prices the interest rate and sectoral stocks for 2007 08 2008 11 and 2009 01 2010 12 meanwhile the short run granger causality is also bidirectional between the interest rate and oil prices

have commodities become a financial asset evidence from ten years of financialization the financialization of commodity markets over the last decade has changed the behavior of commodity prices in fundamental ways in this paper we uncover the gradual transformation of commodities from a physical to a financial asset although economic demand and supply factors continue to play an important role recent indicators associated with financialization have emerged since 2008 we show that financial variables have become the main driving factors explaining the variation in commodity returns and volatility today our findings have important implications for portfolio analysis and for the effectiveness of hedging in commodity markets

barriers to green supply chain management in indian mining industries a graph theoretic approach a country s mining industry despite its significant contributions to the country s economic growth generally has a very poor public image because it is considered as a major environmental polluter to acquire an improved social image as well as to comply with government regulations mining industries are increasingly implementing environmental management systems ems cleaner production cp and adopting green supply chain management gscm practices gscm focuses on a reduction of the adverse impacts of supply chain activities as well as a minimization of energy and material usage this study focuses on the mining industry as a case study by which we will identify factors and sub factors hindering gscm implementation a graph theoretic and matrix approach gtma has been used to quantify the adverse impact of these barriers on gscm implementation an assessment of the inhibiting strength of the barriers will help decision makers rank them and decide a course of action that will make an optimum utilization of available resources during times of resource scarcity

the role of corporate reputation and employees values in the uptake of energy efficiency in office buildings although office market actors in the united kingdom show a growing interest in energy efficiency the pace of takeup of energy efficient office features is slow previous studies have highlighted the roles of limited direct financial costs and benefits efficiency gaps and market barriers in limiting the rate of technology adoption this study provides further evidence on the importance of these factors but the primary contribution is focused on the role of corporate reputation and on the importance of individuals values in shaping corporate behaviour the paper presents a theoretical framework to explain environmental decision making in firms and we present qualitative evidence drawing from sixteen semi structured individual and group interviews with office market stakeholders in london glasgow and edinburgh the research finds that companies despite gradually becoming more energy conscious still regard energy costs as a negligible part of their business costs nevertheless an increasingly important driver is the reputational gain obtained by corporate businesses implementing sustainable practices all the interviewees agreed that the pace of change in the office market is slow and that only further policy interventions will accelerate it

causality in quantiles and dynamic stock return volume relations abstract this paper investigates the causal relations between stock return and volume based on quantile regressions we first define granger non causality in all quantiles and propose testing non causality by a sup wald test such a test is consistent against any deviation from non causality in distribution as opposed to the existing tests that check only non causality in certain moment this test is readily extended to test non causality in different quantile ranges in the empirical studies of three major stock market indices we find that the causal effects of volume on return are usually heterogeneous across quantiles and those of return on volume are more stable in particular the quantile causal effects of volume on return exhibit a spectrum of symmetric v shape relations so that the dispersion of return distribution increases with lagged volume this is an alternative evidence that volume has a positive effect on return volatility moreover the inclusion of the squares of lagged returns in the model may weaken the quantile causal effects of volume on return but does not affect the causality per se

do oil price shocks matter evidence for some european countries this paper analyzes the oil price macroeconomy relationship by means of analyzing the impact of oil prices on inflation and industrial production indexes for many european countries using quarterly data for the period 1960 1999 first we test for cointegration allowing for structural breaks among the variables second and in order to account for the possible non linear relationships we use different transformation of oil price data the main results suggest that oil prices have permanent effects on inflation and short run but asymmetric effects on production growth rates furthermore significant differences are found among the responses of the countries to these shocks

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

see what we want to see the effects of managerial experience on corporate green investments how impartial are managerial decisions this question is particularly concerning when it comes to making green investment decisions in the face of stakeholder pressures when managers respond to stakeholder pressures their personal cognition judgment and past experiences play a role in determining their responses the salience of particular stakeholder claims may be determined by deeply rooted individual preferences this research investigates how a manager s past experiences can influence green investments data are gathered from 247 managers about their past experience and their employer s performance data these data are combined with managerial responses to a vignette based experiment which required managers to make green investments based on a decision scenario where they are exposed to different types and strength of stakeholder pressure from consumers and the community results suggest that managers years of experience their employers financial performance and their employers market performance influence investment decisions even when making decisions under new and different set of circumstances while the employers financial performance influences managers to invest more the employers market performance only influences managers investment in the presence of either high consumer or high community pressure compared to less experienced managers experienced managers invest more in response to consumer pressure but less in response to community pressure practical and theoretical implications of these findings in green management are explored

reexamining the expected effect of available resources and firm size on firm environmental orientation an empirical study of uk firms an emergent body of literature examined why some firms apply some environmental initiatives while other firms do not take responsibility for their natural environment thus firm environmental orientation responsiveness and performance are linked in the literature to several variables unfortunately the relationship between firm environmental orientation and either available resources or firm size showed mixed results and inconclusive evidence therefore the aim of this paper is to show empirically how available resources and firm size can explain differences in firm environmental responsiveness and environmental performance econometric results of environmental responsiveness using the logistic regression model demonstrated that firm size does appear to add something unique in explaining differences in environmental responsiveness while available resource can be safely dropped from the model however econometric analysis of environmental performance using the maximum likelihood random effects model showed strong evidence that available resources and firm size are significant predictors of firm environmental performance

a comparison of the effects of exogenous oil supply shocks on output and inflation in the g7 countries a comparison of the effects of exogenous shocks to global crude oil production on seven major industrialized economies suggests a fair degree of similarity in the real growth responses an exogenous oil supply disruption typically causes a temporary reduction in real gdp growth that is concentrated in the second year after the shock inflation responses are more varied the median cpi inflation response peaks after three to four quarters exogenous oil supply disruptions need not generate sustained inflation or stagflation typical responses include a fall in the real wage higher short term interest rates and a depreciating currency with respect to the dollar despite many qualitative similarities there is strong statistical evidence that the responses to exogenous oil supply disruptions differ across g7 countries for suitable subsets of countries homogeneity cannot be ruled out a counterfactual historical exercise suggests that the evolution of cpi inflation in the g7 countries would have been similar overall to the actual path even in the absence of exogenous shocks to oil production consistent with a monetary explanation of the inflation of the 1970s there is no evidence that the 1973 1974 and 2002 2003 oil supply shocks had a substantial impact on real growth in any g7 country whereas the 1978 1979 1980 and 1990 1991 shocks contributed to lower growth in at least some g7 countries jel e31 e32 q43

the relationship between oil price shocks and china s macro economy an empirical analysis china postdoctoral science foundation 20090460751 ministry of education of the people s republic of china 09yjc790167 09yja820074 national social science funds 09zd050 08ajy031

striving to be green the adoption of total quality environmental management many firms are undertaking environment friendly organizational change by applying the philosophy of total quality management with its emphasis on reducing waste and increasing efficiency their objective is to improve their management of pollution and increase customer satisfaction this article investigates the factors that lead to total quality environmental management tqem by large firms we find that internal considerations stemming from a firm s technical capability size absolute and relative to competing firms extent of operations and volume of past emissions are strongly associated with the tqem adoption decision the first four factors are proxies for the firm s costs and capabilities of adopting tqem while the fifth factor is related to the benefits from increasing efficiency and waste reduction and thus proxies for internally generated demand for tqem the desire to improve a firm s image with customers earning good will with regulators and the anticipation of future regulations do not a

voluntary environmental investment and responsive regulation instances of corporate voluntary environmental investments have been rising in recent years motivations for such activities include corporate image building regulatory preemption and production cost savings while some of these investments arise from industry attempts to set environmental standards where none currently exist many investments seem to be aimed at reducing the costs of complying with existing regulations using a simple game theoretic model we investigate firm motivations for and welfare consequences of these types of voluntary investments by focusing on the role regulatory enforcement might play we find that such investments unambiguously increase when an enforcement regulator acts as a stackelberg follower a regulatory structure we refer to as responsive regulation in setting its monitoring and enforcement strategy these additional investments may be socially undesirable necessitating a restructuring of non compliance penalties

risk spillover of international crude oil to china s firms evidence from granger causality across quantile abstract this paper investigates the extreme risk spillover of international crude oil to stock returns for 529 firms listed on the a share market of the shanghai stock exchange we apply a kernel based nonparametric method to test quantile on quantile granger causality from crude oil to firm returns from the perspective of firm level analysis the findings are outlined as follows first our empirical results provide strong evidence to suggest the asymmetry in the linkage of extreme movements from crude oil to firm returns that is the case of positive risk spillovers are more severe than the case of negative risk spillovers in particular the down to down risk spillover is the most serious case this phenomenon unravels the strong driving force of economic cycles second risk transmission from oil price shocks to firm returns depends on the firm s industry features in addition to the usual focus on inter industry difference we also note the within industry heterogeneity third we confirm that china s refined oil pricing reform of march 27 2013 has had intensifying effects on the negative spillovers from oil prices to firms for investors we emphasize not only the awareness of the predictive power between extreme risks from international crude oil to china s firms but also the existence of heterogeneity in these predictive abilities across firms

relationships between oil price shocks and stock market an empirical analysis from china this paper investigates the interactive relationships between oil price shocks and chinese stock market using multivariate vector auto regression oil price shocks do not show statistically significant impact on the real stock returns of most chinese stock market indices except for manufacturing index and some oil companies some important oil price shocks depress oil company stock prices increase in oil volatility may increase the speculations in mining index and petrochemicals index which raise their stock returns both the world oil price shocks and china oil price shocks can explain much more than interest rates for manufacturing index

panel data analysis of regulatory factors shaping environmental performance this is the publisher s version also available electronically from http www mitpressjournals org doi abs 10 1162 003465304323023895 u1q6giuvdgi

is environmental governance substantive or symbolic an empirical investigation the emergence of environmental governance practices raises a fundamental question as to whether they are substantive or symbolic toward that end we analyze the relationship between a firm s environmental governance and its environmental management as reflected in its ultimate outcome environmental performance we posit that substantive practices would bring changes in organizations most notably in terms of improved environmental performance whereas symbolic practices would portray organizations as environmentally committed without making meaningful changes to their operations focusing on a sample of environmentally sensitive firms results are consistent with environmental governance mechanisms being predominantly part of a symbolic approach to manage stakeholder perceptions on environmental management having little substantial impact on organizations statistical analyses show mostly that there is no relation between environmental governance mechanisms and environmental performance measured in terms of regulatory compliance pollution prevention and environmental capital expenditures however there is some indication that environmental incentives are associated with pollution prevention interviews with corporate directors shed further light on these results by underlining that environmental governance mechanisms are employed at the board level to protect the organization from reputational and or regulatory harm but are not necessarily intended to proactively improve environmental performance

epa s voluntary 33 50 program impact on toxic releases and economic performance of firms abstract this paper examines the motivations for participation in the voluntary 33 50 program and the program s impact on the toxic releases and economic performance of firms in the u s chemical industry it demonstrates that the benefits due to public recognition and the potentially avoided costs of liabilities and compliance under mandatory environmental regulations provide strong incentives for participation after controlling for sample selection bias and the impact of other firm specific characteristics this paper shows that program participation led to a statistically significant decline in toxic releases over the period 1991 93 the program also had a statistically significant negative impact on the current return on investment of firms but its impact on the expected long run profitability of firms was positive and statistically significant

what triggers environmental management and innovation empirical evidence for germany abstract it is frequently hypothesized that environmental management systems emss may improve firms environmental innovation performance whether this hypothesis is true is as critical for environmental policy as questions pertaining to the relevant incentives for 1 a firm s voluntary adoption of an ems and 2 its environmental innovation behavior based on ample empirical evidence for german manufacturing this paper addresses the simultaneity of these issues on the basis of a recursive bivariate probit model that explores the hypothesis that a facility s decision on innovation activities is correlated with the decision on ems adoption our empirical results indicating that environmental innovation activities are not associated with ems implementation nor any other single policy instrument reflect the perceptions of the survey respondents and hence should be interpreted as correlations rather than causal relationships according to these perceptions innovation behavior seems to be mainly correlated with the stringency of environmental policy

does inequality affect environmental quality evidence from major japanese cities abstract this study investigates whether income inequality affects environmental degradation we use city level data in japan where local governments have limited authority and often use voluntary agreements with private firms we test the hypothesis that inequality weakens residents bargaining power over polluters and has a negative effect on environmental quality our results show that inequality negatively affected air quality in residential and commercial areas during the 1990s but not in industrial areas this evidence suggests that the inequality pollution relationship is not just a correlation but reflects a causal effect of residents bargaining power on environmental quality this implies that equal communities can pressure firms into accepting pollution prevention agreements

why japanese firms choose to certify a study of managerial responses to environmental issues abstract this paper examines empirically the determinants that led large japanese manufacturers to 1 incorporate environmental goals in their decisions 2 obtain environmental certification iso 14001 and 3 become early adopters of environmental certification we estimate two sets of models 1 models based on a profit maximization assumption and 2 models which incorporate utility maximization arguments recognizing that managers values attitudes and beliefs may also influence firms decisions the empirical analysis suggests that while the costs and benefits of voluntary actions to enhance or protect the environment and the capacity to act are significant determinants of voluntary environmental commitment so are the environmental values beliefs and attitudes of managers

competitiveness and legitimation the logic of companies going green in geographical clusters this study analyzes the logic behind the development of environmental responsiveness in companies that are located in geographical clusters drawing on previous research we contend that competitiveness and legitimation are important sources of variation in these companies environmental responses in particular the companies perceived rivalry competition tracking capabilities interaction with industry associations and network embeddedness influence their competitiveness and legitimation motivations for environmental responsiveness we used structural equation modeling to test these hypotheses on a sample of 251 clustered agricultural firms in spain the results support the hypotheses and provide a number of insights about the underlying motivations behind going green in geographical clusters

effect of corporate economic performance on firm level environmental performance in a transition economy this paper analyzes the effect of corporate economic performance as measured by value added on firm level environmental performance in a transition economy in particular it analyzes this economic performance effect using an unbalanced panel of czech firms for the years 1995 1998 it assesses whether successful economic performance begets or undermines good environmental performance this connection seems especially important in transition economies since firms are dramatically restructuring their economic management approaches during transitional periods a majority of the analytical results indicate that successful economic performance undermines good environmental performance possibly indicating that more focused managerial efforts to improve economic outcomes may distract efforts to manage environmental matters better

determinants of proactive environmental management practices in indian firms an empirical study abstract the present study aims to empirically determine the primary factors that have a major influence on adoption of environmental management practices in indian firms for this purpose a theoretical framework has been proposed based on previous studies and a pilot survey that provides broad and specific variables that might have an impact of these practices this impact has been investigated by conducting factor analysis and stepwise regression analysis in order to collect the primary data a questionnaire has been designed for which 104 valid responses 8 5 response rate have been obtained the study reveals that internal holder ship and employees and market commercial buyers and suppliers of goods and services pressures are the significant drivers who govern the adoption of proactive environmental management practices however the external pressures from regulatory and societal stakeholders were not found to be important in the indian context the analysis further showed that firm s characteristic also play a significant role in defining the positive behavior of firms as large firms are more proactively engaged in environmental management initiatives moreover firms in the manufacturing chemical and agriculture sector are likely to have more comprehensive environmental management practices compared to the service sector

sustainable energy systems and company performance does the implementation of sustainable energy systems improve companies financial performance abstract the main aim of this paper is to analyse whether the adoption of sustainable energy systems improves corporate financial performance to this end we obtained data from a sample of 574 multinational companies from 36 countries in the 2008 2013 period on this data we implement a dynamic system panel data method our findings show that the adoption of sustainable energy systems allows firms to improve their short term corporate financial performance while not leading them to reduce their corporate financial performance in the long term specifically our results indicate that an increase in energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources do not significantly affect corporate financial performance neither does the integration of energy efficiency systems and renewable energy sources have any significant influence on corporate financial performance while the level of implementation of sustainable energy management systems has a significant effect on short term but not long term corporate financial performance furthermore other control variables such as research and development expenditure and year are also relevant in explaining firms financial performance the adoption of sustainable energy systems helps to improve corporate financial performance in the short term but has no affect in the long term this might be because the monitoring of energy efficiency using key performance indicators allows firms to detect and correct failures in the production process and hence improve short term financial performance however this measure does not generate competitive advantages for firms and therefore has no effect on long term corporate financial performance from a scientific perspective of energy this paper contributes to the literature by providing a detailed explanation of how the adoption of sustainable energy systems proposed by peura 2013 influences corporate financial performance on the basis of new empirical evidence these explanations provide a strong rationale for improving the efficient use of energy and harvesting low hanging fruits in the short term from a managerial perspective policymakers should encourage firms to align sustainable energy systems with their core business strategy by developing green technologies that allow them to acquire rare and valuable capabilities and abilities which generate competitive advantage and therefore allow firms to increase their long term corporate financial performance

oil price shocks and stock markets in the u s and 13 european countries abstract oil price shocks have a statistically significant impact on real stock returns contemporaneously and or within the following month in the u s and 13 european countries over 1986 1 2005 12 norway as an oil exporter shows a statistically significantly positive response of real stock returns to an oil price increase the median result from variance decomposition analysis is that oil price shocks account for a statistically significant 6 of the volatility in real stock returns for many european countries but not for the u s increased volatility of oil prices significantly depresses real stock returns the contribution of oil price shocks to variability in real stock returns in the u s and most other countries is greater than that of interest rate an increase in real oil price is associated with a significant increase in the short term interest rate in the u s and eight out of 13 european countries within one or two months counter to findings for the u s and for norway there is little evidence of asymmetric effects on real stock returns of positive and negative oil price shocks for oil importing european countries

dealing with uncertainties when governing csr policies as corporate social responsibility involves a voluntary business endeavour to address social and environmental issues beyond legal compliance governments cannot fall back on hierarchical command and control policies to support it as such it is complementary with the increasing popularity of public policies known as new governance policies where the government is engaged in a horizontal inter organizational network of societal actors and where public policy is both formed and executed by the interacting and voluntary efforts from a multitude of stakeholders however such policies are known to generate substantive uncertainty about the content of csr and its related issues strategic uncertainty regarding the behavior of the actors involved and institutional uncertainty related to the interaction process involved in the institutional change we explore new governance policy instruments to address these uncertainties in the context csr and discuss the experiences with these methods in the european union

what determines the inclusion in a sustainability stock index a panel data analysis for european companies this paper examines the determinants of the inclusion of european companies in the dow jones sustainability world index and the dow jones stoxx sustainability index in doing so the paper contributes to the micro econometric literature analyzing the determinants and economic effects of sustainability performance in three respects first it examines a broad measure of corporate sustainability behavior and thus does not only apply narrow measures of environmental performance such as toxic releases which is common in other studies second the paper examines the effect of internal assessment processes regarding corporate sustainability performance by an independent financial service institution finally it analyzes the influence of unobserved heterogeneity in the framework of panel data models the analysis shows that the probability for an inclusion in the sustainability indexes strongly decreases if a company does not respond to the written survey of the assessing institution furthermore time invariant random effects and an autoregressive structure in the stochastic components are important factors in contrast a significant influence of past economic performance cannot be confirmed robustly

crude oil and stock markets causal relationships in tails abstract this paper considers the causal relationships between wti and dubai crude oil returns and five stock index returns s p 500 nikkei hang seng shanghai and kospi within the quantile causality framework by using daily data for a period from january 1 1996 to october 12 2012 the quantile causality test is useful for a comprehensive understanding of the causal relationship between two returns the test reveals several noteworthy results first although wti returns are not closely related to asian countries some financial markets such as nikkei and hang seng granger cause wti returns second the significance of causality from one market to another derives only from lower and upper levels of quantiles except for the case of causality from nikkei to wti returns third all stock index returns granger cause dubai crude oil returns over almost all quantile levels except for shanghai returns fourth dubai crude oil returns granger cause all asian stock index returns except for s p 500 returns finally the results indicate asymmetric causality from dubai crude oil returns to shanghai returns and kospi returns to dubai crude oil returns

frontrunners and laggards the strategy of environmental regulation under uncertainty the extant literature on the political economy of environmental regulation does not provide a unified theoretical explanation for three salient stylized facts first companies voluntarily invest to reduce the environmental burden that they cause under threat of regulation second ex ante estimates of the compliance cost tend to be systematically higher than ex post estimates finally regulators use limited information provided by the industry i construct a game theoretic model of environmental regulation under uncertainty with a benevolent regulator in equilibrium companies undertake voluntary action to induce regulation that raises barriers to entry this profit driven behavior is not always socially detrimental however as the regulator obtains a credible commitment to production and a more accurate estimate of the compliance cost additionally the results provide a selection explanation for the mismatch between ex ante and ex post cost estimates if companies condition compliance on the installation cost only low cost companies install in equilibrium the analysis combines regulatory capture with social welfare maximization to explain the curious combination of voluntary action and low ex post compliance cost without serious information collection by the regulator

reverse logistics in malaysia the contingent role of institutional pressure reverse logistics is a primary component of green supply chain management initiatives and is often analysed from a broad perspective rooted in the resource based view of the firm this empirical study decomposes reverse logistics into five commonly adopted disposition options repair recondition remanufacture recycle and disposal to examine the effects of using each option on measures of environmental performance profitability and sales growth considering institutional theory this study also investigates the moderating role of both regulatory and ownership pressure on the relationship between each reverse logistics disposition option and levels of performance using survey data collected from managers at 89 iso14001 certified electrical and electronic equipment manufacturing firms regression models test a series of hypothesized relationships results suggest that under the presence of institutional pressure use of disposition options results in increased levels of performance in some cases the recovery of valuable components during product recondition and remanufacture activities contributes to enhanced environmental and economic benefits conversely product recycling and disposal activities are not necessarily performance inducing initiatives in the face of regulatory pressures the findings of this study can be used to inform business decisions regarding the adoption and use of reverse logistics strategies legislative frameworks regarding extended producer responsibility are recommended in order to motivate the implementation of reverse logistics product disposition activities

crude oil and stock markets stability instability and bubbles abstract we analyze the long run relationship between the world price of crude oil and international stock markets over 1971 1 2008 3 using a cointegrated vector error correction model with additional regressors allowing for endogenously identified breaks in the cointegrating and error correction matrices we find evidence for breaks after 1980 5 1988 1 and 1999 9 there is a clear long run relationship between these series for six oecd countries for 1971 1 1980 5 and 1988 2 1999 9 suggesting that stock market indices respond negatively to increases in the oil price in the long run during 1980 6 1988 1 we find relationships that are not statistically significantly different from either zero or from the relationships of the previous period the expected negative long run relationship appears to disintegrate after 1999 9 this finding supports a conjecture of change in the relationship between real oil price and real stock prices in the last decade compared to earlier years which may suggest the presence of several stock market bubbles and or oil price bubbles since the turn of the century

separating bric using islamic stocks and crude oil dynamic conditional correlation and volatility spillover analysis abstract this paper explores the dynamic conditional correlation and volatility linkage between islamic indexes and oil for bric countries correlations between these assets increase during the global financial crisis for india and china but not for brazil and russia the volatility error forecast variance of all five indexes comes from spillover but is much lower compared to volatility spillover between conventional indexes and oil hedging performance of islamic indexes are superior in india and china compared to conventional indexes in emerging markets an optimal minimum variance portfolio without reducing expected return can be achieved by investing in lower weights of bric islamic indexes and oil compared to conventional indexes

voluntary pollution reductions and the enforcement of environmental law an empirical study of the 33 50 program abstract this paper studies determinants and effects of firms participation in the 33 50 program which is a voluntary pollution reduction vpr program initiated by government regulators we examine a wide range of explanations for voluntary corporate environmentalism and find evidence in support of an enforcement theory that predicts that 1 vpr participation is rewarded by relaxed regulatory scrutiny 2 the anticipation of this reward spurs firms to participate in the program and 3 the program rewards regulators with reduced pollution we also find that 33 50 participation was more likely for firms operating in states with larger environmentalist constituencies

do higher oil prices push the stock market into bear territory this paper investigates whether a higher oil price pushes the stock market into bear territory by using time varying transition probability markov switching models it examines different measures of oil price shocks empirical evidence from monthly returns on the standard poor s s p 500 price index suggests that an increase in oil prices leads to a higher probability of a bear market emerging

oil shocks and stock volatility new evidence via a bayesian graph based var approach abstractthis article examines the temporal dependence between three oil shocks and realized volatility in the stock markets of g20 countries between 1994 and 2019 by applying a novel graphical b

oil and the macroeconomy when prices go up and down an extension of hamilton s results in an important paper hamilton 1983 demonstrated a strong correlation between oil price changes and gross national product growth in u s data however his study pertained to a period in which all the large oil price movements were upward and thus it left unanswered the question whether the correlation persists in periods of price decline moreover the price variable he used was somewhat distorted by price controls in the 1970s this note investigates whether hamilton s results continue to hold when the sample is extended to include the recent oil market collapse and the oil price variable is corrected for the effects of price controls particular attention is given to the possibility of asymmetric responses to oil price increases and decreases as suggested in the structural employment literature loungani 1986 davis 1987 hamilton 1988 like hamilton i based my investigation on the gnp equation in sims s 1 980b six variable quarterly vector autoregressive model

chinese companies awareness and perceptions of the emissions trading scheme ets evidence from a national survey in china abstract china announced the launch of a national emissions trading scheme ets in 2017 however companies appear show little enthusiasm for participation in the ets in china this paper identifies the factors affecting companies awareness and perceptions of ets by conducting a national survey based on an online questionnaire from may to november 2015 in seven carbon trading pilots the results indicate that companies attitudes towards the ets are positively influenced by government regulations and policy public relations management and estimated economic benefit of these public relations management is the decisive factor and estimated economic benefit is confirmed to be a relatively weak predictor a company s environmental and energy strategy exerts insignificant effects on its preference for the ets although the sampled companies are very willing to save energy and reduce emissions there exists an inverted u shape relationship between a company s level of mitigation technologies and its attitudes towards the ets the carbon price fails to stimulate companies to upgrade mitigation technologies the majority of companies treat participation in the ets only as a means of improving ties with governments as well as of earning a good social reputation rather than as a cost effective mechanism to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions

islamic stocks conventional stocks and crude oil directional volatility spillover analysis in brics abstract this paper uses threshold garch tgarch and generalised forecast error variance decomposition to compute time domain and frequency domain volatility spillover the spillover technique is then applied to islamic and conventional stock indices and crude oil in brics countries brazil russia india china and south africa thus informing investors about the magnitude and speed of the volatility spillover we find that the total volatility spillover is driven mainly by a long term component accordingly these assets are suitable for investors with short and medium term investment horizons however analysis reveals that volatility spillover magnitude and speed increase substantially during the global financial crisis suggesting that investors in brazil russia and south africa with stocks in their portfolio should rebalance promptly dynamic covariance analysis shows that covariance between islamic and conventional stock index returns is the highest and exhibit a significant increase during the crisis period

investigating external and internal pressures on corporate environmental behavior in papermaking enterprises of china abstract as china s ecological environmental problem becomes severe corporate environmental behavior ceb has become the focus of a range of stakeholders policy makers and the whole society since the operating activities of companies is the main source of environmental pollution this study used a questionnaire survey and structural equation model sem to examine the relative importance of external and internal pressures eip on driving ceb data was obtained from 702 papermaking companies in china the mechanism of eip effects on ceb was tested employing sem through path analysis using amos 21 0 the results showed that government pressure economic pressure and internal pressure played significant positive roles in environmental behavior of papermaking companies in china economic pressure was the most important factor on environmental behaviors including defensive accommodative and proactive behaviors of papermaking companies furthermore the role of internal pressure on ceb defensive and proactive was second only to economic pressure while the role of government pressure on ceb was much weaker than our expectation however the role of social pressure which was imposed by general public and environmental non governmental organizations ngos was not significant thus policy makers should emphasize on the interactions of economic mechanism government regulation and internal incentive mechanism to stimulate firms to adopt active environmental behavior more concerns from the general public shall be addressed to enhance their driving effect on ceb in chinese papermaking industry

the reputational penalties for environmental violations empirical evidence abstract this paper examines the sizes of the fines damage awards remediation costs and market value losses imposed on companies that violate environmental regulations firms that violate environmental laws suffer statistically significant losses in the market value of firm equity the losses however are of similar magnitudes to the legal penalties imposed and in the cross section the market value loss is related to the size of the legal penalty thus environmental violations are disciplined largely through legal and regulatory penalties not through reputational penalties

exploring new ways of assessing the effect of regulation on environmental management abstract studies indicate that while a variety of factors positively influence voluntary environmental management regulatory pressures are among the most important however most research examines samples representing large manufacturers or single industries essentially assuming a level of regulatory constraint using a sample of heterogeneous facilities this study finds that facilities can be classified according to the level of regulatory constraint and that group membership impacts the choice of environmental management strategy when assessed within a utility maximization framework more extensively regulated facilities implement more individual environmental management practices but participate in fewer formal voluntary environmental programs veps compared to other facilities

food safety regulation an overview of contemporary issues abstract this article discusses a number of issues that are influencing the evolution of food safety regulation in developed and to a lesser extent developing countries whilst not definitive it aims to highlight those factors which are considered crucial to an understanding of contemporary food safety controls in both the public and private spheres these issues include criteria applied to assess the need justification for food safety regulation relationships between public and private food safety control systems alternative forms that public food safety regulation can take strategic responses to food safety regulation and the trade implications of national food safety controls the article serves as an introduction to these issues which are discussed at greater length in the other papers that make up this special issue of food policy

environmental marketing a source of reputational competitive and financial advantage corporate reputation is an intangible asset that is related to marketing and financial performance the social economic and global environment of the 1990 shas resulted in environmental performance becoming an increasingly important component of a company sreputation this paper explores the relationship between reputation environmental performance and financial performance and looks at the contingencies that impact environmental policy making

the role of negotiating tools in the environmental policy mix instruments determinants and effects of the environmental agreement abstract the environmental agreement ea is a policy instruments to address the need to protect and improve environmental quality from a legal point of view the ea represents different types of agreement which are mainly based on a contractual agreement between an individual and a third party to improve environmental performance to contribute to the current debate on this topic our research paper aims through a quantitative analysis to answer the questions on how effective a stringent environmental agreement is in terms of a facility s environmental performance and what the role of stakeholders is on its impact on production activities the econometric analysis shows that the impact of the environmental agreement on production activities significantly improves the facilities environmental performance and that it is influenced by several external influence groups

oil price movements and stock markets revisited a case of sector stock price indexes in the g 7 countries abstract applying sector stock prices and oil prices in 1991 01 2009 05 from the g7 countries we find oil price shocks do not significantly impact the composite index in each country however stock price changes in germany the uk and the us were found to lead oil price changes as for the interaction between oil price changes and sector stock price changes we find short run negative causal relationships 4 of 7 sector index returns were impacted by oil price changes in germany 2 in the us and 1 in france in particular stock returns of information technology and consumer staples sectors were found to be impacted most by oil price shocks followed by financial utilities and transportation sectors in terms of causality from sector stock price changes to oil price changes we find stock price changes lead oil price changes in 8 of 9 sectors in germany most in the g7 countries followed by the uk italy france canada and the us no such a causal relationship however is found for japan with respect to specific sectors stock price changes in consumer staples and materials sectors were impacted most significantly by oil price changes followed by transportation financial energy health care industrials utilities information technology and telecommunication sectors with the exception of consumer discretionary sector in addition short term stock price changes are found to lead positively oil price changes

caviar conditional autoregressive value at risk by regression quantiles value at risk var has become the standard measure of market risk employed by financial institutions for both internal and regulatory purposes var is defined as the value that a portfolio will lose with a given probability over a certain time horizon usually one or ten days despite its conceptual simplicity its measurement is a very challenging statistical problem and none of the methodologies developed so far give satisfactory solutions interpreting the var as the quantile of future portfolio values conditional on current information we propose a new approach to quantile estimation which does not require any of the extreme assumptions invoked by existing methodologies such as normality or i i d returns the conditional autoregressive value at risk or caviar model moves the focus of attention from the distribution of returns directly to the behavior of the quantile we specify the evolution of the quantile over time using a special type of autoregressive process and use the regression quantile framework introduced by koenker and bassett to determine the unknown parameters since the objective function is not differentiable we use a differential evolutionary genetic algorithm for the numerical optimization utilizing the criterion that each period the probability of exceeding the var must be independent of all the past information we introduce a new test of model adequacy the dynamic quantile test applications to simulated and real data provide empirical support to this methodology and illustrate the ability of these algorithms to adapt to new risk environments

it pays to have friends abstract currently a director is classified as independent if he or she has neither financial nor familial ties to the ceo or to the firm we add another dimension social ties using a unique data set we find that 87 of boards are conventionally independent but that only 62 are conventionally and socially independent furthermore firms whose boards are conventionally and socially independent award a significantly lower level of compensation exhibit stronger pay performance sensitivity and exhibit stronger turnover performance sensitivity than firms whose boards are only conventionally independent our results suggest that social ties do matter and that consequently a considerable percentage of the conventionally independent boards are substantively not

non mandatory approaches to environmental protection the approach to environmental protection has been evolving from a regulation driven adversarial government push approach to a more proactive approach involving voluntary and often business led initiatives to self regulate their environmental performance this has been accompanied by increasing provision of environmental information about firms and products to enlist market forces and communities in creating a demand for corporate environmental self regulation by signaling their preferences for environmentally friendly firms this paper provides an overview of the non mandatory approaches being used for environmental protection and surveys the existing theoretical literature analyzing the economic efficiency of such approaches relative to mandatory approaches it also discusses empirical findings on the factors motivating self regulation by firms and its implications for their economic and environmental performance it examines the existing evidence on the extent to which information disclosure is effective in generating pressures from investors and communities on firms to improve their environmental performance