Study on Quantification for Multi-unit Seismic PSA Model using Monte Carlo Sampling

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Oh, Kyemin; Han, Sang Hoon; Jang, Seung-cheol; Park, Jin Hee; Lim, Ho-Gon; Yang, Joon Eon; Heo, Gyunyoung

2015-01-01

In existing PSA, frequency for accident sequences occurred in single-unit has been estimated. While multi-unit PSA has to consider various combinations because accident sequence in each units can be different. However, it is difficult to quantify all of combination between inter-units using traditional method such as Minimal Cut Upper Bound (MCUB). For this reason, we used Monte Carlo sampling as a method to quantify multi-unit PSA model. In this paper, Monte Carlo method was used to quantify multi-unit PSA model. The advantage of this method is to consider all of combinations by the increase of number of unit and to calculate nearly exact value compared to other method. However, it is difficult to get detailed information such as minimal cut sets and accident sequence. To solve partially this problem, FTeMC was modified. In multi-unit PSA, quantification for both internal and external multi-unit accidents is the significant issue. Although our result above mentioned was one of the case studies to check application of method suggested in this paper, it is expected that this method can be used in practical assessment for multi-unit risk

Holistic approach to multi-unit site risk assessment: Status and Issues

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kim, Inn Seock; Jang, Mi Suk; Kim, Seoung Rae [Nuclear Engineering Service and Solution Company (NESS), Daejeon Business Agency, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

2017-03-15

The events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March 2011 point out, among other matters, that concurrent accidents at multiple units of a site can occur in reality. Although site risk has been deterministically considered to some extent in nuclear power plant siting and design, potential occurrence of multi-unit accident sequences at a site was not investigated in sufficient detail thus far in the nuclear power community. Therefore, there is considerable worldwide interest and research effort directed toward multi-unit site risk assessment, especially in the countries with high-density nuclear-power-plant sites such as Korea. As the technique of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been successfully applied to evaluate the risk associated with operation of nuclear power plants in the past several decades, the PSA having primarily focused on single-unit risks is now being extended to the multi-unit PSA. In this paper we first characterize the site risk with explicit consideration of the risk associated with spent fuel pools as well as the reactor risks. The status of multi-unit risk assessment is discussed next, followed by a description of the emerging issues relevant to the multi-unit risk evaluation from a practical standpoint.

Holistic approach to multi-unit site risk assessment: Status and Issues

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Inn Seock; Jang, Mi Suk; Kim, Seoung Rae

2017-01-01

The events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March 2011 point out, among other matters, that concurrent accidents at multiple units of a site can occur in reality. Although site risk has been deterministically considered to some extent in nuclear power plant siting and design, potential occurrence of multi-unit accident sequences at a site was not investigated in sufficient detail thus far in the nuclear power community. Therefore, there is considerable worldwide interest and research effort directed toward multi-unit site risk assessment, especially in the countries with high-density nuclear-power-plant sites such as Korea. As the technique of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been successfully applied to evaluate the risk associated with operation of nuclear power plants in the past several decades, the PSA having primarily focused on single-unit risks is now being extended to the multi-unit PSA. In this paper we first characterize the site risk with explicit consideration of the risk associated with spent fuel pools as well as the reactor risks. The status of multi-unit risk assessment is discussed next, followed by a description of the emerging issues relevant to the multi-unit risk evaluation from a practical standpoint

Enterprise resource planning in a large construction firm: Implementation analysis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Voordijk, Johannes T.; van Leuven, Arjen; Laan, Albertus

2003-01-01

In most large Dutch construction firms, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have replaced nonintegrated information systems with integrated and maintainable software. The implementation of ERP systems in such firms is a difficult task. So far, ERP implementations have yielded more failures

Does internationalisation of technology determine technological diversification in large firms?

OpenAIRE

Christian Le Bas; Pari Patel

2005-01-01

The purpose of the paper is to examine the relationship between technological diversification and internationalisation of technology for large multinational firms, operating at the world technological frontier. More precisely we address the question as to whether internationalisation determines diversification. The analysis is based on a rich database of the European patenting activity of 345 large multinational firms with the highest levels of patenting over two periods of time (1988-1990 an...

Commerical electric power cost studies. Capital cost addendum multi-unit coal and nuclear stations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1977-09-01

This report is the culmination of a study performed to develop designs and associated capital cost estimates for multi-unit nuclear and coal commercial electric power stations, and to determine the distribution of these costs among the individual units. This report addresses six different types of 2400 MWe (nominal) multi-unit stations as follows: Two Unit PWR Station-1139 MWe Each, Two Unit BWR Station-1190 MWe Each, Two Unit High Sulfur Coal-Fired Station-1232 MWe Each, Two Unit Low Sulfur Coal-Fired Station-1243 MWe Each, Three Unit High Sulfur Coal-Fired Station-794 MWe Each, Three Unit Low Sulfur Coal-Fired Station-801 MWe Each. Recent capital cost studies performed for ERDA/NRC of single unit nuclear and coal stations are used as the basis for developing the designs and costs of the multi-unit stations. This report includes the major study groundrules, a summary of single and multi-unit stations total base cost estimates, details of cost estimates at the three digit account level and plot plan drawings for each multi-unit station identified

49 CFR 172.330 - Tank cars and multi-unit tank car tanks.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 49 Transportation 2 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Tank cars and multi-unit tank car tanks. 172.330..., TRAINING REQUIREMENTS, AND SECURITY PLANS Marking § 172.330 Tank cars and multi-unit tank car tanks. (a... material— (1) In a tank car unless the following conditions are met: (i) The tank car must be marked on...

Organizing Corporate Social Responsibility in Small and Large Firms: Size Matters

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Baumann-Pauly, D.; Wickert, C.M.J.; Spence, L.; Scherer, A.G.

2013-01-01

Based on the findings of a qualitative empirical study of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Swiss MNCs and SMEs, we suggest that smaller firms are not necessarily less advanced in organizing CSR than large firms. Results according to theoretically derived assessment frameworks illustrate the

Safety R and D Needs in Multi-Unit PSA from a Regulatory Viewpoint

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Heo, Gyunyoung; Yoon, Ji Woong [Kyung Hee University, Yongin (Korea, Republic of); Kim, Man Cheol [Chung-Ang University, Seoul (Korea, Republic of)

2016-10-15

The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) NSSC’s recent approval of the construction permits and operation licenses of Shin Kori units 3 to 6 has brought attention to the multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (PSA). The disaster in Fukushima revealed the risks associated with the use of spent fuel pools (SFPs), and the linear (or non-linear) consequences of radiation leaks from multi-units in particular, has raised concerns. The number of nuclear power plants (NPPs) in operation will increase to ten at the Kori and Shin Kori sites when the construction of Units 5 and 6 is complete - the highest concentration of power reactors in one region in world history. Nuclear disasters do not happen frequently, but when one does happen, its cascading effects can inflict massive human and environmental loss. Proper safety measures are needed as more nuclear installations are put in place. Nuclear regulators are forced to promptly produce a sufficient degree of realistic and objective risk assessment results to meet the rapidly-increasing demand for multi-unit PSA, while striving to achieve matching levels of technological development. The issues with the technological aspects of PSA would still be inherent even after a few years of research, and ensuring the safety of multi-units would still prove challenging. Experts are however relieved that the general public is now much more familiar with the concept of PSA than in the past, which indicates a rise in the degree of public understanding of technology. More studies should be done on multi-unit regulation and safety so as to steer the government in the proper direction for enacting policies aimed to ensure the health of local residents. In conclusion, the technical problems associated with multi-unit PSA that were not mentioned in this paper are essentially similar to their single-unit counterparts, therefore, reinforcing the base infrastructure of PSAs in general will work towards resolving such technical

Essays on empirical analysis of multi-unit auctions: Impacts of financial transmission rights on the restructured electricity industry

Science.gov (United States)

Zang, Hailing

This dissertation uses recently developed empirical methodologies for the study of multi-unit auctions to test the impacts of Financial Transmission Rights (FTRs) on the competitiveness of restructured electricity markets. FTRs are a special type of financial option that hedge against volatility in the cost of transporting electricity over the grid. Policy makers seek to use the prices of FTRs as market signals to incentivize efficient investment and utilization of transmission capacity. However, prices will not send the correct signals if market participants strategically use FTRs. This dissertation uses data from the Texas electricity market to test whether the prices of FTRs are efficient to achieve such goals. The auctions studied are multi-unit, uniform-price, sealed-bid auctions. The first part of the dissertation studies the auctions on the spot market of the wholesale electricity industry. I derive structural empirical models to test theoretical predictions as to whether bidders fully internalize the effect of FTRs on profits into their bidding decisions. I find that bidders are learning as to how to optimally bid above marginal cost for their inframarginal capacities. The bidders also learn to bid to include FTRs into their profit maximization problem during the course of the first year. But starting from the second year, they deviated from optimal bidding that includes FTRs in the profit maximization problems. Counterfactual analysis show that the primary effect of FTRs on market outcomes is changing the level of prices rather than production efficiency. Finally, I find that in most months, the current allocations of FTRs are statistically equivalent to the optimal allocations. The second part of the dissertation studies the bidding behavior in the FTR auctions. I find that FTRs' strategic impact on the FTR purchasing behavior is significant for large bidders---firms exercising market power in the FTR auctions. Second, trader forecasts future FTR credit

Multi-Unit Initiating Event Analysis for a Single-Unit Internal Events Level 1 PSA

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kim, Dong San; Park, Jin Hee; Lim, Ho Gon [KAERI, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

2016-05-15

The Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 highlighted the importance of considering the risks from multi-unit accidents at a site. The ASME/ANS probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) standard also includes some requirements related to multi-unit aspects, one of which (IE-B5) is as follows: 'For multi-unit sites with shared systems, DO NOT SUBSUME multi-unit initiating events if they impact mitigation capability [1].' However, the existing single-unit PSA models do not explicitly consider multi-unit initiating events and hence systems shared by multiple units (e.g., alternate AC diesel generator) are fully credited for the single unit and ignores the need for the shared systems by other units at the same site [2]. This paper describes the results of the multi-unit initiating event (IE) analysis performed as a part of the at-power internal events Level 1 probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) for an OPR1000 single unit ('reference unit'). In this study, a multi-unit initiating event analysis for a single-unit PSA was performed, and using the results, dual-unit LOOP initiating event was added to the existing PSA model for the reference unit (OPR1000 type). Event trees were developed for dual-unit LOOP and dual-unit SBO which can be transferred from dual- unit LOOP. Moreover, CCF basic events for 5 diesel generators were modelled. In case of simultaneous SBO occurrences in both units, this study compared two different assumptions on the availability of the AAC D/G. As a result, when dual-unit LOOP initiating event was added to the existing single-unit PSA model, the total CDF increased by 1∼ 2% depending on the probability that the AAC D/G is available to a specific unit in case of simultaneous SBO in both units.

49 CFR 179.301 - Individual specification requirements for multi-unit tank car tanks.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

...-unit tank car tanks. 179.301 Section 179.301 Transportation Other Regulations Relating to... MATERIALS REGULATIONS SPECIFICATIONS FOR TANK CARS Specifications for Multi-Unit Tank Car Tanks (Classes DOT-106A and 110AW) § 179.301 Individual specification requirements for multi-unit tank car tanks. (a) In...

Study on quantification method based on Monte Carlo sampling for multiunit probabilistic safety assessment models

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Oh, Kye Min [KHNP Central Research Institute, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of); Han, Sang Hoon; Park, Jin Hee; Lim, Ho Gon; Yang, Joon Yang [Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of); Heo, Gyun Young [Kyung Hee University, Yongin (Korea, Republic of)

2017-06-15

In Korea, many nuclear power plants operate at a single site based on geographical characteristics, but the population density near the sites is higher than that in other countries. Thus, multiunit accidents are a more important consideration than in other countries and should be addressed appropriately. Currently, there are many issues related to a multiunit probabilistic safety assessment (PSA). One of them is the quantification of a multiunit PSA model. A traditional PSA uses a Boolean manipulation of the fault tree in terms of the minimal cut set. However, such methods have some limitations when rare event approximations cannot be used effectively or a very small truncation limit should be applied to identify accident sequence combinations for a multiunit site. In particular, it is well known that seismic risk in terms of core damage frequency can be overestimated because there are many events that have a high failure probability. In this study, we propose a quantification method based on a Monte Carlo approach for a multiunit PSA model. This method can consider all possible accident sequence combinations in a multiunit site and calculate a more exact value for events that have a high failure probability. An example model for six identical units at a site was also developed and quantified to confirm the applicability of the proposed method.

Safety assessment of multi-unit NPP sites subject to external events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Samaddar, Sujit; Hibino, Kenta; Coman, Ovidiu

2014-01-01

This paper presents a framework for conducting a probabilistic safety assessment of multi-unit sites against external events. The treatment of multiple hazard on a unit, interaction between units, implementation of severe accident measures, human reliability, environmental conditions, metric of risk for both reactor and non-reactor sources, integration of risk and responses and many such important factors need to be addressed within the context of this framework. The framework facilitates the establishment of a comprehensive methodology that can be applied internationally to the peer review of safety assessment of multi-unit sites under the impact of multiple external hazards. In summary, it can be said that the site safety assessment for a multi-unit site will be quite complex and need to start with individual unit risk assessments, these need to be combined considering the interactions between units and their responses, and the fragilities of the installations established considering the combined demands from all interactions. Using newly established risk metric the risk can then be integrated for the overall site. Fig. 2 shows schematically such a proposal. Much work has to done and the IAEA has established a working group that is systematically establishing the structure and process to incorporate the many issues that are a part of a multi-unit site safety assessment. (authors)

Job gains and losses at large and small firms during the Great Recession

OpenAIRE

Juan M. Sánchez; Lowell R. Ricketts

2012-01-01

Conventional wisdom says that employment at small firms declines more than employment at large firms during recessions. However, that doesn’t seem to have been the case during the Great Recession of 2007-09.

Sustainable Innovation - Driving Factors in Large Firms

OpenAIRE

Alderin, Clara; Do, Thao

2016-01-01

During recent years, there has been a growing interest in sustainable innovation both in academia and in practice. Our qualitative, multiple case study examines this emerging field in the context of large firms. By doing so, this thesis contributes to the understanding of the concept as well as the underlying factors driving sustainable innovation. Theory highlighted both external and internal factors in firms’ sustainable innovation engagement. The empirical evidence identifies five key fact...

Risk analysis of NPP in multi-unit site for configuration of AAC power source

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Myung Ki

2000-01-01

Because of the difficulties in finding new sites for nuclear power plants, more units are being added to the existing sites. In these multi-unit sites, appropriate countermeasures should be established to cope with the potential station blackout (SBO) accident. Currently, installation of additional diesel generator (DG) is considered to ensure an alternative AC power source, but it has not been decided yet how many DGs should be installed in a multi-unit site. In this paper, risk informed decision making method, which evaluates reliability of electrical system, core damage frequency, and site average core damage frequency, is introduced to draw up the suitable number of DG in multi-unit site. The analysis results show that installing two DGs lowered the site average core damage frequency by 1.4% compared to one DG in six unit site. In the light of risk-informed decisions in regulatory guide 1.174, there is no difference of safety between two alternatives. It is concluded that one emergency diesel generator sufficiently guarantees safety against station blackout of nuclear power plants in multi-unit site. (author)

Perceptions of Secondhand and Thirdhand Smoke Among Hispanic Residents of Multiunit Housing.

Science.gov (United States)

Rendón, Angélica Delgado; Unger, Jennifer B; Cruz, Tess; Soto, Daniel W; Baezconde-Garbanati, Lourdes

2017-02-01

Despite the progressive adoption of smoking bans in public spaces, children living in multi-unit housing remain at risk of exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) and thirdhand smoke (THS). Hispanic populations in California are particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of SHS and THS because a large proportion of Hispanics live in multi-unit housing. Three focus groups were conducted in the fall of 2012 (in Spanish and English, N = 24) to understand Hispanics' knowledge of and experiences with SHS and THS, including barriers to avoiding smoke exposure and strategies for protecting their homes from smoke. Hispanic residents reported unpleasant experiences with SHS and THS and were generally knowledgeable about the adverse health effects, although they were not familiar with the term "thirdhand smoke." Some participants also mentioned marijuana smoke as a potential health hazard. Hispanic cultural values made participants reluctant to confront their neighbors but also motivated them to find ways to protect their families from smoke. Potential solutions included working with the smokers to designate a smoking area and gaining support from the building owners. Broad smoking policies should be implemented to help Hispanic residents overcome cultural and social barriers to smoke free air.

[Attaching single- and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kreulen, C.M.; Wolke, J.G.C.; Baat, C. de; Creugers, N.H.J.

2013-01-01

A single- or multi-unit fixed dental prosthesis can be attached to the abutment teeth through mechanical retention and gap sealing or by adhesion. For sealing the gap, water-soluble cements are appropriate, such as zinc phosphate, polycarboxylate, and (resin-modified) glasionomer cement. Attachment

Examination of post-Fukushima action items for Korean NPPs from multi-unit dependency perspective

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kim, Kyung Jin; Park, Chul Kyu; Oh, Seung Jong [KEPCO International Nuclear Graduate School, Ulsan (Korea, Republic of)

2015-10-15

This paper examines qualitatively the adequacy of the above improvements from multi-unit dependency point-of-view. We chose an extended SBO scenario and utilized extensive damage mitigation guidelines to make the examination more realistic. In this study, we examined qualitatively the improvement of Korean NPP against extreme events such as extended SBO from the multi-unit dependency perspective. In performing Seabrook PSA in 1983, multi-unit effect was examined. With the Fukushima accident, PSA community recognized the importance of multi-unit dependency and it has become one of active research area in PSA. In light of Fukushima event, all IAEA member nations adopted an action plan on nuclear safety to strengthen nuclear safety worldwide. In Korea, the special team organized by the government led special safety inspection to Korean nuclear facilities, which resulted in identifying 56 plant improvements. Most of these improvements have been implemented and all of the improvements will be implemented by the end of 2015. One important area of improvement is to strengthen the mitigation capability against extreme events such as extended SBO utilizing portable equipment. The benefit of mobile generator is substantial in reducing the failure probability of power unavailable to 4.16 kV SWGR. Though there are multi-unit dependency in portable pumps (using identical pumps), its impact due to common cause seems to be smaller than other contribution such as human error. Considering the consequence of common cause failure of portable pumps, the cost aspect of having two different types of pumps needs to be evaluated.

Revenue and efficiency in multi-unit uniform-price auctions

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Břeský, Michal

-, č. 384 (2009), s. 1-39 ISSN 1211-3298 Institutional research plan: CEZ:MSM0021620846 Keywords : multi-unit auction * multiple-object auction * market efficiency * optimal selling mechanism Subject RIV: AH - Economics http://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/wp/Wp384.pdf

Integrated risk assessment for multi-unit NPP sites—A comparison

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kumar, C. Senthil; Hassija, Varun; Velusamy, K.; Balasubramaniyan, V.

2015-01-01

Highlights: • Framework for integrated risk assessment for multi-unit NPP sites. • Categorization of external and internal events. • Modelling of key issues: mission time, cliff-edge, common cause failures, etc. • Safety goals for multi-unit NPP sites. • Comparison of site core damage frequency in one, two, three and four unit sites. - Abstract: Most of the nuclear power producing sites in the world houses multiple units. Such sites are faced with hazards generated from external events: earthquake, tsunami, flood, etc. and can threaten the safety of nuclear power plants. Further, risk from a multiple unit site and its impact on the public and environment was evident during the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011. It is therefore important to evolve a methodology to systematically assess the risk from multi-unit site. For a single unit site, probabilistic risk assessment technique identifies the potential accident scenarios, their consequences, and estimates the core damage frequency that arise due to internal and external hazards. This challenging task becomes even more complex for a multiple unit site, especially when the external hazards that has the potential to generate one or more correlated hazards or a combination of non-correlated hazards are to be modelled. This paper presents an approach to evaluate risk for multiple NPP sites and also compare the risk for sites housing single, double and multiple nuclear plants.

Integrated risk assessment for multi-unit NPP sites—A comparison

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kumar, C. Senthil, E-mail: cskumar@igcar.gov.in [AERB-Safety Research Institute, Kalpakkam (India); Hassija, Varun; Velusamy, K. [Reactor Design Group, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam (India); Balasubramaniyan, V. [AERB-Safety Research Institute, Kalpakkam (India)

2015-11-15

Highlights: • Framework for integrated risk assessment for multi-unit NPP sites. • Categorization of external and internal events. • Modelling of key issues: mission time, cliff-edge, common cause failures, etc. • Safety goals for multi-unit NPP sites. • Comparison of site core damage frequency in one, two, three and four unit sites. - Abstract: Most of the nuclear power producing sites in the world houses multiple units. Such sites are faced with hazards generated from external events: earthquake, tsunami, flood, etc. and can threaten the safety of nuclear power plants. Further, risk from a multiple unit site and its impact on the public and environment was evident during the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011. It is therefore important to evolve a methodology to systematically assess the risk from multi-unit site. For a single unit site, probabilistic risk assessment technique identifies the potential accident scenarios, their consequences, and estimates the core damage frequency that arise due to internal and external hazards. This challenging task becomes even more complex for a multiple unit site, especially when the external hazards that has the potential to generate one or more correlated hazards or a combination of non-correlated hazards are to be modelled. This paper presents an approach to evaluate risk for multiple NPP sites and also compare the risk for sites housing single, double and multiple nuclear plants.

In the loop Large Hadron Collider project - UK engineering firms

CERN Document Server

Wilks, N

2004-01-01

This paper presents the latest measures being taken to boost the level of UK engineering firms' involvement in research at CERN (Centre for Nuclear Research), including its 27 km circular Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project. Virtually all of the components on this complex project have had to be custom-made, usually in the form of collaboration. It is part of these collaborations that some UK firms have proved they can shine. However, despite the proven capabilities, the financial return continues to be less than the government's funding. Each of the 20 CERN member states provides funds in proportion to its GDP and the UK is the second largest financial contributor. UK firms become price-competitive where a contract calls for a degree of customisation or product development, project management and tight quality control. Development of the Particle Physics Grid, for dissemination and analysis of data from the LHC, continues to provide major supply opportunities for UK manufacturers.

The Impact of Ownership Structure on Firm Performance : Evidence From a Large Emerging Market

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Douma, S.W.; George, R.; Kabir, M.R.

2002-01-01

We examine how ownership structure affects the performance of firms using firm level data from a large emerging market, India.We specifically focus on a previously unexplored phenomenon, namely the differential role played by foreign institutional and foreign corporate shareholders.An examination of

Revenue and efficiency in multi-unit uniform-price auctions

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Břeský, Michal

2013-01-01

Roč. 82, November (2013), s. 205-217 ISSN 0899-8256 R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GAP402/11/1531 Institutional support: RVO:67985998 Keywords : multi-unit auction * multiple-object auction * market efficiency Subject RIV: AH - Economics Impact factor: 1.025, year: 2013

Foreign Firms, Domestic Wages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Malchow-Møller, Nikolaj; Markusen, James R.; Schjerning, Bertel

to the firm?s productivity. Foreign-owned firms have, on average, higher productivity in equilibrium due to entry costs, which means that low-productivity foreign firms cannot enter. Foreign firms have higher wage growth and, with some exceptions, pay higher average wages, but not when compared to similarly...... large domestic firms. The empirical implications of the model are tested on matched employer-employee data from Denmark. Consistent with the theory, we find considerable evidence of higher wages and wage growth in large and/or foreign-owned firms. These effects survive controlling for individual...... characteristics, but, as expected, are reduced significantly when controlling for unobservable firm heterogeneity. Furthermore, acquired skills in foreign-owned and large firms appear to be transferable to both subsequent wage work and self-employment...

Bidding behaviour in multi-unit auctions – an experimental investigation

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Engelmann, Dirk; Grimm, V.

2009-01-01

Roč. 119, č. 537 (2009), s. 855-882 ISSN 0013-0133 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z70850503 Keywords : multi-unit auctions * bidding behavior * laboratory experiments Subject RIV: AH - Economics Impact factor: 1.902, year: 2009

E-commerce between a large firm and a SME supplier: a screening model

OpenAIRE

Veronica, Alderete Maria

2009-01-01

This paper derives a model of screening contracts in the presence of positive network effects when building an electronic commerce network (e-commerce) between a large firm and a small and medium sized enterprise (SME) supplier based on Compte (2008). Compte (2008) main insight is that when several potential candidates compete for the task, the principal will in general improve the performance of his firm by inducing the member candidates to assess their competence before signing the contract...

Safety Goal, Multi-unit Risk and PSA Uncertainty

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Yang, Joon-Eon [Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

2015-10-15

The safety goal is an answer of each country to the question 'How safe is safe enough?'. Table 1 shows some examples of the safety goal. However, many countries including Korea do not have the official safety goal for NPPs up to now since the establishment of safety goal is not just a technical issue but a very complex socio-technical issue. In establishing the safety goal for nuclear facilities, we have to consider various factors including not only technical aspects but also social, cultural ones. Recently, Korea is trying to establish the official safety goal. In this paper, we will review the relationship between the safety goal and Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA). We will also address some important technical issues to be considered in establishing the safety goal for NPPs from PSA point of view, i.e. a multi-unit risk issue and the uncertainty of PSA. In this paper, we reviewed some issues related to the safety goal and PSA. We believe that the safety goal is to be established in Korea considering the multi-unit risk. In addition, the relationship between the safety goal and PSA should be also defined clearly since PSA is the only way to answer to the question 'How safe is safe enough?'.

Application of RASCAL code for multiunit accident in domestic nuclear sites

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Park, Sang Hyun; Jeong, Seung Young [Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

2014-10-15

All of domestic nuclear power plant sites are multiunit site (at least 5 - 6 reactors are operating), so this capability has to be quickly secured for nuclear licensee and institutes responsible for nuclear emergency response. In this study, source term and offsite dose from multiunit event were assessed using a computer code, RASCAL. An emergency exercise scenario was chosen to verify applicability of the codes to domestic nuclear site accident. Employing tools and new features of the code, such as merging more than two individual source terms and source term estimate for long term progression accident, main parameters and information in the scenario, release estimates and dose projections were performed. Radiological releases and offsite doses from multiunit accident were calculated using RASCAL.. A scenario, in which three reactors were damaged coincidently by a great natural disaster, was considered. Surrogate plants were chosen for the code calculation. Source terms of each damaged unit were calculated individually first, and then total source term and integrated offsite dose assessment data was acquired using a source term merge function in the code. Also comparison between LTSBO and LOCA source term estimate options was performed. Differences in offsite doses were caused by release characteristics. From LTSBO option, iodines were released much higher than LOCA. Also LTSBO source term release was delayed and the duration was longer than LOCA. This option would be useful to accidents which progress with much longer time frame than LOCA. RASCAL can be useful tool for radiological consequence assessment in domestic nuclear site accidents.

ARE SMALL-FIRM CLUSTERS EMERGENT PHENOMENA? EVIDENCE FROM ZIMBABWE’S SMALL FURNITURE- MANUFACTURING FIRMS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Godfrey MUPONDA

2014-07-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study was to explore the reasons behind the rapid growth and apparent dynamism of Zimbabwe’s small-firm industrial clusters. The hypothesis behind the study was that these small-firm clusters are emergent phenomena. The study analysed the capital utilisation techniques of small firms located in a large industrial cluster in order to determine the factors that lead to the collective efficiency of such firms. The study found that, in comparison with large, stock exchange-listed firms, the cluster environment enables the small firm to operate from a relatively small capital base and also to use its capital more efficiently in creating revenues and profits. The individual firm does not have to invest its capital in a large assets base as this is done by a specialised group of firms within the cluster. Thus, the cluster has the characteristics of an emergent phenomenon.

Some new evidence on the determinants of large- and small-firm innovation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

B. van Dijk (Bob); R. den Hertog; A.R. Thurik (Roy); A.J. Menkveld (Bert)

1997-01-01

textabstractEmpirical analyses presented by Acs and Audretsch suggest differences in the market structure determinants of innovation between large and small firms in U.S. manufacturing. The evidence they offer is ambiguous. By using data for a different country (The Netherlands), a different measure

49 CFR 172.331 - Bulk packagings other than portable tanks, cargo tanks, tank cars and multi-unit tank car tanks.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 49 Transportation 2 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Bulk packagings other than portable tanks, cargo tanks, tank cars and multi-unit tank car tanks. 172.331 Section 172.331 Transportation Other Regulations... packagings other than portable tanks, cargo tanks, tank cars and multi-unit tank car tanks. (a) Each person...

On the hazard rate process for imperfectly monitored multi-unit systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Barros, A.; Berenguer, C.; Grall, A.

2005-01-01

The aim of this paper is to present a stochastic model to characterize the failure distribution of multi-unit systems when the current units state is imperfectly monitored. The definition of the hazard rate process existing with perfect monitoring is extended to the realistic case where the units failure time are not always detected (non-detection events). The so defined observed hazard rate process gives a better representation of the system behavior than the classical failure rate calculated without any information on the units state and than the hazard rate process based on perfect monitoring information. The quality of this representation is, however, conditioned by the monotony property of the process. This problem is mainly discussed and illustrated on a practical example (two parallel units). The results obtained motivate the use of the observed hazard rate process to characterize the stochastic behavior of the multi-unit systems and to optimize for example preventive maintenance policies

On the hazard rate process for imperfectly monitored multi-unit systems

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Barros, A. [Institut des Sciences et Techonologies de l' Information de Troyes (ISTIT-CNRS), Equipe de Modelisation et Surete des Systemes, Universite de Technologie de Troyes (UTT), 12, rue Marie Curie, BP2060, 10010 Troyes cedex (France)]. E-mail: anne.barros@utt.fr; Berenguer, C. [Institut des Sciences et Techonologies de l' Information de Troyes (ISTIT-CNRS), Equipe de Modelisation et Surete des Systemes, Universite de Technologie de Troyes (UTT), 12, rue Marie Curie, BP2060, 10010 Troyes cedex (France); Grall, A. [Institut des Sciences et Techonologies de l' Information de Troyes (ISTIT-CNRS), Equipe de Modelisation et Surete des Systemes, Universite de Technologie de Troyes (UTT), 12, rue Marie Curie, BP2060, 10010 Troyes cedex (France)

2005-12-01

The aim of this paper is to present a stochastic model to characterize the failure distribution of multi-unit systems when the current units state is imperfectly monitored. The definition of the hazard rate process existing with perfect monitoring is extended to the realistic case where the units failure time are not always detected (non-detection events). The so defined observed hazard rate process gives a better representation of the system behavior than the classical failure rate calculated without any information on the units state and than the hazard rate process based on perfect monitoring information. The quality of this representation is, however, conditioned by the monotony property of the process. This problem is mainly discussed and illustrated on a practical example (two parallel units). The results obtained motivate the use of the observed hazard rate process to characterize the stochastic behavior of the multi-unit systems and to optimize for example preventive maintenance policies.

[Technical aspects of treatments with single- and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wiersema, E.J.; Kreulen, C.M.; Latzke, P.; Witter, D.J.; Creugers, N.H.J.

2014-01-01

For the manufacture of single- and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses, effective communication between dentist and dental technician is required. Mutual insight concerning the (im)possibilities of available treatments and technical options is prerequisitefor this communication. The manufacture of

Multi-unit Operations in Non-Nuclear Systems: Lessons Learned for Small Modular Reactors

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

OHara J. M.; Higgins, J.; DAgostino, A.

2012-01-17

The nuclear-power community has reached the stage of proposing advanced reactor designs to support power generation for decades to come. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are one approach to meet these energy needs. While the power output of individual reactor modules is relatively small, they can be grouped to produce reactor sites with different outputs. Also, they can be designed to generate hydrogen, or to process heat. Many characteristics of SMRs are quite different from those of current plants and may be operated quite differently. One difference is that multiple units may be operated by a single crew (or a single operator) from one control room. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is examining the human factors engineering (HFE) aspects of SMRs to support licensing reviews. While we reviewed information on SMR designs to obtain information, the designs are not completed and all of the design and operational information is not yet available. Nor is there information on multi-unit operations as envisioned for SMRs available in operating experience. Thus, to gain a better understanding of multi-unit operations we sought the lesson learned from non-nuclear systems that have experience in multi-unit operations, specifically refineries, unmanned aerial vehicles and tele-intensive care units. In this paper we report the lessons learned from these systems and the implications for SMRs.

Development of a method to evaluate shared alternate AC power source effects in multi-unit nuclear power plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jung, Woo Sik; Yang, Joon Eun

2003-07-01

In order to evaluate accurately a Station BlackOut (SBO) event frequency of a multi-unit nuclear power plant that has a shared Alternate AC (AAC) power source, an approach has been developed which accommodates the complex inter-unit behavior of the shared AAC power source under multi-unit Loss Of Offsite Power (LOOP) conditions. The approach is illustrated for two cases, 2 units and 4 units at a single site, and generalized for a multi-unit site. Furthermore, the SBO frequency of the first unit of the 2-unit site is quantified. The SBO frequency at a target unit of Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) could be underestimated if the inter-unit dependency of the shared AAC power source is not properly modeled. The effect of the inter-unit behavior of the shared AAC power source on the SBO frequency is not negligible depending on the Common Cause Failure (CCF) characteristics among AC power sources. The methodology suggested in the present report is believed to be very useful in evaluating the SBO frequency and the core damage frequency resulting from the SBO event. This approach is also applicable to the probabilistic evaluation of the other shared systems in a multi-unit nuclear power plant

The application of fuzzy control on energy saving for multi-unit room air-conditioners

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chiou, C.B.; Chiou, C.H.; Chu, C.M.; Lin, S.L.

2009-01-01

Most research, on energy saving methods for air-conditioners have focused on large chillers as its subject. As most school offices, laboratories, and classrooms are equipped with unitary systems for air-conditioning, this paper discusses methods for energy savings with regard to unitary systems. This paper will put forward the fuzzy temperature control method for multi-unit air-conditioners to enhance energy efficiency. The results show that the use of fuzzy control is efficient for energy saving as well as causing temperature control be steadier, even if there is a change to the thermal loading, the fuzzy control system is able to control the air-conditioning in stable conditions

Robust Multi-unit Auction Protocol against False-name Bids

Science.gov (United States)

Yokoo, Makoto; Sakurai, Yuko; Matsubara, Shigeo

This paper presents a new multi-unit auction protocol (IR protocol) that is robust against false-name bids. Internet auctions have become an integral part of Electronic Commerce and a promising field for applying agent and Artificial Intelligence technologies. Although the Internet provides an excellent infrastructure for executing auctions, the possibility of a new type of cheating called false-name bids has been pointed out. A false-name bid is a bid submitted under a fictitious name. A protocol called LDS has been developed for combinatorial auctions of multiple different items and has proven to be robust against false-name bids. Although we can modify the LDS protocol to handle multi-unit auctions, in which multiple units of an identical item are auctioned, the protocol is complicated and requires the auctioneer to carefully pre-determine the combination of bundles to obtain a high social surplus or revenue. For the auctioneer, our newly developed IR protocol is easier to use than the LDS, since the combination of bundles is automatically determined in a flexible manner according to the declared evaluation values of agents. The evaluation results show that the IR protocol can obtain a better social surplus than that obtained by the LDS protocol.

Cyclicality and Firm Size in Private Firm Defaults

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Thais Lærkholm; Lando, David; Medhat, Mamdouh

2017-01-01

The Basel II/III and CRD IV Accords reduce capital charges on bank loans to smaller firms by assuming that the default probabilities of smaller firms are less sensitive to macroeconomic cycles. We test this assumption in a default intensity framework using a large sample of bank loans to private...

Selection of workers and firm heterogeneity

NARCIS (Netherlands)

G.W.J. Hendrikse (George)

1992-01-01

textabstractA model based on differences between workers regarding their preferences for wage and leisure drives the heterogeneity of firms result. The more industrious workers are driven to small firms due to free riding in large firms. An industry consisting of small and large firms turns out to

Multi-unit price promotions and their impact on purchase decisions and sales

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Drechsler, Salome; Leeflang, Peter S. H.; Bijmolt, Tammo H. A.; Natter, Martin

2017-01-01

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of different multi-unit promotions (MUPs) and a single-unit promotion (SUP) on store-level sales and consumer-level purchase probability and quantity decision. Design/methodology/approach - The paper combines two empirical studies. Study 1

Corporate Governance and the Value of Excess Cash Holdings of Large European Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

M.B.J. Schauten (Marc); D.J.C. van Dijk (Dick); J-P. van der Waal (Jan-Paul)

2008-01-01

textabstractWe examine the relation between the quality of corporate governance and the value of excess cash for large European firms (FTSEurofirst 300 Index). We use Deminor ratings for Shareholder rights, Takeover defences, Disclosure and Board as proxies for the quality of corporate governance.

Corporate Governance and the Value of Excess Cash Holdings of Large European Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schauten, M.B.J.; van Dijk, D.J.C.; van der Waal, J.P.

2013-01-01

We examine the relation between the quality of corporate governance and the value of excess cash for large publicly listed European firms from common-law and civil-law countries. Besides different law origins, we distinguish different dimensions of corporate governance by using ratings for the

Modeling of drug release from multi-unit dosage tablets of theophylline

African Journals Online (AJOL)

To form the multi-unit dose tablets, granules of A and B were mixed together in various proportions in the ratios (A: B) 2:1, 1:1 and 1:2. The disintegration times of the tablets and their dissolution profiles were measured to investigate consistence with the model. The results showed that the tablets generally disintegrated ...

[Loading and strength of single- and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses 2. Strength

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Baat, C. de; Witter, D.J.; Meijers, C.C.A.J.; Vergoossen, E.L.; Creugers, N.H.J.

2014-01-01

The ultimate strength of a dental prosthesis is defined as the strongest loading force applied to the prosthesis until afracture failure occurs. Important key terms are strength, hardness, toughness and fatigue. Relatively prevalent complications of single- and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses are

The development of asymmetric trust in cooperation between large firms and SMEs: Insights from China

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wang, H.; Peverelli, P.J.; Bossink, B.A.G.

2015-01-01

This paper describes how asymmetric trust develops and changes in time in cooperative relationships between large enterprises and SMEs in China. A model is developed on the basis of in-depth case studies of cooperation between six SMEs and five large firms in China. The data sources reveal how

Corporate Social Responsibility in Large Family and Founder Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

J.H. Block (Jörn); M. Wagner (Marcus)

2010-01-01

textabstractBased on arguments about long-term orientation and corporate reputation, we argue that family and founder firms differ from other firms with regard to corporate social responsibility. Using Bayesian analysis, we then show that family and founder ownership are associated with a lower

Multiunit Sequences in First Language Acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Theakston, Anna; Lieven, Elena

2017-07-01

Theoretical and empirical reasons suggest that children build their language not only out of individual words but also out of multiunit strings. These are the basis for the development of schemas containing slots. The slots are putative categories that build in abstraction while the schemas eventually connect to other schemas in terms of both meaning and form. Evidence comes from the nature of the input, the ways in which children construct novel utterances, the systematic errors that children make, and the computational modeling of children's grammars. However, much of this research is on English, which is unusual in its rigid word order and impoverished inflectional morphology. We summarize these results and explore their implications for languages with more flexible word order and/or much richer inflectional morphology. Copyright © 2017 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Thermodynamics of firms' growth

Science.gov (United States)

Zambrano, Eduardo; Hernando, Alberto; Hernando, Ricardo; Plastino, Angelo

2015-01-01

The distribution of firms' growth and firms' sizes is a topic under intense scrutiny. In this paper, we show that a thermodynamic model based on the maximum entropy principle, with dynamical prior information, can be constructed that adequately describes the dynamics and distribution of firms' growth. Our theoretical framework is tested against a comprehensive database of Spanish firms, which covers, to a very large extent, Spain's economic activity, with a total of 1 155 142 firms evolving along a full decade. We show that the empirical exponent of Pareto's law, a rule often observed in the rank distribution of large-size firms, is explained by the capacity of economic system for creating/destroying firms, and that can be used to measure the health of a capitalist-based economy. Indeed, our model predicts that when the exponent is larger than 1, creation of firms is favoured; when it is smaller than 1, destruction of firms is favoured instead; and when it equals 1 (matching Zipf's law), the system is in a full macroeconomic equilibrium, entailing ‘free’ creation and/or destruction of firms. For medium and smaller firm sizes, the dynamical regime changes, the whole distribution can no longer be fitted to a single simple analytical form and numerical prediction is required. Our model constitutes the basis for a full predictive framework regarding the economic evolution of an ensemble of firms. Such a structure can be potentially used to develop simulations and test hypothetical scenarios, such as economic crisis or the response to specific policy measures. PMID:26510828

Experiences of Emerging Economy Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Experiences of Emerging Economy Firms investigates the different elements of the experiences of emerging economy firms and sheds essential light on a large variety of aspects associated with their functioning in both home and host contexts. For example, firms must be able to overcome the liability...... of foreign and emerging issues when they expand their activities in various contexts, enter, exit, and re-enter overseas markets; they have to overcome institutional barriers, adapt the cultural challenges in foreign markets, undergo the impact of large multinational firms from developed economies...

[Aftercare for durability and profitability of single-unit and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Baat, C. de; Loveren, C. van; Maarel-Wierink, C.D. van der; Witter, D.J.; Creugers, N.H.J.

2013-01-01

An important aim ofa treatment with single-unit and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses is a durable and profitable treatment outcome. That requires aftercare, too. First, the frequency of routine oral examinations should be assessed, using an individual risk profile. The objectives of the routine

Clusterless Decoding of Position From Multiunit Activity Using A Marked Point Process Filter

Science.gov (United States)

Deng, Xinyi; Liu, Daniel F.; Kay, Kenneth; Frank, Loren M.; Eden, Uri T.

2016-01-01

Point process filters have been applied successfully to decode neural signals and track neural dynamics. Traditionally, these methods assume that multiunit spiking activity has already been correctly spike-sorted. As a result, these methods are not appropriate for situations where sorting cannot be performed with high precision such as real-time decoding for brain-computer interfaces. As the unsupervised spike-sorting problem remains unsolved, we took an alternative approach that takes advantage of recent insights about clusterless decoding. Here we present a new point process decoding algorithm that does not require multiunit signals to be sorted into individual units. We use the theory of marked point processes to construct a function that characterizes the relationship between a covariate of interest (in this case, the location of a rat on a track) and features of the spike waveforms. In our example, we use tetrode recordings, and the marks represent a four-dimensional vector of the maximum amplitudes of the spike waveform on each of the four electrodes. In general, the marks may represent any features of the spike waveform. We then use Bayes’ rule to estimate spatial location from hippocampal neural activity. We validate our approach with a simulation study and with experimental data recorded in the hippocampus of a rat moving through a linear environment. Our decoding algorithm accurately reconstructs the rat’s position from unsorted multiunit spiking activity. We then compare the quality of our decoding algorithm to that of a traditional spike-sorting and decoding algorithm. Our analyses show that the proposed decoding algorithm performs equivalently or better than algorithms based on sorted single-unit activity. These results provide a path toward accurate real-time decoding of spiking patterns that could be used to carry out content-specific manipulations of population activity in hippocampus or elsewhere in the brain. PMID:25973549

[Single- and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses in relation to the occlusal system].

Science.gov (United States)

Witter, D J; Gerritsen, A E; van Spijker, A; Creugers, N H J

2013-02-01

Occlusion concepts based on functional aspects offer more solid ground in the diagnostic process and in the treatment of (reduced) dentitions than morphologically and mechanically oriented occlusion concepts. Nevertheless, for occlusal reconstruction morphologically oriented guidelines are necessary. These guidelines are based on the border movements and positions of the mandible in the orofacial system, and on the location and modelling of the occlusal contacts in the occlusal system. The modelling of single- and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses must harmonize with the occlusal system. Moreover, an important feature is the relation of the anterior teeth which enables mutually protected occlusion. Characteristics of a healthy orofacial and occlusal system are: absence of pathology, perceived sufficient oral functions, variability inform and function, and adaptive capacity. When designing single- or multiunit fixed dental prostheses, a pragmatic starting point is to maintain the existing occlusion and the existing speech pattern unless arguments can be provided for alterations. The occlusal design should aim at optimizing oral functions, such as mandibular and occlusal stability.

International taxation and multinational firm location decisions

OpenAIRE

Barrios Cobos, Salvador; Huizinga, Harry; Laeven, Luc; Nicodème, Gaëtan J.A.

2008-01-01

Using a large international firm-level data set, we estimate separate effects of host and parent country taxation on the location decisions of multinational firms. Both types of taxation are estimated to have a negative impact on the location of new foreign subsidiaries. In fact, the impact of parent country taxation is estimated to be relatively large, possibly reflecting its international discriminatory nature. For the cross-section of multinational firms, we find that parent firms tend to ...

Gibrat's Law and the Firm Size / Firm Growth Relationship in Italian Services

NARCIS (Netherlands)

R. Piergiovanni; E. Santarelli (Enrico); L. Klomp (Luuk); A.R. Thurik (Roy)

2002-01-01

textabstractSeveral surveys on intra-industry dynamics have recently reached the conclusion from a large body of evidence that Gibrat's Law does not hold, i.e., the main finding is that firm growth decreases with firm size. However, almost all of these studies have been based on manufacturing. In

Gender Segregation Small Firms

OpenAIRE

Kenneth R Troske; William J Carrington

1992-01-01

This paper studies interfirm gender segregation in a unique sample of small employers. We focus on small firms because previous research on interfirm segregation has studied only large firms and because it is easier to link the demographic characteristics of employers and employees in small firms. This latter feature permits an assessment of the role of employer discrimination in creating gender segregation. Our first finding is that interfirm segregation is prevalent among small employers. I...

Financing patterns around the world: Are small firms different?.

OpenAIRE

Beck, T.H.L.; Demirgüc-Kunt, A.; Maksimovic, V.

2008-01-01

Using a firm-level survey database covering 48 countries, we investigate how financial and institutional development affects financing of large and small firms. Our database is not limited to large firms but includes small and medium-size firms and data on a broad spectrum of financing sources, including leasing, supplier, development, and informal finance. Small firms and firms in countries with poor institutions use less external finance, especially bank finance. Protection of property righ...

Financing patterns around the world : Are small firms different?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Beck, T.H.L.; Demirgüc-Kunt, A.; Maksimovic, V.

2008-01-01

Using a firm-level survey database covering 48 countries, we investigate how financial and institutional development affects financing of large and small firms. Our database is not limited to large firms, but includes small and medium firms and data on a broad spectrum of financing sources,

COEXISTENCE OF PRIVATE FIRMS AND OPEN SOURCE FIRMS UNDER SPILLOVERS AND CONSUMER BIAS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Murat YILMAZ

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Open source technologies have been an important divergence from the private produc- tion, and some markets have accommodated both open source firms and private firms. We explore the conditions under which such a coexistence of both type of firms can be seen. Through a simple and tractable game theoretical model, with spillovers on the open source production and positive consumer bias for the privately produced good, we analyze the conditions for which, in the equilibrium, a private firm and an open source firm share the market. We find that for large enough consumer bias, the two types cannot coexist, however when the consumer bias is relatively low and the spillover effect is not too strong, then we get a coexistence result.

[Loading and strength of single- and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses. 1. Retention and resistance

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Baat, C. de; Witter, D.J.; Meijers, C.C.A.J.; Vergoossen, E.L.; Creugers, N.H.J.

2014-01-01

The degree to which single- and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses are able to withstand loading forces is dependent, among other things, on the quality of their retention and resistance. The quality of the retention and resistance of the configuration of an abutment tooth prepared for a metal and

Process Ambidexterity for Entrepreneurial Firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sonia D. Bot

2012-04-01

Full Text Available Technology-based entrepreneurial firms must effectively support both mainstream exploitation and new-stream exploration in order to remain competitive for the long term. The processes that support exploitation and exploration initiatives are different in terms of logistics, payoff horizons, and capabilities. Few firms are able to strike a balance between the two, where mainstream exploitation usually trumps new-stream exploration. The ultimate goal is for the firm to operate effectively in a repeatable, scalable, and systematic manner, rather than relying on good luck and hoping either to come up with the next innovation or for the product to function according to its requirements. This article builds on the author’s years of experience in building businesses and transforming medium and large-sized, entrepreneurial technology firms, leading large-scale breakthrough and sustained performance improvements by using and evolving Lean Six Sigma methodologies, and reviews of technology innovation management and entrepreneurship literature. This article provides a process-based perspective to understanding and addressing the issues on balancing mainstream exploitation and new-stream exploration in medium and large-sized entrepreneurial firms and extending it to startups. The resulting capability is known as process ambidexterity and requires disciplined, agile, and lean business management.

Study on LOOP and SBO Frequency for Multi-Unit PSA

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jin, Kyung Ho; Heo, Gyun Young [Kyunghee University, Yongin (Korea, Republic of)

2016-05-15

In conventional single unit PSA, it was assumed that all accidents or events are independent and the risk of only one unit has been evaluated. In other words, the possibility that simultaneous events occur on multiple units was excluded because it was assumed that the probability of concurrent events were extremely low. After Fukushima accidents, however, it was found that external hazards such as tsunami may impact on multiple units; that means, for the sake of proper mitigation the risk of accidents in shared SSCs should be reevaluated. New risk metrics to improve conventional CDF (Core Damage frequency) based on reactor-year is needed to perform MUPSA (Multi-Unit Probabilistic Safety Assessment). IAEA suggested SCDF (Site CDF) as a risk metrics for MUPSA. The frequency based on reactor-year was converted to the frequency based on site-year. In addition, shared SSCs were modeled in single unit PSA as if those units have independent shared SSCs. Therefore, the risk of shared SSCs should be reevaluated. In this paper, the frequency of LOOP (Loss of Offsite Power), which is typically a multi-unit event, was evaluated and the frequency of SBO (Station Blackout) depending on LOOP frequency and emergency power systems such as EDG (Emergency Diesel Generator) and AAC (Alternate AC), that can mitigate SBO events, was modeled. This paper describes how to calculate LOOP and SBO frequency from the simple example for two-unit site with shared AAC. The events impacting on multiple units, which were excluded in conventional PSA, should be considered for MUPSA.

Firm Search for External Knowledge

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sofka, Wolfgang; Grimpe, Christoph

2012-01-01

ignored the institutional context that provides or denies access to external knowledge at the country level. Combining institutional and knowledge search theory, we suggest that the market orientation of the institutional environment and the magnitude of institutional change influence when firms begin......The innovation performance of modern firms is increasingly determined by their ability to search and absorb external knowledge. However, after a certain threshold firms "oversearch" their environment and innovation performance declines. In this paper, we argue that prior literature has largely...... to experience the negative performance effects of oversearch. Based on a comprehensive sample of almost 8,000 firms from ten European countries, we find that institutions matter considerably for firms' search activity. Higher market orientation of institutions increases the effectiveness of firms' search...

Firm Leverage and the Financial Crisis

OpenAIRE

Fatih Altunok; Arif Oduncu

2014-01-01

The firm growth dynamics is an important topic since the growth performance of firms is the main source of the economic growth in countries. Generally, crises produce a sharp decline in firms’ growth and this leads to a decline in both the level of employment and the income of households. This paper focuses on the role of firm leverage on the growth performance of the firm during the global financial crisis. We investigate whether the firms that experienced a large leverage increase before th...

Effect of firm variables on patent price

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shyam Sreekumaran Nair

2012-03-01

Full Text Available In this study, using singleton patent auction price data from Ocean Tomo, LLC, we analyse the effect of firm variables on patent price. Patents owned by small firms attract higher price than patents owned by large firms, if they engage in multi-country filings. The patents owned by small firms get cited more than the patents owned by large firms. The patents owned by individual inventors attract a higher price than the patents owned by organisations when multi-country filings are not included. We believe that the lack of resources is preventing individual inventors from engaging in multi-country filings and maximising the revenue from their invention. A larger representative data should be used to replicate the results before generalising it.

Inter-firm and intra-firm efficiency measures

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Oude Lansink, A.G.J.M.; Silva, E.; Stefanou, S.

2001-01-01

Intra-firm efficiency involves computing a particular firm's efficiency degree over time relative to the firm-specific production frontier. Inter-firm efficiency reveals a particular firm's performance over time relative to the ``best practice frontier'' among the set of comparable firms. These

Corporate Governance Provisions, Family Involvement, and Firm Performance in Publicly Traded Family Firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Esra Memili

2015-07-01

Full Text Available This study examines the moderation effects of corporate governance provisions on the link between family involvement (i.e., family ownership and family management in publicly-traded firms and firm performance by drawing upon agency theory, with a focus on principal-principal agency issues, and the extant family governance literature. We develop and test the hypotheses on 386 of the S&P 500 firms longitudinally. Findings support the hypotheses suggesting the moderation effects of the use of provisions (a protecting controlling owners in terms of their sustainability of controlling status, and (b protecting management legally on the inverted U-shaped relationship between family ownership and firm performance. We also found support for the moderation effects of provisions (c protecting controlling owners in terms of their voting rights, (d protecting noncontrolling owners, and (e protecting management monetarily on the inverted U-shaped relationship between family management and firm performance. By this, our study provides empirical support for the principal-principal agency perspective on the corporate governance in publicly-traded family firms. As such, it suggests new avenues of research for both the corporate governance literature, as well as for the theory of the family firm. Our study also offers insights to policy directed toward monitoring the actions of large shareholders such as family and enhancing the overall shareholder value in publicly-traded family firms.

Interlocking Boards and Firm Performance: Evidence from a New Panel Database

NARCIS (Netherlands)

M.C. Non (Marielle); Ph.H.B.F. Franses (Philip Hans)

2007-01-01

textabstractAn interlock between two firms occurs if the firms share one or more directors in their boards of directors. We explore the effect of interlocks on firm performance for 101 large Dutch firms using a large and new panel database. We use five different performance measures, and for each

Commercialization of Innovations and Firm Performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Madsen, Erik Strøjer; Smith, Valdemar

The decision on investment in R&D is very important and highly risky for firms' performance and survival in their business. This paper focuses on the commercialization of firms' investment in innovation and how these decisions affect their performance. The study uses a large innovation survey...... of Danish firms holding information on their R&D investment as well as their expenses on marketing which gives knowledge of the commercialization of their innovations. The results suggest a highly significant commercialization of innovation, which means that firms' follows a strategy of investment both...

Debt and Taxes: Evidence from bank-financed unlisted firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bartholdy, Jan; Mateus, Cesário

This paper analyzes the capital structure decision of non-listed bank-financed firms using a rich and unique new data set of Portuguese firms. These firms are rarely studied in capital structure contexts and differ from large listed firms in terms of agency and asymmetric information problems...

Automated daily quality control analysis for mammography in a multi-unit imaging center.

Science.gov (United States)

Sundell, Veli-Matti; Mäkelä, Teemu; Meaney, Alexander; Kaasalainen, Touko; Savolainen, Sauli

2018-01-01

Background The high requirements for mammography image quality necessitate a systematic quality assurance process. Digital imaging allows automation of the image quality analysis, which can potentially improve repeatability and objectivity compared to a visual evaluation made by the users. Purpose To develop an automatic image quality analysis software for daily mammography quality control in a multi-unit imaging center. Material and Methods An automated image quality analysis software using the discrete wavelet transform and multiresolution analysis was developed for the American College of Radiology accreditation phantom. The software was validated by analyzing 60 randomly selected phantom images from six mammography systems and 20 phantom images with different dose levels from one mammography system. The results were compared to a visual analysis made by four reviewers. Additionally, long-term image quality trends of a full-field digital mammography system and a computed radiography mammography system were investigated. Results The automated software produced feature detection levels comparable to visual analysis. The agreement was good in the case of fibers, while the software detected somewhat more microcalcifications and characteristic masses. Long-term follow-up via a quality assurance web portal demonstrated the feasibility of using the software for monitoring the performance of mammography systems in a multi-unit imaging center. Conclusion Automated image quality analysis enables monitoring the performance of digital mammography systems in an efficient, centralized manner.

Drivers of Discretionary Firm Donations in Brazil

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rodrigo Bandeira-de-Mello

2008-10-01

Full Text Available Discretionary firm donation is usually related to the stakeholder theory and corporate social performance. Although theoretical explanations for this social behavior are pervasive in related literature, empirical modeling remains underdeveloped. We developed an explanatory structural model of discretionary firm donation using firm and industry level indicators. Unlike previous research, we estimated the explanatory power of the construct we called stakeholder orientation. Our tentative model was tested on a Brazilian sample of 101 publicly traded donor firms, using data on firm donations to social projects and to political candidates in electoral campaigns. The main results suggest that discretionary donation seems to be a strategy for managing conflicting claims in highly stakeholder oriented firms; the characteristics of the firm are more important than industry effects in explaining firm donations; and large firms, showing slack resources, and with a less concentrated ownership structure tend to engage in discretionary donation more intensively.

Foreign Firms, Domestic Wages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Malchow-Møller, Nikolaj; Markusen, James R.; Schjerning, Bertel

Many papers have documented a wage premium in foreign-owned and large firms. However, there is very little formal theory in the literature and empirical analyses are typically not based on hypotheses which are rigorously derived from theory. This paper contributes to the theory-empirics gap...... by developing a model that allows for two "pure" explanations for the wage premium. The first is a heterogenous-worker explanation along the lines of Yeaple (2005), where firms that select more scaleintensive technologies select ex-ante more productive workers. In this case, the wage premium is a pure selection...... phenomenon. The second explanation builds on the heterogeneous-firm model of Melitz (2003) combined with on-the-job learning as in Markusen (2001). Productivity differences between firms are internalized by ex-ante homogeneous workers, so the wage premium is a pure learning phenomenon due to ex-post higher...

Sources of Investment Finance in Firms in Slovakia

OpenAIRE

Mikócziová Jana

2010-01-01

Based on results of the EBRD-World Bank “Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey” (BEEPS), the paper provides an explanation of why firms in Slovakia finance the most of their new investments with retained earnings, followed by bank debt, trade credit and external equity, as well as why small firms tend to use more retained earnings and less bank debt than medium and large firms. The financing patterns of firms in Slovakia are compared to the average financing patterns of firms...

The innovative behaviour of tourism firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sundbo, Jon; Orfila-Sintes, Francina; Sørensen, Flemming

2007-01-01

Tourism firms operate in a competitive sector where innovating is often a condition for survival. This article presents a theoretical framework for understanding tourist firms’ innovative behaviour and innovation systems in tourism. The innovativeness of tourism firms and its determinants...... systems. The article suggests that large size, professionalism, but also entrepreneurship among small tourism firms are important determinants of innovation. Varied innovation networks are another determinant as are supportive innovation systems. These determinants favour Spanish firms, which are more...... are investigated by analysing quantitative as well as qualitative data comparing Spain and Denmark. A taxonomy of tourism firms is suggested and the firms’ characteristics which influence their innovativeness are presented. Additionally, the role of innovation networks is discussed, as is the role of innovation...

International taxation and multinational firm decisions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Barrios, S.; Huizinga, H.P.; Laeven, L.; Nicodeme, G.

2012-01-01

Using a large international firm-level data set, we examine the separate effects of host and additional parent country taxation on the location decisions of multinational firms. Both types of taxation are estimated to have a negative impact on the location of new foreign subsidiaries. The impact of

New Firm Survival: Industry versus Firm Effects

NARCIS (Netherlands)

D.B. Audretsch (David); P. Houweling (Patrick); A.R. Thurik (Roy)

1997-01-01

textabstractRecent studies show that the likelihood of survival differs significantly across firms. Both firm and industry characteristics are hypothesized to account for this heterogenity. Using a longitudinal database of manufacturing firms we investigate whether firm or industry characteristics

Economic incentives of family controlling shareholders and the monitoring role of non-dominant large shareholders in corporate governance: Evidence from the manufacturing firms in Malaysia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chin Fei Goh

2014-08-01

Full Text Available This article explores the economic incentives of dominant controlling shareholders with regard to the expropriation of minority shareholders, on the one hand, and the monitoring role of non-dominant large shareholders in family firms, on the other. The authors argue that family controlling shareholders (or family owners do not share common interests with other shareholders. Drawing on 141 family firms in the manufacturing sector that were listed on Bursa Malaysia (the Malaysian stock exchange from 2003 to 2006, the article finds an inverted U-shaped relationship between excess control rights and a firm's market performance. The findings also show that both the cash flow rights (i.e. claims on cash payouts of family controlling shareholders and the presence of non-dominant large shareholders with the ability to contest control of the firm have a positive relationship with market performance.  This study contributes to the literature by indicating that family owners are unlikely to collude with other large shareholders to expropriate minority shareholders. Furthermore, low levels of excess family-owner control rights are beneficial for market performance because firms may benefit from group affiliations and receive patronage from wealthy owners. However, high levels of excess control rights are understood to be an economic incentive for family owners to expropriate minority shareholders during non-crisis periods.

Educational Competencies That Mid-Sized CPA Firms Value in Their Professional Accounting Staff

Science.gov (United States)

Margheim, Loren; Hora, Judith A.; Pattison, Diane

2010-01-01

This study examined the educational competencies mid-sized accounting firm partners value in their professional staff when making promotion decisions to senior, manager, and partner. Mid-sized firms were defined in this study to include all of the non-Big 4 national firms, the large regional CPA firms, and several large local firms. Over 1,380…

Commercialization of Innovations and Firm Performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Madsen, Erik Strøjer; Smith, Valdemar

The decision on investment in R&D is very important and highly risky for firms' performance and survival in their business. This paper focuses on the commercialization of firms' investment in innovation and how these decisions affect their performance. The study uses a large innovation survey...... of Danish firms holding information on their R&D investment as well as their expenses on marketing which gives knowledge of the commercialization of their innovations. The results suggest a highly significant commercialization of innovation, which means that firms' follows a strategy of investment both...... in innovation and marketing making R&D and marketing complements in their investment decision. However, there is only week evidence for the hypothesis that commercialization of innovations also creates more value for the firms in the short run....

Optimal maintenance of a multi-unit system under dependencies

Science.gov (United States)

Sung, Ho-Joon

The availability, or reliability, of an engineering component greatly influences the operational cost and safety characteristics of a modern system over its life-cycle. Until recently, the reliance on past empirical data has been the industry-standard practice to develop maintenance policies that provide the minimum level of system reliability. Because such empirically-derived policies are vulnerable to unforeseen or fast-changing external factors, recent advancements in the study of topic on maintenance, which is known as optimal maintenance problem, has gained considerable interest as a legitimate area of research. An extensive body of applicable work is available, ranging from those concerned with identifying maintenance policies aimed at providing required system availability at minimum possible cost, to topics on imperfect maintenance of multi-unit system under dependencies. Nonetheless, these existing mathematical approaches to solve for optimal maintenance policies must be treated with caution when considered for broader applications, as they are accompanied by specialized treatments to ease the mathematical derivation of unknown functions in both objective function and constraint for a given optimal maintenance problem. These unknown functions are defined as reliability measures in this thesis, and theses measures (e.g., expected number of failures, system renewal cycle, expected system up time, etc.) do not often lend themselves to possess closed-form formulas. It is thus quite common to impose simplifying assumptions on input probability distributions of components' lifetime or repair policies. Simplifying the complex structure of a multi-unit system to a k-out-of-n system by neglecting any sources of dependencies is another commonly practiced technique intended to increase the mathematical tractability of a particular model. This dissertation presents a proposal for an alternative methodology to solve optimal maintenance problems by aiming to achieve the

The Characteristics of Multi-Unit Ownership in Franchising: Evidence from Fast-Food Restaurants in Texas

OpenAIRE

Arturs Kalnins; Francine Lafontaine

1996-01-01

One empirical phenomenon that has received little attention in the franchising literature is the tendency for individual franchisees to own not just one but several units of a given franchised chain. Most current theories of franchising, based on incentives, information asymmetries, and strategic arguments, have little capacity to explain this phenomenon. In fact, several of them imply that all units should be independently owned and operated. However, given the existence of multi-unit owners...

Working Capital Management and Firm Listing Status

OpenAIRE

Seraina Anagnostopoulou

2012-01-01

This study comparatively examines the determinants of working capital management for listed vs. unlisted firms, and assesses the impact of this policy on profitability by focusing on the cash conversion cycle, a commonly used measure of working capital management. By using a large UK public and private firm sample, it is found that private firms have significantly lower cash conversion cycles than their public counterparts, and that traditional determinants of the cycle significantly differ b...

Sources of Investment Finance in Firms in Slovakia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mikócziová Jana

2010-06-01

Full Text Available Based on results of the EBRD-World Bank “Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey” (BEEPS, the paper provides an explanation of why firms in Slovakia finance the most of their new investments with retained earnings, followed by bank debt, trade credit and external equity, as well as why small firms tend to use more retained earnings and less bank debt than medium and large firms. The financing patterns of firms in Slovakia are compared to the average financing patterns of firms in selected OECD-countries. Furthermore, measures to stimulate corporate investments and their financing are proposed.

Capital market financing, firm growth, and firm size distribution

OpenAIRE

Didier Brandao,Tatiana; Levine,Ross Eric; Schmukler,Sergio L.

2015-01-01

How many and which firms issue equity and bonds in domestic and international markets, how do these firms grow relative to non-issuing firms, and how does firm performance vary along the firm size distribution? To evaluate these questions, a new data set is constructed by matching data on firm-level capital raising activity with balance sheet data for 45,527 listed firms in 51 countries. T...

Overeducation, wages and promotions within the firm

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hartog, J.

2004-01-01

We analyse data from personnel records of a large firm producing energy and telecommunication and test for the effect of deviations between required and attained education of workers. Required education is measured as hiring standards set by the firm. We find the usual effects of over- and

Female Directors, Board Committees and Firm Performance

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Green, Colin P.; Homroy, Swarnodeep

A number of studies have found little economic impact of board gender diversity on firm performance. We return to this issue in the context of large European firms. Our contribution is twofold. First, using information on the gender of CEOs children as a source of exogenous variation in female

Do Treasure Islands Create Firm Value?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Choy, Siu Kai; Lai, Tat-kei

On October 11, 2011, a non-governmental organization called ActionAid published a report condemning the FTSE 100 firms for holding an unusually large number of subsidiaries in tax havens. Urging the government to take appropriate actions, the report raised the firms’ costs of holding tax haven...... subsidiaries. After this event, there was a 0.9% drop in cumulative abnormal returns among the non-financial firms (corresponding to about £9 billion in market capitalization), more so for better-governed firms and those with larger shares of subsidiaries in tax havens. We find some evidence that government...

A Robust Open Ascending-price Multi-unit Auction Protocol against False-name Bids

Science.gov (United States)

Iwasaki, Atsushi; Yokoo, Makoto; Terada, Kenji

This paper develops a new ascending-price multi-unit auction protocol that has following characteristics: (i) it has an open format, (ii) sincere bidding is an equilibrium strategy even if the marginal utilities of each agent can increase and agents can submit false-name bids. False-name bids are bids submitted under fictitious names such as multiple e-mail addresses, which can be done easily in the Internet. This is the first protocol that has these two characteristics. We show that our new protocol outperforms an existing protocol, which satisfies (ii), with respect to the social surplus and the seller's revenue.

Controlling engineering project changes for multi-unit, multi-site standardized nuclear power plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Randall, E.; Boddeker, G.; McGugin, H.; Strother, E.; Waggoner, G.

1978-01-01

Multibillioin dollar multiple nuclear power plant projects have numerous potential sources of engineering changes. The majority of these are internally generated changes, client generated changes, and changes from construction, procurement, other engineering organizations, and regulatory organizations. For multiunit, multisite projects, the use of a standardized design is cost effective. Engineering changes can then be controlled for a single standardized design, and the unit or site unique changes can be treated as deviations. Once an effective change procedure is established for change control of the standardized design, the same procedures can be used for control of unit or site unique changes

Performance investigation on a multi-unit heat pump for simultaneous temperature and humidity control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fan, Hongming; Shao, Shuangquan; Tian, Changqing

2014-01-01

Highlights: • A multi-unit heat pump is proposed for simultaneous temperature and humidity control. • Condensation heat is non, partly or fully recovered for temperature regulation. • Highly integrated heat pump for residential cooling, dehumidification and heating. • High energy saving potential for all-year-round operation in wet and warm regions. - Abstract: A multi-unit heat pump is presented for simultaneous humidity and temperature control to improve the energy efficiency and the thermal comfort. Two parallel connected condensers are employed in the system, locating at the back of the indoor evaporator and the outdoor unit, respectively. The heat pump can operate in four modes, including heating, cooling and dehumidification without and/or with partial or total condensing heat recovery. The experimental investigation shows that the temperature control capacity is from 3.5 kW for cooling to 3.8 kW for heating with the cooling and heating efficiency higher than 3.5 kW kW −1 , and the dehumidification rate is about 2.0 kg h −1 with the efficiency about 2.0 kg h −1 kW −1 . The supply air temperature and humidity can be simultaneously regulated with high accuracy and high efficiency by adjusting the indoor and/or outdoor air volumes. It provides an integrated and effective solution for simultaneous indoor air temperature and humidity control for all-year-round operation in residential buildings

Financial Constrains for Innovative Firms: The Role of Size, Industry and ICT Uses as Determinants of Firms' Financial Structure

Science.gov (United States)

Castillo-Merino, David; Vilaseca-Requena, Jordi; Plana-Erta, Dolors

This paper uses a large and original data set of Catalan firms in all the economic branches to analyse the effects of size, industry and degree of ICT uses on financial constraints for innovative firms. We have conducted a micro econometric analysis following Henry et al. (1999) investment model to empirically contrast the relationship between firms' investment spread over time and their financial structure, and we have used von Kalckreuth (2004) methodology, based on an original survey with data on financial issues. Our results show that it exits a positive and significant relationship between investment shift and financial structure, emerging financial constraints for more innovative firms. Furthermore, these constraints are higher for micro companies and firms within the knowledge-advanced services' industry. Finally, we have also found that advanced ICT uses by more innovative firms allow them to reduce constraints of access to sources of finance.

Earnings management, audit committee effectiveness and the role of blockholders ownership: Evidence from UK large firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Murya Habbash

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The existing literature documents that the quality of financial reporting is higher when firms have effective audit committees. However, recent studies find that audit committees are not effective in family firms where agency conflicts arise between controlling and non-controlling shareholders. This study extends the previous findings by investigating the effectiveness of audit committees in firms with similar agency conflicts when one owner obtains effective control of the firm. Compared to firms with a low level of block ownership, high-blockholder firms face less agency problems due to the separation of ownership and management, but more severe agency problems between controlling (blockholders and non-controlling shareholders (minority shareholders. Using a unique hand-collected sample, this study tests the largest 350 UK firms for three years from 2005 to 2007, and shows that firms with effective audit committees have less earnings management. This study also documents that the monitoring effectiveness of audit committees is moderated in firms with high blockholder ownership. The results are not sensitive to the endogeneity test and hold for alternative specifications of both dependent and independent variables. Overall, these findings suggest that audit committees are ineffective in mitigating the majority-minority conflict compared to their effectiveness in reducing owners-managers conflicts. These conclusions, along with some recent similar evidence (e.g., Rose, 2009 and Guthrie and Sokolowsky, 2010, may raise doubts about the monitoring role of blockholders asserted by agency theorists and widely accepted in corporate governance literature.

The Impact of the Demand for Integration in the Large Multi-Business Unit Firm on the IT Organization Structure

Science.gov (United States)

Larson, Eric Christopher

2012-01-01

Large, multi-business unit firms are decentralizing their overall corporate structures. At the same time, the structures of their IT organizations are becoming more centralized. This is contrary to current wisdom that the IT organization structure will mimic the structure of the corporation, all else being equal. Because the general business…

Firm Size as Moderator to Non-Linear Leverage-Performance Relation: An Emerging Market Review

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Umar Farooq

2017-08-01

such losses are more prominent for small size firms. Results also show that the leverage-performance relation is nonlinear for medium and large size firms. However, these firms are not targeting optimal level and overleveraging that ultimately decrease their profits. So, financial managers of small size firms should avoid debt financing while for large and medium size firms, managers need to adjust their debt ratio to its optimal level.

Executive compensation and firm performance: Evidence from Indian firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mehul Raithatha

2016-09-01

Full Text Available The study examines the relationship between executive compensation and firm performance among Indian firms. The evidence suggests that firm performance measured by accounting, as well as market-based measures, significantly affects executive compensation. We also test for the presence of persistence in executive compensation by employing the system-generalised methods of moments (GMM estimator. We find significant persistence in executive compensation among the sample firms. Further, we report the absence of pay–performance relationship among the smaller sample firms and business group affiliated firms. Thus, our findings cast doubts over the performance-based executive compensation practices of Indian business group affiliated firms.

Cost Focussed Firms and Internet Usage

OpenAIRE

Joanne Loundes

2002-01-01

This paper looks at Internet usage by Australian firms that have a cost focussed competitive strategy. The data source for this analysis is the Melbourne Institute Business Survey, conducted by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. The survey was conducted in late 2001, and targeted large Australian firms. Instrumental variables estimation found that cost-focussed organizations utilised the Internet more intensively for both internal organizational activities and ex...

Racial Bias in the Manager-Employee Relationship: An Analysis of Quits, Dismissals, and Promotions at a Large Retail Firm

Science.gov (United States)

Giuliano, Laura; Levine, David I.; Leonard, Jonathan

2011-01-01

Using data from a large U.S. retail firm, we examine how racial matches between managers and their employees affect rates of employee quits, dismissals, and promotions. We exploit changes in management at hundreds of stores to estimate hazard models with store fixed effects that control for all unobserved differences across store locations. We…

The Role of Technology Spillovers in the Process of Water Pollution Abatement for Large International Firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luigi Aldieri

2017-05-01

Full Text Available The objective of this paper is to analyze the effects of technology externalities stemming from different technological sectors for international firms engaged both in water pollution abatement and in dirty activities. We present a theoretical framework and an empirical analysis based upon a dataset composed of worldwide R&D-intensive firms. In order to identify the technological proximity between the firms, we construct an original Mahalanobis environmental industry weight matrix, based on the construction of technological vectors for each firm, with European ecological patents distributed across more technology classes. Opportune econometric techniques that deal with the firms’ unobserved heterogeneity and the weak exogeneity of the explanatory variables are implemented. The findings show significant spillover effects on the productivity and environmental performance of the firms.

Microcap pharmaceutical firms: linking drug pipelines to market value.

Science.gov (United States)

Beach, Robert

2012-01-01

This article examines predictors of the future market value of microcap pharmaceutical companies. This is problematic since the large majority of these firms seldom report positive net income. Their value comes from the potential of a liquidity event such as occurs when a key drug is approved by the FDA. The typical scenario is one in which the company is either acquired by a larger pharmaceutical firm or enters into a joint venture with another pharmaceutical firm. Binary logistic regression is used to determine the impact of the firm's drug treatment pipeline and its investment in research and development on the firm's market cap. Using annual financial data from 2007 through 2010, this study finds that the status of the firm's drug treatment pipeline and its research and development expenses are significant predictors of the firm's future stock value relative to other microcap pharmaceutical firms.

Tariffs and Firm-Level Heterogeneous Fixed Export Costs

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schröder, Philipp J.H.; Jørgensen, Jan Guldager

2006-01-01

This paper presents a two country intra-industry trade model with bilateral ad valorem tariffs and fixed export costs that are heterogeneous across firms. In this model not all firms will choose to export. We examine the effects of reciprocal changes in the tariff and the fixed export barrier...... on the number of firms, firm profits, tariff revenue and consumer welfare. We show that both types of trade barriers reduce (increase) the number of exporting (pure domestic) firms. However, the sum of available home and foreign varieties may actually increase for small tariffs. Firm profits fall for both...... the tariff and the fixed export barrier. Tariff revenue falls for an increase in fixed exporting costs whereas we have a Laffer curve effect for the tariff. Finally, we establish that welfare falls with fixed export costs and large tariffs but increases for small tariffs, i.e. there exist a welfare...

Managing innovation in SMEs product development in small Irish electronics firms

CERN Document Server

Ledwith, Ann; Bessant, John

2009-01-01

Innovating and developing new products is critical for the survival and growth of any small firm but particularly for technology based firms. This study of NPD at small Irish electronics firms makes two main contributions to knowledge. Firstly, the management of NPD at small firms is found to be different from that at large firms in several respects including; NPD resources and expenditure, organising for NPD, NPD process proficiency, marketing and technical skills and proficiency, R&D/marke...

Small firm perspective in customer relationship management implementation

OpenAIRE

Teh, Soo Yee

2017-01-01

CRM has been a popular topic since the 90s and several of studies have been conducted by academic scholars from diverse multidisciplinary fields of study. CRM implementation have always been focused in large organizations and not that much attention given has been to smaller size organization. However, with the emerging small size firms in the market CRM software providers shifted the attention from larger firms to smaller size firms. The ready to use software, lower cost and features functio...

Barriers to innovation within large financial services firms : An in-depth study into disruptive and radical innovation projects at a bank

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Das, P.A.C.; Verburg, R.M.; Verbraeck, A.; Bonebakker, Lodewijk

2017-01-01

Purpose - Since the 2008 financial crisis, the financial industry is in need of innovation to increase stability and improve quality of services. The purpose of this paper is to explore internal barriers that influence the effectiveness of projects within large financial services firms focussing on

Second-best energy policies for heterogeneous firms

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Verhoef, E.T.; Nijkamp, P.

1999-01-01

This paper investigates second-best issues in the regulation of external costs of energy use by heterogeneous firms. The efficiency of regulatory energy policies depends in general on the policy incentives given for both output reduction and input substitution. The resulting endogeneity of firms' supply functions appears to lead to complicated policy rules. In contrast to earlier efforts, the analysis considers an arbitrarily large number of non-identical price-taking firms in a joint market; a large variety of possible production functions, including varying levels of economies of scale and possibilities for input substitution; and elasticities of market demand which may vary from completely elastic to completely inelastic. Two second-best instruments are considered, namely output taxes and energy-efficiency standards, and are compared to the benchmark of first-best energy taxes. The underlying market factors determining the relative efficiency of these second-best instruments, when used optimally, are identified

The Dispersion of Employees' Wage Increases and Firm Performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Grund, Christian; Westergård-Nielsen, Niels Chr.

does not induce any monetary incentives. Evidence from unique Danish linked employer employee data shows that large dispersion of wage growth within firms is generally connected with low firm performance. The results are mainly driven by white collar rather than blue collar workers.......In this contribution, we examine the interrelation between intra-firm wage increases and firm performance. Previous studies have focused on the dispersion of wages in order to examine for the empirical dominance of positive monetary incentives effects compared to adverse effects due to fairness...... considerations. We argue that the dispersion of wage increases rather than wage levels is a crucial measure for monetary incentives in firms. The larger the dispersion of wage increases the higher the amount of monetary incentives in firms. In contrast, huge wage inequality without any promotion possibilities...

Do Peer Firms Affect Firm Corporate Social Responsibility?

OpenAIRE

Shenggang Yang; Heng Ye; Qi Zhu

2017-01-01

Peer-firm strategies are a critical factor for corporate finance, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the main trend for evaluating the behavior of firms. On the basis of the connection between peer strategy and CSR, this paper explores the CSR strategies employed by a sample of Chinese firms during the 2008–2015 period. Our two main empirical findings are as follows. First, the CSR strategies of firms have a positive effect on their CSR behavior. Second, when there is the CSR gap be...

Gendering dynamic capabilities in micro firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yevgen Bogodistov

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Gender issues are well-researched in the general management literature, particular in studies on new ventures. Unfortunately, gender issues have been largely ignored in the dynamic capabilities litera­ture. We address this gap by analyzing the effects of gender diversity on dynamic capabilities among micro firms. We consider the gender of managers and personnel in 124 Ukrainian tourism micro firms. We examine how a manager’s gender affects the firm’s sensing capacities and investigate how it moderates team gender diversity’s impact on sensing capacities. We also investigate how person­nel composition impacts seizing and reconfiguration capacities. We find that female managers have several shortcomings concerning a firm’s sensing capacity but that personnel gender diversity increa­ses this capacity. Team gender diversity has positive effects on a firm’s seizing and reconfiguration abilities. Our study advances research on gender diversity and its impact on firm capabilities and illustrates its relevance for staffing practices in micro firms.

Job Creation by Firms in Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ibsen, Rikke Falkner; Westergård-Nielsen, Niels

-offs and mergers. The analysis will make it possible to differentiate between net and gross creation of jobs because we can follow each single individual in and out of jobs. We have for Denmark found that size on its own does not have a big impact, but young firms are much more likely to contribute to a positive...... growth. For the U.S. it has been found that the growth in jobs comes from small businesses. A closer analysis though shows that the main factor here is the firm age. Thus, it is found that young firms net create the most jobs, but they are also responsible for the most job destructions.......In this paper we will look at job creation and destruction in firms. We will answer the question if it is the large companies that create jobs, while the smaller companies are contributing much less. Or is it the young companies that create jobs? And who destroys the most jobs? In the crisis...

Internal Capital Market Controls and Financial Performance in Multidivisional Firms.

OpenAIRE

Hill, Charles W L

1988-01-01

It is proposed that, within the population of M-form firms, the control systems necessary to realize economic benefits from interrelationships between subunits o f a firm are incompatible with the systems necessary to realize benef its from an M-form type internal capital market. This hypothesis is t ested on 156 large U.K. firms. Questionnaire data are used to classif y the firms according to their internal control characteristics. The findings provide tentative support for the hypothesis. C...

Where Gibrat meets Zipf: Scale and scope of French firms

Science.gov (United States)

Bee, Marco; Riccaboni, Massimo; Schiavo, Stefano

2017-09-01

The proper characterization of the size distribution and growth of firms represents an important issue in economics and business. We use the Maximum Entropy approach to assess the plausibility of the assumption that firm size follows Lognormal or Pareto distributions, which underlies most recent works on the subject. A comprehensive dataset covering the universe of French firms allows us to draw two major conclusions. First, the Pareto hypothesis for the whole distribution should be rejected. Second, by discriminating across firms based on the number of products sold and markets served, we find that, within the class of multi-product companies active in multiple markets, the distribution converges to a Zipf's law. Conversely, Lognormal distribution is a good benchmark for small single-product firms. The size distribution of firms largely depends on firms' diversification patterns.

CNSS plant concept, capital cost, and multi-unit station economics

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

1984-07-01

United Engineers and Constructors (UE and C) and the Babcock and Wilcox Company (B and W) have performed several studies over the last eight years related to small integral pressurized water reactors. These reactors include the 365 MWt (100 MWe) Consolidated Nuclear Steam Generator (CNSG) and the 1200 MWt Consolidated Nuclear Steam System (CNSS). The studies, mostly performed under contract to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have led to a 1250 MWt (400 MWe) Consolidated Nuclear Steam System (CNSS) plant concept, with unique design and cost features. This report contains an update of earlier studies of the CNSS reactor and balance-of-plant concept design, capital costs, and multi-unit plant economics incorporating recent design developments, improvements, and post-TMI-2 upgrades. The economic evaluation compares the total system economic impact of a phased, three stage 400 MWe CNSS implementation program, i.e., a three-unit station, to the installation of a single 1200 MWe Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) into a typical USA utility system.

CNSS plant concept, capital cost, and multi-unit station economics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1984-07-01

United Engineers and Constructors (UE and C) and the Babcock and Wilcox Company (B and W) have performed several studies over the last eight years related to small integral pressurized water reactors. These reactors include the 365 MWt (100 MWe) Consolidated Nuclear Steam Generator (CNSG) and the 1200 MWt Consolidated Nuclear Steam System (CNSS). The studies, mostly performed under contract to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have led to a 1250 MWt (400 MWe) Consolidated Nuclear Steam System (CNSS) plant concept, with unique design and cost features. This report contains an update of earlier studies of the CNSS reactor and balance-of-plant concept design, capital costs, and multi-unit plant economics incorporating recent design developments, improvements, and post-TMI-2 upgrades. The economic evaluation compares the total system economic impact of a phased, three stage 400 MWe CNSS implementation program, i.e., a three-unit station, to the installation of a single 1200 MWe Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) into a typical USA utility system

An empirical examination of the influence of industry and firm drivers on the rate of internationalization by firms

Science.gov (United States)

Elango, B.

A gradual shift in U.S. firms' 'center of gravity' toward international markets is taking place. This study seeks to explain which drivers are related to this push toward international markets by U.S. firms. In addressing internationalization, previous research has not focused on various drivers that influence the rate of internationalization. Drivers refer to forces, both within and outside the firm, that impact (both positively and negatively) a firm's extent of internationalization. The role of these drivers on the rate of internationalization, though acknowledged in the literature, is yet to be validated through empirical research. This research seeks to narrow the gap in the literature by testing the various relationships among industry drivers, firm drivers, and the rate of internationalization. The objectives of this study are: (A) To develop a conceptual framework that takes into account various forces that influence the internationalization strategy of a firm; (B) To examine empirically (a) the influence of industry drivers on the rate of internationalization pursued by firms; and, (b) the influence of firm drivers on the rate of internationalization by firms. The sample for this study consists of 158 large U.S.- based multinational firms drawn from seven different industries. Data for the study is gathered from a variety of sources including the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis; COMPUSTAT; and WORLDSCOPE databases. Set-wise regression models were used for data analysis. This study found that global market growth rate, domestic market growth rate, relative size of domestic market to international market, employee productivity, administrative investments, as well as new plant and equipment influences the international strategy of firms. This study explains about 24 percent of the variance of the rate of internationalization. This research finding is contributory to our existing understanding of internationalization in many ways

Organizing Innovation within Incumbent Firms: Structure Enabling Strategic Autonomy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Looy, Bart; van Looy, Bart; Visscher, Klaasjan

2011-01-01

In this paper we will discuss how large established firms can be effective in organizing innovation alongside their current business. We examine the trajectory of an incumbent firm in the telecommunication industry – Alcatel – which has been successful in exploring and exploiting the promises of

Tumor Volume Decrease via Feeder Occlusion for Treating a Large, Firm Trigone Meningioma.

Science.gov (United States)

Nakashima, Takuma; Hatano, Norikazu; Kanamori, Fumiaki; Muraoka, Shinsuke; Kawabata, Teppei; Takasu, Syuntaro; Watanabe, Tadashi; Kojima, Takao; Nagatani, Tetsuya; Seki, Yukio

2018-01-01

Trigone meningiomas are considered a surgical challenge, as they tend to be considerably large and hypervascularized at the time of presentation. We experienced a case of a large and very hard trigone meningioma that was effectively treated using initial microsurgical feeder occlusion followed by surgery in stages. A 19-year-old woman who presented with loss of consciousness was referred to our hospital for surgical treatment of a brain tumor. Radiological findings were compatible with a left ventricular trigone meningioma extending laterally in proximity to the Sylvian fissure. At initial surgery using the transsylvian approach, main feeders originating from the anterior and lateral posterior choroidal arteries were occluded at the inferior horn; however, only a small section of the tumor could initially be removed because of its firmness. Over time, feeder occlusion resulted in tumor necrosis and a 20% decrease in its diameter; the mass effect was alleviated within 1 year. The residual meningioma was then totally excised in staged surgical procedures after resection became more feasible owing to ischemia-induced partial softening of the tumor. When a trigone meningioma is large and very hard, initial microsurgical feeder occlusion in the inferior horn can be a safe and effective option, and can lead to necrosis, volume decrease, and partial softening of the residual tumor to allow for its staged surgical excision.

The Limited Utility of Multiunit Data in Differentiating Neuronal Population Activity.

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Corey J Keller

Full Text Available To date, single neuron recordings remain the gold standard for monitoring the activity of neuronal populations. Since obtaining single neuron recordings is not always possible, high frequency or 'multiunit activity' (MUA is often used as a surrogate. Although MUA recordings allow one to monitor the activity of a large number of neurons, they do not allow identification of specific neuronal subtypes, the knowledge of which is often critical for understanding electrophysiological processes. Here, we explored whether prior knowledge of the single unit waveform of specific neuron types is sufficient to permit the use of MUA to monitor and distinguish differential activity of individual neuron types. We used an experimental and modeling approach to determine if components of the MUA can monitor medium spiny neurons (MSNs and fast-spiking interneurons (FSIs in the mouse dorsal striatum. We demonstrate that when well-isolated spikes are recorded, the MUA at frequencies greater than 100Hz is correlated with single unit spiking, highly dependent on the waveform of each neuron type, and accurately reflects the timing and spectral signature of each neuron. However, in the absence of well-isolated spikes (the norm in most MUA recordings, the MUA did not typically contain sufficient information to permit accurate prediction of the respective population activity of MSNs and FSIs. Thus, even under ideal conditions for the MUA to reliably predict the moment-to-moment activity of specific local neuronal ensembles, knowledge of the spike waveform of the underlying neuronal populations is necessary, but not sufficient.

Negotiating land: Foreign Firms, Large Scale Mining and Human Rights in Colombia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juan David Velasco

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The sharp increase in land acquisitions by foreign firms in African, Asian and Latin-American countries reflects a new phase of global capitalism. Colombia is no exception to this new trend of global capitalism, and in the last decade foreign companies have been visibly involved in the local land market. In this regard, this paper reviews from a Human Rights perspective the land acquisition strategies implemented by three foreign companies engaged in open-pit coal mining operations in La Guajira and Cesar. The results indicate that formality of land ownership and the institutional constraints on firms -related to corporate governance, being listed in stock markets and the veto power of international buyers- have a significant effect on the respect for Human Rights.

Do Firms Believe in Interest Rate Parity?

OpenAIRE

Matthew R. McBrady; Sandra Mortal; Michael J. Schill

2010-01-01

Using a broad sample of international corporate bond offerings, we provide evidence that corporate borrowers make opportunistic currency choices, in that they denominate the currency of their bonds in a manner that is inconsistent with a belief in either covered or uncovered interest rate parity. Using firm-level tests, we identify a number of characteristics of firms that engage in opportunistic behavior. We observe that large issuers located in developed markets with investment-grade rating...

The exponential age distribution and the Pareto firm size distribution

OpenAIRE

Coad, Alex

2008-01-01

Recent work drawing on data for large and small firms has shown a Pareto distribution of firm size. We mix a Gibrat-type growth process among incumbents with an exponential distribution of firm’s age, to obtain the empirical Pareto distribution.

Multi-unit dosage formulations of theophylline for controlled release applications.

Science.gov (United States)

Uhumwangho, Michael U; Okor, Roland S

2007-01-01

The study was carried out to investigate the drug release profiles of multi-unit dosage formulations of theophylline consisting of both the fast and slow release components in a unit dose. The fast release component consisted of conventional granules of theophylline formed by mixing the drug powder with starch mucilage (20% w/v) while the slow release component consisted of wax granulations of theophylline formed by triturating the drug powder with a melted Carnauba wax (drug:wax ratio, 4:1). The granules were either filled into capsules or tabletted. In the study design, the drug release characteristics of the individual fast or slow release particles were first determined separately and then mixed in various proportions for the purpose of optimizing the drug release profiles. The evaluating parameters were the prompt release in the first 1 h (mp), the maximum release (m infinity) and the time to attain it (t infinity). Total drug content in each capsule or tablet was 300 mg and two of such were used in dissolution studies. The release kinetics and hence the release mechanism was confirmed by measuring the linear regression coefficient (R2 values) of the release data. The release kinetics was generally most consistent with the Higuchi square root of time relationship (R2 = 0.95). indicating a diffusion-controlled mechanism. The mp (mg) and t infinity (h) values for capsules and tablets of the conventional granules were (420 mg, 3 h) and (348 mg, 5 h), respectively, while for the capsules and tablets of the wax granulations mp and t infinity values were (228 mg, 9 h) and (156 mg, 12 h), respectively, indicating that a combination of wax granulation and tableting markedly retarded drug release. In the multi-unit dose formulations where the conventional and wax granulations were mixed in the ratios 2:1, 1:1 and 1:2 (conventional: matrix), the m infinity and t infinity values for the capsules were (378 mg, 6 h), (326 mg, 6 h) and (272 mg, 7 h), reSpectively. The

Estimating risk propagation between interacting firms on inter-firm complex network.

Science.gov (United States)

Goto, Hayato; Takayasu, Hideki; Takayasu, Misako

2017-01-01

We derive a stochastic function of risk propagation empirically from comprehensive data of chain-reaction bankruptcy events in Japan from 2006 to 2015 over 5,000 pairs of firms. The probability is formulated by firm interaction between the pair of firms; it is proportional to the product of α-th power of the size of the first bankrupt firm and β-th power of that of the chain-reaction bankrupt firm. We confirm that α is positive and β is negative throughout the observing period, meaning that the probability of cascading failure is higher between a larger first bankrupt firm and smaller trading firm. We additionally introduce a numerical model simulating the whole ecosystem of firms and show that the interaction kernel is a key factor to express complexities of spreading bankruptcy risks on real ecosystems.

Estimating risk propagation between interacting firms on inter-firm complex network.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hayato Goto

Full Text Available We derive a stochastic function of risk propagation empirically from comprehensive data of chain-reaction bankruptcy events in Japan from 2006 to 2015 over 5,000 pairs of firms. The probability is formulated by firm interaction between the pair of firms; it is proportional to the product of α-th power of the size of the first bankrupt firm and β-th power of that of the chain-reaction bankrupt firm. We confirm that α is positive and β is negative throughout the observing period, meaning that the probability of cascading failure is higher between a larger first bankrupt firm and smaller trading firm. We additionally introduce a numerical model simulating the whole ecosystem of firms and show that the interaction kernel is a key factor to express complexities of spreading bankruptcy risks on real ecosystems.

Firm Size and the Information Content of Over-the-Counter Common Stock Offerings

OpenAIRE

Robert M. Hull; George E. Pinches

1995-01-01

We examine the announcement period of stock returns for 179 over-the-counter (OTC) firms that issue common stock to reduce nonconvertible debt. We find that small OTC firms experience returns that are significantly more negative than large OTC firms. Regression tests reveal that firm size is a significant factor in accounting for stock returns. Other tests establish as firm size a dominant effect. Our support for a firm size effect is consistent with a differential information effect given th...

Panel Data Models of New Firm Formation in New England

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Jitendra Parajuli

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This study examines the impact of the determinants of new firm formation in New England at the county level from 1999 to 2009. Based on the Spatial Durbin panel model that accounts for spillover effects, it is found that population density and human capital positively affect single-unit firm births within a county and its neighbors. Population growth rate also exerts a significant positive impact on new firm formation, but most of the effect is from spatial spillovers. On the contrary, the ratio of large to small firm in terms of employment size and unemployment rate negatively influence single-unit firm births both within counties and among neighbors. However, there is no significant impact of local financial capital and personal income growth on new firm formation.

Transformation of Manufacturing Firms to Servitisation Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lin, Chih-Cheng; Ma, Zheng; Tanev, Stoyan

2014-01-01

It is crucial for the manufacturing SMEs to reconsider their business strategy in order to be able to launch customer-centric solutions. This ability is associated with a paradigm shift from a product-orientation to service-orientation. One of the major challenges to success in transforming...... a traditional manufacturing firm to service-oriented firms is the conspicuous lack of publications in this research stream. Applying a case study research approach, this study explores the transformation model for manufacturing SMEs to servitisation firms by adopting a network approach, and reveals...

Disability Management in Small Firms.

Science.gov (United States)

Drury, David

1991-01-01

Notes that American research has paid relatively little attention to prospects for adapting disability management practices to financial and management environment of smaller employers. Compares large and small firms in terms of employer disability practices and characteristics of disabled workers; discusses barriers to rehabilitation and…

Female Directors and Firm Performance: Evidence from UK Listed Firms

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Pananda Pasaribu

2017-08-01

Full Text Available The impact of female directors on firm performance has lacked consistency in the previously conducted empirical studies, which may be due to the endogeneity problem, or certain characteristics (i.e. governance, industry, competition. This study examines the relationship between female directors and firm performance by addressing those problems. This study analyses all non-financial UK listed firms during the period 2004-2012 and employs several econometric models. The regression results indicate that there is little evidence that female directors have a positive and strong relationship with firm performance. But, further analysis reports that the UK’s small listed firms experience a positive significant effect, because small firms do not suffer from the problem of over-monitoring and they have more flexibility in composing their boards of directors.

Within- and cross-firm mobility and earnings growth

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Frederiksen, Anders; Halliday, Timothy; Koch, Alexander Karl

While it is well established that both promotions within firms and mobility across firms lead to substantial earnings progression, few studies offer an integrated analysis of the effects of these two types of mobility on earnings growth. To do this, we exploit a large Danish panel data set and te...... deductable pension contributions and more expensive real estate or financed consumption where interest is tax deductable....

Firm Culture and Leadership as Firm Performance Predictors : a Resource-Based Perspective

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wilderom, C.P.M.; van den Berg, P.

2000-01-01

In this study, we tested part of the resource-based view of the firm by examining two 'soft' resources, firm culture and top leadership, as predictors of 'hard' or bottom-line firm performance.Transformational top leadership was found to predict firm performance directly while the link between firm

The Small Firm Effect and the Quality of Entrepreneurs

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Chen, Jing

of this alternative explanation, versus the existing theories for the small firm effect, this paper examines the persistence of the small firm effect on new business survival and the founders’ post-entry occupational choice. Using employer-employee matched panel data obtained from Statistics Denmark, I find...... that the size of entrepreneurs’ prior employers continues to have a negative correlation with the survival of startups for the first three years, but the size effect gradually fades away afterwards. The magnitude of the correlation is largely reduced if the new businesses were formed in sectors...... barriers of entry in sectors clustered by small firms, while related industry experience further facilitates the transition into self-employment for small firm employees....

Firm Innovation and the Ratchet Effect Among Consumer Packaged Goods Firms

OpenAIRE

Christine Moorman; Simone Wies; Natalie Mizik; Fredrika J. Spencer

2012-01-01

We consider how public firms influence their stock market valuations by timing the introduction of innovative new products. Our focus is on innovation ratchet strategy --firms timing the introduction of innovations in order to demonstrate an improvement in the number of introductions over time. We document that public firms use an innovation ratchet strategy more often than do private firms and that the stock market rewards public firms for doing so. These rewards from the stock market, howev...

Does Input Quality Drive Measured Differences in Firm Productivity?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fox, Jeremy T.; Smeets, Valerie Anne Rolande

is roughly of the same order of magnitude as some competitive effects found in the literature, but input quality measures do not explain most productivity dispersion, despite economically large production function coefficients. We find that the wage bill explains as much dispersion as human capital measures.......Firms in the same industry can differ in measured productivity by multiples of 3. Griliches (1957) suggests one explanation: the quality of inputs differs across firms. We add labor market history variables such as experience and firm and industry tenure, as well as general human capital measures...

Entry Mode and Performance of Nordic Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wulff, Jesper

2015-01-01

including the proposed moderating effect, on average, yield higher post-entry performance. This study sheds light on inconsistent results found in previous research investigating the impact of international experience and has practical implications for managerial decision-making.......This study investigates whether the relationship between mode of international market entry and non-location bound international experience is weaker for firms that are large or have a high foreign to total sales ratio, labeled multinational experience. Empirical evidence based on 250 foreign...... market entries made by Norwegian, Danish and Swedish firms suggests that the association between equity mode choice and non-location bound international experience diminishes in the presence of higher levels of multinational experience. Furthermore, firms whose entry mode choice is predicted by the model...

Social Attitudes on Gender Equality and Firms' Discriminatory Pay-Setting

OpenAIRE

Janssen, Simon; Tuor Sartore, Simone N.; Backes-Gellner, Uschi

2014-01-01

We analyze the relationship between social attitudes on gender equality and firms' pay-setting behavior by combining information about regional votes relative to gender equality laws with a large data set of multi-branch firms and workers. The results show that multi-branch firms pay more discriminatory wages in branches located in regions with a higher social acceptance of gender inequality than in branches located in regions with a lower acceptance. The results are similar for different sub...

Do family CEOs impact firm value? An empirical analysis of Indian family firms

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Lakshmi Kalyanaraman

2015-01-01

Full Text Available We study the association between family CEO and firm value on a sample of 288 family firms during the 6-year period, from 2009 to 2014. The sample is drawn from domestic private companies belonging to non-financial services sector included in the NSE CNX 500 index. We find that family CEO has no significant association with firm value, when the family is not the majority shareholder. Family shareholding has positive relationship with firm value, but does not moderate the relationship of family CEO with firm value. We show that family CEO and firm value are negatively related when the family does not hold majority equity stake in the family firm. While family shareholding has no significant relationship with firm value, it has a negative interaction effect on the relationship between family CEO and firm value. The research findings have important implications for family firms as well as the nonfamily investors in the family firms.

Accounting in Agriculture: Measurement practices of listed firms

OpenAIRE

Rute Gonçalves; Patrícia Lopes

2015-01-01

Based on the International Accounting Standard (IAS) 41 – Agriculture, this paper examines measurement practices of biological assets and their drivers, under accounting choice theory, given data from 2012. Taking into consideration 324 listed firms worldwide that have adopted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) until 2011, the empirical evidence supports that while a large number of firms measures biological assets at fair value, there are others that refute the presumption of...

Challenges and status of multi-unit PSA development in Canada

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yalaoui, Smain

2015-01-01

Firstly, this paper discusses the issues and challenges related to the development of a Multi-Unit PSA (MU-PSA) and the general recommendations and conclusions from the MU-PSA Workshop organized by the CNSC in Ottawa, November 2014. This includes a discussion regarding the issue related to the methodological challenges in performing MU-PSA, the site-based risk metrics to be adopted, and the issue of risk aggregation across all hazards and all units. The paper also addresses the challenges for establishing site-based safety goals as the current safety goals were established on a per-unit basis. CNSC Staff efforts, both at the national and international level, on developing whole-site safety goals and guidance on MU-PSA and risk aggregation methodologies will also be discussed. Finally, the paper will provide a summary of the industry effort and road map for completing the pilot Whole-site PSA project for the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, as requested by the Commission following to the public hearing for licence renewal in February 20 and May 29-31, 2013. (author)

Cost Efficiency and Returns to Scope in Italian Investment Firms

OpenAIRE

Marcello Basili; Fulvio Fontini

2005-01-01

This paper estimates cost efficiency and returns to scope of Italian investment firms during the period 1998-2002, following the stochastic frontier function approach. Results indicate a large inefficiency for Italian investment firms (with a high standard deviation across sample) and the absence of significant returns to scope

Essays on Firm Behavior in Developing Economies

Science.gov (United States)

Abeberese, Ama Baafra

identify this impact by studying an electricity rationing program that took place in Ghana in 1998, which placed significant constraints on the electricity available to firms. Using data on Ghanaian manufacturing firms, I find a significant decline in investment in plant and machinery during the electricity rationing period. The decline in investment is more pronounced for firms in electricity-intensive sectors. I explore alternative explanations for the reduction in investment during the electricity rationing period, including a contraction in firm credit access and economy-wide shocks unrelated to electricity constraints, and find no evidence in support of either explanation. The results, therefore, suggest that the reduction in investment during the electricity rationing period was due to the constraints on the availability of electricity. These findings highlight the potentially negative impact of the inadequate provision of electricity that frequently plagues developing countries. These electricity constraints can hinder growth in these countries by curbing investment by firms. In Chapter 3, I turn to the investigation of the effect of a trade-related constraint. Until recently, most of the literature on firms engaged in international trade had largely focused on exporting, with little work on the role of imports in the behavior and performance of firms. Using data on Indonesian manufacturing firms, Chapter 3 analyzes the effect of a reduction in tariffs on imported inputs on the exporting activity of firms. I argue that a tariff reduction program in Indonesia, which generated exogenous variation in the tariffs imposed on imports of goods used by firms, had a positive effect on the exported share of output of firms. I explore the mechanisms underlying this positive effect and find that an increase in the use of imported inputs, facilitated by the reduction in input tariffs, generated an increase in the exported share of output of firms. I also find that this positive

Does Nature of Financial Institutions Matter to Firm Growth in Transition Economies?

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Abubakr SAEED

2009-05-01

Full Text Available Drawing on firm-level data set on transition economies, this paper investigates the relationship between financial institutions and firm growth. The paper focuses in perspective of growth, how the impact of various sources of external finance varies across firm size. Primarily, it is shown a differential impact of institutions on firm growth, precisely, in terms of employment and sale, growth augments by equity market, local banks, foreign banks, state-owned banks, trade credit and leasing, while informal lending abates growth. In particular, the results suggest that local banks and trade credit improve sale growth of small and medium firms, while these financial institutions are insignificant for large firms. By contrast, state owned banks and informal institutions constrain employment growth of small firms. It is confirmed that irrespective of firm size lease financing exerts statistically significant positive impact on firm growth. Moreover, financial system differences across the regions play vital role in firm growth-finance relationship.

MRI quality assurance using the ACR phantom in a multi-unit imaging center

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ihalainen, Toni M.; Kuusela, Linda J.; Savolainen, Sauli E.; Loennroth, Nadja T.; Peltonen, Juha I.; Uusi-Simola, Jouni K.; Timonen, Marjut H.; Sipilae, Outi E.

2011-01-01

Background. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) instrumentation is vulnerable to technical and image quality problems, and quality assurance is essential. In the studied regional imaging center the long-term quality assurance has been based on MagNET phantom measurements. American College of Radiology (ACR) has an accreditation program including a standardized image quality measurement protocol and phantom. The ACR protocol includes recommended acceptance criteria for clinical sequences and thus provides possibility to assess the clinical relevance of quality assurance. The purpose of this study was to test the ACR MRI phantom in quality assurance of a multi-unit imaging center. Material and methods. The imaging center operates 11 MRI systems of three major manufacturers with field strengths of 3.0 T, 1.5 T and 1.0 T. Images of the ACR phantom were acquired using a head coil following the ACR scanning instructions. Both ACR T1- and T2-weighted sequences as well as T1- and T2-weighted brain sequences in clinical use at each site were acquired. Measurements were performed twice. The images were analyzed and the results were compared with the ACR acceptance levels. Results. The acquisition procedure with the ACR phantom was faster than with the MagNET phantoms. On the first and second measurement rounds 91% and 73% of the systems passed the ACR test. Measured slice thickness accuracies were not within the acceptance limits in site T2 sequences. Differences in the high contrast spatial resolution between the ACR and the site sequences were observed. In 3.0 T systems the image intensity uniformity was slightly lower than the ACR acceptance limit. Conclusion. The ACR method was feasible in quality assurance of a multi-unit imaging center and the ACR protocol could replace the MagNET phantom tests. An automatic analysis of the images will further improve cost-effectiveness and objectiveness of the ACR protocol

Regional infrastructure and firm investment. Theory and empirical evidence for Italy

OpenAIRE

Aiello, Francesco; Iona, Alfonsina; Leonida, Leone

2009-01-01

We model the channels through which public expenditure on infrastructure influences firm value and shapes its investment decisions via both adjustment costs and marginal profitability of capital. We test these hypotheses by using a large panel of Italian firms. Empirical results show that infrastructure interacts with revenues and costs in shaping firm's profitability of capital and influences its adjustment costs. Finally we find that infrastructure expenditure contributes to reduce the econ...

Characteristics of Intrapreneurs in Scale-Intensive Service Firms

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Katja Maria Hydle

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This empirical paper explores the work of employees in charge of service innovation when firms develop and launch new scale-intensive services by addressing two re- search questions: i How do employees responsible for service innovation work? and ii what are the related managerial implications when developing and launching new scale-intensive services? To this end, 21 qualitative, in-depth interviews were con- ducted with employees in five large scale-intensive service firms. The findings suggest that the involvement of internal professionals is an asset when new scale-intensive services are developed, and that internal professionals act as intrapreneurs when they are involved in the development of radically new scale-intensive services. This paper integrates understanding from the innovation management literature with knowledge of professionals from extant literature on professional service firms since we find that professionals in scale-intensive firms act as intrapreneurs. Thus, this pa- per extends the theory on determinants of innovation in scale-intensive service firms, blending insights from both findings and theory.

Pengaruh Family Control, Firm Size, Firm Risk, Dan Firm Life Cycle Terhadap Profitabilitas Dan Nilai Perusahaan Sektor Industri Barang Konsumsi

OpenAIRE

Servin, Servin

2014-01-01

This study aims to examine the effect of family control, firm size, firm risk, and firm lifecycle towards profitability and firm's value. Sampels were taken from 27 consumer goodscompanies, listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange, ranging from 2010 – 2012. The hypotheseswere tested using multiple regression analysis. In this study, profitability was measured byROA (Return on Asset) and firm's value was measured by Tobin's q. The result were, familycontrol and life cycle stage-growth had negative i...

Hybrid competitive strategies, organizational structure, and firm performance

OpenAIRE

Pertusa Ortega, Eva María

2008-01-01

Comunicación presentada en SMS 28th Annual International Conference, Cologne, Germany, October 12-15, 2008. This paper analyzes the internal characteristics of organizational structure which have an influence on the development of hybrid competitive strategies and their link to firm performance. The study examines a sample of large Spanish firms belonging to different sectors by means of the Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique, using formative dimensions for competitive strategy and orga...

ERP and the changing role of IT in engineering consultancy firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Voordijk, Johannes T.; Stegwee, R.A.; Helmus, Rogier

2005-01-01

Purpose – In recent years, large engineering consultancy firms in the Netherlands have implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the changing role of information technology (IT) in these firms after implementing ERP.

Division of Labor, Transaction Cost, Emergence of the Firm and Firm Size

OpenAIRE

Pak-Wai Liu; Xiaokai Yang

1999-01-01

In this paper a general equilibrium model is constructed to explain the emergence of firms and change in firm size by the tradeoff between economies of specialization and transaction cost. We show that firms emerge from the development of division of labor if the transaction efficiency for labor is smaller than that for intermediate goods. Given the emergence of firms, change in the average size of firms (average employment) will depend on the change in transaction efficiency for intermediate...

Internationalization of Emerging Economies and Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

A contribution to the scarce body of literature on internationalization of emerging economies and their firms. Using a large variety of national contexts, it addresses the advancing business development of new emerging economies and their impact on the process of internationalization of emerging...

Default Risk and Firm Value of Shipping & Logistics Firms in Korea

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hyun Jung Nam

2017-07-01

Full Text Available As shipping and logistics industry is one of the core industries in Korea, the volume was ranked in the fifth highest in the world. However, shipping and logistics industry of Korea has suffered from default risk since Global Financial Crisis in 2008. This study examines the relationship between the default risk, as measured by the Altman K-Score, and firm value, as measured by the Return on Assets (ROA, of shipping and logistics firms in Korea and compares the impact of default risk on firm value between good financial health firms and poor financial health firms. As the trends of KScores over a ten-year periods, shipping and logistics firms in Korea register weak-to-moderate financial healthy rage. We find that Altman K-Score is significantly linked with firm value and also higher performing firms as measured by the ROA exhibit higher financial health as measured by KScore. Although nine years have been passed since Global Financial Crisis 2008, Korean shipping and logistics industry is still under the financial depression. This study proposes that systematic financial alert system of Korean shipping and logistics industry should be required to decrease default risk reflecting significance of Korean economy.

Strategies for knowledge management in law firms in Botswana

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M.C. Fombad

2009-02-01

Full Text Available This article formulates a route map on how law firms in Botswana may utilise knowledge management to enhance their competitive edge amidst the changing legal environment. It draws from the multiple definitions and perspectives of knowledge management, several frameworks and models together with the empirical findings to recommend a strategy for knowledge management in law firms in Botswana. It underscores the fact that knowledge management is becoming an imperative for the survival of law firms as knowledge intensive organisations. Law firms in Botswana can no longer afford to rely on the traditional methods of managing knowledge because there is a need for the 'best minds' and the best knowledge in their area of practice. It is recommended that lawyers should be proactive, adaptive, innovative, effective and competitive in the provision of outstanding, cost-efficient and effective services to clients. Most previous studies in this area have been carried out in developed countries with large law firms.

Cost-effective smoke-free multiunit housing media campaigns: connecting with local communities.

Science.gov (United States)

Modayil, Mary V; Consolacion, Theodora B; Isler, Jonathan; Soria, Sandra; Stevens, Colleen

2011-11-01

Presented are cost-effective paid media strategies to educate Californians to advocate for stronger smoke-free multiunit housing (SF-MUH) policies between 2006 and 2008. Included is a summary of general market and specific ethnic market costs that correspond to SF-MUH attitudes and home smoking bans. Statewide questionnaires indicated that half of the intended general market saw an antitobacco TV ad and half of the intended ethnic markets heard radio ads. Analyses indicated that it cost $0.67 and $0.78 per person to see Caution Tape and Apartment TV ads, respectively. Slightly higher per capita costs corresponded with positive attitudes toward SF-MUH: $0.87 for Caution Tape and $1.00 for Apartment. Lessons learned from this campaign included effectiveness of specific ads in ethnic markets, impact on SF-MUH work plan policy objectives, and the need for collaborations among state and local partners throughout the message development process.

Pharmaceutical R&D performance by firm size: approval success rates and economic returns.

Science.gov (United States)

DiMasi, Joseph A

2014-01-01

The R&D productivity of pharmaceutical firms has become an increasingly significant concern of industry, regulators, and policymakers. To address an important aspect of R&D performance, public and private data sources were used to estimate clinical phase transition and clinical approval probabilities for the pipelines of the 50 largest pharmaceutical firms (by sales) by 3 firms size groups (top 10 firms, top 11-20 firms, and top 21-50 firms). For self-originated compounds, the clinical approval success rates were 14.3%, 16.4%, and 18.4% for top 10 firms, top 11-20 firms, and top 21-50 firms, respectively. The results showing higher success rates for smaller firms were largely driven by outcomes for the small-molecule drugs. Adjustments for the relatively small differences in therapeutic class distributions across the firm size groups showed that the success rate for small-molecule self-originated drugs was 6% below average for top 10 firms and 17% above average for top 21-50 firms. Although success rates for small firms were higher, this advantage was offset to some degree by lower returns on approved drugs, suggesting different strategic objectives with regard to risk and reward by firm size.

Procurement with specialized firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boone, Jan; Schottmuller, C.

2016-01-01

We analyze optimal procurement mechanisms when firms are specialized. The procurement agency has incomplete information concerning the firms' cost functions and values high quality as well as low price. Lower type firms are cheaper (more expensive) than higher type firms when providing low (high)

Tenant Placement Strategies within Multi-Level Large-Scale Shopping Centers

OpenAIRE

Tony Shun-Te Yuo; Colin Lizieri

2013-01-01

This paper argues that tenant placement strategies for large-scale multi-unit shopping centers differ depending on the number of floor levels. Two core strategies are identified: dispersion and departmentalization. There exists a trade-off between three income effects: basic footfall effects, spillover effects, and an effective floor area effect, which varies by the number of floor levels. Departmentalization is favored for centers with more than four floors. Greater spatial complexity also p...

Founder Control, Ownership Structure and Firm Value: Evidence from Entrepreneurial Listed Firms in China

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lijun Xia

2008-06-01

Full Text Available In emerging markets, the deviation between the ultimate controlling shareholders' voting rights and their cash flow rights (hereafter “DVC” in the listed firms is quite prevalent. DVC could be introduced due to the ultimate controlling shareholders' opportunistic incentives, as well as by their incentives to improve firm efficiency. This study uses 229 listed firms ultimately controlled by individuals or families (hereafter “entrepreneurial firms” for 2004 in China, to investigate the effect of DVC on firm value and to determine whether it is different between founder and non-founder controlled firms. We find that DVC has a positive effect on firm value for founder controlled firms. This result implies that investors believe that their interests are better protected by founder controlled firms than by non-founder controlled firms.

Firm Traits and Web Based Disclosures in Top Nigerian Firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bello Ayuba

2016-02-01

Full Text Available The use of the internet as a medium of dissemination of information to stakeholders is increasingly gaining grounds. This study extends existing literature on web disclosures by investigating the characteristics that predict the extent of web-based disclosures. In this study, corporate websites of top Nigerian firms are used as sources of data, while a regression analysis is employed to examine the extent of prediction. Results indicate that the firm size and industry type are significant determinants of web disclosures. However, other firm traits such as ownership dispersion and financial performance do not significantly explain the extent of internet disclosures. The study recommends that a regulatory template for corporate web disclosures be put in place by government regardless of the size or industry classification of the firm. This is with a view to considerably reduce agency conflicts arising from information asymmetry in publicly listed firms in Nigeria.

Estimating productivity with multi-product firms, pricing heterogeneity and the role of international trade

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Smeets, Valerie Anne Rolande; Warzynski, Frederic Michel Patrick

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between exports, imports and firm productivity. We use a rich product-firm-level dataset providing both revenue and quantities of all products for a large panel of Danish manufacturing firms over the period 1998-2008 and link it to firms’ international...

Shaking up the Firm Survival: Evidence from Yogyakarta (Indonesia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aloysius Gunadi Brata

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The survival of firms under changes in the business environment caused by exogenous shocks can be explained using economic Darwinism. Exogenous shocks can cause ‘cleansing effects’. Shocks clean out unproductive firms so that available resources are allocated to the remaining more productive firms. However, shocks may also force out young firms that have the potential to be highly productive in the future, which will lower the average productivity of industries. This is known as the ‘scarring effect’ of shocks. Therefore, the overall impact of exogenous shocks on the allocation of resources depends on the relative magnitude of cleansing and scarring effects. This paper investigates this natural selection mechanism after the Yogyakarta earthquake in 2006. The study uses data on medium-sized and large manufacturing firms in the Yogyakarta province collected by the Indonesian Statistical Agency. The main finding of this paper is that firms that had higher productivity prior to the earthquake in 2006 were more likely to survive after the earthquake, which suggests the existence of a natural selection mechanism, specifically cleansing effects. There is no evidence of the scarring effects of the earthquake on the new entrants.

Outsourcing the law firm library: the UK experience

OpenAIRE

Brown, Fiona

2017-01-01

Since 2009, a number of large and leading UK law firms have outsourced their in-house law library and research service to outsource service providers. Integreon, the leading provider of these services in the UK, commenced operations in Australia in 2011. Since that time, a number of other providers of outsourced law library and legal research services have attracted a number of top-tier Australian law firms as clients. These outsource providers are not currently providing law library and lega...

Small is Beautiful? Firm's Size, Prevention & Food Safety.

OpenAIRE

Rouviere, Elodie; Soubeyran, Raphael

2012-01-01

The European General Food Law of 2005 and the newly promulgated FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FFSMA) of 2010 ask all food operators to implement preventive efforts. In this article, we explore the link between firm’s size and preventive efforts. We show two main results. First, when there is no cross-contamination, small firms will provide higher preventive efforts than large firms. When there is crosscontamination, the effort-size curve may have a "inverted-U" shape. From our results we...

Organizational Structure and Firms' Demand for HRM Practices

OpenAIRE

Eriksson, Tor; Ortega, Jaime

2014-01-01

A question largely left unanswered in previous studies of firms’ use of HRM practices, and the consequences thereof, is why some firms adopt these practices while others do not. We examine empirically the determinants of firms’ demand for HRM pay, work and training practices with a special focus on the role of differences in the organizational structure of firms. For this purpose we merge data from a detailed questionnaire study of Danish private sector firms’ use of HRM practices with workfo...

Firm size and taxes

OpenAIRE

Chongvilaivan, Aekapol; Jinjarak, Yothin

2010-01-01

The scale dependence in firm growth (smaller firms grow faster) is systematically reflected in the size distribution. This paper studies whether taxes affect the equilibrium firm size distribution in a cross-country context. The main finding is that the empirical association between firm growth and corporate tax (VAT) is positive (negative), with notable differences in the response of manufacturing firms and that of the others. We draw implications for recent debate on the impact of taxes and...

Female Directors and Firm Performance: Evidence from UK Listed Firms

OpenAIRE

Pasaribu, Pananda

2017-01-01

The impact of female directors on firm performance has lacked consistency in the previously conducted empirical studies, which may be due to the endogeneity problem, or certain characteristics (i.e. governance, industry, competition). This study examines the relationship between female directors and firm performance by addressing those problems. This study analyses all non-financial UK listed firms during the period 2004-2012 and employs several econometric models. The regression results indi...

Scenarios for multi-unit inertial fusion energy plants producing hydrogen fuel

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Logan, B.G.

1993-12-01

This work describes: (a) the motivation for considering fusion in general, and Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) in particular, to produce hydrogen fuel powering low-emission vehicles; (b) the general requirements for any fusion electric plant to produce hydrogen by water electrolysis at costs competitive with present consumer gasoline fuel costs per passenger mile, for advanced car architectures meeting President Clinton's 80 mpg advanced car goal, and (c) a comparative economic analysis for the potential cost of electricity (CoE) and corresponding cost of hydrogen (CoH) from a variety of multi-unit IFE plants with one to eight target chambers sharing a common driver and target fab facility. Cases with either heavy-ion or diode-pumped, solid-state laser drivers are considered, with ''conventional'' indirect drive target gains versus ''advanced, e.g. Fast Ignitor'' direct drive gain assumptions, and with conventional steam balance-of-plant (BoP) versus advanced MHD plus steam combined cycle BoP, to contrast the potential economics under ''conventional'' and ''advanced'' IFE assumptions, respectively

Leverage, Investment, and Firm Growth

OpenAIRE

Larry Lang; Eli Ofek; Rene M. Stulz

1995-01-01

We show that there is a negative relation between leverage and future growth at the firm level and, for diversified firms, at the segment level. Further, this negative relation between leverage and growth holds for firms with low Tobin's q, but not for high-q firms or firms in high-q industries. Therefore, leverage does not reduce growth for firms known to have good investment opportunities, but is negatively related to growth for firms whose growth opportunities are either not recognized by ...

Dual Headquarters Involvement in Multibusiness Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nell, Phillip Christopher; Kappen, Philip; Dellestrand, Henrik

The strategy literature has shown that headquarters involve themselves into subsidiary operations to add value. Yet, little is known about the extent to which multiple headquarters do so. Therefore, we investigate antecedents of corporate and divisional headquarters’ involvement in innovation...... development projects of subsidiaries. Analyses of 85 innovation development projects reveal that dual innovation importance (innovation that is important for the division and the rest of the firm), and dual dual embeddedness (innovating subsidiary is embedded both within the division and in the rest...... of the firm) lead to greater dual headquarters involvement, especially when the innovation development network is large. The results contribute to the literature on complex parenting and theory of selective headquarters involvement....

The effects of country and firm-level governance on cash management

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Seifert, Bruce; Gonenc, Halit

We examine the effects of both country and firm-level governance on cash holdings and the value of cash for a large international sample during the period 2002-2013. We find that both strong country and strong firm-level governance reduce the amount of cash holdings. We observe that a number of the

Performance of Patenting Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Madsen, Erik Strøjer; Smith, Valdemar; Nielsen, Anders Østergaard

2000-01-01

Most countries focus on industries with high technology and the governments grant subsidies to innovating firms. However, there has been remarkable few studies of the performance of innovative firms or industries. This study examines the performance of patent active firms compared to the non-patenting...... firms within the manufacturing sector in Denmark. Performance is measured both by growth in employment as well as in the return on equity and profit share in turnover. The results suggest that differences in performance of patenting and non-patenting firms are very small, which questions the political...

Information and Communication Technology Clusters, Local Firm ...

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

Information and Communication Technology Clusters, Local Firm Performance, and Employment Generation. As countries steadily increase the share and value of knowledge, information, and services in their economies, governments have been crafting policies to attract foreign investment and establish large ...

When Intra-Firm and Inter-Firm Collaborations Co-Occur

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schleimer, Stephanie Christine; Sculman, Arthur D.

2011-01-01

There is evidence that intra-firm collaboration and inter-firm collaboration are important for new service development (NSD) and new product development (NPD) success. However, evidence of the contributions of each to innovative outcomes is inconsistent. This inconsistency is associated with the ...

The environmental actions of firms: examining the role of spillovers, networks and absorptive capacity.

Science.gov (United States)

Albornoz, Facundo; Cole, Matthew A; Elliott, Robert J R; Ercolani, Marco G

2014-12-15

In the light of climate uncertainty and growing concern for the natural environment, an increasingly important aspect of global business is the environmental behaviour of firms. In this paper we consider the factors that influence firms' environmental actions (EAs). Our study of Argentinean firms concentrates on measures of environmental spillovers, informal and formal networks and absorptive capacity by testing four related hypotheses. We find that foreign-owned firms, large firms and those with a greater capacity to assimilate new environmental technologies are more likely to adopt EAs. We also show that formal and informal networks aid the adoption of EAs in the presence of traditional firm-level spillovers. Finally, we show that foreign-owned firms have different motives to domestic firms for undertaking EAs. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Deciphering the therapeutic stem cell strategies of large and midsize pharmaceutical firms.

Science.gov (United States)

Vertès, Alain A

2014-01-01

The slow adoption of cytotherapeutics remains a vexing hurdle given clinical progress achieved to date with a variety of stem cell lineages. Big and midsize pharmaceutical companies as an asset class still delay large-scale investments in this arena until technological and market risks will have been further reduced. Nonetheless, a handful of stem cell strategic alliance and licensing transactions have already been implemented, indicating that progress is actively monitored, although most of these involve midsize firms. The greatest difficulty is, perhaps, that the regenerative medicine industry is currently only approaching the point of inflexion of the technology development S-curve, as many more clinical trials read out. A path to accelerating technology adoption is to focus on innovation outliers among healthcare actors. These can be identified by analyzing systemic factors (e.g., national science policies and industry fragmentation) and intrinsic factors (corporate culture, e.g., nimble decision-making structures; corporate finance, e.g., opportunity costs and ownership structure; and operations, e.g., portfolio management strategies, threats on existing businesses and patent expirations). Another path is to accelerate the full clinical translation and commercialization of an allogeneic cytotherapeutic product in any indication to demonstrate the disease-modifying potential of the new products for treatment and prophylaxis, ideally for a large unmet medical need such as dry age-related macular degeneration, or for an orphan disease such as biologics-refractory acute graft-versus-host disease. In times of decreased industry average research productivities, regenerative medicine products provide important prospects for creating new franchises with a market potential that could very well mirror that achieved with the technology of monoclonal antibodies.

The impact of gender diversity in the boardroom on firm performance: A South African perspective

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tshipa Jonty

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The study employs panel methodology and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS multiple regression to examine the impact of board gender diversity on firm performance for a sample of 137 Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE listed firms during the period 2002 and 2011. The results show that board gender diversity among South African firms have been improving substantially since 2002 when King II came into force. In 2002, the average South African board had only 4 per cent of women and by 2011, this had increased to 13 per cent. Notably, the findings also show that large South African firms have a greater representivity of women on their boards than small firms. By inference this could mean that gender diversity has a positive influence on firm value as findings further show that firm value in large firms is higher than that in small firms. This study contribute to the debate of whether board gender diversity influences firm value and whether the South African government should consider adopting quota legislation such as in Spain, Norway, The Netherlands and France. The findings suggest that there is evidence of a business case to advocate the implementation of quota legislation in South Africa. Empirical findings proceed to confirm that theories of corporate governance such as agency, resource-dependence, signalling and stakeholding surely provide some support to understanding the relationship between board gender diversity and firm performance.

Informal or Formal Financing? Or Both? First Evidence on the Co-Funding of Chinese Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Degryse, H.A.; Lu, L.; Ongena, S.

2013-01-01

Abstract: The recent financial crisis has reopened the debate on the impact of informal and formal finance on firm growth in developing countries. Using unique survey data, we find that informal finance is associated with higher sales growth for small firms and lower sales growth for large firms. We

A Firm-Specific Analysis of the Exchange-Rate Exposure of Dutch Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

A. de Jong (Abe); J. Ligterink; V. Macrae

2002-01-01

textabstractWe examine the relationship between exchange-rate changes and stock returns for a sample of Dutch firms over 1994-1998. We find that over 50% of the firms are significantly exposed to exchange-rate risk. Furthermore, all firms with significant exchange-rate exposure benefit from a

Stricter Employment Protection and Firms' Incentives to Sponsor Training

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Messe, Pierre-Jean; Rouland, Bénédicte

2014-01-01

to the unemployment insurance system, known as the Delalande tax. In 1999, the measure was subjected to a reform that increased the tax, but only for large firms. We find that this exogenous increase substantially raised firms' incentives to train workers aged 45–49 but had no impact on the training rates among...... workers aged over 50. From a simple model with endogenous firing and training decisions, we give a theoretical illustration of these results....

Essays on Family Firms

OpenAIRE

Zhou, Haoyong

2012-01-01

The dissertation examines corporate performance and capital structure of family firms, contributing to the limited empirical research on family firms. Family firms are prevalent in national economies all over the world. It is the prevalence that makes family firms receive increasing attentions from academia. The dissertation consists of an introduction and three chapters. Each chapter is an independent paper. The first chapter is a joint work with Professor Morten Bennedsen and...

Global Sourcing and Firm Selection

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kohler, Wilhelm; Smolka, Marcel

2014-01-01

We analyze the sourcing strategies of firms active in the Spanish manufacturing sector. We show that firms that select strategies of vertical integration and of foreign sourcing ex post tend to have been more productive, ex ante, than other firms.......We analyze the sourcing strategies of firms active in the Spanish manufacturing sector. We show that firms that select strategies of vertical integration and of foreign sourcing ex post tend to have been more productive, ex ante, than other firms....

Robust, highly customizable, and economical multi-channel electrode for chronic multi-unit recording in behaving animals.

Science.gov (United States)

Tateyama, Yukina; Oyama, Kei; Shiraishi, Masaru; Iijima, Toshio; Tsutsui, Ken-Ichiro

2017-12-01

Multi-unit recording has been one of the most widely used techniques to investigate the correlation between multiple neuronal activities and behavior. However, a common problem of currently used multi-channel electrodes is their physical weakness. In this study, we developed a novel multi-channel electrode with sufficient physical strength to penetrate a thickened dura mater. This electrode consists of low-cost materials and is easily fabricated, and it enables recording without removing dura mater, thereby reducing the risk of inflammation, infection, or brain herniation. The low-cost multi-channel electrode developed in this study would be a useful tool for chronic recording in behaving animals. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Whom do new firms hire?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dahl, Michael S.; Klepper, Steven

2015-01-01

Using the matched employer-employee data set for Denmark and information on the founders of new firms, we analyze the hiring choices of all new firms that entered from 2003 to 2010. We develop a theoretical model in which the quality of a firm’s employees determines its average cost, a firm......, and firm size influence the wages firms pay to their early hires. We find that beginning with the time of entry, larger firms consistently pay higher wages to their new hires. These are firms with greater survival prospects at the time of entry based on the pre-entry backgrounds of their founders...

Do Private Firms Outperform SOE Firms after Going Public in China Given their Different Governance Characteristics?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shenghui Tong

2013-06-01

Full Text Available This study examines the characteristics of board structure that affect Chinese public firm’s financial performance. Using a sample of 871 firms with 699 observations of previously private firms and 1,914 observations of previously state-owned enterprise (SOE firms, we investigate the differences in corporate governance between publicly listed firms that used to be pure private firms before going public and listed firms that used to be SOEs before their initial public offerings (IPOs. Our main finding is that previously private firms outperform previously SOE firms in China after IPOs. In the wake of becoming listed firms, previously SOE firms might be faced with difficulties adjusting to professional business practices to build and extend competitive advantages. In addition, favorable policies and assistance from the government to the SOE firms might have triggered complacency, especially in early years after getting listed. On the other hand, professional savvy and acumen, combined with efficiency and favorable business climate created by the government have probably led the previously private firms to improve their values stronger and faster.

Understanding the Modularization of Business Services : The Maturity of Firms in Bundling Services

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Plugge, A.G.; Bouwman, W.A.G.A.

2017-01-01

Sourcing literature reveals that large firms bundle or unbundle existing business services by means of modularization to achieve organizational agility. However, one may assume that firms need some degree of maturity to manage the complexity that comes along with bundling modularized services.

Firm-specific factors and financial performance of firms in the Czech Republic

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pathirawasam Chandrapala

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The objective of this study is to investigate the role of internal factors in generating financial performance of firms in the Czech Republic. The paper examines the impact of firm specific factors on company financial performance of 974 firms in the Czech Republic over the period 2005 to 2008, using data in the Albertina database. Pooled and panel cross-sectional time series techniques are used for the data analysis. Return on Assets (ROA is the dependent variable of the model and eight firm specific factors are introduced as the explanatory variables. Using Return on Assets as the dependent variable, it is established that the firm size, sales growth and capital turnover are having significant positive impact on financial performance of firms. At the same time, debt ratio and inventory reflect significant negative impact on financial performance of firms. Overall explanatory powers of the two models are low and further research is necessary to increase the statistical power of the model. The results from the present study may be very encouraging and useful for managers as well as investors to plan investment and operational activities to achieve profitability objectives more efficiently and effectively. The findings have important managerial implications.

WHAT DETERMINES THE CAPITAL STRUCTURE OF LISTED FIRMS IN ROMANIA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Floriniţa Duca

2012-10-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the relative importance of four factors in the capital structure decisions of Romanian listed firms. The existing empirical research on capital structure has been largely confined to developed countries. The Romanian Financial Market has been developing at an exponential rate and dedicated research in the field is required. We used 100 firms listed in 2010 at the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The objective of this paper is to build on previous studies model all the important factors affecting capital structure decisions. We find that factors such as tangibility of assets, firm size, liquidity, and profitability have significant influences on the leverage structure chosen by firms.These results are believed to have significant implications for the theory of finance and to be of importance to the corporate treasure in choice of new financing and to the financial analyst.

Assessing the impact of oil prices on firms of different sizes: Its tough being in the middle

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sadorsky, Perry

2008-01-01

Recent empirical research has found evidence of a relationship between oil price movements and stock prices. Most published research investigates the relationship between oil price movements and stock prices using either economy-wide measures of stock prices or industry sector measures of stock prices. An important question that has largely gone unanswered relates to the relationship between oil prices and stock prices when the size of firms is allowed to vary. Relative to large firms, do oil price movements have larger or smaller impacts on the stock prices of small- or medium-sized firms? The answer to this question could have important policy implications that affect economic growth and prosperity. In this paper, a panel of firms is followed over a 17-year period to investigate the relationship between oil price movements, firm size, and stock prices. Evidence is found that shows the relationship between oil price movements and stock prices does vary with firm size and the relationship is strongest for medium-sized firms

The Relationship between Offshoring Strategies and Firm Performance: Impact of innovation, absorptive capacity and firm size

NARCIS (Netherlands)

M.W. Roza-van Vuren (Marja)

2011-01-01

textabstractHow do offshoring strategies impact firm performance? And how are innovation, absorptive capacity and firm size influencing this relationship? This research investigates how firms of varying size, well-established firms and growing firms may profit from relocating business activities to

Firm Size and Monetary Policy Transmission: A Theoretical Model on the Role of Capital Investment Expenditures

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Raabe, K.; Arnold, I.; Kool, C.J.M.

This paper presents a dynamic investment model that explains differences in the sensitivity of small- and large-sized firms to changes in the money market interest rate. In contrast to existing studies on the firm size effects of monetary policy, the importance of firms as monetary transmission

The Dark Side of Valuation: Firms with No Earnings, No History and No Comparables

OpenAIRE

Aswath Damodaran

1999-01-01

In traditional valuation models, we begin by forecasting earnings and cash flows and discount these cash flows back at an appropriate discount rate to arrive at the value of a firm or asset. This task is simpler when valuing firms with positive earnings, a long history of performance and a large number of comparable firms. In this paper, we look at valuation when one or more of these conditions does not hold. We begin by looking ways of dealing with firms with negative earnings, and note that...

Firm-Specific Learning and the Nature of the Firm

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Knudsen, Thorbjørn

2007-01-01

that a conjoint research program, encompassing both transaction costs and capabilities, must be developed and tested empirically. Cet article discute les limites d'une explication de l'existence de la firme fondée exclusivement sur les coûts de transaction en indiquant quelques facteurs additionnels susceptibles...... d'intervenir. Un modèle heuristique simple montre que les effets d'apprentissage spécifiques à la firme peuvent surmonter les coûts de surveillance des employés et expliquer l'existence de la firme même en l'absence de coûts de transaction liés au mode d'organisation de marché. Une comparaison de l......'importance relative des explications fondées sur les coûts de transaction et celles fondées sur les compétences en ce qui concerne l'existence de la firme montre qu'il n'y a aucune raison a priori de supposer la suprématie d'un type d'explication à l'autre. Nous soutenons qu'un programme de recherche conjoint...

Stakeholder Governance, Competition and Firm Value

OpenAIRE

Allen, Franklin; Carletti, Elena; Marquez, Robert

2014-01-01

In many countries, the legal system or social norms ensure that firms are stakeholder oriented. We analyze the advantages and disadvantages of stakeholder-oriented firms that are concerned with employees and suppliers compared to shareholder-oriented firms in a model of imperfect competition. Stakeholder firms are more (less) valuable than shareholder firms when marginal cost uncertainty is greater (less) than demand uncertainty. With globalization shareholder firms and stakeholder firms ofte...

Firm Exit, Technological Progress and Trade

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schröder, Philipp; Sørensen, Allan

The dynamics of export market exit and firm closure have found limited attention in the new heterogeneous-firms trade literature. In fact, several of the predictions on firm survival and exit stemming from this new class of models are at odds with the stylized facts. Empirically, higher productiv......The dynamics of export market exit and firm closure have found limited attention in the new heterogeneous-firms trade literature. In fact, several of the predictions on firm survival and exit stemming from this new class of models are at odds with the stylized facts. Empirically, higher...... productivity firms survive longer, most firm closures are young firms, higher productivity exporters are more likely to continue to export compared to less productive exporters and market exits as well as firm closures are typically preceded by periods of contracting market shares. The present paper shows...... liberalization on export market exit and firm closure....

Legal Technology for Law Firms: Determining Roadmaps for Innovation

OpenAIRE

Kerikmäe, Tanel; Hoffmann, Thomas; Chochia, Archil

2018-01-01

The business model of many law firms, as legal professions on the whole, will be facing a considerable paradigm change since the work provided by law firms in the form of billable hours, in fact, largely consists of services which do not require superior legal education but involve mere data procession. It is only a question of time that the consequence – to have all outsourceable services be performed by means of legal technology – will become public knowledge in the branch, as the costs sav...

Derivatives Usage by Non-Financial Firms in Thailand; implications on the hedging strategy

OpenAIRE

Chawla, Veerathep

2007-01-01

This dissertation is the result of the research carried out to investigate the derivatives usage in 65 non-financial companies across 8 specified industries in Thailand. The use of derivatives in Thailand is growing rapidly every year, our survey shows 75% of firms using derivatives in their hedging strategy. There is no significance in the use between Thai and Foreign companies in Thailand, while smaller firms do not use derivatives as much as larger firms, especially large listed companies....

Firming Up Inequality

OpenAIRE

Jae Song; David J. Price; Fatih Guvenen; Nicholas Bloom; Till von Wachter

2015-01-01

Earnings inequality in the United States has increased rapidly over the last three decades, but little is known about the role of firms in this trend. For example, how much of the rise in earnings inequality can be attributed to rising dispersion between firms in the average wages they pay, and how much is due to rising wage dispersion among workers within firms? Similarly, how did rising inequality affect the wage earnings of different types of workers working for the same employer—men vs. w...

The impact of social media followers on corporate value: An investigation of Australian firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Patrick Mauder

2018-03-01

Full Text Available With social media user numbers reaching billions, firms seek to partake in the benefits of investing into social media activities. Existing literature, however, provides little insight as to whether investment in social media adds value for corporations. In particular, it remains difficult to quantify the financial benefits for firms from social media activities. Prior research found uncertainty for small and large firms on whether value is derived from the information present on social media and the access to the large number of users. Based on a sample of 74 listed Australian firms for an observation period of 30 days of June 2016, this study examines the relationship between the firmrs social media activities on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and corporate value. The results show that a firmrs social media presence on LinkedIn has a significant effect on the share return of firms, while a social media presence on Facebook and Twitter did not provide statistically significant results. Interestingly, the study also found that there is a difference between B2B and B2C firms, confirming a significant impact between for B2C firms on LinkedIn and share returns. The findings are useful for corporate managers and social media activists trying to understand the financial impacts of social media on corporate value.

A firm-specific exposure analyis of the exchange-rate exposure of Dutch firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Jong, A.; Ligterink, J.; Macrae, V.

2006-01-01

We examine the relationship between exchange-rate changes and stock returns for a sample of Dutch firms over 1994-1998. We find that over 50 per cent of the firms are significantly exposed to exchange-rate risk. Furthermore, all firms with significant exchange-rate exposure benefit from a

Effect of Work-Life Balance Practices on Firm Productivity: Evidence from Japanese firm-level panel data

OpenAIRE

YAMAMOTO Isamu; MATSUURA Toshiyuki

2012-01-01

This paper examines how firm practices that could contribute to worker attainment of work-life balance (WLB) affect the total factor productivity (TFP) of a firm, by using panel data of Japanese firms from the 1990s. We observed a positive correlation between the WLB practices and TFP among sampled firms. However, that correlation vanished when we controlled for unobserved firm heterogeneity, and we found no general causal relationship in which WLB practices increase firm TFP in the medium or...

Entrepreneurial Orientation in Small Established Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Middel, Rick; Lassen, Astrid Heidemann; Laugen, Bjørge Timenes

2010-01-01

While research findings have provided important insights on radical innovation for small start-ups and large established organizations, there is still a gap in knowledge on the ability of the well-established small firm to engage in radical innovation. This paper addresses this gap in knowledge b......-taking and autonomy plays a very important role, and that the three dimensions are often intertwined....

Credit scarcity in developing countries: An empirical investigation using Brazilian firm-level data

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Antônio Marcos Hoelz Pinto Ambrozio

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of this paper is to investigate whether Brazilian manufacturing firms are credit constrained. We exploit a rich database that contains more than three thousand firms with characteristics that may affect their degree of credit constraint: size, being listed in the Brazilian stock market and level of exports-sales ratio. Our results show that all dimensions considered here may affect the sensitiveness of investment to cash flow. Large firms, stock market listed firms as well as firms with better export capacity are associated with inexistence or less credit restriction. Specifically, considering firms’ size, our results corroborate the economic theory prediction and empirical international literature. Furthermore, the influence of being listed in the stock market and export capacity is beyond any possible correlation with size. Even small and middle firms are not credit constrained when listed in the stock market or when the exports-sales ratio is higher.

And Now, The Rest of the News: Volatility and Firm Specific News Arrival

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Engle, Robert F.; Hansen, Martin Klint; Lunde, Asger

Starting with the advent of the event study methodology, the puzzle of how public information relates to changes in asset prices has unraveled gradually. Using a sample of 28 large US companies, we investigate how more than 3 million firm specific news items are related to firm specific stock ret...

Organizational learning capability, firm innovativeness, and firm performance: A meta-analysis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schlägel, Christopher; Reichel, Lisa-Marie; Richter, Nicole Franziska

In the last twenty years a growing number of empirical studies tested the association be-tween organizational learning capability (OLC) and various economic outcomes. While these studies have provided a better understanding of these relationships, the literature is characterized by the use...... different measures. Based on 53 studies (13,663 firms), we (a) provide a systematic overview of the most commonly used OLC measures, (b) use meta-analytic techniques to highlight the relevance of OLC for firm innovativeness (ruc = .39) and firm perfor-mance (ruc = .41), and (c) explore the unique and common...

The relationship between strategic type and firm capabilities in Chinese firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Benedetto, Di A.C.; Song, X.M.

2003-01-01

Proposes that firms of different Miles and Snow strategic types will have different bundles of firm-level capabilities; that is, certain capabilities will be more important to certain strategic types. Specifically, proposes that prospectors have greater relative inside-out capabilities and

Environmental and Financial Performance of Fossil Fuel Firms : A Closer Inspection of their Interaction

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gonenc, Halit; Scholtens, Bert

We investigate the relationship between environmental and financial performance of fossil fuel firms. To this extent, we analyze a large international sample of firms in chemicals, oil, gas, and coal with respect to several environmental indicators in relation to financial performance for the period

Requirements for low-cost electricity and hydrogen fuel production from multiunit inertial fusion energy plants with a shared driver and target factory

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Logan, G.B.; Moir, R.W.; Hoffmman, M.A.

1995-01-01

The economy of scale for multiunit inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plants is explored based on the molten salt HYLIFE-II fusion chamber concept, for the purpose of producing lower cost electricity and hydrogen fuel. The cost of electricity (CoE) is minimized with a new IFE systems code IFEFUEL5 for a matrix of plant cases with one to eight fusion chambers of 250 to 2000-MW (electric) net output each, sharing a common heavy-ion driver and target factory. Improvements to previous HYLIFE-II models include a recirculating induction linac driver optimized as a function of driver energy and rep-rate (average driver power), inclusion of beam switchyard costs, a fusion chamber cost scaling dependence on both thermal power and fusion yield, and a more accurate bypass pump power scaling with chamber rep-rate. A CoE less than 3 cents/kW(electric)-h is found for plant outputs greater than 2 GW(electric), allowing hydrogen fuel production by wafer electrolysis to provide lower fuel cost per mile for higher efficiency hydrogen engines compared with gasoline engines. These multiunit, multi-GW(electric) IFE plants allow staged utility plant deployment, lower optimum chamber rep-rates, less sensitivity to driver and target fabrication costs, and a CoE possibly lower than future fission, fossil, and solar competitors. 37 refs., 12 figs., 4 tabs

Worker and Firm Heterogeneity in Wage Growth: An AKM approach

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Kenneth Lykke; Vejlin, Rune Majlund

This paper estimates a wage growth equation containing human capital variables known from the traditional Mincerian wage equation with year, worker and firm fixed effects included as well. The paper thus contributes further to the large empirical literature on unobserved heterogeneity following...... the work of Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis (1999). Our main contribution is to extend the analysis from wage levels to wage growth. The specification enables us to estimate the individual specific and firm specific fixed effects and their degree of explanation on wage growth. The analysis is conducted using...... are estimated to explain four to ten per cent. We furthermore find a negative correlation between the worker and firm effects, as do nearly all authors examining wage level equations....

Capital Allocation and Delegation of Decision-Making Authority within Firms

OpenAIRE

John R. Graham; Campbell R. Harvey; Manju Puri

2011-01-01

We survey more than 1,000 CEOs and CFOs to understand how capital is allocated, and decision-making authority is delegated, within firms. We find that CEOs are least likely to share or delegate decision-making authority in mergers and acquisitions, relative to delegation of capital structure, payout, investment, and capital allocation decisions. We also find that CEOs are more likely to delegate decision authority when the firm is large or complex. Delegation is less likely when the CEO is pa...

Social security and firm performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lee, Sangheon; Torm, Nina

2017-01-01

This article investigates how social security provision - a key determinant of formality - impacts on small and medium-sized firm performance in Viet Nam. Based on enterprise census data covering all registered firms from 2006 to 2011, the authors find that firms which increase their social...... security coverage by 10 per cent experience a revenue gain of 1.4-2.0 per cent per worker and a profit gain of up to 1.8 per cent, depending on the survival time of the firm. However, given the time lag between 'investment' (in social security contributions) and returns (enhanced firm performance...

Decomposing Firm-level Sales Variation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Munch, Jakob Roland; Nguyen, Daniel Xuyen

, and that for the median product it drives 31% of the sales variation. When we remove first-time exports from our sample, the median value increases to 40%, implying that firm-destination-specific effects are most important the first year. We conclude that while firm-specific productivity can account for some......We measure the contribution of firm-specific effects to overall sales variation within a destination and find it remarkably low. Our empirical decomposition is structurally motivated by a heterogeneity model of exporting involving destination-specific, firm-specific, and firm......-destination-specific latent effects with incidental truncation. We use a highly detailed dataset with exports by products and destinations for all Danish manufacturing fi…rms. We fi…nd the contribution of firm-specific heterogeneity to within-destination sales variation varies greatly across HS6 products...

Family firm research – A review

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Qiang Cheng

2014-09-01

Part I of the article discusses the fundaments of family firms: the prevalence of and the agency conflicts within family firms. Part II summarizes the findings of recent U.S. family firm studies. It reviews the evidence on the family firm premium (how, which, and when family firms are associated with a valuation premium, the manifestation of the agency conflict between majority and minority shareholders in family firms, earnings quality and corporate disclosure, and the determinants of family ownership and control. Part III discusses the prevalence and characteristics of Chinese family firms and reviews the findings of related studies. The article concludes with some suggestions for future research.

Do Services differ from Manufacturing? The Post-Entry Performance of Firms in Dutch Services

NARCIS (Netherlands)

D.B. Audretsch (David); L. Klomp (Luuk); A.R. Thurik (Roy)

1998-01-01

textabstractA large literature has emerged focusing on the post-entry performance of firms and, in particular, on the links between firm growth, survival, size and age. While these studies have resulted in findings that are sufficiently consistent as to constitute Stylized Facts, virtually all of

Risks and financing decisions in the energy sector: An empirical investigation using firm-level data

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rashid, Abdul

2013-01-01

Using a sample of 102 UK energy firms over the period 1981–2009, this paper empirically examines the effects of uncertainty on firms' leverage decisions. The results indicate that both firms-specific and macroeconomic uncertainty have negative, sizeable, and statistically significant impacts on the UK energy sector firms' target leverage. The results also indicate that the profitability of energy firms plays an important role in uncertainty–leverage relationship by changing the (total) effect of uncertainty on leverage. While more profitable firms appear to reduce their leverage by a relatively large amount in response to increased macroeconomic uncertainty, they are less likely to be affected by firm-specific uncertainty. These results suggest that stability in macroeconomic conditions and business activity is important to the stability of the capital structure of firms in the energy sector which would in turn be conducive to stability in their investments and production. - Highlights: • I examine the effect of uncertainty on the UK energy firms' leverage decisions. • Both firm-specific and macroeconomic uncertainty have negative effects on leverage. • Firm profitability plays an important role in uncertainty–leverage relationships. • The total effect of uncertainty on leverage varies with changes in profitability

International vs. domestic technology in-licensing: How do Chinese firms build their technological capabilities?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Li, Ying; Wang, Yuandi

2011-01-01

This paper investigates the different impacts of international and domestic technology in-licensing for Chinese firms as licensees on their technological capability building. The evolution of firms in developing countries and development of their technological capabilities has received increasing...... attention in the extant literature on both innovation management and international business. However, little has been done to reach a clear understanding on whether Chinese firms can benefit from international or domestic technology in-licensing and improve their own technological capabilities. This study......, therefore, pursues this endeavor by using a unique dataset from China State of Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) containing information on large Chinese firms. The findings of this empirical study indicate that firms with international technology in-licensing possess stronger technological innovation...

Moderating the Role of Firm Size in Sustainable Performance Improvement through Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jing Wang

2018-05-01

Full Text Available In the context of the Chinese government’s strategy for sustainable development, the study of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM for enterprises has important practical significance. Drawing data from 172 Chinese firms, the model studied the moderating role of firm size on the SSCM practices and the sustainable performance of the firms (economic, environmental, and social, using hierarchical regression analysis on SPSS 22.0. The results suggest that SSCM practices and firm size are positively related to the firm’s environmental and social performance. Firm size moderates the effect of SSCM practices on economic performance. Additionally, SSCM internal practices have a significant positive impact on the economic performance of large enterprises, but not so much on the economic performance of the Small and medium enterprises(SMEs. This paper proposes a comprehensive SSCM practice performance model that identifies firm size as a moderating role. Through research on the moderating effect of firm size, the implementation and recommendation of SSCM for different firm size are given.

Determinants of the capital structure of Portuguese firms with investments in Angola

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jorge H.F. Mota

2017-02-01

Full Text Available Background: This article seeks to complement the previous literature and clarify the particularities of the capital structure policy of firms with foreign direct investment in Angola. Aim: This article seeks to identify the determinants of the capital structure of Portuguese firms with direct investment in Angola and to understand whether the determinants normally considered by standard finance theory are in line with those used by firms when structuring their capital structure policy to participate in the specific market of Angola. Setting: This article examines 26 large Portuguese firms with investments in Angola using econometric panel data for the period 2006–2010. Methods: The study applied fixed and random effects methods and panel-corrected standard errors that maintain efficiency and unbiased behaviour even in the presence of panel-level heteroscedasticity and contemporaneous correlation of observations among panels. Results: The results provide evidence that the determinants normally considered by standard finance theory are in fact – in terms of sign and coefficient dimension – those used by firms for structuring their capital structure policy when involved in the internationalisation process of entering Angola. Specifically, age, asset structure, return on assets and tangibility have a positive influence on the capital structure of Portuguese firms that have invested in Angola, while non-debt tax shields and liquidity have a negative influence on these companies’ leverage ratios. When comparing our results with studies that have analysed the capital structure determinants of listed Portuguese firms – firms belonging to the PSI 20 Index and large firms in the Portuguese corporate sector – we found similarities in the sign and coefficient dimension of the determinants of capital structure. However, the profitability coefficient sign is in line with the trade-off framework (i.e. profitability is positively related to debt but

Connected Firms and Investor Myopia

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ginglinger, Edith; Hébert, Camille; Renneboog, Luc

2017-01-01

Conglomerates, multinational corporations and business groups are non-exclusive forms of complex firms. Often organized as corporate networks, complex firms control a myriad of firms connected through ownership links. We investigate whether parent-subsidiary links within corporate networks enhance

Tensions Between Firm Size and Sustainability Goals: Fair Trade Coffee in the United States

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Philip H. Howard

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Sustainability marketing trends have typically been led by smaller, more mission-driven firms, but are increasingly attracting larger, more profit-driven firms. Studying the strategies of firms that are moving away from these two poles (i.e., mission-driven but larger firms, and profit-driven firms that are more committed to sustainability may help us to better understand the potential to resolve tensions between firm size and sustainability goals. We used this approach to analyze a case study of the U.S. fair trade coffee industry, employing the methods of data visualization and media content analysis. We identified three firms that account for the highest proportion of U.S. fair trade coffee purchases (Equal Exchange, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Starbucks and analyzed their strategies, including reactions to recent changes in U.S. fair trade standards. We found an inverse relationship between firm size and demonstrated commitment to sustainability ideals, and the two larger firms were much less likely to acknowledge conflicts between size and sustainability in their public discourse. We conclude that similar efforts to increase sustainability marketing for other products and services should be more skeptical of approaches that rely on primarily on the participation of large, profit-driven firms.

Inference from concave stochastic frontiers and the covariance of firm efficiency measures across firms

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dashti, Imad

2003-01-01

This paper uses a Bayesian stochastic frontier model to obtain confidence intervals on firm efficiency measures of electric utilities rather than the point estimates reported in most previous studies. Results reveal that the stochastic frontier model yields imprecise measures of firm efficiency. However, the application produces much more precise inference on pairwise efficiency comparisons of firms due to a sometimes strong positive covariance of efficiency measures across firms. In addition, we examine the sensitivity to functional form by repeating the analysis for Cobb-Douglas, translog and Fourier frontiers, with and without imposing monotonicity and concavity

[Aftercare for durability and profitability of single-unit and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses].

Science.gov (United States)

de Baat, C; van Loveren, C; van der Maarel-Wierink, C D; Witter, D J; Creugers, N H J

2013-01-01

An important aim ofa treatment with single-unit and multi-unit fixed dental prostheses is a durable and profitable treatment outcome. That requires aftercare, too. First, the frequency of routine oral examinations should be assessed, using an individual risk profile. The objectives of the routine oral examinations are the prevention and, when necessary, the treatment of pathological conditions and complications. With regard to prevention, attention should be paid to information and instruction, oral biofilm and calculus, non-functional activities, hard tooth tissues, periodontal and peri-implant tissues, and saliva. Subsequently, it can be determined whether the intended durability and profitability have been achieved or can still be achieved, whether or not through indicated adjustments. Special attention should be paid to endodontically treated teeth. Restorative, repair or replacement treatments may be indicated in case ofcomplications, such as loose single- or multi-unitfixed dental prosthesis, fracture of a fixed dental prosthesis unit, lost tooth pulp vitality, tooth root fracture, and implant or implant abutment problems.

The causal effect of board size in the performance of small and medium-sized firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bennedsen, Morten; Kongsted, Hans Christian; Meisner Nielsen, Kasper

2008-01-01

correlation between family size and board size and show this correlation to be driven by firms where the CEO's relatives serve on the board. Second, we find empirical evidence of a small adverse board size effect driven by the minority of small and medium-sized firms that are characterized by having......Empirical studies of large publicly traded firms have shown a robust negative relationship between board size and firm performance. The evidence on small and medium-sized firms is less clear; we show that existing work has been incomplete in analyzing the causal relationship due to weak...... identification strategies. Using a rich data set of almost 7000 closely held corporations we provide a causal analysis of board size effects on firm performance: We use a novel instrument given by the number of children of the chief executive officer (CEO) of the firms. First, we find a strong positive...

Assessment of U.S. firm-level climate change performance and strategy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yu, Yu; Wang, Derek D.; Li, Shanling; Shi, Qinfen

2016-01-01

Climate change is becoming an increasingly critical concern for human society. While there has been a great deal of research on climate change performance at the country/region level, our research focuses on the study of firm-level environmental efficiency as a proxy for firms' climate change management. Using a unique data set on U.S. S&P 500 firms for the period 2012–2013 and DEA slack-based models, we obtain firms' environmental efficiencies in six sectors. The results show significant performance dispersions both across and within the sectors. We highlight each sector's pros and cons in the environmental performance and propose guidelines for policy makers to further improve climate change performance. We also evaluate firms' operational performance and propose a unified performance measure by integrating operational and environmental efficiencies. Overall, we find there is no significant relationship between operational and environmental efficiencies in any of the six industrial sectors under study. The unified performance measures are more driven by the environmental efficiency than the operational efficiency. - Highlights: •U.S. firms have large variations in climate performance across/within the sectors. •Relationship between operational and climate performances is not significant. •The operational and climate performances can be captured in a unified measure.

Applying complexity theory: A primer for identifying and modeling firm anomalies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Arch G. Woodside

2018-01-01

Full Text Available This essay elaborates on the usefulness of embracing complexity theory, modeling outcomes rather than directionality, and modeling complex rather than simple outcomes in strategic management. Complexity theory includes the tenet that most antecedent conditions are neither sufficient nor necessary for the occurrence of a specific outcome. Identifying a firm by individual antecedents (i.e., non-innovative versus highly innovative, small versus large size in sales or number of employees, or serving local versus international markets provides shallow information in modeling specific outcomes (e.g., high sales growth or high profitability—even if directional analyses (e.g., regression analysis, including structural equation modeling indicates that the independent (main effects of the individual antecedents relate to outcomes directionally—because firm (case anomalies almost always occur to main effects. Examples: a number of highly innovative firms have low sales while others have high sales and a number of non-innovative firms have low sales while others have high sales. Breaking-away from the current dominant logic of directionality testing—null hypotheses statistic testing (NHST—to embrace somewhat precise outcome testing (SPOT is necessary for extracting highly useful information about the causes of anomalies—associations opposite to expected and “statistically significant” main effects. The study of anomalies extends to identifying the occurrences of four-corner strategy outcomes: firms doing well in favorable circumstances, firms doing badly in favorable circumstances, firms doing well in unfavorable circumstances, and firms doing badly in unfavorable circumstances. Models of four-corner strategy outcomes advances strategic management beyond the current dominant logic of directional modeling of single outcomes.

Board diversity in family firms

OpenAIRE

Menozzi, Anna; Fraquelli, Giovanni; Novara, Jolanda de

2015-01-01

The paper deals with diversity as a key factor to improve the board of directors’ decision process in family firms. The empirical literature about board diversity points at the positive impact of diversity on board functioning and firm performance. The paper uses a statistical diversity index to capture the heterogeneity of board of directors and put it in relation with firm performance, as measured by firm profitability. The empirical analysis is based on a newly collected panel of 327 famil...

Collaborative Communities of Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

2011-01-01

and developing strategic initiatives that aid the community as a whole. We discuss the facilitator role of the shared services provider, contrasting it with the coordinator role found in other multi-firm organizations, and we show how shared services providers function by describing three examples...... is an organizational model called the collaborative community of firms. This chapter addresses an important organizational role in a collaborative community, that of the shared services provider. The shared services provider acts as a facilitator in the community, helping member firms collaborate with one another...... of collaborative communities of firms from different sectors: the U.S.-based Blade.org and two Denmark-based communities, the Kalundborg Industrial Symbiosis and MG50. Implications for the theory and practice of organization design are discussed....

Universal informations of restructuralization of magnesite firm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bandurová Miriam

2001-12-01

Full Text Available The article presents general process of the judging of organization structures. At beginning there are defined development trends in the organizational structures, form of cooperation and concentration of the firm and of enterprise network. In present time it is very actual questions of organization of large company in the world. Then strategy of organization is described which can be classical and elastic. From new expression in this area is writed reengineering as a principle and radical reconstruction of company process. Between other forms of existence of firms (companies in this time belongs their combination and its forms there are described in this article too.The basic of contribution consists of informations about mining industry in the Slovakia and restructuralization of mining companies after 1989. There is mentioned proposal on general process at analysis of organizational structure of magnesite firm. The basic at the analysis is existence united model of every company produced in this area. Model presents division of organization to two parts: production and administration part. After analysis of individual production process in the production part and technical workers of administration parts of organization there are suggested two alternatives on solution of these problems.

7 CFR 51.893 - Firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Firm. 51.893 Section 51.893 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Grades of Table Grapes (European or Vinifera Type) 1 Definitions § 51.893 Firm. Firm means...

Firm-Level Corruption in Vietnam

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rand, John; Tarp, Finn

This paper uses a unique panel dataset on firm-level corruption. It contains quantitative information on bribe payments by a sample of formal and informal Vietnamese firms. We show that bribe incidence is highly associated with firm-level differences in (i) visibility, (ii) sunk costs, (iii...

A firm's activity in social media and its relationship with corporate reputation, firm size and firm performance

OpenAIRE

Mäkinen, Hanna

2015-01-01

The significance of social media has increased greatly in the past few years, leading companies to increase their social media activity and also increase their interest in knowing whether it is genuinely worth being active on social media, including knowing the potential advantages. This study aims to examine the relationship between social media activity and three variables: reputation, firm size and firm performance. The study analyzes the relationships between the constru...

Multi-Unit Aspects of the Pickering Generating Station

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Morison, W. G. [Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, Sheridan Park, ON (Canada)

1968-04-15

The Pickering nuclear generating station is located on the north shore of Lake Ontario, about 20 miles east of the city of Toronto, Canada. The station has been planned and laid out on an eight-unit station, four units of which have now been authorized for construction. Each of these four units consists of a single heavy-water moderated and cooled CANDU-type reactor and auxiliaries coupled to a single tandem compound turbine generator with a net output of approximately 500 MW(e). The units are identical and are scheduled to come into operation at intervals of one year from 1970 to 1973. The station has been planned with central facilities for: administration maintenance laboratories, stores, change rooms, decontamination and waste management services. A common control centre, cooling water intake and discharge system, and spent fuel storage bay for four units has been arranged. A feature of the multi-unit station is a common containment system. Cost savings in building a number of identical units on the same site result from a single exclusion area, shared engineering costs, equipment purchase contracts for four identical components, and efficient use of construction plant. Operating cost savings are anticipated in the use of a common operating and maintenance staff and spare parts inventory. The plant has been arranged to minimize problems of operating, commissioning and constructing units at the same time on the same site. The layout and construction sequence have been arranged so that the first unit can be commissioned and operated with little or no interference from the construction forces working on succeeding units. During the construction phase barriers will be erected in the common control centre between operating control equipment and that being installed. Operations and construction personnel will enter the plant by separate routes and work in areas separated by physical barriers. (author)

Shared vision promotes family firm performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Neff, John E

2015-01-01

A clear picture of the influential drivers of private family firm performance has proven to be an elusive target. The unique characteristics of private family owned firms necessitate a broader, non-financial approach to reveal firm performance drivers. This research study sought to specify and evaluate the themes that distinguish successful family firms from less successful family firms. In addition, this study explored the possibility that these themes collectively form an effective organizational culture that improves longer-term firm performance. At an organizational level of analysis, research findings identified four significant variables: Shared Vision (PNS), Role Clarity (RCL), Confidence in Management (CON), and Professional Networking (OLN) that positively impacted family firm financial performance. Shared Vision exhibited the strongest positive influence among the significant factors. In addition, Family Functionality (APGAR), the functional integrity of the family itself, exhibited a significant supporting role. Taken together, the variables collectively represent an effective family business culture (EFBC) that positively impacted the long-term financial sustainability of family owned firms. The index of effective family business culture also exhibited potential as a predictive non-financial model of family firm performance.

Shared Vision promotes family firm performance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

John Edward Neff

2015-05-01

Full Text Available A clear picture of the influential drivers of private family firm performance has proven to be an elusive target. The unique characteristics of private family owned firms necessitate a broader, non-financial approach to reveal firm performance drivers. This research study sought to specify and evaluate the themes that distinguish successful family firms from less successful family firms. In addition, this study explored the possibility that these themes collectively form an effective organizational culture that improves longer-term firm performance. At an organizational level of analysis, research findings identified four significant variables: Shared Vision (PNS, Role Clarity (RCL, Confidence in Management (CON, and Professional Networking (OLN that positively impacted family firm financial performance. Shared Vision exhibited the strongest positive influence among the significant factors. In addition, Family Functionality (APGAR, the functional integrity of the family itself exhibited a significant supporting role. Taken together, the variables collectively represent an effective family business culture (EFBC that positively impacted the long-term financial sustainability of family owned firms. The index of effective family business culture also exhibited potential as a predictive non-financial model of family firm performance.

7 CFR 51.1551 - Firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Firm. 51.1551 Section 51.1551 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Grades of Potatoes 1 Definitions § 51.1551 Firm. Firm means that the potato is not shriveled...

7 CFR 51.696 - Firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Firm. 51.696 Section 51.696 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... § 51.696 Firm. Firm as applied to common oranges, means that the fruit is not soft, or noticeably...

7 CFR 51.1353 - Firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Firm. 51.1353 Section 51.1353 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Pears for Canning Definitions § 51.1353 Firm. Firm means that the pear is fairly solid and...

7 CFR 51.1006 - Firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Firm. 51.1006 Section 51.1006 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Persian (Tahiti) Limes Definitions § 51.1006 Firm. Firm means that the fruit is not soft or...

7 CFR 51.1824 - Firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Firm. 51.1824 Section 51.1824 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Grades of Florida Tangerines Definitions § 51.1824 Firm. Firm means that the flesh is not soft...

7 CFR 51.765 - Firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Firm. 51.765 Section 51.765 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Grades of Florida Grapefruit Definitions § 51.765 Firm. Firm means that the fruit is not soft...

40 CFR 745.89 - Firm certification.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 30 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Firm certification. 745.89 Section 745... § 745.89 Firm certification. (a) Initial certification. (1) Firms that perform renovations for compensation must apply to EPA for certification to perform renovations or dust sampling. To apply, a firm must...

A social network model of supply chain management in formal and informal inter-firm engagement

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lokhman Hakim Osman

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Background: This research looks into the different effects of firms' network structural positions in an upstream supply network upon the firms' level of relational capital outcomes.  Previous research has largely focus on the context of decentralized network structure.  However, the supply network is a centralized network because of the existence of the focal firm.  The existence of the focal firm may influence the impact of relational capital outcomes.  Methods: The objective of this research is to determine the type of network structural positions required to obtain reasonable relational capital outcome in upstream supply network.  Results and conclusions: This study found that, network structural positions i.e. betweeness centrality contributed to firms' level of relational capital influence. In conclusion, firms, embedded in upstream supply network benefits differently in terms of relational capital through different degree of embeddedness.  Firms' resources should be re-aligned to match the benefits with the different network structural positions.

The impact of firm and industry characteristics on small firms' capital structure

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Degryse, H.A.; de Goeij, P. C.; Kappert, P.

2012-01-01

We study the impact of firm and industry characteristics on small firms’ capital structure, employing a proprietary database containing financial statements of Dutch small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from 2003 to 2005. The firm characteristics suggest that the capital structure decision is

Leverage, Growth Opportunities and Firm Investment: The Case of Manufacturing Firms in China

OpenAIRE

Di Sheng; Shuyang Hou

2014-01-01

This paper examined the impact of financial leverage on investment decisions offirms using the panel data of publicly traded Chinese firms. We collected data for511 manufacturing companies during the period from 2005 to 2013 to do theresearch. The data shows that financial leverage is negatively correlated with afirm’s investment. Moreover, after we categorized the data into two types: 1)high-growth firms and 2) low-growth firms, it demonstrated that such negativecorrelation is significant fo...

7 CFR 51.634 - Firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Firm. 51.634 Section 51.634 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing...) Definitions § 51.634 Firm. Firm means that the fruit is not soft, or noticeably wilted or flabby, and the skin...

Foreign and domestic ownership, business groups, and firm performance: evidence from a large emerging market

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Douma, Sytse; George, Rejie; Kabir, Mohammed Rezaul

2006-01-01

We adopt a multi-theoretic approach to investigate a previously unexplored phenomenon in extant literature, namely the differential impact of foreign institutional and foreign corporate shareholders on the performance of emerging market firms. We show that the previously documented positive effect

The influence of market orientation on firm performance and members’ livelihood in Ethiopian seed producer cooperatives

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sisay, Dawit Tsegaye; Verhees, Frans J.H.M.; Trijp, Van Hans C.M.

2017-01-01

The positive effects of market orientation and its components on firm performance are empirically supported by studies conducted for large firms in developed economies. However, its influence on performance in developing and emerging (D&E) economies, particularly under a cooperative's context,

Firm performance and employment in the EU emissions trading scheme: An empirical assessment for Germany

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anger, Niels; Oberndorfer, Ulrich

2008-01-01

This paper empirically investigates the role of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) for firm performance and employment in Germany. We provide an overview of relative allowance allocation within the EU ETS as well as an econometric analysis for a large sample of German firms covered by the scheme in order to assess the impacts of EU emissions regulation on both firm revenues and employment. The dataset indicates that the EU ETS was in an overall long position in 2005, although allowance allocation was very heterogeneous across member states. Our econometric analysis suggests that, within the first phase of the EU ETS, relative allowance allocation did not have a significant impact on firm performance and employment of regulated German firms

Determinants of capital structure: An empirical study on Vietnamese listed firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Le Trung Thanh

2017-05-01

Full Text Available This paper aims to explore the capital structure of listed Vietnamese companies in an updated context of financial development (the recent situation of domestic equity and debt capital market. By applying Random Effect model for panel data, we analyze 05 firm-specific and 01 country-specific determinants of capital structure based on the data set of 228 firms listed on Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange during the period 2010 – 2014. The results indicated that The Pecking Order theory better explains the financing behaviors of Vietnamese listed firms. Accordingly, although in recent years, Vietnam’s equity market and corporate debt capital market have evolved considerably, the capital structure of Vietnamese companies are still dominated by the use of short-term financing sources. High-growth firms or large-sized firms still rely heavily on external debt rather than equity issuance while State-owned enterprises (SOE are reported to have positive association with the use of long-term financing sources. This study proposed some recommendations to the policymakers in two dimensions: improving the efficiency and role of capital markets to mitigate the reliance on short-term funds and ensuring that bank finance is allocated on a commercial basis.

7 CFR 51.1156 - Firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Firm. 51.1156 Section 51.1156 Agriculture Regulations... Standards for Grades of Florida Oranges and Tangelos Definitions § 51.1156 Firm. Firm as applied to common... oranges of the Mandarin group (Satsumas, King, Mandarin), “firm” means that the fruit is not extremely...

10 CFR 603.1230 - Commercial firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 10 Energy 4 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Commercial firm. 603.1230 Section 603.1230 Energy... Used in this Part § 603.1230 Commercial firm. A for-profit firm or segment of a for-profit firm (e.g., a division or other business unit) that does a substantial portion of its business in the commercial...

Sustainability Reporting in Family Firms: A Panel Data Analysis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Giovanna Gavana

2016-12-01

Full Text Available We analyze the largely unexplored differences in sustainability reporting within family businesses using a sample of 230 non-financial Italian listed firms for the period 2004–2013. Drawing on legitimacy theory and stakeholder theory, integrated with the socio-emotional wealth (SEW approach, we study how family control, influence and identification shape a firm’s attitude towards disclosing its social and environmental behavior. Our results suggest that family firms are more sensitive to media exposure than their non-family counterparts and that family control enhances sustainability disclosure when it is associated to a family’s direct influence on the business, by the founder’s presence on the board or by having a family CEO. In cases of indirect influence, without family involvement on the board, the level of family ownership is negatively related to sustainability reporting. On the other hand, a formal identification of the family with the firm by business name does not significantly affect social disclosure.

Disentangling the Impact of Control-Enhancing Mechanisms on Firm Performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zattoni, Alessandro; Pedersen, Torben

2011-01-01

shareholders to expropriate minority shareholders. The aim of this article is to contribute to the current debate investigating the implications of these control-enhancing mechanisms on firm performance. To reach this purpose, we collected ownership data on the (100) largest listed companies per capitalization......Governance scholars and investors traditionally advocate against the use of control enhancing mechanisms, i.e. mechanisms aimed at separating voting and cash flow rights. These mechanisms may, in fact, determine a deviation from the proportionality principle and may encourage large and controlling...... in five European countries (i.e. France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK). Then we tested the consequences of control-enhancing mechanisms for firm performance using 2SLS regression models. Our results show that (i) mechanisms that lock-in control do have a direct and negative impact on firm performance...

The role of management practice and business environment in promoting firm innovativeness

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Strugar-Jelača Maja

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of this research is to identify the relationships between management practices and firm innovativeness on the one hand and business environment and firm innovativeness on the other. The research subject is the new management practices explored through two sides of the coin of management, like innovative management functions and roles, factors of dynamic business environment and organization innovation rate. The methodology that was used includes the application of statistical methods such as Spearman's correlation and MANOVA. Relying on data from 50 large organizations in Serbia, this study shows that, as well as some managerial roles, innovation-oriented planning, staffing leading and controlling stand in positive correlation to higher firm innovativeness. Furthermore, it explains differences in the degree of firm innovativeness depending on the nature of planning, staffing and leading. Given that firms usually operate in a dynamic business environment, empirical results regard changes in customer preferences, competition and technology as important contingency factors of firm innovativeness. The obtained results are useful for encouraging innovative ways of doing business which can be the base for developing a practical framework of new management practices which enhance firm innovativeness. However, empirical studies investigating the relative importance of innovative management practices are scarce, and therefore our study will attempt to fill the gap and open the way for further research into this area.

The Identity of Ownership on Firm Internationalization

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Strandskov, Jesper; Madsen, Tage Koed; Pedersen, Bent

2016-01-01

The paper develops an integrative ownership-internationalization model that explores the influences of various owner types (i.e. investor-owned firms, family-owned firms, employee-owned firms, cooperative–owned firms, and state-owned firms) on firm internationalization. Based on a comparative...... analysis of the various owner types, we discuss how each owner group’s main objectives, risk behavior and provision of resources influence their internationalization strategies and decisions (i.e. scale, scope and speed decisions)....

The Role of Firm Ownership on Internationalization

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hobdari, Bersant; Gregoric, Aleksandra; Sinani, Evis

2011-01-01

This paper investigates how different types of owners influence the extent of firm internationalization, measured by the share of firm exports in total sales. The results of the analysis carried out using firm level data of Estonian and Slovenian firms, show that the firms under the control...... in internationalization process. Finally, high market share also leads to increased internationalization through exports as firms seek to expand in foreign markets after having dominated the domestic ones....

Fashion Brand Purity and Firm Performance

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Jin-hui Zheng

2013-01-01

Full Text Available A large number of prior empirical research and case studies used qualitative methodology to discuss the fashion brand dilution resulting from consumer base extension from the target group(s to the nontarget groups and its impacts. From a different perspective, this paper establishes a dynamic brand dilution and performance model, demonstrating how dynamic changes of sales volumes involving the two consumer groups affect the degree of brand dilution and the performance of the brand. We incorporate the factor “brand purity” to the model as a quantitative measure of brand dilution level that affects firm annual revenue and profit change comprehensively in iteration. Our model suggests that fashion brands, especially luxury brands, can be easily diluted under the pressure of firm growth, and the brands suffer the significant negative impact on their revenues and profit. While increasing sales volume can aggravate the negative consequences, brand purity can be increased through limiting the consumer base to the target group only.

Relative importance of moisture migration and amylopectin retrogradation for pound cake crumb firming.

Science.gov (United States)

Luyts, A; Wilderjans, E; Van Haesendonck, I; Brijs, K; Courtin, C M; Delcour, J A

2013-12-15

Moisture migration largely impacts cake crumb firmness during storage at ambient temperature. To study the importance of phenomena other than crumb to crust moisture migration and to exclude moisture and temperature gradients during baking, crustless cakes were baked using an electrical resistance oven (ERO). Cake crumb firming was evaluated by texture analysis. First, ERO cakes with properties similar to those baked conventionally were produced. Cake batter moisture content (MC) was adjusted to ensure complete starch gelatinisation in the baking process. In cakes baked conventionally, most of the increase in crumb firmness during storage was caused by moisture migration. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance ((1)H NMR) showed that the population containing protons of crystalline starch grew during cake storage. These and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) data pointed to only limited amylopectin retrogradation. The limited increase in amylopectin retrogradation during cake storage cannot solely account for the significant firming of ERO cakes and, hence, other phenomena are involved in cake firming. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Resources access needs and capabilities as mediators of the relationship between VC firm size and syndication

NARCIS (Netherlands)

E. Verwaal (Ernst); J. Bruining (Hans); D.M. Wright (Mike); S. Manigart (Sophie); A. Lockett (Andy)

2010-01-01

textabstractDrawing from the resource-based view and transaction costs economics, we develop a theoretical framework to explain why small and large firms face different levels of resource access needs and resource access capabilities, which mediate the relationship between firm size and hybrid

Foreign Exchange Exposures of Korean Firms

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Sungbin Cho

2011-03-01

Full Text Available We measure foreign exchange exposures as sensitivity of firm's value to FX premium in the CAPM plus FX premium model, and try to find determinants of the exposures; using data of non-financial companies listed in the Korea Exchange from the year 2007 to 2008. Main findings are as follows. If Korean won depreciates, only a small number of firms is benefitted while majority of firms are harmed to the contrary of common knowledge. As a firm's export increases, the foreign exchange exposure increases up to a certain level and after that it declines. And, smaller firms of negative foreign exchange exposures are more sensitive to foreign exchange changes. These suggest heterogeneous effects of foreign exchange rates on industries and firms.

The effect of institutional development on the growth of Brazilian firms

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Antonio Gledson de Carvalho

2008-12-01

Full Text Available This article focuses on the determinants of firm's growth in Brazil. In particular it investigates the individual characteristics of firm that determine its growth; how institutional development affects firm's performance, and how institutional development differently affects small and large firms. We find that, consistently with the learning models, growth is decreasing on age and negatively correlated to size. As expected, firms that belong to an economic group, export and maintain operations abroad grow faster. Growth is negatively correlated to profitability. Furthermore, we observe that shortcomings in institutional development, when measured in terms of corruption, inefficiency of the judicial system and lack of financial development, have a negative impact on firms' growth. This negative impact of corruption and inefficiency of the judicial system is stronger for smaller firms. Large firms benefit the most with financial development. Overall our results indicate that improvement in institutions can be an important mechanism to promote growth. Furthermore, institutional underdevelopment has the perverse effect of promoting concentration.Este artigo foca nos determinantes da taxa de crescimento das firmas no Brasil. Em particular, investigamos as características individuais das empresas que determinam o seu crescimento, como o desenvolvimento institucional afeta a performance da firma e como o desenvolvimento institucional afeta de maneira diversa pequenas e grandes empresas. Nossos resultados, consistentemente com os modelos de crescimento, indicam que taxas de crescimento decrescem com a idade e tamanho da empresa. Conforme o esperado, empresas que pertencem a um grupo econômico, exportam ou mantêm operações no exterior crescem mais rapidamente. Crescimento é negativamente correlacionado com lucratividade. Observamos também que fraco desenvolvimento institucional, mensurado em termos de corrupção e ineficiência do sistema judici

The effect of innovative activity in firm performance and development: Analysing data from eurozone

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Ilias A. Makris

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of Innovative Activity on firm performance and growth. Active Research and Development is considered to be directly related with development, prosperity and growth, in micro and macro level and a key factor in hindering economic recession. Design/methodology/approach – We analyse economic data from listed firms of selected eurozone country-members in order to associate Research and Development with performance indicators in firm and country level. For that purpose, several firm data were collected from WorldScope data base and macroeconomic data from Worldbank database. The period examined is between 2002 and 2012, with a special focus on current financial crisis (after 2007. The empirical process includes, descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis. Findings – Findings indicate the crucial effect of innovative process in economic performance and development in firm and country level. The latter highlights the urgent need for public support in order to spur innovative activity and high-tech exports, especially in countries that were heavily affected by recession. Research limitations/implications – Some research limitations are the large number of missing cases in WordScope database, as many firms after the beginning of current crisis exit stock market. Furthermore, the other part of the economy, the Small and Medium Enterprises does not exist in the analysis, as listed firms are mainly large and mature companies. Originality/value – The results tend to highlight the need for common policy measures in eurozone, in regard to such issues, instead of imposing horizontal budgetary constraints in specific countries (like Southern Europe, hindering the vicious recessionary circle.

Heterogeneity in Firm Performance During Economic Crisis

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Sergio Bruni

2014-06-01

Full Text Available What happens to firms during periods of deep economic crisis? Did different types of firms perform differently under the economic crisis? With the aid of a rich database and focusing on the literature regarding the growth of firms, this paper investigates the relative profitability performance of Italian firms during the current economic crisis, exploring those factors, which help certain firms to do relatively better even in the slowdown period. Some preliminary results show that the Italian firms that are relatively young in age, with relatively better current liquidity and more focused on domestic market have performed better than other firms. Furthermore, firms operating in high-tech and in highly concentrated sectors have enjoyed a better performance in this period.

Foreign Entry and Heterogeneous Growth of Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Deng, Paul Duo; Jefferson, Gary H.

We adopt the framework of Schumpeterian creative destruction formalized by Aghion et al. (2009) to analyze the impact of foreign entry on the productivity growth of domestic firms. In the face of foreign entry, domestic firms exhibit heterogeneous patterns of growth depending on their technologic...... manufacturing. Our empirical results confirm that foreign entry indeed generates strong heterogeneous growth patterns among domestic firms.......We adopt the framework of Schumpeterian creative destruction formalized by Aghion et al. (2009) to analyze the impact of foreign entry on the productivity growth of domestic firms. In the face of foreign entry, domestic firms exhibit heterogeneous patterns of growth depending on their technological...... distance from foreign firms. Domestic firms with smaller technological distance from their foreign counterparts tend to experience faster productivity growth, while firms with larger technological distance tend to lag further behind. We test this hypothesis using a unique firm-level data of Chinese...

Real Time Pricing and the Real Live Firm

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Moezzi, Mithra; Goldman, Charles; Sezgen, Osman; Bharvirkar, Ranjit; Hopper, Nicole

2004-05-26

Energy economists have long argued the benefits of real time pricing (RTP) of electricity. Their basis for modeling customers response to short-term fluctuations in electricity prices are based on theories of rational firm behavior, where management strives to minimize operating costs and optimize profit, and labor, capital and energy are potential substitutes in the firm's production function. How well do private firms and public sector institutions operating conditions, knowledge structures, decision-making practices, and external relationships comport with these assumptions and how might this impact price response? We discuss these issues on the basis of interviews with 29 large (over 2 MW) industrial, commercial, and institutional customers in the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation service territory that have faced day-ahead electricity market prices since 1998. We look at stories interviewees told about why and how they respond to RTP, why some customers report that they can't, and why even if they can, they don't. Some firms respond as theorized, and we describe their load curtailment strategies. About half of our interviewees reported that they were unable to either shift or forego electricity consumption even when prices are high ($0.50/kWh). Reasons customers gave for why they weren't price-responsive include implicit value placed on reliability, pricing structures, lack of flexibility in adjusting production inputs, just-in-time practices, perceived barriers to onsite generation, and insufficient time. We draw these observations into a framework that could help refine economic theory of dynamic pricing by providing real-world descriptions of how firms behave and why.

Examining the scope of multibusiness health care firms: implications for strategy and financial performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Noorein Inamdar, S

2007-08-01

Use theory and data to examine the scope of corporate strategies for multibusiness health care firms, also known as organized or integrated health care delivery systems. Data are from the 2000 HIMSS Analytics Annual Survey of integrated health care delivery systems (IHDS), which provides complete information on businesses owned by IHDS. Scope defined as the breadth and type of businesses in which a firm chooses to compete is measured across seven separate business areas: (1) health plans, (2) ambulatory, (3) acute, (4) subacute, (5) home health, (6) other related nonpatient care businesses, and (7) external collaborations. Theories on strategy and organizational configurations along with measures of scope and a novel dataset were used to classify 796 firms into five mutually exclusive groups. The bases for classification were two competitive dimensions of scope: (1) breadth of businesses and (2) mix of existing core businesses versus new noncore businesses. Unit of analysis is the multibusiness health care firm. Sample consists of 796 firms, defined as nonprofit organizations that own two or more direct patient care businesses in two or more separate areas across the health care value chain. Firms were clustered into five mutually exclusive organizational configurations with unique scope characteristics revealing a new taxonomy of corporate strategies. Analysis of the scope variables revealed five strategic types (along with the number of firms and distinguishing features of each strategy) defined as follows: (1) Core Service Provider (340 firms with the smallest scope providing core set of patient care services), (2) Mission Based (52 firms with the next smallest scope offering core set of services to underserved populations), (3) Contractor (266 firms with medium scope and contracting with physician groups), (4) Health Plan Focus (83 firms with large scope and providing health plans), and (5) Entrepreneur (55 firms with the largest scope offering both a core set

Do Treasure Islands Create Firm Value?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lai, Tat-kei; Ng, Travis

They do! Otherwise, their use would not have been so prevalent among firms. How much firm value they create, however, is still an open question. Exploiting a political event in the U.K. that suddenly raised the cost of using tax havens, we find that there was a 0.87% reduction in cumulative...... abnormal return (CAR) among the sampled firms, corresponding to about £532 million in market capitalization. The firms of stronger corporate governance registered a stronger reduction in CAR. A simple linear extrapolation suggests that the firm value contributed by tax havens can be as much as £31 billion....

A resource based view to small firms' sustainable competitive advantages: A case of Iranian small firms

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Ali Reza Babakhan

2012-10-01

Full Text Available During the last decades, the importance of small firms as one of the main economical parts in each country has been proved. Considering to the resources limitation in one hand, and the competitive global market in the other hand, it is very important that firms can obtain sustainable competitive advantages (SCAs to compete with other rivals. This paper, at the first step, tries to explore the potentially SCAs of Qom's small firms by using of Structural Equation Model (SEM. Then, the real current situation of firms in using these competitive advantages has been examined. The results tell that except firms' location, other potentially SCAs do not have acceptable condition.

Do Work-Life Balance Policies Increase a Firm's Total Factor Productivity?: Evidence from panel data of Japanese firms (Japanese)

OpenAIRE

YAMAMOTO Isamu; MATSUURA Toshiyuki

2011-01-01

This paper examines how firms' policies for workers' work-life balance (WLB) affect total factor productivity (TFP) in the long run, by using panel data of Japanese firms from the 1990s. Although we observed a positive correlation between firms' WLB policies and their TFP, once controlling for unobserved firm heterogeneity, we found no causal relationship where WLB policies increase a firm's TFP in the long run. Under the following conditions, however, WLB policies would likely improve a firm...

Regulatory analysis for the resolution of Generic Issue 130: Essential service water system failures at multi-unit sites

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Leung, V.; Basdekas, D.; Mazetis, G.

1991-06-01

The essential service water system (ESWS) is required to provide cooling in nuclear power plants during normal operation and accident conditions. The ESWS typically supports component cooling water heat exchangers, containment spray heat exchangers, high-pressure injection pump oil coolers, emergency diesel generators, and auxiliary building ventilation coolers. Failure of the ESWS function could lead to severe consequences. This report presents the regulatory analysis for GI-130, ''Essential Service Water System Failures at Multi-Unit Sites.'' The risk reduction estimates, cost/benefit analyses, and other insights gained during this effort have shown that implementation of the recommendations will significantly reduce risk and that these improvements are warranted in accordance with the backfit rule, 10 CFR 50.109(a)(3). 19 refs., 16 tabs

Agility in a small software firm

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schmidt, Thomas; Mathiassen, Lars

2009-01-01

Small software firms are vulnerable to environmental uncertainty. While agile methods and other technologies offer suggestions to this challenge, we know little about how these firms combine project and firm level capabilities to effectively respond to changes. On this backdrop, we examine a small...... Danish software firm, TeachTech Inc., through the lens of Haeckel's sense-and-respond approach. Our analysis suggests that: the firm has appropriate sense-and-respond cycles, but improving process modularity and human resource flexibility, could increase its ability to respond faster and more effectively......; the firm focuses on specific business goals, but these are not clearly explicated and expressed as empowering governing values enabling a quick and coordinated response; complex and demanding challenges are related to dynamically reassigning commitments and the supporting mechanisms are insufficient...

Do Direct Foreign Investments Increase Efficiency Convergence at Firm Level? The Case of Vietnam, 2000-2011

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Nguyen Khac Minh

2014-07-01

Full Text Available The objective of this study is to assess the extent to which  the effect of FDI on firms’  efficiency and efficiency convergence across industries in Vietnam. Dynamic input output tables are used to construct the linkages between domestic and foreign firms. Stochastic production frontier is used to estimate firms ‘efficiency with a large panel dataset covering manufacturing firms in Vietnam from 2000 to 2011. The analysis shows that, the impact of FDI on domestic firms ‘efficiency score and convergence at firms’ level through the horizontal, backward and supply backward channels are negative and different.

Does money buy credit? Firm-level evidence on bribery and bank debt

OpenAIRE

Fungácová , Zuzana; Kochanova, Anna; Weill, Laurent

2014-01-01

This study examines how bribery influences bank debt ratios for a large sample of firms in 14 transition countries. We combine information on bribery practices from the BEEPS survey with firm-level accounting data from the Amadeus database. Bribery is measured by the frequency of extra unofficial payments to officials to “get things done”. We find that bribery is positively related to firms’ total bank debt ratios, which provides evidence that bribing bank officials facilitates firms’ access ...

Foreign Firms, Domestic Wages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Malchow-Møller, Nikolaj; Schjerning, Bertel; R. Markusen, James

2013-01-01

Three types of theories have been used to explain the wage premium in foreign firms: the theories of heterogeneous workers, heterogeneous learning, and heterogeneous firms. We set up a model that explicitly encompasses two of these theories, and that can illustrate the third. This unifying...

Location of New Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Backman, Mikaela; Karlsson, Charlie

2017-01-01

characteristics, such as the commuting experience. Our results show that commuting influences the firm location choice. The probability of establishing a firm in the work municipality increases if the entrepreneur is a commuter, holding constant the type of region and unobservable and observable individual...

How do Economic Crises Impact Firm Boundaries?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Foss, Kirsten

2010-01-01

How economic crises impact the boundaries of firms has been offered virtually no attention in the literature on the theory of the firm. I review the best-known theories of the firm and identify the variables that matter for the explanation of firm boundaries. I then examine how an economic crisis...... may impact these variables and change efficient firm boundaries. The various theories of the firm have difficulties explaining how firms efficiently adapt their boundaries to such prominent characteristics of economic crisis as declining demand and increased costs of external finance. However, all...... these theories stress uncertainty as an antecedent of firm organization, and as uncertainty is also an important characteristic of an economic crisis I examine how uncertainty is allowed to play out in the various theories in order to identify what predictions we can derive from the theory regarding changes...

Towards a better understanding of the dynamics of value creation in R&D intensive small firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Casault, Sébastien; Groen, Aard J.; Linton, Jonathan D.

2017-01-01

Standard financial and economic theories suggest that the stock value of R&D intensive High Technology Small Firms (HTSF) undergo a geometric random walk. Such a model neglects to account for observed periods where firms experience large fluctuations due to uncertainty related to its R&D activities,

Innovative knowledge sharing, supply chain integration and firm performance of Australian manufacturing firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Singh, Prakash J.; Power, Damien

2014-01-01

A number of reports show that innovation in Australian manufacturing firms is declining. We propose that better knowledge sharing practices can assist these firms to become more innovative. In this paper, we examine this proposition by empirically testing the relationship between knowledge sharing

The Effect of Board Independence on the Sustainability Reporting Practices of Large U.S. Firms \\

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David N. Herda

2012-12-01

firms with a greater proportion of independent board members are: 1 more likely to publish standalone sustainability reports, and 2 more likely to publish higher quality sustainability reports. This paper contributes to prior literature that reports somewhat mixed results on the effect of board independence on voluntary disclosure.

Does Labor Diversity Affect Firm Performance?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pytlikova, Mariola; Pozzoli, Dario; Parrotta, Pierpaolo

/education significantly enhances firm performance as measured by firm TFP. Conversely, diversity in demographics and ethnicity brings mixed results – both dimensions of workforce diversity have either no or negative effects on firm TFP. Hence, it seems as if the negative effects, coming from communication and integration...... costs connected to a more demographically and culturally diverse workforce, counteract the positive effects of diversity on firm TFP, coming from creativity and knowledge spillovers. However, we find that ethnic diversity is valuable for firms operating in industries characterized by above-average trade...... openness, giving support to the hypothesis that an ethnically diverse workforce provides information and access to global markets....

From Knowledge to Firm Performance: An Empirical analysis of Intellectual Capital Impact in Polish and Dutch Listed Firms

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Koen Verduijn

2013-09-01

Full Text Available Purpose: Empirical results about the direct relation of knowledge leading to financial performance at a firm is dispersed. This study aims to examine the impact intellectual capital (IC has on firm performance in Polish and Dutch listed firms.Methodology: Quantitative data is collected based on audited annual reports from the top 20 companies listed at the Warsaw Stock Exchange and Amsterdam Stock Exchange between 2007 and 2011. IC is measured using the VAIC methodology with its individual elements of HCE, SCE, and CEE. Direct relations between ICE, HCE, and SCE and five measures of firm performance are statistically analysed.Results: The results suggest that there is a direct positive relationship between ICE and firm performance of Polish and Dutch listed firms, particularly with ROA, ROE, EP, and to a lesser extent with ATO. Firms listed in Poland provide a stronger positive ICE relation to ROA and ROE where firms listed in the Netherlands provide a stronger positive ICE relation to EP. Regarding individual elements, HCE relates highly positive to ROA, ROE, and EP where SCE finds only partial negative relation with ATO.Implications: Nurturing IC and in particular HC confirms the importance of firm knowledge and employees with right training and other support. Additionally, further clarification regarding SC is required.Originality: This paper presents the first study of the IC relationship with firm performance in Poland as well in the Netherlands. Additionally, the comparison between firms of both countries establishes a novelty in IC research.

Procurement with Specialized Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boone, J.; Schottmuller, C.

2011-01-01

This paper analyzes optimal procurement mechanisms in a setting where the procurement agency has incomplete information concerning the firms’ cost functions and cares about quality as well as price. Low type firms are cheaper than high type firms in providing low quality but more expensive when

Gauging a Firm's Innovative Performance Using an Integrated Structural Index for Patents

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Xiaojun Hu

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Purpose: In this contribution we try to find new indicators to measure characteristics of a firm's patents and their influence on a company's profits. Design/methodology/approach: We realize that patent evaluation and influence on a company's profits is a complicated issue requiring different perspectives. For this reason we design two types of structural h-indices, derived from the International Patent Classification (IPC. In a case study we apply not only basic statistics but also a nested case-control methodology. Findings: The resulting indicator values based on a large dataset (19,080 patents in total from the pharmaceutical industry show that the new structural indices are significantly correlated with a firm's profits. Research limitations: The new structural index and the synthetic structural index have just been applied in one case study in the pharmaceutical industry. Practical implications: Our study suggests useful implications for patentometric studies and leads to suggestions for different sized firms to include a healthy research and development (R&D policy management. The structural h-index can be used to gauge the profits resulting from the innovative performance of a firm's patent portfolio. Originality/value: Traditionally, the breadth and depth of patents of a firm and their citations are considered separately. This approach, however, does not provide an integrated insight in the major characteristics of a firm's patents. The Sh(Y index, proposed in our investigation, can reflect a firm's innovation activities, its technological breadth, and its influence in an integrated way.

Firms, crowds, and innovation.

Science.gov (United States)

Felin, Teppo; Lakhani, Karim R; Tushman, Michael L

2017-05-01

The purpose of this article is to suggest a (preliminary) taxonomy and research agenda for the topic of "firms, crowds, and innovation" and to provide an introduction to the associated special issue. We specifically discuss how various crowd-related phenomena and practices-for example, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, user innovation, and peer production-relate to theories of the firm, with particular attention on "sociality" in firms and markets. We first briefly review extant theories of the firm and then discuss three theoretical aspects of sociality related to crowds in the context of strategy, organizations, and innovation: (1) the functions of sociality (sociality as extension of rationality, sociality as sensing and signaling, sociality as matching and identity), (2) the forms of sociality (independent/aggregate and interacting/emergent forms of sociality), and (3) the failures of sociality (misattribution and misapplication). We conclude with an outline of future research directions and introduce the special issue papers and essays.

Technological Capability and Firm Performance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fernanda Maciel Reichert

2014-08-01

Full Text Available This research aims to investigate the relationship between investments in technological capability and economic performance in Brazilian firms. Based on economic development theory and on developed countries history, it is assumed that this relationship is positive. Through key indicators, 133 Brazilian firms have been analyzed. Given the economic circumstances of an emerging economy, which the majority of businesses are primarily based on low and medium-low-technology industries, it is not possible to affirm the existence of a positive relation between technological capability and firm performance. There are other elements that allow firms to achieve such results. Firms of lower technological intensity industries performed above average in the economic performance indicators, adversely, they invested below average in technological capability. These findings do not diminish the merit of firms’ and country’s success. They in fact confirm a historical tradition of a country that concentrates its efforts on basic industries.

An Aspirational Community Theory of the Firm

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Li, Xin

propose an aspirational community theory of the firm (ACT) as a candidate theory by conceptualizing the firm as an aspirational community, the core of which is a group of like-minded people sharing similar or same aspiration/vision. To explain the existence of the firm, we make a distinction between......All of the three major theories of the firm, i.e., the transaction cost theory, knowledge-based theory and the entrepreneurship theory, offer some insightful analyses of the nature of the firm. However, they all have limitations and weaknesses in answering the fundamental question of the existence...... of the firm. In addition, they are all partial due to their particular focus on the multifaceted phenomenon of the firm. We argue that it is necessary and sufficient to develop a comprehensive yet integrative theory of the firm that combines the three competing yet complementary logics. Toward this end, we...

Supervision in Firms

OpenAIRE

Vafaï , Kouroche

2012-01-01

URL des Documents de travail : http://centredeconomiesorbonne.univ-paris1.fr/bandeau-haut/documents-de-travail/; Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2012.84 - ISSN : 1955-611X; To control, evaluate, and motivate their agents, firms employ supervisors. As shown by empirical investigations, biased evaluation by supervisors linked to collusion is a persistent feature of firms. This paper studies how deceptive supervision affects agency relationships. We consider a three-leve...

Merger incentives and the failing firm defense

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bouckaert, J.M.C.; Kort, P.M.

2014-01-01

The merger incentives between profitable firms differ fundamentally from the incentives of a profitable firm to merge with a failing firm. We investigate these incentives under different modes of price competition and Cournot behavior. Our main finding is that firms strictly prefer exit of the

Firm Based Trade Models and Turkish Economy

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Nilüfer ARGIN

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Among all international trade models, only The Firm Based Trade Models explains firm’s action and behavior in the world trade. The Firm Based Trade Models focuses on the trade behavior of individual firms that actually make intra industry trade. Firm Based Trade Models can explain globalization process truly. These approaches include multinational cooperation, supply chain and outsourcing also. Our paper aims to explain and analyze Turkish export with Firm Based Trade Models’ context. We use UNCTAD data on exports by SITC Rev 3 categorization to explain total export and 255 products and calculate intensive-extensive margins of Turkish firms.

Strategic Adjustment Capacity, Sustained Competitive Advantage, and Firm Performance: An Evolutionary Perspective on Bird Flocking and Firm Competition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shou Chen

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Imitating the positioning rules in the bird flocking system, the strategic adjustment capacity is decomposed into three aspects, which are the organizational learning capacity from the top firms, the extent to which firms maintain or rely on the best operational capacity vector in history, and the ability to overcome the disadvantage while maintaining the advantage of the operational capacity vector from the previous years, respectively. Financial vectors are constructed to represent the results of corporate strategic adjustment and listed firms in the China A stock are chosen as the samples. As empirical analysis reveals, there is a positive correlation between the organizational learning capacity from the top firms and the firm performance and a U-shaped relation between the learning capability from the previous best operational capacity vector and the firm performance. However, no significant correlation between the inertia control ability of the current operational capacity vector of the firms and their performance improvement can be observed. This study verifies that the issue of corporate competitiveness and performance can be investigated by utilizing the principles of competition in nature. Moreover, a firm can obtain a sustainable competitive advantage by improving its ability to learn from top firms in the industry.

Strong Firms Lobby, Weak Firms Bribe

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bennedsen, Morten; Feldmann, Sven E.; Lassen, David Dreyer

that are larger, older, exporting, government-owned, are widely held and/or have fewer competitors, have more political influence, perceive corruption to be less of a problem and pay bribes less often; (c) influence increases sales and government subsidies and in general makes the firm have a more positive view...

Stakeholder capitalism, corporate governance and firm value

OpenAIRE

Allen, Franklin; Carletti, Elena; Marquez, Robert

2007-01-01

In countries such as Germany, the legal system is such that firms are necessarily stakeholder oriented. In others like Japan social convention achieves a similar effect. We analyze the advantages and disadvantages of stakeholder-oriented firms that are concerned with employees and suppliers compared to pure shareholder-oriented firms. We show that in a context of imperfect competition stakeholder firms have higher prices and lower output than shareholder-oriented firms. Surprisingly, we also ...

The Internationalisation of Mainland Chinese Firms into Malaysia: From Obligated Embeddedness to Active Embeddedness

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Guanie LIM

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the rationale by which mainland Chinese firms choose their coalition partners in their Malaysian ventures. I explore how, under certain political economic conditions, such cross-border investment and corporate tie-ups can be shaped to meet the Malaysian state’s objectives. I argue that the Malaysian state has enjoyed success in the construction sector by nurturing cooperation between its carefully groomed government-linked companies and mainland Chinese firms. Government-linked companies are useful coalition partners for the mainland Chinese firms because of the crucial role the state plays in creating a largely non-competitive industry that favours government-linked companies. Outside of the construction sector, however, the state has enjoyed markedly less success in fostering cooperation between the mainland Chinese firms and the government-linked companies. Consequently, the mainland Chinese firms possess more bargaining power vis-à-vis the state when they invest in these sectors, enjoying considerable autonomy in the selection of their coalition partners.

Diversified boundaries of the firm

OpenAIRE

Kimura, Koichiro

2012-01-01

We analyze diversification of boundaries of local firms in developing countries under the economic globalization. The globalization has an aspect of homogenization of the world economy, but also has another aspect of diversification through international economic activities. Focusing on boundary-level of the firm, this article shows that the diversification from a comparison with boundaries of foreign firms in developed countries is brought by a disadvantage of technology deficit and a home a...

Market-Oriented Product Innovation in Small Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Verhees, F.J.H.M.

2005-01-01

Description: This thesis deals with product-innovation in small firms. It aims at a better understanding of the determinants of product innovation in small firms, particularly those determinants that are related to the market orientation of small firms. The focus of the study is on small firms that

Correlation between Sales of Foreign Affiliates and Productivity of Multinational Firms: Evidence from Korean Firm-Level Data

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jung Hur

2013-09-01

Full Text Available Using firm-level panel data for Korean multinational enterprises (MNEs, we make a distinction between being the only affiliate of a parent firm and being one of the multiple affiliates of a parent firm. In particular, we attempt to find a correlation between the sales of foreign affiliates and the productivity of multinational firms. Our main empirical results in this paper suggest that productive Korean MNEs would enlarge the number of affiliates in the host country.

Swedish Listed Family Firms and Entrepreneurial Spirit

OpenAIRE

Bjuggren, Per-Olof; Palmberg, Johanna

2008-01-01

This paper investigates the entrepreneurial spirit in Swedish listed family firms. We associate family firms with entrepreneurship in the sense that there is an identifiable person that takes the uninsurable risk in the sense of Knight. This paper analysis two questions: Do entrepreneurial family firms have a higher rate of growth and do they invest in a more profit maximizing fashion than other listed firms? The analysis shows that entrepreneurial family firms in general are smaller in terms...

7 CFR 51.1831 - Fairly firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Fairly firm. 51.1831 Section 51.1831 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Grades of Florida Tangerines Definitions § 51.1831 Fairly firm. Fairly firm means that the...

24 CFR 200.47 - Firm commitments.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 24 Housing and Urban Development 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Firm commitments. 200.47 Section 200.47 Housing and Urban Development Regulations Relating to Housing and Urban Development (Continued... Eligibility Requirements for Existing Projects Commitment Applications § 200.47 Firm commitments. A valid firm...

7 CFR 51.774 - Fairly firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Fairly firm. 51.774 Section 51.774 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Grades of Florida Grapefruit Definitions § 51.774 Fairly firm. Fairly firm means that the...

7 CFR 51.2843 - Fairly firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Fairly firm. 51.2843 Section 51.2843 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Fairly firm. Fairly firm means that the onion may yield slightly to moderate pressure but is not...

7 CFR 51.3204 - Fairly firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Fairly firm. 51.3204 Section 51.3204 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Grades of Bermuda-Granex-Grano Type Onions Definitions § 51.3204 Fairly firm. Fairly firm...

7 CFR 51.1167 - Fairly firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Fairly firm. 51.1167 Section 51.1167 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Grades of Florida Oranges and Tangelos Definitions § 51.1167 Fairly firm. Fairly firm as...

Entrepreneurship and the Economics of the Firm

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Foss, Nicolai Juul

The study of entrepreneurship and the study of economic organizing lack contact. In fact, the modern theory of the firm virtually ignores entrepreneurship, while the literature on entrepreneurship often sees little value in the economic theory of the firm. In contrast, we argue in this chapter...... that entrepreneurship theory and the theory of the firm can be usefully integrated, and that doing so would improve both bodies of theory. Adding the entrepreneur to the theory of the firm provides a dynamic view that the overly static analysis of firm organizing cannot support. Moreover, adding the firm to the study...... of the entrepreneur provides important clues to how we can understand entrepreneurship....

The market for firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Davis, Jerome Dean; Keiding, Hans

2010-01-01

and as a consequence a higher sales value of the firm. Buyers take this signaling into consideration, but irrespective of their countermoves, the equilib- rium result may be a lowering of ex ante product prices, and an ex post market overvaluation of the firm. This model is utilized to suggest possible explanations...

7 CFR 51.705 - Fairly firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Fairly firm. 51.705 Section 51.705 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... § 51.705 Fairly firm. Fairly firm as applied to common oranges, means that the fruit may be slightly...

7 CFR 51.1012 - Fairly firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Fairly firm. 51.1012 Section 51.1012 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing... Standards for Persian (Tahiti) Limes Definitions § 51.1012 Fairly firm. Fairly firm means that the fruit is...

The Dividend Policy of German Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Andres, C.; Betzer, A.; Goergen, M.; Renneboog, L.D.R.

2008-01-01

Abstract: German firms pay out a lower proportion of their cash flows, but a higher proportion of their published profits than UK and US firms. We estimate partial adjustment models and report two major findings. First, German firms base their dividend decisions on cash flows rather than published

The Dividend Policy of German Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Andres, C.; Betzer, A.; Goergen, M.; Renneboog, L.D.R.

2008-01-01

German firms pay out a lower proportion of their cash flows, but a higher proportion of their published profits than UK and US firms. We estimate partial adjustment models and report two major findings. First, German firms base their dividend decisions on cash flows rather than published earnings as

The financing of innovative firms

OpenAIRE

Hall, Bronwyn H.

2009-01-01

To what extent are new and/or innovative firms fundamentally different from established firms, and therefore require a different form of financing? The theoretical background for this proposition is presented, and the empirical evidence on its importance is reviewed. Owing to the intangible nature of their investment, asymmetric-information and moral-hazard, these firms are more likely to be financed by equity than debt and behave in some cases as though they are cash-constrained, especially ...

The theory of the firm. Vol. 3

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

as an information processor. In addition, the collection features perspectives from business strategy and business history as well as methodological and doctrinal historical perspectives. Including over 60 classic papers, these volumes collect together contributions on the theory of the firm, beginning with Ronald......Firms have for a long time been part of the explanatory set-up of economics. However, it is only recently that economists have felt the need for an economic theory addressing: why firms are different; why firms exist; what determines their boundaries relative to "the market"; and what determines...... their internal organization. This collection documents the rise of the modern theory of the firm during the last two to three decades. It reprints classic writings from a diversity of perspectives, including not only contractual theories of the firm, but also knowledge-based theories and theories of the firm...

Views of CEOs on Firm Performance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dario Berginc

2014-11-01

Full Text Available Researching the managerial perspective of performance can contribute to a better understanding of firm performance, and offer a valuable contribution to research on objective performance measurement. The aim of this article is to examine how managers evaluate firm performance and which factors, in their opinion, have the biggest influence on performance. We particularly wanted to investigate the influence of top management and owners on firm performance. We conducted a qualitative study among the CEOs of some of the most successful Slovenian firms. The results show that CEOs connect positive performance with long-term growth and satisfying the needs of key stakeholders (employees, customers and owners, but short-term positive financial performance represents the basic foundation. The second most important factor is a united top management, capable of generating new ideas and acting as a role model to employees. This can lead to a higher degree of engagement by employees and a better understanding of the firm's goals. Owners can contribute to a positive firm performance with their active, strategic and long-term orientation, and with their ability to set clear goals and to trust top management in the long run. Another important factor that influences firm performance is the ownership structure. In the opinion of CEOs, dominant and private ownership has a more positive impact on firm performance than dispersed and state ownership. The present research findings provide several examples of good and bad practice, and highlight opportunities for further research, from an in-depth study of individual factors of firm performance to the search for a more comprehensive model of performance factors, based on a larger sample of CEOs and other managers.

7 CFR 51.643 - Fairly firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 2 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Fairly firm. 51.643 Section 51.643 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Standards, Inspections, Marketing...) Definitions § 51.643 Fairly firm. Fairly firm means that the fruit may be slightly soft, but not bruised, and...

The Effect of Monitoring Committees on the Relationship between Board Structure and Firm Performance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aymen Ammari

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of board structure on the performance of French firms in the presence of several monitoring committees. We studied 80 publicly listed French firms spanning from 2001 to 2013. We concluded that large board size has a negative effect on market performance. While large board size in combination with the existence of at least three committees enhances accounting performance and does not have any impact on market performance, the existence of a board dominated by independent directors with the presence of at least three committees seems to have only a negative impact on accounting performance. Our findings indicate that monitoring committees are beneficial for shareholders only for corporations with a large board size.

Quantification of the evolution of firm size distributions due to mergers and acquisitions

Science.gov (United States)

Sornette, Didier

2017-01-01

The distribution of firm sizes is known to be heavy tailed. In order to account for this stylized fact, previous economic models have focused mainly on growth through investments in a company’s own operations (internal growth). Thereby, the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on the firm size (external growth) is often not taken into consideration, notwithstanding its potential large impact. In this article, we make a first step into accounting for M&A. Specifically, we describe the effect of mergers and acquisitions on the firm size distribution in terms of an integro-differential equation. This equation is subsequently solved both analytically and numerically for various initial conditions, which allows us to account for different observations of previous empirical studies. In particular, it rationalises shortcomings of past work by quantifying that mergers and acquisitions develop a significant influence on the firm size distribution only over time scales much longer than a few decades. This explains why M&A has apparently little impact on the firm size distributions in existing data sets. Our approach is very flexible and can be extended to account for other sources of external growth, thus contributing towards a holistic understanding of the distribution of firm sizes. PMID:28841683

Quantification of the evolution of firm size distributions due to mergers and acquisitions.

Science.gov (United States)

Lera, Sandro Claudio; Sornette, Didier

2017-01-01

The distribution of firm sizes is known to be heavy tailed. In order to account for this stylized fact, previous economic models have focused mainly on growth through investments in a company's own operations (internal growth). Thereby, the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on the firm size (external growth) is often not taken into consideration, notwithstanding its potential large impact. In this article, we make a first step into accounting for M&A. Specifically, we describe the effect of mergers and acquisitions on the firm size distribution in terms of an integro-differential equation. This equation is subsequently solved both analytically and numerically for various initial conditions, which allows us to account for different observations of previous empirical studies. In particular, it rationalises shortcomings of past work by quantifying that mergers and acquisitions develop a significant influence on the firm size distribution only over time scales much longer than a few decades. This explains why M&A has apparently little impact on the firm size distributions in existing data sets. Our approach is very flexible and can be extended to account for other sources of external growth, thus contributing towards a holistic understanding of the distribution of firm sizes.

Quantification of the evolution of firm size distributions due to mergers and acquisitions.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sandro Claudio Lera

Full Text Available The distribution of firm sizes is known to be heavy tailed. In order to account for this stylized fact, previous economic models have focused mainly on growth through investments in a company's own operations (internal growth. Thereby, the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&A on the firm size (external growth is often not taken into consideration, notwithstanding its potential large impact. In this article, we make a first step into accounting for M&A. Specifically, we describe the effect of mergers and acquisitions on the firm size distribution in terms of an integro-differential equation. This equation is subsequently solved both analytically and numerically for various initial conditions, which allows us to account for different observations of previous empirical studies. In particular, it rationalises shortcomings of past work by quantifying that mergers and acquisitions develop a significant influence on the firm size distribution only over time scales much longer than a few decades. This explains why M&A has apparently little impact on the firm size distributions in existing data sets. Our approach is very flexible and can be extended to account for other sources of external growth, thus contributing towards a holistic understanding of the distribution of firm sizes.

Does Labour Diversity affect Firm Productivity?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Parrotta, Pierpaolo; Pozzoli, Dario; Pytlikova, Mariola

Using a matched employer-employee dataset, we analyze how workforce diversity in cultural background, education and demographic characteristics affects productivity of firms in Denmark. Implementing a structural estimation of the firms' production function (Ackerberg et al., 2006) we find...... diverse workforce, seem to outweigh the positive effects coming from creativity and knowledge spillovers....... that labor diversity in education significantly enhances a firm's value added. Conversely, diversity in ethnicity and demographics induces negative effects on firm productivity. Hence, the negative effects, coming from communication and integration costs connected to a more culturally and demographically...

Industrial environmental practices in Polish Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kræmer, Trine Pipi

, and environment. The five case firms all had a Communist past. The firms represent three different industrial sectors; i.e. textile, energy, and publishing and printing industries. Furthermore, the firms are both private and state owned as well as in the process of privatisation.......The study investigates how discursive developments in Poland interact with industrial environmental practices in five production firms. The analysis of the discursive development covers the period from the end of World War I to the turn of the century. The areas in focus are identity, industry...

The Role of Family in Family Firms

OpenAIRE

Marianne Bertrand; Antoinette Schoar

2006-01-01

History is replete with examples of spectacular ascents of family businesses. Yet there are also numerous accounts of family businesses brought down by bitter feuds among family members, disappointed expectations between generations, and tragic sagas of later generations unable to manage their wealth. A large fraction of businesses throughout the world are organized around families. Why are family firms so prevalent? What are the implications of family control for the governance, financing an...

21 CFR 7.46 - Firm-initiated recall.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Firm-initiated recall. 7.46 Section 7.46 Food and....46 Firm-initiated recall. (a) A firm may decide of its own volition and under any circumstances to remove or correct a distributed product. A firm that does so because it believes the product to be...

Factors Important for Rapid Internationalization : A Multiple Case-Study of Born Global Internet-Based Service Firms in Sweden

OpenAIRE

Burman, Anna; Stjernström, Ida

2017-01-01

The evolution of globalization and technology have changed the playground for international business and made it possible for smaller businesses to compete internationally among large and capital intensive companies. Markets become increasingly alike with converging product preferences and changing the world into one large integrated marketplace easily accessible for firms of all sizes. Recent research in the field of International Business has shed light on small firms that rapidly become in...

Using financial derivatives to hedge against currency risk : British large and medium-sized firms

OpenAIRE

Nguyen, My

2012-01-01

Nowadays, as a growing number of firms strive to conduct their business at international market place, currency risk has increasingly raised concern among financial mangers due to its substantial impact on companies’ financial results. Financial derivative instruments (Forward, Futures, Options, Swaps) are utilized as efficient hedging mechanisms against such an exchange rate exposure. The main objective of this study is to examine whether derivatives play a primary role in mitigating an adve...

Web traffic and firm performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Farooq, Omar; Aguenaou, Samir

2013-01-01

Does the traffic generated by websites of firms signal anything to stock market participants? Does higher web-traffic translate into availability of more information and therefore lower agency problems? And if answers to above questions are in affirmative, does higher web-traffic traffic translate...... into better firm performance? This paper aims to answer these questions by documenting a positive relationship between the extent of web-traffic and firm performance in the MENA region during the 2010. We argue that higher web-traffic lowers the agency problems in firms by disseminating more information...... to stock market participants. Consequently, lower agency problems translate into better performance. Furthermore, we also show that agency reducing role of web-traffic is more pronounced in regimes where information environment is already bad. For example, our results show stronger impact of web...

Determinants of CEO Turnover in Publicand Private Firms in Denmark - CEO and Firm Characteristics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sponholtz, Carina

In this study we are the first to draw on longitudinal matched employer-employee data to study CEO turnover. Using this data we contribute tothe existing literature by examining the e¤ect of previously unstudied in-dividual characteristics on CEO turnover. Additionally, we are able toexamine CEO...... turnover. Finally, the inverse relationshipbetween firm performance and CEO turnover only exists in LLL firms(larger limited liability firms, both publicly and privately held), whereagency costs are assumed and found to be highest.In this study we are the first to draw on longitudinal matched employer-employee...... turnover across a variety of firm types that di¤er with re-spect to the corporate governance issues they face. Our simple methodol-ogy to define CEO turnover results in turnover rates similar to those foundpreviously. Our results indicate that CEO characteristics are an important factor in explaining CEO...

Performance of Patenting Firms in Danish Manufacturing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Madsen, Erik Strøjer; Smith, Valdemar; Nielsen, Anders Østergaard

2000-01-01

Most countries focus on industries with high technology and the governments grant subsidies to innovating firms. However, there has been remarkable few studies of the performance of innovative firms or industries. This study examines the performance of patent active firms compared to the non-patenting...... firms within the manufacturing sector in Denmark. Performance is measured both by growth in employment as well as in the return on equity and profit share in turnover. The results suggest that differences in performance of patenting and non-patenting firms are very small, which questions the political...

Are Family Firms Better Performers during Financial Crisis?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhou, Haoyong

(Italy) during the period 2006-2010, I give empirical evidences examining the performance of family firms vis-à-vis non-family firms during the current financial crisis. I find that broadly defined family firms, comprising 35 percent of the sample, do not outperform non-family firms during the crisis...... that in the financial crisis, founder firms bear the least agency cost and Tobin’s Q is not a good measure of corporate performance.......Despite extensive researches on efficiency of family firms in normal or good economic times, we know rather little about whether family firms are superior performers in recession times. Using a dataset covering firms from S&P 500 (US), FTE100 (UK), DAX 30 (Germany), CAC 40 (France) and FTSE MIB 40...

Routine Ultrasound Quality Assurance in a Multi-Unit Radiology Department: A Retrospective Evaluation of Transducer Failures.

Science.gov (United States)

Vitikainen, Anne-Mari; Peltonen, Juha I; Vartiainen, Eija

2017-09-01

The importance of quality assurance (QA) in medical ultrasound (US) has been widely recognized and recommendations concerning technical QA have been published over the years. However, the demonstrated impact of a properly working QA protocol on clinical routine has been scarce. We investigated the transducer write-off causes for a 5-y period in a multi-unit radiology department with an annual average of 230 transducers in demanding diagnostic use. The transducer faults and the initial observers of the faults leading to transducer write-offs were traced and categorized. The most common cause of transducer write-off was an image uniformity problem or element failure. Mechanical faults or excessive leakage current and defects in the lens constituted smaller yet substantial shares. Our results suggest that a properly working routine QA program can detect majority of the faults before they are reported by users. Copyright © 2017 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Do Less Regulated Markets Attract Lower Quality Firms?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsson, Ulf

2013-01-01

The paper examines whether the moderately regulated London AIM market is at a disadvantage in attracting high quality firms. The results show that firms listed on AIM are of the same quality level as firms listed in the US and in Continental Europe, albeit smaller in size. Furthermore, the delist......The paper examines whether the moderately regulated London AIM market is at a disadvantage in attracting high quality firms. The results show that firms listed on AIM are of the same quality level as firms listed in the US and in Continental Europe, albeit smaller in size. Furthermore...... equivalent to firms listing in more regulated markets...

The Heterogeneity of Job Creation and Destruction in Transition and Non-transition Developing Countries: The Effects of Firm Size, Age and Ownership

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Haggai Kennedy Ochieng

2017-12-01

Full Text Available This paper investigates how firm age, size and ownership are related with job creation and destruction, and how these patterns differ across transition and non-transition economies. The analysis finds that age is inversely related with gross job creation and net job creation in the two samples. This finding is consistent with the theory of the learning effect. The relationship between age and job destruction is indifferent in non-transition economies. On the contrary, old firms in transition economies destroy more jobs than young ones. The paper further establishes an inverse relationship between size and gross job creation in the two groups. However, there is divergence between the two samples; small firms in non-transition economies also exhibit a higher gross job destruction rate. Consequently large firms have a higher net job creation rate. In transition economies, small and large firms exhibit similar rates of job destruction. But small firms retain a higher net job creation rate. A more intriguing finding is that state owned firms do not underperform domestic private ones. This means these countries may be using soft budget constraint which allows state owned firms to overstaff. Finally, crowding out of SMEs by foreign owned firms is not evident in transition economies.

PENGARUH LARGE POSITIVE ABNORMAL BOOK-TAX DIFFERENCES TERHADAP PERSISTENSI LABA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nurul Aisyah Rachmawati

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of Large Positive Abnormal Book-Tax Differences (LPABTD on earnings persistence and accruals persistence. This study used unbalanced panel data of listed companies in Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2006-2011. It is hypothesized that firms with LPABTD exhibit lower earnings and accruals persistence than other firms with Large Positive Normal Book-Tax Differences (LPNBTD. The results provide evidence which is consistent with the hypotheses. It is shown that firms with LPABTD exhibit lower earnings quality than other firms with LPNBTD.

Toward an Integrative Theory of the Firm

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Li, Xin

understand the nature and behaviors of the firm, we need a comprehensive yet integrative theory. Toward this end, this paper proposes a relationship-based theory of the firm (R’BT) which claims that it is the relationships between the entrepreneur and other individuals or firms that determine the existence......This paper argues that the existing four major theories of the firm, i.e., the transaction cost theory, resource-based view, the entrepreneurial theory, and the stakeholder theory, are all insightful yet partial because each of them has a particular focus on the phenomenon of the firm. To better...

Women in Top Management and Firm Performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Smith, Nina; Smith, Valdemar; Verner, Mette

-observations for all Danish firms with more than 50 employees over the period 1994-2003, the analysis suggests that the proportion of women in top management jobs has from none to positive influence on firm performance. However, the results show that the strength of the effects of women in top management depends...... on how top CEOs are defined and on the method of estimation of the model. Next, the results point towards a positive influence on firm performance of the staff representation in the supervisory board of the firm but more women representing the shareholders in the supervisory board of the firm seems...

Human Capital and Wages in Exporting Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Munch, Jakob Roland; Skaksen, Jan Rose

2006-01-01

This paper studies the link between a firms education level, export performance and wages of its workers. We argue that firms may escape intence competition in international markets by using high skilled workers to differentiate their products. This story is consistent with our empirical results....... Osing a very rich matched worker-firm longitudinal dataset we find that firms with high export intensities pay higher wages. However, an interaction term between export intensity and skill intensity has a positive impact on wages and it absorbs the direct effect of the export intensity. That is, we find...... an export wage premium, but it accrues to workers in firms with high skill intensities.Keywords: Exports, Wages, Human Capital, Rent Sharing, Matched Worker-Firm DataJEL Classification: J30, F10, I20...

The emergence and evolution of the multidimensional organization

OpenAIRE

Strikwerda, J.; Stoelhorst, J.W.

2009-01-01

The article discusses multidimensional organizations and the evolution of complex organizations. The six characteristics of multidimensional organizations, disadvantages of the successful organizational structure that is categorized as a multidivisional, multi-unit or M-form, research by the Foundation for Management Studies which suggests that synergies across business divisions can be exploited by the M-form, a team approach to creating economic value, examples of multidimensional firms suc...

Investigation on the integral output power model of a large-scale wind farm

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

BAO Nengsheng; MA Xiuqian; NI Weidou

2007-01-01

The integral output power model of a large-scale wind farm is needed when estimating the wind farm's output over a period of time in the future.The actual wind speed power model and calculation method of a wind farm made up of many wind turbine units are discussed.After analyzing the incoming wind flow characteristics and their energy distributions,and after considering the multi-effects among the wind turbine units and certain assumptions,the incoming wind flow model of multi-units is built.The calculation algorithms and steps of the integral output power model of a large-scale wind farm are provided.Finally,an actual power output of the wind farm is calculated and analyzed by using the practical measurement wind speed data.The characteristics of a large-scale wind farm are also discussed.

Competitive Advantage of Interconnected Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nell, Phillip Christopher; Andersson, Ulf

We model the complex interplay between firm-level variables, notably capabilities and performance, and relationship-level variables: relationship-specific assets and network context. We test how the network context of individual exchange relationships as well as firm-level capabilities jointly af...

Bank Relationship and Firm Profitability

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Degryse, H.A.; Ongena, S.

2000-01-01

This paper examines how bank relationships affect firm performance. An empirical implication of recent theoretical models is that firms maintaining multiple bank relationships are less profitable than their single-bank peers. We investigate this empirical implication using a data set containing

Patent licensing and selling to China as a strategy of technology transfer in a New Era: A perspective of European firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Li, Ying; Meijer, Elise; Duysters, Geert

2010-01-01

International technology transfer enables firms in developed countries to exploit the value of their technological innovations, and provides firms in developing countries with access to technological and organizational knowledge. This study aims to present a timely description of the experience...... and intentions of EU firms with regard to patent licensing and/or selling to China in this new era. Firms from 12 European countries in various industries were surveyed by an online questionnaire. We found that (1) large and small EU firms are very different with regard to the number of non...

Challenges Fostering Unwillingness to Form Strategic Alliances among Medium-Sized Manufacturing Firms in Tanzania

OpenAIRE

Kafigi Jeje

2014-01-01

For many years, strategic alliances have attracted the attention of researchers. The most researched area is the challenges facing the development and maintenance of strategic alliances. Most studies on alliance challenges have concentrated on strategic alliances among large firms in developed economies. Little research has been done on the link between these challenges and firms¡¯ unwillingness to form strategic alliances. We therefore want to find whether the unwillingness to form strategic...

Corporate governance attributes, firm characteristics and the level of corporate disclosure: Evidence from the Indian listed firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sunil Nandi

2013-01-01

Full Text Available This study investigates the association between firm characteristics, corporate governance attributes and the level of corporate disclosure of listed firms in India. The research paper has been based on a sample of 60 firms listed in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE / National Stock Exchange (NSE during the study period from 2000-01 to 2009-10. The study has used the Standard & Poor (2008 model for measuring the level of corporate disclosure. To examine the association between explanatory variables and the level of corporate disclosure, multiple regression model has been used. The results suggest a positive relationship between board size, ratio of audit committee members to total board members, family control, CEO duality, firm size, profitability, liquidity and the extent of corporate disclosure. However, the degree of corporate disclosure is negatively related to board composition, leverage and age of the firm.

Regional logistics land allocation policies: stimulating spatial concentration of logistics firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Heuvel, van den F.P.; Langen, de P.W.; Donselaar, van K.H.; Fransoo, J.C.

2013-01-01

Although spatial concentration of logistics firms in logistics concentration areas can be beneficial for society at large, there is not much research on the relationship between land allocation policies and logistics concentration areas. This paper analyzes land allocation policies by means of a

Regional logistics land allocation policies : stimulating spatial concentration of logistics firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Heuvel, van den F.P.; Langen, de P.W.; Donselaar, van K.H.; Fransoo, J.C.

2013-01-01

Although spatial concentration of logistics firms in logistics concentration areas can be beneficial for society at large, there is not much research on the relationship between land allocation policies and logistics concentration areas. This paper analyzes land allocation policies by means of a

INFLUENCE OF FIRM SIZE ON ITS BUSINESS SUCCESS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maja Pervan

2012-12-01

Full Text Available A firm may use different methods and diverse (nonfinancial analysis/indicators in order to evaluate its business success. However, one of the most widely applied methods refers to financial analyses that use profitability ratios as the key measures of firm’s overall efficiency and performance. In this research we focused our attention on firm size and evaluated its influence on firm profitability. Other than by the size of a firm, a firm performance is affected by a variety of internal and external variables. Therefore, apart from mere investigating the relationship between firm size and performance, we also explored the impact of some other variables crucial in determining firm profitability. The analysis was conducted for the 2002-2010 period and the results revealed that firm size has a significant positive (although weak influence on firm profitability. Additionally, results showed that assets turnover and debt ratio also statistically significantly influence firms’ performance while current ratio didn’t prove to be an important explanatory variable of firms’ profitability.

Does internationalization foster firm performance?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van den Berg, Marcel

2014-01-01

The research in this dissertation concerns the impact of internationalization of business activities on several dimensions of firm performance. We show that the productivity ranking by trade status of Dutch manufacturing firms in increasing order of productivity is: non-traders, importers, exporters

Human Capital and Wages in Exporting Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Munch, Jakob Roland; Skaksen, Jan Rose

This paper studies the link between a firms education level, export performance and wages of its workers. We argue that firms may escape intense competition in international markets by using high skilled workers to differentiate their products. This story is consistent with our empirical results....... Using a very rich matched worker-firm longitudinal dataset we find that firms with high export intensities pay higher wages. However, an interaction term between export intensity and skill intensity has a positive impact on wages and it absorbs the direct effect of the export intensity. That is, we find...... an export wage premium, but it accrues to workers in firms with high skill intensities...

Political uncertainty and firm risk in China

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Danglun Luo

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The political uncertainty surrounded by the turnover of government officials has a major impact on local economies and local firms. This paper investigates the relationship between the turnover of prefecture-city officials and the inherent risk faced by local firms in China. Using data from 1999 to 2012, we find that prefecture-city official turnovers significantly increased firm risk. Our results show that the political risk was mitigated when new prefecture-city officials were well connected with their provincial leaders. In addition, the impact of political uncertainty was more pronounced for regulated firms and firms residing in provinces with low market openness.

Does Firm Innovation Affect Corporate Social Responsibility?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

R. Shen (Rui); Y. Tang (Yi); Y. Zhang (Ying)

2016-01-01

textabstractThis study examines the relationship between firm innovation and CSR. Stakeholders’ concern over transaction-specific investments exacerbates when firms engage heavily in innovation activities. To secure stakeholders’ support, firms adopt CSR effectively as an ex ante signal of

Optimal investment and location decisions of a firm in a flood risk area using Impulse Control Theory

Science.gov (United States)

Grames, Johanna; Grass, Dieter; Kort, Peter; Prskawetz, Alexia

2017-04-01

Flooding events can affect businesses close to rivers, lakes or coasts. This paper provides a partial equilibrium model which helps to understand the optimal location choice for a firm in flood risk areas and its investment strategies. How often, when and how much are firms willing to invest in flood risk protection measures? We apply Impulse Control Theory to solve the model analytically and develop a continuation algorithm to solve the model numerically. Firms always invest in flood defense. The investment increases the higher the flood risk and the more firms also value the future, i.e. the more sustainable they plan. Investments in production capital follow a similar path. Hence, planning in a sustainable way leads to economic growth. Sociohydrological feedbacks are crucial for the location choice of the firm, whereas different economic situations have an impact on investment strategies. If flood defense is already present, e.g. built up by the government, firms move closer to the water and invest less in flood defense, which allows firms to accrue higher expected profits. Firms with a large initial production capital surprisingly try not to keep their market advantage, but rather reduce flood risk by reducing exposed production capital.

Growth of New Firms: Which Factors Influence Post-Entry Performance? An Empirical Analysis Based on Swiss Firm Data

OpenAIRE

David Marmet

2004-01-01

The aim of this study is to shed light on the factors which determine the post-entry performance of new firms. It is often argued that new firms are the driving force of structural changes and sometimes they are even characterized as an “engine” of economic growth. Nevertheless, the empirical evidence is mixed. Taking into account the high exit rate of new firms, a specific founding cohort does not contribute substantially to new jobs. In this paper, we analyse the contribution of new firms c...

Do international acquisitions by emerging-economy firms create shareholder value? The case of Indian firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gubbi, Sathyajit R.; Aulakh, Preet S.; Ray, Sougata; Sarkar, M. B.; Chittoor, Raveendra

While overseas acquisitions by emerging-economy firms are gaining increased attention from the business press, our understanding of whether and why this inorganic mode of international expansion creates value to acquirer firms is limited. We argue that international acquisitions facilitate

Modern Competitive Strategy Firm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

František Bartes

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The article deals with problems of an ever increasing number of cases of successful application of old combat strategies in business practice. Nevertheless, the author refuses the so called “direct conflict“ of firms, when it is really fought for victory on the market. His approach is based on the philosophy of “victory without fight“, in other words – of achieving the aim without direct conflict with the rival firm.In the end he comes to the conclusion that combat philosophies are more and more often incorporated into classical approach of strategic firm control and become the integral part of philosophy of management. At the close happens to opinion that the one from basic factors absolutely necessary to creation such strategy at company, is necessary present so-called „creative intelligence“.

IMPACT OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND FIRM-LEVEL CONTROL VARIABLES ON DIVIDEND POLICY OF SERVICE TRADE SECTOR OF MALAYSIA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Agha Jahanzeb

2016-09-01

Full Text Available This paper empirically investigates the impact of corporate governance factors (i.e. board size, board independence and CEO ownership and firm-level control variables (i.e. firm size, firm growth and firm profitability on the dividend payout policy among the service sector companies of Malaysia that are listed on Bursa Malaysia. Ordinary least square model was used to estimate the results. Sample consisted of 113 service sector firms from the period of 2009 to 2013. The results show that the profitable companies with large boards and less growth tend to pay higher dividends. Findings can be interpreted as that the profitable companies are sharing their profits with their shareholders in terms of dividends to give positive message to the market.

R&D status and the performance of domestic firms in China's coal mining industry

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sun, Sizhong; Anwar, Sajid

2015-01-01

Coal use accounts for a very large proportion of electricity production in China. Using a recently developed coarsened exact matching (CEM) technique, this paper examines the impact of research and development (R&D) activities on the performance of firms in China's coal mining industry. Our empirical results reveal that firms in China's coal industry that conduct R&D are more productive and their sales are higher. However, as far as the firm profitability and market shares are concerned, whether or not a firm in China's coal industry conducts R&D makes no difference. We find that foreign direct investment in China's coal mining industry leads to a significant decrease in the market share of domestic firms and its impact on productivity, sales and profitability of domestic firms is insignificant. The empirical results presented in this paper suggest that policies that encourage domestic firms in China's coal mining industries to conduct R&D can increase domestic production thereby reducing reliance on imports. Furthermore, productivity gains arising from R&D activities can also help Chinese mining firms to improve their competitive position in the international market. However, there is a need for restricting foreign direct investment in China's coal mining industry. - Highlights: • R&D status affects firm performance in China's coal mining industry. • Coal mining firms that conduct R&D are, on average, 0.2717% more productive. • Coal mining firms that conduct R&D experience an increase in sales. • Increase in foreign investment decreases the market share of coal mining firms

Competition Law and the Bounded Rationality of Firms

OpenAIRE

Bhattacharya, Shilpi

2016-01-01

Firm rationality plays a role in several aspects of competition law. Yet, the conception of the firm as a rational, profit maximizing entity has been disputed in different disciplines. This literature shows that neoclassical economic assumptions on which competition law is based can fall short of explaining the full range of observed firm behaviour. Accordingly, an alternative conception of the firm as boundedly rational can impact the understanding of firm conduct in competition law. Be...

Characterization of the Relationship Between Firms and Universities and Innovation Performance: The Case of Colombian Firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fredy Gomez

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Within the National Innovation System, universities play a key role as the main source of knowledge that supports national productivity and as a system that seeks to improve the competitiveness of firms competitiveness and to find answers concerning market needs in today’s fast-changing and globalized economy. Innovation, as a source of competitiveness, is normally supported by a firm’s technological capabilities: internal R&D, external collaborative agreements, and relationships with universities. This study uses a cluster analysis to identify three clusters that represent respectively those firms that interact closely with universities for technology development (which include R&D projects and technological learning activities, those firms that interact with universities for technological learning only, and those that do not have any kind of relationship with universities. We also analyze the innovation performance of each cluster. Data here come from the Second Colombian Innovation Survey, which was applied in 2005 to a sample of 6,222 firms. Among the main results, this study shows a higher innovation performance for those firms with relevant linkages for technology learning activities.

Empirical Analysis of Hungarian Firms According to Venture Capital Investment Criteria

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Futó Judit Edit

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Over the past decade the venture capital industry has become more and more prominent, not just on a global level, but in Hungary, too. Thanks to the JEREMIE Program a large number of new venture capital firms are located in our country, and therefore an investment wave has started. The aim of the paper is to sort micro- and small sized enterprises in terms of how appropriate is a venture capital financing. The main topic of the paper relates to the selection of firms for venture capital investment; therefore, in the first part of the study we briefly summarize a general venture capital investment process, highlighting both the selection process and the criteria used for selection. Then we propose 3 indexes (trustworthiness index, openness index, investment index, which we have created to help venture capitalists to decide whether the targeted enterprises are appropriate for them, or not. In the main part of the paper we provide a classification of micro- and small sized Hungarian firms based on my own survey, and we analyze what kind of relationship exists between the proposed indexes and the type of the classified firms. The result of the classification is that we identify four main firm types and, based on statistical tests, it can be said that there is no significant relationship between the trustworthiness index and the clusters, but that there are between the two other indexes and the clusters.

78 FR 70987 - Proxy Advisory Firm Roundtable

Science.gov (United States)

2013-11-27

... Firm Roundtable AGENCY: Securities and Exchange Commission. ACTION: Notice of roundtable discussion... advisory firms. The panel will be asked to discuss topics including the current state of proxy advisory firm use by investment advisers and institutional investors and potential changes that have been...

Endogenous Markups, Firm Productivity and International Trade:

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bellone, Flora; Musso, Patrick; Nesta, Lionel

) markups are positively related to firm productivity; 3) markups are negatively related to import penetration; 4) markups are positively related to firm export intensity and markups are higher on the export market than on the domestic ones in the presence of trade barriers and/or if competitors...... on the export market are less efficient than competitors on the domestic market. We estimate micro-level price cost margins (PCMs) using firm-level data extending the techniques developed by Hall (1986, 1988) and extended by Domowitz et al. (1988) and Roeger (1995) for the French manufacturing industry from......In this paper, we test key micro-level theoretical predictions ofMelitz and Ottaviano (MO) (2008), a model of international trade with heterogenous firms and endogenous mark-ups. At the firm-level, the MO model predicts that: 1) firm markups are negatively related to domestic market size; 2...

Value Creation Logics and Internationalization of Service Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ørberg Jensen, Peter D.; Petersen, Bent

2014-01-01

While mainstream theories in international business and management are founded either explicitly or implicitly on studies of manufacturing firms, prior attempts to develop theory on the internationalization of service firms are sparse and have yet to establish solid and comprehensive frameworks...... on a thorough understanding of the fundamental nature of these firms. We put forward ten propositions concerning the pace of internationalization in service firms and the dominant foreign operation modes. The use of value creation logics can be a useful complement to the conventional approaches to the study...... of service firms’ internationalization. However, the fact that most firms encompass more than one value creation logic complicates the use of firm databases and industry statistics. The study presents a novel theoretical approach and a set of propositions on service firm internationalization founded...

Value Creation Logics and Internationalization of Service Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ørberg Jensen, Peter D.; Petersen, Bent

2014-01-01

be based on a thorough understanding of the fundamental nature of these firms. Design/methodology/approach - Theoretical study. Findings - We put forward propositions concerning the pace of internationalization and the default foreign operation modes in service firms. Research limitations...... implications - We suggest that managers in service firms should consider primarily the nature of the value creation logic(s) in their firms when deciding and designing an internationalization strategy. Originality/value - The study presents a novel theoretical approach and a set of propositions on service firm....../implications - The use of value creation logics can be a useful complement to the conventional approaches to the study of service firms’ internationalization. However, the fact that most firms encompass more than one value creation logic complicates the use of firm databases and industry statistics. Practical...

From spectator to walk-on to actor: An exploratory study of the internationalisation of Greek firms since 1989

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kalogeresis, Athanasios

2010-06-01

Full Text Available The article follows the evolution of the Greek business activities in foreign countries. Based on two unique databases, the article acknowledges the existence of two sub-periods. More particularly, the years up to 1998 are characterized by two central elements, whose importance diminishes during the second period: the overwhelming significance of the Balkans (especially the countries bordering on Greece and the hesitance of large Greek firms. In the second period, large firms make a dynamic entry, while some of them start behaving as real TNCs. However, the importance of small firms but also of the Balkans is preserved. As anticipated, with the shift of the morphological features of Greek entrepreneurial activity in foreign countries, the impact on the Greek economy also changes.

13 CFR 315.6 - Firm eligibility for Adjustment Assistance.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 13 Business Credit and Assistance 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Firm eligibility for Adjustment..., DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE FOR FIRMS General Provisions § 315.6 Firm eligibility for Adjustment Assistance. (a) Firms participate in the Trade Adjustment Assistance for Firms program in...

24 CFR 891.818 - Firm commitment application.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 24 Housing and Urban Development 4 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Firm commitment application. 891.818 Section 891.818 Housing and Urban Development Regulations Relating to Housing and Urban... Persons with Disabilities § 891.818 Firm commitment application. The sponsor will submit the firm...

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND FIRM VALUE IN EMERGING MARKETS AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF ADR ISSUING EMERGING MARKET FIRMS

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Aysun Ficici

2012-01-01

Full Text Available This study explores the value implications of good corporate governance for a sample of 54 ADR issuing emerging market firms (EMFs from 9 countries primarily located in the regions of Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America and the and employs recently constructed company composite corporate governance metric along with some alternative corporate governance measures associated with the origin of the issuing firm. Although the ADR literature primarily focuses on the impact of subscription to US disclosure requirements we contend that company and country specific corporate governance standards play a significant role in the risk reduction and ensuing value capture.  The fundamental inquiry in this study has the following foci: The primary focus is on the impact of corporate governance structures on firm performance as to whether adherence to standards creates market value for ADR issuing EMFs.  Do good corporate governance practices affect the value of EMFs? The secondary focus is concerned with whether the impact of corruption level and legal system in a firm’s home country affect the corporate structures of EMFs thus affecting the market value of firms.  In this study, we utilize Tobin’s q as the measure of firm performance/market value.  Our findings suggest that there is a significant correlation between corporate governance structures of ADR issuing EMFs and their market values and/or performances.  The results also indicate that the level of corruption and legal structures in home countries of EMFs strongly impact the corporate governance structures of these firms and sequentially affect their market values. Therefore, this research further contributes to the scholarly findings and suppositions that corporate structures of firms do create consequences on firm value.

The direct and indirect effects of infrastructure on firm productivity: Evidence from manufacturing in the People's Republic of China

OpenAIRE

Wan, Guanghua; Zhang, Yan

2017-01-01

This paper attempts to distinguish and estimate the direct and indirect effects of infrastructure on firm productivity. The latter arises from the infrastructure-agglomeration link and has been largely overlooked in the literature on infrastructure. An analytical framework is then developed to estimate both effects. Finally, empirical results are obtained using large-scale firm-level survey data from the People's Republic of China (PRC). Major findings include: (1) all the three kinds of infr...

Restructuring: new relationships between the oil companies and the upstream oil firms

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Barreau, S.

2001-11-01

Since the 1986 oil shock, international oil companies have focused on their base competencies, concentrating on activities viewed as their core businesses and steadily increasing the number of tasks to be subcontracted to the upstream oil and gas service sector. The upstream oil and gas service companies had to be restructured to face this new challenge. The strategies they launched at the end of the 80's were varied. Some firms became largely integrated (Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, Halliburton) whereas other firms chose to broaden their range of services. However generally, they opted for external investment which led to an important wave of mergers and acquisitions. The first part characterizes the upstream oil and gas sector by introducing the main oil and gas service firms and their recent strategic evolution. This concludes with both an economic valuation and a typology of attempted growth strategies. To illustrate this, a matrix has been created to characterise the dynamic paths of the oil and gas service firms. The purpose of the second part is to consider the economic theories related to industrial strategies. The strategies of innovation, market protection, vertical integration and diversification have been studied to illustrate the main conclusion which is that the aim of all these strategies was to change the relationships between the oil companies and the upstream oil and gas service firms. (author)

The Internationalisation of Service Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Blagoeva, Denitsa Hazarbassanova

The question the thesis aims at resolving is: How do the value creation logics of firms impact their internationalisation? The overall aim of this PhD project is to explore and test an approach to understanding the internationalisation of service firms, based not on opposing them to manufacturing...

Dividend Policy of German Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Goergen, M.; Renneboog, L.D.R.; Correia Da Silva, L.

2004-01-01

German firms pay out a lower proportion of their cash flows than UK and US firms.However, on a published profits basis, the pattern is reversed.Company law provisions and accounting policies account for these conflicting results.A partial adjustment model is used to estimate the implicit target

How Firms Make Boundary Decisions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dobrajska, Magdalena; Billinger, Stephan; Becker, Markus

2014-01-01

We report findings from an analysis of 234 firm boundary decisions that a manufacturing firm has made during a 10 year period. Extensive interviews with all major decision makers located both at the headquarters and subsidiaries allow us to examine (a) who was involved in each boundary decision...

48 CFR 1852.216-78 - Firm fixed price.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 6 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 true Firm fixed price. 1852.216... 1852.216-78 Firm fixed price. As prescribed in 1816.202-70, insert the following clause: Firm Fixed Price (DEC 1988) The total firm fixed price of this contract is $[Insert the appropriate amount]. (End...

Technological Innovation Capabilities and Firm Performance

OpenAIRE

Richard C.M. Yam; William Lo; Esther P.Y. Tang; Antonio; K.W. Lau

2010-01-01

Technological innovation capability (TIC) is defined as a comprehensive set of characteristics of a firm that facilities and supports its technological innovation strategies. An audit to evaluate the TICs of a firm may trigger improvement in its future practices. Such an audit can be used by the firm for self assessment or third-party independent assessment to identify problems of its capability status. This paper attempts to develop such an auditing framework that can...

Leverage, monetary policy, and firm investment

OpenAIRE

Charles X. Hu

1999-01-01

In this paper, I investigate whether the effects of monetary policy on firm investment can be transmitted through leverage. I find that monetary contractions reduce the growth of investment more for highly leveraged firms than for less leveraged firms. The results suggest that the board credit channel for monetary policy exists, and that it can operate through leverage, as adverse monetary shocks aggravate real debt burdens and raise the effective costs of investment.

Corruption and firm behavior

OpenAIRE

Sandra Sequeira; Simeon Djankov

2013-01-01

This paper investigates how corruption affects firrm behavior. Firms can engage in two types of corruption when seeking a public service: cost-reducing "collusive" corruption and cost increasing "coercive" corruption. Using an original and unusually rich dataset on bribe payments at ports matched to firrm-level data, we observe how firms respond to each type of corruption by adjusting their shipping and sourcing strategies. "Collusive" corruption is associated with higher usage of the corrupt...

Firms, Technology and Trade

OpenAIRE

Caldera Sanchez, Aida

2010-01-01

This doctoral dissertation studies the effect of economic integration on the performance of firms. The ongoing process of global economic integration has been characterized by dismantling of trade barriers and openness to foreign direct investments (FDI). These changes have not only brought opportunities to firms in terms of market access and the possibility to learn about foreign technologies brought in by foreign counterparts. The new economic environment has also posed new challenges throu...

The Influence of Ownership on Firm Internationalization: A Synthesis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Strandskov, Jesper; Madsen, Tage Koed; Petersen, Bent

2018-01-01

The paper develops an integrative ownership-internationalization model that explores the influences of various owner types (i.e. investor-owned firms, family-owned firms, employee-owned firms, cooperative–owned firms, and state-owned firms) on firm internationalization. Based on a comparative...... analysis of the various owner types, we discuss how each owner group’s main objectives, risk behavior and provision of resources influence their internationalization strategies and decisions (i.e. scale, scope and speed decisions)....

Choice of Ownership Structure and Firm Performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jones, Derek C; Kalmi, Panu; Mygind, Niels

2003-01-01

In this paper we use rich panel data for a representative sample of Estonian enterprises to analysediverse issues related to the determinants of ownership structures and ownership changes afterprivatisation. A key focus is to determine whether ownership changes are related to economicefficiency....... While employee owned firms are found to be much more prone than other firms toswitch ownership categories, often `employee owned' firms remain `insider-owned' as ownershippasses from current employees to managers and former employees. Logit analyses of thedeterminants of ownership structures...... and ownership changes provides mixed support for severalhypotheses. As predicted: (i) wealth and resource constraints play a crucial role in thedetermination of ownership, with foreigners buying firms with the highest equity levels andinsiders buying firms with the lowest equity valuations; (ii) risk aversion...

Firm-level volatility and exports

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vannoorenberghe, G.C.L.

2012-01-01

This paper shows that the share of exports in the total sales of a firm has a positive and substantial impact on the volatility of its sales. Decomposing the volatility of sales of exporters between their domestic and export markets, I show using an identification strategy based on a firm-specific

Reasons for not changing to activity-based costing: a survey of Irish firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Martin Quinn

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Purpose – This paper aims to report on a survey of medium and large Irish firms to ascertain reasons for not changing to more advanced costing techniques, namely, activity-based costing (ABC. Developments in technology and recent poor economic conditions would suggest that the technique could be adopted more by firms, as they make increased efforts to keep costs under control. Design/methodology/approach – A survey instrument was used to gather data drawing from the top 1,000 Irish firms. From a useable population of 821 organisations, a response rate of 20.75 per cent was achieved. Findings – Findings show a rate of adoption of ABC of 18.7 per cent, which is lower than previous studies in an Irish context. The level of information technology in firms is not a key factor for non-adoption. Instead, the main reasoning for non-adoption revolve around stable existing costing methods, which firms expressed satisfaction with. Originality/value – This research suggests the adoption of ABC is not necessarily driven by external factors such as technology and economic shocks, at least in the context of Ireland. It also suggests that costing techniques may be deeply embedded within organisations and are less likely to be subject to change.

Energy efficiency barriers in commercial and industrial firms in Ukraine: An empirical analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hochman, Gal; Timilsina, Govinda R.

2017-01-01

Improvement in energy efficiency is one of the main options to reduce energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. However, large-scale deployment of energy-efficient technologies is constrained by several factors. Employing a survey of 509 industrial and commercial firms throughout Ukraine and a generalized ordered logit model, we quantified the economic, behavioral, and institutional barriers that may impede the deployment of energy-efficient technologies. Our analysis shows that behavioral barriers resulted from lack of information, knowledge, and awareness are major impediments to the adoption of energy-efficient technologies in Ukraine, and that financial barriers may further impede investments in these technologies especially for small firms. This suggests that carefully targeted information provisions and energy audits will enhance Ukrainian firms' investments in energy-efficient technologies to save energy consumption, improve productivity, and reduce carbon emissions from the productive sectors. - Highlights: • Employing a survey of 509 industrial and commercial firms throughout Ukraine • A generalized ordered logit model is used in the analysis. • The paper quantifies the economic, behavioral, and institutional barriers to energy-efficient technologies. • Behavioral barriers are major impediments to the adoption of energy-efficient technologies. • Financial barriers may further impede investments in these technologies especially for small firms.

Cash Holdings and Leverage of German Listed Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rapp, Marc Steffen; Killi, Andreas Maximilian

2016-01-01

We examine cash holdings and leverage levels of German listed (non-financial and non-utility) firms. We document a secular increase in cash ratios over the last twenty years (1992–2011), reducing the net debt book leverage ratio for the average sample firm close to zero. Using prediction models...... firms are associated with measures of uncertainty faced by firms. Our results suggest that German firms have increased (reduced) their cash (net debt leverage) levels over time in order to adopt more precautionary financial policies....

An Empirical Study on the Behavior of Monthly Stock Prices of Fortune 500 Firms and S&P Smaller Firms: Evidence and Implications

OpenAIRE

Young H. Kim; Edward L. Davis; Charles T. Moses

2014-01-01

This paper revisits a random walk hypothesis by investigating the behavior of monthly stock prices of 461 Fortune 500 firms over 45 years and 599 S&P smaller firms over 10 years. The Box-Jenkins ARIMA models are applied to time series analysis and stock market forecasting to find the monthly stock price behavior. The research findings show that 309 (67.03%) Fortune 500 firms and 449 (74.96%) S&P smaller firms follow a random walk. The monthly stock prices of Fortune 500 firms and S&P firms ...

Green Shipping Practices of Shipping Firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Young-Tae Chang

2017-05-01

Full Text Available The primary objective of this study is to provide an empirical research using structural equation modeling to identify the factors that motivate shipping firms to adopt green shipping practices (GSP. Furthermore, it also examines if adopting GSP can enhance the shipping firms’ environmental and productivity performance. The findings show that shipping firms are motivated to adopt GSP mostly by industrial norms set by institutionalized associations. They are also motivated by customers’ demand for environmental friendliness and their own strategy to make good image. Unlike our expectation, government regulations and international environmental laws are not significant in influencing shipping firms to adopt GSP. Moreover, adoption of green shipping practices can improve the environmental and productivity performance of the shipping firms.

Komunikační strategie ve firmě

OpenAIRE

Radil, Lukáš

2009-01-01

Application-oriented work on the theme "Communication strategies in the company" is solving problems with corporate communications solution in companies. It is a reaction to the ever-present poor and nonconceptual marketing communication whether it's a small or large firm. The aim of this work is to provide an overview of communication tools and to show on concrete company, that for the formation of functional integrated commercial communication is not always required expensive advertising ag...

Within- and Cross-Firm Mobility and Earnings Growth

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Frederiksen, Anders; Halliday, Timothy; Koch, Alexander Karl

It is widely accepted that promotions within firms and mobility across firms lead to significant earnings progression. Existing research generally examined cross-firm mobility separately from hierarchical advancement. Yet, as our descriptive evidence from Danish panel data shows, how the two type...... growth of promotions (either within or across firms) and subsequent mobility at a higher hierarchy level....

Strategic Orientation in the Globalization of Software Firms

Science.gov (United States)

Dedrick, Jason; Kraemer, Kenneth L.; Carmel, Erran; Dunkle, Debora

In the search for profits, software firms are globalizing their development activities. Some firms achieve greater profits by becoming more efficient, whereas others do so by reaching new markets; some do both. This paper creates an a priori typology of strategies based on the extent to which firms are focused on operational improvement or market access, have a dual focus or are unfocused. We find that firms with these strategies differ in degree of internationalization, organization of offshoring and performance outcomes related to offshoring. Market-oriented firms receive a greater proportion of their total revenue from sales outside the U.S., showing a greater international orientation. They keep more of their offshore development in-house via captive operations. They also are most likely to report increased non-U.S. sales as a result of offshoring. On the other hand, operations-oriented firms have lower levels of international sales, are more likely to go offshore via outsourced software development, and achieve greater costs savings and labor force flexibility as a result of offshoring. Operations-oriented firms also face more obstacles in offshoring, perhaps because of their reliance on outsourcing. Dual focus firms generally achieve some of the best of both strategies, whereas unfocused firms achieve lower cost benefits.

Drivers for liquidation and transfer in small firms : Theory of Planned Behavior and firm conditions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

H. Leory; Lex van Teeffelen

2009-01-01

Recently Leroy et al. (2008) tested if the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) predicts exit behavior of entrepreneurs: liquidation or transfer. He added the purchasers view to the TPB: firm viability and intangible assets. We retested Leroy et al. hypotheses on a more refined dataset of 136 firms in

The Firm as a Competent Team

OpenAIRE

Eliasson, Gunnar

1988-01-01

Results from empirical studies of firm behavior are synthesized into, a theory of the firm as a competent team. I demonstrate the existence of a tacit organizational competence exercising a leverage on the productivities of all other factors through selecting and allocating competent people, thus earning a monopoly rent in the capital market. The competence identified can only be fairly compensated through sharing in firm value growth in the equity market, exhibiting undervaluation of prime a...

An empirical analysis of ERP adoption by oil and gas firms

Science.gov (United States)

Romero, Jorge

2005-07-01

Despite the growing popularity of enterprise-resource-planning (ERP) systems for the information technology infrastructure of large and medium-sized businesses, there is limited empirical evidence on the competitive benefits of ERP implementations. Case studies of individual firms provide insights but do not provide sufficient evidence to draw reliable inferences and cross-sectional studies of firms in multiple industries provide a broad-brush perspective of the performance effects associated with ERP installations. To narrow the focus to a specific competitive arena, I analyze the impact of ERP adoption on various dimensions of performance for firms in the Oil and Gas Industry. I selected the Oil and Gas Industry because several companies installed a specific type of ERP system, SAP R/3, during the period from 1990 to 2002. In fact, SAP was the dominant provider of enterprise software to oil and gas companies during this period. I evaluate performance of firms that implemented SAP R/3 relative to firms that did not adopt ERP systems in the pre-implementation, implementation and post-implementation periods. My analysis takes two different approaches, the first from a financial perspective and the second from a strategic perspective. Using the Sloan (General Motors) model commonly applied in financial statement analysis, I examine changes in performance for ERP-adopting firms versus non-adopting firms along the dimensions of asset utilization and return on sales. Asset utilization is more closely aligned with changes in leanness of operations, and return on sales is more closely aligned with customer-value-added. I test hypotheses related to the timing and magnitude of the impact of ERP implementation with respect to leanness of operations and customer value added. I find that SAP-adopting companies performed relatively better in terms of asset turnover than non-SAP-adopting companies during both the implementation and post-implementation periods and that SAP

Core Knowledge Employee Creativity and Firm Performance: The Moderating Role of Riskiness Orientation, Firm Size, and Realized Absorptive Capacity

Science.gov (United States)

Gong, Yaping; Zhou, Jing; Chang, Song

2013-01-01

In this study, we examine when creativity is positively or negatively related to firm performance. Building on the creation-implementation tension theorized in the literature and the attention capacity perspective, we argue that the relationship between creativity and firm performance is contingent on riskiness orientation, firm size, and realized…

THE ROLE OF THE SUSTAINABILITY REPORT IN CAPITALISTIC FIRM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gazzola Patrizia

2011-12-01

Full Text Available The aim and the central topic of this research is the understanding of the importance of Sustainable growth strategy approach as a driver to achieving top-line growth and bottom-line results. The main contributions of this line of research are to demonstrate the idea that the sustainability report is an instrument for social interaction and social cost/benefit analysis and to show that such an instrument can describe, comment on and sum up the firm's own behaviour aimed at sustainable growth. The work integrates the CSR management literature with a large body of research in accounting and finance. This study draws from theoretical research about the nature of the corporation, its role in society and contributions by recent research on corporate social, environmental, ethical responsibility and accountability. Our research demonstrates that the economic existence of the capitalistic firm as a producer of economic and financial values must be appreciated, in terms of the sustainability of the development path of the firm, and evaluated by a wide range of social performance measures of outcome or benefit. It also shows how the Sustainability report emphasizes the link between firm and territory, and affirms the concept of the firm as an entity that, by pursuing its own prevailing interests, contributes to improving the quality of life of the members of the society in which it operates. This paper contributes primarily to the academic debate by reviewing past attempts to theorise CSR and stakeholder dialogue, identifying gaps and weaknesses, and proposing the Sustainable Growth implementation processes for the creation of value. It also highlights the relationship between CSR activity and corporate image and performance. The research shed light on aspects of CSR activity for which little is known and much less is being understood; namely, the channels and the mechanisms through which the CSR impact is perceived and realized for creation of value

Does Corruption Increase or Decrease Employment in Firms?

OpenAIRE

Beltrán, Arlette

2015-01-01

This article uses representative data for firms for Latin American firms and show that corruption decreases employment in firms. This result is robust to changes in specification and also consistent with the use of an instrumental variables approach. Corruption appears to negatively impact the growth and wealth in a country, not by introducing labour distortion in firms, but by keeping them small.

The Verdoorn law, firm strategy and firm performance

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hartigh, den E.; Langerak, F.; Zegveld, M.A.; Geenhuizen, van M.; Trzmielak, D.M.; Gibson, D.V.; Urbaniak, M.

2009-01-01

In many markets and firms, positive feedback effects play an important role. Positive feedback effects mean that there is a tendency for that which is ahead to get further ahead, and for that which loses advantage to lose further advantage (Arthur, 1996). Such positive feedback effects result from

Foreign Currency Borrowing by Small Firms

OpenAIRE

Martin Brown; Steven Ongena; Pinar Yesin

2009-01-01

We examine the firm- and country-level determinants of the currency denomination of small business loans. We first model the choice of loan currency in a framework which features a trade-off between lower cost of debt and the risk of firm-level distress costs, and also incorporates the impact of information asymmetry between banks and firms. When foreign currency funds come at a lower interest rate, all foreign currency earners as well as those local currency earners with high revenues and lo...

Employee participation in decision-making in architectural firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Adedapo Oluwatayo

2017-06-01

Full Text Available In this study, the participation of employee architects in decision-making in architectural firms is investigated. This is with a view to identifying the organisational contexts that enhance employee participation in decision making. The impact of such participation on the performances of the firms was also assessed. This study was carried out through a questionnaire survey of employers of architects in Nigeria. In agreement with findings of previous studies, participation of the employees of the architectural firms in the study in decision making is low. Employee participation in decision making in the firms was dependent on the staffing strategy and proportion of junior staff in many cases. The positive impact of employee participation in decision making on firm performance varied with the nature of the decision. This study concludes that there is need for employers in architectural firms to identify the categories of decision that employees should be involved in and to modify their firm contexts to encourage participation where desired.

Multi-unit shutdown due to boiler feedwater chemical excursion

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Diebel, M.E.

1991-01-01

Ontario Hydro's Bruce Nuclear Generating Station 'B' consists of four 935 W CANDU units located on the east shore of Lake Huron in the province of Ontario, Canada. On July 25 and 26, 1989 three of the four operating units were shutdown due to boiler feedwater chemical excursions initiated by a process upset in the Water Treatment Plant that provides demineralized make-up water to all four units. The chemicals that escaped from an ion exchange vessel during a routine regeneration very quickly spread through the condensate make-up system and into the boiler feedwater systems. This resulted in boiler sulfate levels exceeding shutdown limits. A total of 260 GWH of electrical generation was unexpectedly made unavailable to the grid at a time of peak seasonal demand. This event exposed several unforeseen deficiencies and vulnerabilities in the automatic demineralized water make-up quality protection scheme, system designs, operating procedures and the ability of operating personnel to recognize and appropriately respond to such an event. The combination of these factors contributed towards turning a minor system upset into a major multi-unit shutdown. This paper provides the details of the actual event initiation in the Water Treatment Plant and describes the sequence of events that led to the eventual shutdown of three units and near shutdown of the fourth. The design inadequacies, procedural deficiencies and operating personnel responses and difficulties are described. The process of recovering from this event, the flushing out of system piping, boilers and the feedwater train is covered as well as our experiences with setting up supplemental demineralized water supplies including trucking in water and the use of rental trailer mounted demineralizing systems. System design, procedural and operational changes that have been made and that are still being worked on in response to this event are described. The latest evidence of the effect of this event on boiler tube

What results when firms implement practices: the differential relationship between specific practices, firm financial performance, customer service, and quality.

Science.gov (United States)

Gibson, Cristina B; Porath, Christine L; Benson, George S; Lawler, Edward E

2007-11-01

Previous research on organizational practices is replete with contradictory evidence regarding their effects. Here, the authors argue that these contradictory findings may have occurred because researchers have often examined complex practice combinations and have failed to investigate a broad variety of firm-level outcomes. Thus, past research may obscure important differential effects of specific practices on specific firm-level outcomes. Extending this research, the authors develop hypotheses about the effects of practices that (a) enable information sharing, (b) set boundaries, and (c) enable teams on 3 different firm-level outcomes: financial performance, customer service, and quality. Relationships are tested in a sample of observations from over 200 Fortune 1000 firms. Results indicate that information-sharing practices were positively related to financial performance 1 year following implementation of the practices, boundary-setting practices were positively related to firm-level customer service, and team-enabling practices were related to firm-level quality. No single set of practices predicted all 3 firm-level outcomes, indicating practice-specific effects. These findings help resolve the theoretical tension in the literature regarding the effects of organizational practices and offer guidance as to how to best target practices to increase specific work-related outcomes. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed. (c) 2007 APA

Female Employment and Firm Performance: An empirical analysis using firm panel data (Japanese)

OpenAIRE

YAMAMOTO Isamu

2014-01-01

This paper overviews the situation of female employment in listed Japanese companies using firm-level panel data after the 2000s, and demonstrates whether those companies utilizing female employment earn higher profits. The estimation results of fixed effect models show that a higher female proportion among regular employees significantly raises a company's profit rates, as measured by the return on assets. Particularly, it is shown that those firms with a female proportion of 30% to 40%, as ...

Immigrants’ initial firm allocation and earnings growth

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wen Ci

2017-05-01

Full Text Available While employers are playing an increasingly important role in immigration selection in Canada, little is known about how firm-level characteristics affect the economic integration of immigrants. Using a Canadian employer–employee matched dataset, this paper considers whether immigrants initially employed in low-paying firms in Canada experienced inferior earnings growth than those initially employed in high-paying firms. The results show that the large earnings differential observed between immigrants initially employed in low- and high-paying firms diminished only slightly over the subsequent 14 years, even when differences in demographic and general human capital characteristics are taken into account. Alors que les employeurs jouent un rôle de plus en plus important dans la sélection des immigrants qui s’établissent au Canada, on en sait peu sur la façon dont les caractéristiques au niveau de l’entreprise influencent l’intégration économique de ces derniers. Au moyen d’un ensemble de données appariées sur les employeurs et les employés, le présent document vise à déterminer si la croissance des gains des immigrants employés initialement au Canada par des entreprises à bas salaires est plus faible que celle des gains des immigrants employés au départ par des entreprises à hauts salaires. Les résultats montrent que l’écart important observé entre les gains des immigrants employés au départ par des entreprises à bas salaires et de ceux employés par des entreprises à hauts salaires ne diminuait que légèrement au cours des 14 années suivantes, même après avoir tenu compte des différences de caractéristiques démographiques et de caractéristiques générales du capital humain.

How do firms implement impairment tests of goodwill?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Plenborg, Thomas; Vriborg Petersen, Christian

Adopting a survey approach, our study examines how firms implement impairment test of goodwill. We focus on how firms define and measure the recoverable amount of CGU. The survey includes 58 completed questionnaires representing 73% of the firms on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange that recognise goo...... be of interest to a number of parties including firms, financial advisors, auditors, standard setters and users of financial statements....

Finding the "Right Staff" in Small Firms

Science.gov (United States)

Barrett, Rowena; Neeson, Robyn; Billington, Leo

2007-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore what owners of small firms are looking for from new employees. The aim is to pursue this in light of the debate around formality and informality of small firm HRM, exploring the extent to which the small firms studied had formalized HRM practices. Design/methodology/approach: The data reported here…

Collaborative Communities of Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bøllingtoft, Anne; Müller, Sabine; Ulhøi, John Parm

2011-01-01

and developing strategic initiatives that aid the community as a whole. We discuss the facilitator role of the shared services provider, contrasting it with the coordinator role found in other multi-firm organizations, and we show how shared services providers function by describing three examples...... of collaborative communities of firms from different sectors: the U.S.-based Blade.org and two Denmark-based communities, the Kalundborg Industrial Symbiosis and MG50. Implications for the theory and practice of organization design are discussed....

Direct effect of ownership and technology import: Firm level evidence from large and medium-enterprises in Shanghai

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

ZHU Pingfang; LI Lei

2007-01-01

This paper explores the direct effect of ownership and technology imports under the fiamework of neoclassical economic theory.The econometric analysis is based on panel data from a random sample of large and mediumenterprises in Shanghai,during the period of 1998 to 2003.The results show that Sino-foreign joint ventures,Sino-foralgn cooperative enterprises and foreignfunded enterprises (SANZI) enjoy higher labor productivity and total factor productlvity (TFP) than domestic enterprises.Intra-firm diffusion of non-codified technology,proxied by ovwnership,is the main source of their better performance,whereas internally transferred codified technology makes little contribution to TFP.For state-owned enterprises,codified technology imports have significantly raised both labor productivity and TFP,but such positive effect is significantly dependent on the S&T human resource.In contrast,no evidence supports that introduction of foreign technology has enhanced the productivity in domestic nonstate-owned enterprises.The empirical results indicate that SANZI do not have a distinct advantage in their codified technology.In addition,inadequate investment in assimilation process and research and development together with inefficient management of science and technology activities,may impede the use of imported technology.

What is the Relation (if any) Between a Firm's Corporate Governance Arrangements and its Financial Performance?

OpenAIRE

Wessels, Roberto E.; Wansbeek, Tom J.

2014-01-01

This paper presents estimates from a latent variables model of the relation between corporate governance and financial performance. We use data on large US corporations to estimate the correlation, conditional on the firms' investment opportunity set, between governance and performance. We find that this correlation is statistically speaking zero. This result is consistent with the equilibrium view (Demsetz, 1983) in which firms optimize corporate governance arrangements subject to the constr...

International working capital practices of Ghanaian firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J. Abor

2005-12-01

Full Text Available International working capital management is important to firms frequently operating in the international market. This article investigates the international working capital practices of top Ghanaian firms involved in international trade. The objective of the study is to ascertain the extent to which Ghanaian firms use international working capital management vehicles. The article focuses on two main areas of international working capital management; international cash management and international sales and accounts receivables management. The results of this study reveal low level of use of international working capital vehicles among Ghanaian firms. Recommendations are made in this regard.

Does Innovating Customer Relationship Management Improve Firm Performance?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Geersbro, Jens; Ritter, Thomas

Based on an empirical study of more than 400 B2B firms, this paper investigates the role of innovating a firm’s customer relationship management capability on firm performance. There is a lot of evidence for the positive impact of customer relationship management capability on firm performance....... This paper advances this stream of literature by analyzing whether or not investments into developing a firm’s customer relationship capability increase firm performance. The findings illustrate that although relationship management innovation (defined as new (to the firm) processes, systems and tools...... for relationship management) has a positive correlation with firm performance, the impact is fully mediated by the firms’ relationship management capability. The paper also identifies internal and external drivers of customer relationship management innovation. Not surprisingly customer and competitor dynamics...

Multicultural markets and acculturation: Implications for service firms

OpenAIRE

Poulis, Konstantinos; Yamin, Mo; Poulis, Efthimios

2013-01-01

Purpose: The purpose is to construct an analytical framework that encapsulates implications for the marketing offering of service firms as a result of observed intra-national ethnic diversity in these firms' markets of operation. Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual approach which promotes the idea that acculturation matters for service firms operating in multicultural markets and adopts relevant propositions related to service firms' strategy in such markets. Findings: Integrati...

Born Global Firms: A Foreign Trade Related Study on Turkey

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aytaç GÖKMEN

2013-11-01

Full Text Available With the comprehensive advent in information and communication technologies and worldwide ease of transportation, the volume of international trade and business increased profoundly. Within this process, a Born Global Firm (BGF, right from its initiation, aims at creating competitive advantage by marketing a large volume of its products in various international markets by utilizing technological advances. Therefore, the rational behind the idea of BGF is to become an international firm in a short period of time and making international business affairs core of its business activities. Thus, the aim of this study is to review the concept of BGF theoretically and relate the issue to foreign trade affairs resting on significant sources related to the Turkish case mainly focusing on trade statistics as to review the potential development of BGFs in Turkey.

Audit firm rotation, audit firm tenure and earnings conservatism

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kramer, S.T.; Georgakopoulos, G.; Sotiropoulos, I.; Vasileiou, K.Z.

2011-01-01

This study aims to contribute to the debate around the possibility of mandating audit firm rotation. Specifically, it examines conservatism as an attribute of earnings quality, which has not attracted particular attention in the auditor rotation research. Applying regression analyses on a sample,

Taxing the Financially Integrated Multinational Firm

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Johannesen, Niels

partly fall on investment and thus workers in the former country. This tax exporting mechanism introduces a scope for corporate taxes, which is not present in standard models of international taxation. Accounting for the internal capital markets of multinational firms thus represents a way to resolve......This paper develops a theoretical model of corporate taxation in the presence of financially integrated multinational firms. Under the assumption that multinational firms at least partly use internal loans to finance foreign investment, we find that the optimal corporate tax rate is positive from...... the perspective of a small, open economy. This finding contrasts the standard result that the optimal source based capital tax is zero. Intuitively, to the extent that multinational firms finance investment in country i with loans from affiliates in country j, the burden of corporate taxes in the latter country...

Adopting Advertising and Communication Innovations in Small Firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fabricia Durieux Zucco

2017-03-01

Full Text Available The adoption of innovation for market penetration of small firms tends to consider the effectiveness of communication channels. In this study we investigate the adoption of communication and advertising innovations, the use of virtual social networks, in a sample of 227 small firms in the Brazilian countryside. We analyse how distinct communication objectives of a firm influence the choice of using virtual social networks to build links between firms and customers.  We also look at the role of paid advertising in virtual social networks. Main results show a trend of such firms to engage in virtual social networks when they are targeting at stronger brand image and when building deeper links through brand information with their public. Firms also tend to use advertising in virtual social networks when intending to raise brand recall from their brand portfolio.

Comparison of Health Risks and Changes in Risks over Time Among a Sample of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Heterosexual Employees at a Large Firm.

Science.gov (United States)

Mitchell, Rebecca J; Ozminkowski, Ronald J

2017-04-01

The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of health risk factors by sexual orientation over a 4-year period within a sample of employees from a large firm. Propensity score-weighted generalized linear regression models were used to estimate the proportion of employees at high risk for health problems in each year and over time, controlling for many factors. Analyses were conducted with 6 study samples based on sex and sexual orientation. Rates of smoking, stress, and certain other health risk factors were higher for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) employees compared with rates of these risks among straight employees. Lesbian, gay, and straight employees successfully reduced risk levels in many areas. Significant reductions were realized for the proportion at risk for high stress and low life satisfaction among gay and lesbian employees, and for the proportion of smokers among gay males. Comparing changes over time for sexual orientation groups versus other employee groups showed that improvements and reductions in risk levels for most health risk factors examined occurred at similar rates among individuals employed by this firm, regardless of sexual orientation. These results can help improve understanding of LGB health and provide information on where to focus workplace health promotion efforts to meet the health needs of LGB employees.

Energy price uncertainty, energy intensity and firm investment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yoon, Kyung Hwan; Ratti, Ronald A.

2011-01-01

This paper examines the effect of energy price uncertainty on firm-level investment. An error correction model of capital stock adjustment is estimated with data on U.S. manufacturing firms. Higher energy price uncertainty is found to make firms more cautious by reducing the responsiveness of investment to sales growth. The result is robust to consideration of energy intensity by industry. The effect is greater for high growth firms. It must be emphasized that the direct effect of uncertainty is not estimated. Conditional variance of energy price is obtained from a GARCH model. Findings suggest that stability in energy prices would be conducive to greater stability in firm-level investment. (author)

Consumer Networks and Firm Reputation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Huck, Steffen; Lünser, Gabriele K.; Tyran, Jean-Robert

Arguing that consumers are the carriers of firms' reputations, we examine the role of consumer networks for trust in markets that suffer from moral hazard. When consumers are embedded in a network, they can exchange information with their neighbours about their private experiences with different ...... sellers. We find that such information exchange fosters firms' incentives for reputation building and, thus, enhances trust and efficiency in markets. This efficiency-enhancing effect is already achieved with a rather low level of network density......Arguing that consumers are the carriers of firms' reputations, we examine the role of consumer networks for trust in markets that suffer from moral hazard. When consumers are embedded in a network, they can exchange information with their neighbours about their private experiences with different...

The Variance Composition of Firm Growth Rates

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luiz Artur Ledur Brito

2009-04-01

Full Text Available Firms exhibit a wide variability in growth rates. This can be seen as another manifestation of the fact that firms are different from one another in several respects. This study investigated this variability using the variance components technique previously used to decompose the variance of financial performance. The main source of variation in growth rates, responsible for more than 40% of total variance, corresponds to individual, idiosyncratic firm aspects and not to industry, country, or macroeconomic conditions prevailing in specific years. Firm growth, similar to financial performance, is mostly unique to specific firms and not an industry or country related phenomenon. This finding also justifies using growth as an alternative outcome of superior firm resources and as a complementary dimension of competitive advantage. This also links this research with the resource-based view of strategy. Country was the second source of variation with around 10% of total variance. The analysis was done using the Compustat Global database with 80,320 observations, comprising 13,221 companies in 47 countries, covering the years of 1994 to 2002. It also compared the variance structure of growth to the variance structure of financial performance in the same sample.

International Trade and Macroeconomic Dynamics with Heteroegenous Firms

OpenAIRE

Ghironi, Fabio; Melitz, Marc J

2004-01-01

We develop a stochastic, general equilibrium, two-country model of trade and macroeconomic dynamics. Productivity differs across individual, monopolistically competitive firms in each country. Firms face a sunk entry cost in the domestic market and both fixed and per-unit export costs. Only relatively more productive firms export. Exogenous shocks to aggregate productivity and entry or trade costs induce firms to enter and exit both their domestic and export markets, thus altering the composi...

Efficient Climate Policy with Internationally Mobile Firms

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Maestad, O.

2001-01-01

A major concern in the design of an incomplete climate agreement is that firms that use fossil fuels intensively may respond to emission regulations by relocating their plants from cooperating to non-cooperating countries. This paper analyses how the cooperating countries might deal with the issue of firm delocation through emission taxes, trade provisions and a localisation subsidy to mobile firms. It is shown that firms should not be induced to stay in the cooperating countries by lowering emission taxes below the Pigouvian tax rate. Incentives to stay should be given partly through trade provisions and partly through a localisation subsidy. A second best solution without localisation subsidies is also discussed. In that case, the efficient emission tax is lower than the Pigouvian tax rate. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of the first best and the second best policy regimes for the pattern of firm localisation. 19 refs

Efficiency of European Dairy Processing Firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Soboh, R.A.M.E.; Oude Lansink, A.G.J.M.; Dijk, van G.

2014-01-01

This paper compares the technical efficiency and production frontier of dairy processing cooperativesand investor owned firms in six major dairy producing European countries. Two parametric produc-tion frontiers are estimated, i.e. for cooperatives and investor owned firms separately, which are

Psychic Distance, Innovation, and Firm Performance

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Azar, Goudarz; Drogendijk, Rian

2014-01-01

Previous research suggests that internationalization improves a firm's ability to innovate, but the effect of internationalizing into specific target markets or destinations on the innovation ability of firms has not been fully investigated. This study examined whether the psychic distance between

Innovation and risk-averse firms: Options on carbon allowances as a hedging tool

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Szolgayová, Jana; Golub, Alexander; Fuss, Sabine

2014-01-01

In a regulated world where government seeks to decarbonize the energy sector, firms face both indirect and direct costs of emitting CO 2 . This study seeks to take the perspective of the firm, which needs to maximize profits implying minimization of (carbon) cost as well. In this study, the firm can compose the cost-optimal portfolio of (a) investing into carbon-saving technology, which is currently expensive, (b) investing into carbon-saving technology R and D and adopt this technology at a later point, (c) buying allowances per ton of emitted CO 2 in a carbon market (alternatively this could be formulated as a tax), and (d) buying offsets traded in the same market, which are based on reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+). Uncertainties in the cost of carbon coming from a lack of commitment in policy-making leading to fluctuations in markets and uncertainty in the payoff of R and D activities could provide disincentives to incur large up-front sunk cost and raise the economic value of being flexible. We apply a real options approach with stochastic carbon-saving technology costs and stochastic CO 2 costs. Assuming that firms are risk-averse, they will not only value flexibility, but also risk reductions from diversification over the different (carbon mitigation) options. - Highlights: • We study the compliance problem of a private firm under both regulatory and technological uncertainty in an optimal control setting. • When firms are risk-averse, forest-backed offset options will be part of the compliance portfolio. • R and D creates valuable options on new technology

The Impact of Workplace Conditions on Firm Performance

NARCIS (Netherlands)

I.S. Buhai (Sebastian); E. Cottini (Elena); N. Westergaard-Nielsen

2008-01-01

textabstractThis paper estimates the impact of work environment health and safety practice on firm performance, and examines which firm-characteristic factors are associated with good work conditions. We use Danish longitudinal register matched employer-employee data, merged with firm business

FOOD ENTREPRENEUR SUSTAINABLE ORIENTATION AND FIRM PRACTICES

OpenAIRE

Mark A. Gagnon; Pamela A. Heinrichs

2016-01-01

This exploratory research examines the relationship between food entrepreneur sustainable orientation, mindset and firm sustainable practices in a mixed methods format. In particular we seek to address if entrepreneur behavior and firm practices are congruent with founding entrepreneur espoused support of sustainability. Our survey findings with thirty specialty food entrepreneurs suggest tenuous empirical support for the relationship of entrepreneur sustainable orientation, mindset and firm ...

Human Capital Intensity in Technology-Based Firms Located in Portugal: Do Foreign Multinationals Make a Difference?

OpenAIRE

Ana Teresa Tavares; Aurora A. C. Teixeira

2005-01-01

This paper contributes to the scarce empirical literature on the impact of foreign ownership on human capital intensity. New evidence is provided, based on a comprehensive, large-scale survey of technology-based firms located in Portugal. Using two alternatives measures of human capital (one based on skills, another on education), the key findings are that: (1) foreign ownership directly (and significantly) impacts on firms general human capital (education); (2) foreign ownership indirectly (...

THE INFLUENCE OF FIRMS STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS ON THE DEGREE OF AGGLOMERATION ECONOMIES ENJOYED AMONGST FIRMS IN THE LAGOS REGION, NIGERIA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

FAGBOHUNKA Adejompo

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Agglomeration economies is a potent tool in socio-economic revamping, rejuvenation and sustenance of regions, this is as a result of the impulse it transmitted through the multiplier effect it is capable of generated. Therefore, this paper underscores the influence of firms structural characteristics on the degree of agglomeration economies enjoyed amongst firms, using the Lagos region as a case study. The first stage in the collection of primary data involves the reconnaissance survey, thereafter one hundred and three questionnaire were administered in twelve industrial estates; one questionnaire in each of the firm. The paper reveals the following structural characteristics as germane to industrial enterprise; age of firms, areal plant size (m², capacity utilization (in percentage, and Labour size and firms investment. The paper has also found out those agglomeration economies enjoyed ranges from transportation, labour, power supply, to joint water supply. The Roy’s Largest Root test employed to test for the significance of the canonical correlations at 0.05 significant levels shows the calculated F-value 3.5247 and the tabulated F-value 2.90. This suggests that the degree of agglomeration economies enjoyed by firms is significantly explained by the size and structural characteristics of the firms. The paper therefore recommends more and active government participation in the industrial scene, given the necessary support for the expansion of firm’s structural characteristics which will lead to increase agglomeration economies enjoyed by these firms.

Market Imperfections and Firm-Sponsored Training

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Picchio, M.; van Ours, J.C.

2010-01-01

Recent human capital theories predict that labor market frictions and product market competition influence firm-sponsored training. Using matched worker-firm data from Dutch manufacturing, our paper empirically assesses the validity of these predictions. We find that a decrease in labor market

The failing firm defence: merger policy and entry

OpenAIRE

Mason, Robin; Weeds, Helen

2003-01-01

This Paper considers the 'failing firm defence'. Under this principle, found in most antitrust jurisdictions, a merger that would otherwise be blocked due to its adverse effect on competition is permitted when the firm to be acquired is a failing firm, and an alternative, less detrimental merger is unavailable. Competition authorities have shown considerable reluctance to accept the failing firm defence, and it has been successfully used in just a handful of cases. The Paper considers the def...

Financing Constraints and Firm Growth in Emerging Europe

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Leitner Sandra M.

2016-04-01

Full Text Available The paper aims to shed light on the effects of different types of financing constraints on firm sales and employment growth in Emerging Europe before and after the onset of the financial crisis. It analyzes the group of emerging NMS-10 economies (plus Turkey and the group of economically and financially lagging Western Balkan countries. The paper demonstrates that financing constraints significantly obstruct firm growth, particularly in the Western Balkan countries, which calls for policy intervention to ensure swifter job-rich growth and catching-up with the rest of Europe. It also emphasizes that particular firm characteristics are essential for growth in Emerging Europe and demonstrates that exporting only and innovating are recipes for faster firm growth, while importing only and a high foreign ownership share seriously retard firm growth. Finally, it stresses the importance of the particular institutional environment for firms to thrive.

New workplace practices and firm performance in manufacturing:

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pozzoli, Dario; Cristini, Annalisa

Using data from the 2004 Workplace Employee Relations Survey on British establishments and two surveys on manufacturing firms located in the North of Italy, we look at the diffusion of new workplace practices in the two countries and at their impact on the firm's performance. We find that the Ita......Using data from the 2004 Workplace Employee Relations Survey on British establishments and two surveys on manufacturing firms located in the North of Italy, we look at the diffusion of new workplace practices in the two countries and at their impact on the firm's performance. We find...... that the Italian and British samples differ more in terms of composition of the set practices than in terms of overall incidence, but the statistical associations between some of the practices and the firm's performance are robust across countries. The counterfactual analysis shows that could the Italian firms...

Global Sourcing, Technology, and Factor Intensity: Firm-level Relationships

OpenAIRE

TOMIURA Eiichi

2007-01-01

This paper empirically examines how technology and capital intensity are related with the firm's global sourcing decision. Firm-level data are derived from a survey covering all manufacturing industries in Japan without any firm-size threshold. Firms are disaggregated by their make-or-buy decision (in-house or outsourcing) and by their choice of sourcing location (offshore or domestic). Capital-intensive or R&D-intensive firms tend to source in-house from their FDI affiliates rather than outs...

Human Capital-Intensive Firms and Symbolic Value Creation

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Cezanne Cécile

2014-06-01

Full Text Available The aim of this paper is to study the process of symbolic value creation of human capital-intensive firms. Human capital is a critical resource for firms’ activities. Nevertheless, this dimension is often obscured by industrial economists. In the light of critical resource theory, we analyze how taking into account the inalienable and inimitable nature of specific human capital entails a reconsideration of the role and boundaries of the firm. We show that the firm seeks to coordinate the specialization of its key partners within the frame of its economic boundaries to ensure the long-term optimization of its potential of value. Therefore, the value of the firm depends on all the resources that the firm coordinates. Then we focus on the way HCIF can create different values. We suggest that the firm builds its competitive advantage on different forms of values, in particular the symbolic value incorporated in human capital. Finally, on the basis of these considerations, we identify the wealth included in the critical resources of the firm and to bring to light the process of symbolic value creation associated with it. We suggest that the firm is the value creating entity and the customer both recognizes and derives the value created from whatever it is that the firm provides. We propose a definition of this value and a schema of its creation process based on management works attempts. We conclude by proposing paths of research that could fruitfully be explored to further develop this new subject.

CASH HOLDING, GOOD CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND FIRM VALUE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Prana Wahyu Nisasmara

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This research aims to understand the influence of profitability, capital structure, cash holding, and GCG (Good Corporate Governance on firm value.  The samples of this study were the property sector and real estate companies listed on Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX in the period of 2008-2013. The data used from the annual report company. The methods of data analysis were multiple regression models and analyzed using IBM SPSS software. The results of this study are profitability has no influence on firm value, capital structure has positive influence on firm value, cash holding has no influence on firm value and GCG a has a positive influence on firm value.

Possible routes to improve adaptive management of firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Stuiver, M.; Westerink, J.

2016-01-01

This study explores possible routes to improve the adaptive management of firms and proposes to view firms as social-ecological systems. We conceptualise three possible ways in which firms can frame their relation with the natural environment. The first is impact related: strategies for assessing

Entrepreneurial strategic groups: how clustering helps nascent firms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Amezcua, A.S.; Ratinho, Tiago

2012-01-01

Our study examines how strategic groups consisting of nascent ventures outperform other firms. An entrepreneurial strategic group is defined as firms that pursue a similar founding strategy, belong to the same industry, and compete in the same geography. We show that firms belonging to an

32 CFR 37.1250 - Commercial firm.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 32 National Defense 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Commercial firm. 37.1250 Section 37.1250... REGULATIONS TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENT AGREEMENTS Definitions of Terms Used in This Part § 37.1250 Commercial firm... does a substantial portion of its business in the commercial marketplace. ...

Knowledge Sharing in Knowledge-Intensive Firms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gupta, Akshey; Michailova, Snejina

2004-01-01

This paper is a study of the knowledge-sharing difficulties experienced by three departments in a knowledge-intensive firm. The case organization is a global consulting firm that has been on the forefront of knowledge management and has won several knowledge management related international accla...

Firm age, business cycles and aggregate labor market dynamics

OpenAIRE

Sedláček, P.

2011-01-01

Job creation and destruction rates fall with a firm's age, young businesses have higher exit rates, conditional on survival they grow faster and given their employment shares they create relatively more jobs than older firms. In fact, recent studies show that the well established negative relationship between a firm's size and its growth rate vanishes once its age is taken into account. I extend these findings by showing that, compared to old firms, employment growth in young firms is more vo...

Firm-value effects of CSR disclosure and CSR performance

OpenAIRE

Gutsche, Robert; Schulz, Jan-Frederic; Gratwohl, Michael

2017-01-01

We examine in this paper the effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and CSR performance on firm value for S&P 500 firms from 2011 to 2014. We find that CSR disclosure is positively associated with firm value and that the effect of CSR disclosure on firm value is larger than the effect of CSR performance. On average, the overall firm value increase for one index point of Bloomberg's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) Disclosure Score is $260 million, whereas the i...

The Impact of Membership in Strategic Alliances on the Profitability of Firms in the Retail Sector

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nikola Butigan

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Strategic alliances in the retail sector are based on cooperation in a variety of activities, ranging from supply and marketing to knowledge sharing and branding. For their members, they are a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Ever since the 1990s, a growing number of firms from the retail sector have attempted to improve their performance through participation in strategic alliances. The objective of this paper is to explore how participation in strategic alliances influences profitability of firms in the retail sector. A dynamic panel analysis is applied to the data on nearly 3,700 firms obtained from Amadeus, a large firm-level database, for eight countries (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Hungary and Estonia for the 2007–2012 period. The results of the investigation suggest that participation in strategic alliances positively influences a firm’s performance.

The effect of corporate culture on firm performance: Evidence from China

OpenAIRE

Hailin Zhao; Haimeng Teng; Qiang Wu

2018-01-01

This study examines whether corporate culture promotion affects firm performance in China in terms of firm market value, firm financial performance and innovation output. We find consistent evidence that corporate culture promotion is negatively related to firm market value, positively related to innovation output and not significantly related to firm financial performance. In addition, the negative effect of corporate culture promotion on firm market value is driven by small firms and firms ...

An empirical study of Malaysian firms' capital structure

OpenAIRE

Zain, Sharifah Raihan Syed Mohd

2003-01-01

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/821 on 27.03.2017 by CS (TIS) It is sometimes purported that one of the factors affecting a firm's value is its capital structure. The event of the 1997 Asian financial crisis was expected to affect the firms' gearing level as the firms' earnings deteriorated and the capital market collapsed. The main objective of this research is to examine empirically the determinants of the capital structure of Malaysian firms. The main additional aim is ...

Knowledge management in the firm

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rasmussen, Palle; Nielsen, Peter

2011-01-01

to innovation and illustrates how combinations of these might benefit firm performance. It also stresses the preconditions of employee involvement and participation to knowledge management and not least the importance of interaction with environmental resources. To improve performance firms should be aware......Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to set focus on, and discuss the concept of knowledge, and show how the interrelations between knowledge and other concepts, such as learning, have become a decisive element in managing human resources and firm performance. Design....../methodology/approach – The dimensions of knowledge management are identified and related to learning, organizational configurations, human resources management and institutional environments in order to identify and percent the most important approaches to knowledge management and the development over time. Findings – Creating...

39 CFR 281.1 - Notification of firm mailers.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 39 Postal Service 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Notification of firm mailers. 281.1 Section 281.1 Postal Service UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION FIRM MAILINGS DAMAGED OR DESTROYED THROUGH TRANSPORTATION ACCIDENTS OR CATASTROPHES § 281.1 Notification of firm mailers. Whenever...

Determinants of firms' investment behaviour : a multilevel approach

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Farla, K.

2013-01-01

This paper investigates micro and macro determinants of firms' investment behaviour using firm data from 101 developing and emerging economies. A substantial number of firms in our sample does not invest in fixed capital or invests little relative to sales revenue. Using a multilevel probit model we

Strategic Resources and Family Firm Performance

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Matser, I.A.

2013-01-01

Most companies in the Netherlands can be labeled as family firms (according to the GEEF definition (Mandle, 2008; Flören et al., 2010). The family firm can be regarded as an open system model comprising three overlapping, interacting, and interdependent subsystems: owners, family, and managers

Source of finance, growth and firm size: Evidence from China

OpenAIRE

Du, Jun; Girma, Sourafel

2009-01-01

Using a comprehensive firm-level dataset spanning the period 1998-2005, this paper provides a thorough investigation of the relationship between firm size, total factor productivity growth and financial structure in China, controlling for the endogeneity of the latter. Generally, it finds financing source matters for firms of different size, and the extent to which financing source matters for firm growth is greater for small firms than big firms. Self-raised finance appears to be most effect...

Linking the Value Assessment of Oil and Gas Firms to Ambidexterity Theory Using a Mixture of Normal Distributions

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Casault Sébastien

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Oil and gas exploration and production firms have return profiles that are not easily explained by current financial theory – the variation in their market returns is non-Gaussian. In this paper, the nature and underlying reason for these significant deviations from expected behavior are considered. Understanding these differences in financial market behavior is important for a wide range of reasons, including: assessing investments, investor relations, decisions to raise capital, assessment of firm and management performance. We show that using a “thicker tailed” mixture of two normal distributions offers a significantly more accurate model than the traditionally Gaussian approach in describing the behavior of the value of oil and gas firms. This mixture of normal distribution is also more effective in bridging the gap between management theory and practice without the need to introduce complex time-sensitive GARCH and/or jump diffusion dynamics. The mixture distribution is consistent with ambidexterity theory that suggests firms operate in two distinct states driven by the primary focus of the firm: an exploration state with high uncertainty and, an exploitation (or production state with lower uncertainty. The findings have direct implications on improving the accuracy of real option pricing techniques and futures analysis of risk management. Traditional options pricing models assume that commercial returns from these assets are described by a normal random walk. However, a normal random walk model discounts the possibility of large changes to the marketplace from events such as the discovery of important reserves or the introduction of new technology. The mixture distribution proves to be well suited to inherently describe the unusually large risks and opportunities associated with oil and gas production and exploration. A significance testing study of 554 oil and gas exploration and production firms empirically supports using a mixture

Small Firms and the Growth Stage: Can Entrepreneurship Education Programmes Be Supportive?

Science.gov (United States)

Bureau, S.; Salvador, E.; Fendt, J.

2012-01-01

Whilst entrepreneurship education is booming, it focuses largely on nascent entrepreneurs and company creation. In contrast, a major challenge in small business entrepreneurship is growth. The authors first position growth and its barriers in small firms in the context of current theory and practice in entrepreneurship education: from this…

The structure of a market containing boundedly rational firms

Science.gov (United States)

Ibrahim, Adyda; Zura, Nerda; Saaban, Azizan

2017-11-01

The structure of a market is determined by the number of active firms in it. Over time, this number is affected by the exit of existing firms, called incumbents, and entries of new firms, called entrant. In this paper, we considered a market governed by the Cobb-Douglas utility function such that the demand function is isoelastic. Each firm is assumed to produce a single homogenous product under a constant unit cost. Furthermore, firms are assumed to be boundedly rational in adjusting their outputs at each period. A firm is considered to exit the market if its output is negative. In this paper, the market is assumed to have zero barrier-to-entry. Therefore, the exiting firm can reenter the market if its output is positive again, and new firms can enter the market easily. Based on these assumptions and rules, a mathematical model was developed and numerical simulations were run using Matlab. By setting certain values for the parameters in the model, initial numerical simulations showed that in the long run, the number of firms that manages to survive the market varies between zero to 30. This initial result is consistent with the idea that a zero barrier-to-entry may produce a perfectly competitive market.

Dual structures for the sole-proprietorship firm

OpenAIRE

Chambers, Robert G.; Quiggin, John

2003-01-01

This paper presents a dual representation of firm-level and market-level equilibrium behavior for a sole proprietorship economy with competitive and frictionless financial markets and stochastic production opportunities in a two-period setting. The dual equilibrium model is used to state conditions for the firms' production choices to be independent of their risk preferences in equilibrium. These conditions entail Pareto optimality, but do not require either that the firm's consumption choice...

Peculiarities Of Financial Management In Family Firms

OpenAIRE

Martin R. W. Hiebl

2012-01-01

The majority of firms in market-oriented countries are family-owned. Despite their significant economic importance for these countries, research focusing on family firms is a rather young field within business research, having intensified starting only in the late 1980s. Research regarding the peculiarities of financial management in family firms is especially scarce. Hence, this paper seeks to synthesize existing research and to theoretically analyze the finance and accounting practices and ...

How does firm performance influence market orientation?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Hans Eibe; Stieglitz, Nils

This paper contributes by investigating how firm performance influences its market orientation. We draw on the aspiration-level model from the behavioral theory of the firm to develop testable propositions that substantiate and extend prior market orientation research. Specifically, we address how...... performance influences firms' market-oriented search behavior (responsive or proactive) and the allocation of attention (customer and competitor orientation) as well as the formation of aspiration levels. Research and managerial implications are discussed....

Firm Size Distribution in Fortune Global 500

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Qinghua; Chen, Liujun; Liu, Kai

By analyzing the data of Fortune Global 500 firms from 1996 to 2008, we found that their ranks and revenues always obey the same distribution, which implies that worldwide firm structure has been stable for a long time. The fitting results show that simple Zipf distribution is not an ideal model for global firms, while SCL, FSS have better fitting goodness, and lognormal fitting is the best. And then, we proposed a simple explanation.

Organizational change in family firms

OpenAIRE

HENDRIKX, Karolien; VOORDECKERS, Wim; LAMBRECHTS, Frank

2009-01-01

Many organizational change efforts don’t live up to their expectations, with inefficiencies in the interaction process between organizational actors as one of the main potential reasons for this failure. Therefore, this paper will focus on the impact of interaction processes on change within the specific organizational context of family firms. Family firms are particularly interesting for organizational change research since they have several unique characteristics that may facilitate or hind...

The impact of workplace conditions on firm performance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Buhai, Ioan Sebastian; Cottini, Elena; Westergård-Nielsen, Niels Chr.

This paper estimates the impact of work environment health and safety practice on firm performance, and examines which firm-characteristic factors are associated with good work conditions. We use Danish longitudinal register matched employer-employee data, merged with firm business accounts...... and detailed cross-sectional survey data on workplace conditions. This enables us to address typical econometric problems such as omitted variables bias or endogeneity in estimating i) standard production functions augmented with work environment indicators and aggregate employee characteristics and ii) firm...... mean wage regressions on the same explanatory variables. Our findings suggest that improvement in some of the physical dimensions of the work health and safety environment (speci.cally, "internal climate" and "repetitive and strenuous activity") strongly impacts the firm productivity, whereas "internal...

Working abroad, working with others: How firms learn to operate international joint ventures

NARCIS (Netherlands)

H.G. Barkema (Harry); O. Shenkar (Oded); G.A.M. Vermeulen (Freek); J.H.J. Bell (John)

1997-01-01

textabstractSuccessful international joint ventures entail both learning to operate across national boundaries and learning to cooperate. Hypotheses grounded in organizational learning theory were tested with event-history analysis and data on 1,493 expansions of 25 large Dutch firms between 1966

In Search of Legal Foundation for Indonesian Family Firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yetty Komalasari Dewi

2016-08-01

Full Text Available One of the factors that affect Indonesia's economic growth is the existence of business firms. It cannot be ignored that most business firms in Indonesia is family owned firms, and which are considered to constitute as the backbone of the economic development.  Family firms represent the most enduring business model in the world. The continuing success of family firms through the generations relies on ensuring the next generation. However, the issue of family firms is rarely discussed in particular from the perspective of corporate law. In fact, from legal perspectives, there is some issues deal with this type of firms, amongst other, the lack of an overall definition of the term “family business”. It is because family businesses and small medium enterprises (SMEs are widely understood synonymously in spite of the fact that they exist in every size class. Other issue is the questions of its legal basis or legal framework in terms of its corporate governance. Many Indonesian business players lack the basic understanding of corporation’s law. It is partly because these obligations are incompatible with the values and cultures in Indonesia where “kinship principle” is deeply rooted. This article aims to describe the characteristics and the legal frameworks for the family firms in Indonesia. It also recommends the government to take progressive measure by providing clear regulations on the family firms in Indonesia. This will reinforce family firms contribution in economic development of Indonesia in the future. 

37 CFR 10.35 - Firm names and letterheads.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 37 Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Firm names and letterheads... Office Code of Professional Responsibility § 10.35 Firm names and letterheads. (a) A practitioner shall not use a firm name, letterhead, or other professional designation that violates § 10.31. A trade name...

Modelling firm heterogeneity with spatial 'trends'

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sarmiento, C. [North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND (United States). Dept. of Agricultural Business & Applied Economics

2004-04-15

The hypothesis underlying this article is that firm heterogeneity can be captured by spatial characteristics of the firm (similar to the inclusion of a time trend in time series models). The hypothesis is examined in the context of modelling electric generation by coal powered plants in the presence of firm heterogeneity.

Insurance and Information : Firms as a Commitment Device

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bovenberg, A.L.; Teulings, C.N.

2002-01-01

We explore the role of firms in insuring risk-averse workers.As a device that allows workers to commit to the delivery of their output, the firm arises endogenously as an alternative to the spot market if workers are suciently risk averse and the firm can base incentive payments on good

Wage inequality in workers’ cooperatives and conventional firms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nathalie Magne

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The author evaluates the effects of democratic worker participation on the income distribution within firms. Wage inequality in French workers’ cooperatives (called SCOPs versus traditional firms is measured using the 2001-2012 panel DADS dataset which includes all French firms. The author finds significantly lower inequality in SCOPs, in line with the previous empirical literature. Going into more detail, it appears that inequality is reduced at the top of the distribution and specifically regarding qualification-based inequalities; the gender gap and the advantage of senior workers are not lower in SCOPs. These findings contribute to the literature on Labor-Managed Firms, as well as to the broader debate on rising wage inequality in developed countries.The author evaluates the effects of democratic worker participation on the income distribution within firms. Wage inequality in French workers’ cooperatives (called SCOPs versus traditional firms is measured using the 2001-2012 panel DADS dataset which includes all French firms. The author finds significantly lower inequality in SCOPs, in line with the previous empirical literature. Going into more detail, it appears that inequality is reduced at the top of the distribution and specifically regarding qualification-based inequalities; the gender gap and the advantage of senior workers are not lower in SCOPs. These findings contribute to the literature on Labor-Managed Firms, as well as to the broader debate on rising wage inequality in developed countries.