Service diversification and growth of professional service firms

This study investigates the impact of service diversification on the rate and mode of firm growth in professional service firms (PSFs). Drawing on the extant PSF literature, we identify differing views regarding the growth impact of service diversification. Specifically, some scholars suggest that the external client benefits associated with service diversification should allow PSFs to expand revenues at a rapid pace and pursue less merger and acquisition activity, whereas others imply that increased diversification can cause internal challenges with respect to learning costs, coordination and innovation that can limit the rate of revenue growth and encourage more mergers and acquisitions. We test these competing views using longitudinal data on 137 accounting firms and cross-sectional data on 125 law firms and find that service diversification is negatively associated with the rate of firm revenue growth and positively associated with the use of mergers and acquisitions.     

城市人力资本外部性的识别——基于工业企业生产率视角的研究

人力资本外部性的存在具有重要的现实意义,它是政府进行教育投资和人力资本投资的重要决策依据.文章从工业企业生产率视角识别城市人力资本外部性,基于中国工业企业微观数据、人口普查分县资料和地级市统计数据,考虑城市人力资本变量的内生性后,采用两阶段最小二乘法,实证研究城市人力资本对工业企业生产率的影响.研究发现:在控制企业自身的人力资本后,城市大专以上学历人口占比越高,工业企业的产出越高,人力资本的溢出效应显著,且人力资本正外部性主要存在于人口规模300万以上的大城市.从工业内部看,行业内人力资本正外部性随城市规模扩大逐渐增强,而行业外人力资本正外部性随城市规模扩大逐渐减弱.从企业异质性看,高新技术企业、非国有企业和大企业从城市人力资本提高中获得的正向溢出效应更大.此外,城市外商直接投资和地方政府财政支出越高,地理区位距离港口越远,越不利于工业企业产出的提高.文章的研究结论表明增加人力资本投资,促进人力资本结构升级,发挥大城市人力资本溢出效应对新时期经济可持续增长尤为重要.     

The effects of pre-IPO corporate activity on newly-public firms' growth

We investigate firms' pre-IPO corporate activity. We find that firms involved in extraordinary – i.e., beyond momentum – amounts of acquisitions, JVs, and alliances in the year leading up to their IPOs (1) are more likely to engage in post-IPO corporate activity; and (2) enter into their first post-IPO transaction twice as fast as other firms. Our results indicate that signaling via extraordinary corporate activity can have a significant effect on entrepreneurial firms’ growth. The implications are discussed.     

Information and communication technology adoption in micro and small firms: Can internet access improve labour productivity?

The rapid spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) may increase firms’ productivity with important consequences for job creation and for economic growth. This article contributes to this discussion by analysing the impact of internet adoption on labour productivity and the mechanisms shaping this relationship in Peruvian micro and small manufacturing firms over the period 2011–2013. The article estimates a reduced form where labour productivity is a function of internet adoption and other explanatory factors. Internet adoption is instrumented using a measure of the availability of financial opportunities for micro and small firms in Peru. Findings indicate that internet adoption: (a) increases firms’ labour productivity; (b) reallocates employment away from temporary administrative workers and non‐remunerated workers and expands employment of permanent production workers; (c) leads to the formalization of labour relationships, to the implementation of new organizational practices and to the improvement of training measures. While changes in employment and formalization of workers are linked to labour productivity gains, increases in training measures and organizational changes do not generate any additional productivity increase. Policies oriented to promote the adoption of ICT in micro and small firms can be beneficial to close the productivity gap with larger firms in Peru. Moreover, policies directed to the formalization of the workforce can provide an extra benefit, i.e. additional labour productivity gains in firms adopting the internet. Finally, policies oriented to the development of digital skills are also important to ease the re‐employment of those workers losing their jobs and the achievement of additional productivity gains that new organizational practices can provide.     

生产率与企业出口--基于辽宁省工业企业微观数据的实证研究

近期部分学者发现的中国企业出口“生产率悖论”问题,可能是加工贸易比重过高导致的。为此文章选择加工贸易比重较低的辽宁省作为检验对象,对2003～2008年间持续存在的2644家规模以上制造业企业数据进行面板数据分析,发现“生产率悖论”在该地区并不存在,高生产率是企业出口的决定因素,同时所有制性质、企业规模、市场进入成本等也会影响出口。针对人均利润、人均应收账款等方面的对比还发现,国内信用制度较差、交易成本过高也可能导致了中国企业“被迫出口”。     

女性董事改善了企业会计稳健性吗?——基于中国民营上市公司的经验证据

以2004-2011年中国民营上市公司为研究样本,运用Basu模型结合民营上市公司董事会环境和女性特征,实证检验了女性董事对会计稳健性的影响.研究结果表明,董事会是否存在女性、董事会中女性的数量和比例都对会计稳健性有着显著的影响.其中,董事会存在女性董事降低了低竞争行业企业和低债务监督企业的会计稳健性,但女性董事的数量和比例的增加却提高了高竞争行业企业的会计稳健性.研究结论对深入理解会计稳健性以及加强中国民营上市公司治理结构具有一定的指导意义.     

Catch-up as a Survival Strategy in the Solar Power Industry

We evaluate the strategies of the emerging market firms in the context of nascent industries. We use the Indian solar power industry as the empirical setting, against the backdrop of the evolution of the global industry, While in traditional industries emerging market firms learn from advanced economy multinational enterprises (MNEs) and slowly upgrade their capabilities, in the intensely competitive environment of nascent innovative industries, emerging market firms are exposed to global competition in their home market right from the early years. This shortens their catch-up clock. As a result, their long-term survival depends on their ability to catch-up fast, both in output and innovation capabilities. In the solar power industry, we find that innovations stem, in the main, from advanced economy firms. Further, Chinese firms are beginning to move from cost-based imitation to innovation. In contrast, with a few key exceptions, most firms in the Indian solar industry remain locked within a narrow niche of downstream site-based installation. Their operations are opportunistic, short term, and without specific catch-up goals, a scenario that does not bode well for the industry's future in India.     

Strategic corporate sustainability performance of Chinese state-owned listed firms: A meta-frontier generalized directional distance function approach

Although sustainability recently became a key factor in social science, little progress has been made toward improving the measurement of sustainability performance. This paper proposes composite corporate sustainability performance indicators using a meta-frontier generalized directional distance function. This advanced approach can measure the efficiency of corporate social responsibility activities by benchmarking, while simultaneously considering industrial heterogeneities, using the meta-frontier approach. First, we propose the concept of a meta-frontier generalized directional distance function. Second, several standardized composite indicators related to corporate sustainability performance are developed. The meta-frontier directional distance function is estimated by solving a series of data envelopment analysis models. Chinese state-owned listed enterprises are then empirically examined using the proposed model. We find significant group heterogeneities in terms of corporate sustainability performance. We also derive some policy implications using the empirical results.     

Modelling hierarchical clustered censored data with the hierarchical Kendall copula

This article proposes a new model for right‐censored survival data with multi‐level clustering based on the hierarchical Kendall copula model of Brechmann (2014) with Archimedean clusters. This model accommodates clusters of unequal size and multiple clustering levels, without imposing any structural conditions on the parameters or on the copulas used at various levels of the hierarchy. A step‐wise estimation procedure is proposed and shown to yield consistent and asymptotically Gaussian estimates under mild regularity conditions. The model fitting is based on multiple imputation, given that the censoring rate increases with the level of the hierarchy. To check the model assumption of Archimedean dependence, a goodness‐of test is developed. The finite‐sample performance of the proposed estimators and of the goodness‐of‐fit test is investigated through simulations. The new model is applied to data from the study of chronic granulomatous disease. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 47: 182–203; 2019 © 2019 Statistical Society of Canada