Panel Dataset Research Articles

Levels of mandatory CSR compliance and the payoff: evidence from India

Purpose This paper aims to examine the diverse levels of corporate social responsibility (CSR) expenditure among Indian companies and its influence on their performance. The study aims to determine whether exceeding the mandatory CSR spending limit provides an edge to companies that outperform in enhancing corporate firm value. Design/methodology/approach A dynamic model using system generalized method of moments (GMM) was used to analyze a balanced panel data set of 191 firms over seven years, spanning from 2016 to 2022. Return on assets was used as a proxy to gauge financial performance. At the same time, the study also examined the robustness of the results by considering return on equity and Tobin’s Q as additional measures. Findings The study results indicate that, in a mandatory CSR setting, all companies are generally perceived as performing and reporting on CSR equally. Hence, it will not make any payoff, although few companies outperform. Therefore, companies should differentiate themselves regarding CSR spending and reporting to claim a competitive advantage in the market. The study also suggests that the payoff of mandatory CSR expenditure for both performing and outperforming companies is reflected more in non-quantifiable firm characteristics than in measurable performance metrics. Research limitations/implications The period of study covers 7 years, i.e. 2015–2016 to 2022–2023. This may limit capturing long-term CSR practices and firm performance trends. Additionally, data from only 191 Indian companies restrict generalizability; future research should include diverse geographic regions with mandated CSR spending to provide a more comprehensive view. In subsequent studies, contextual factors like regulatory changes and macroeconomic conditions could be considered moderating variables. Practical implications The study provides valuable insights to top management, indicating that spending beyond the threshold limit of mandatory CSR spending does not enhance corporate firm value. Instead, this additional investment may yield benefits in the form of goodwill and reputation over the long term. Social implications This study assists corporations in optimizing their CSR strategies to enhance their social and financial performance impact. Moreover, the study suggests ways to improve the CSR payoff and the need for increasing stakeholder satisfaction. Originality/value The study provides original insights into the relationship between mandatory CSR spending and firm performance in the Indian context, revealing that CSR spending does not significantly impact financial metrics, and it highlights the importance of considering a non-quantitative matrix to enhance the firm value in a mandatory CSR setting.

Beyond Competitiveness: Is Productivity Everything?

ABSTRACTThis study examines and compares the predictive power of competitiveness, approximated by the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), and productivity for economic growth. Using a panel dataset of 62 countries over the period 2007–2019 and the local projections (LP) approach, we find that both higher productivity and higher GCI contribute to higher economic growth over the next 5 years. However, productivity has a stronger predictive power for economic growth than the GCI. We find evidence that this divergence between productivity and GCI could be explained by ‘productivity beyond competitiveness’: As economies develop and converge towards the world technological frontier, the GCI, unlike productivity, no longer captures the key determinants of economic growth. We then examine the determinants of ‘productivity beyond competitiveness’ that can help economies increase their productivity, and by extension growth, even as they approach the technological frontier. We find that higher financial development, institutional quality, as well as some cultural traits explain the divergence between productivity and competitiveness in advanced economies.

Institutional investors’ impact on sustainability disclosure: exploring the moderating role of financial performance

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the relationship between institutional investors and sustainability disclosure, specifically examining the impact of financial performance as a moderator variable on the relationship between institutional investors and sustainability disclosure. Design/methodology/approach This paper used a panel data set of 51 firms from the industrial sector listed in the Amman Stock Exchange, with a total of 459 observations during 2013–2021. Multiple regression models were used to test the direct and moderating relationships. Findings The findings of this paper indicate that institutional investors exhibit varying attitudes toward sustainability disclosure. Institutional investors have a positive and significant impact on firm sustainability disclosure. Furthermore, the relationship between institutional investors and sustainability disclosure is significantly influenced by financial performance. Social implications The study’s findings encourage regulators to enhance firms’ awareness of sustainability disclosures by balancing the economic, social and environmental pillars. This can be achieved by conserving natural resources, protecting the environment and promoting social justice for future generations. Originality/value The paper’s insights can be valuable for policymakers’ sustainable practices by encouraging institutional investors to support sustainability activities actively.

The Impact of High-Standard Scenic Areas Construction on County-Level Carbon Emissions and Its Spatial Spillover Effects: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment

This study investigated for the first time the tourism–carbon emissions nexus based on the destination construction perspective, using the China’s national scenic areas (CNSA) construction as a vehicle for concretization. A multi-source county panel dataset of 29,628 samples was constructed. The staggered Difference-in-Differences (DID) model and spatial DID model were further formulated. The findings show that: (1) the CNSA resulted in a 0.1024% reduction in carbon emission intensity (CEI) in treatment counties relative to non-treatment counties, and although the effect exhibits a delay, it persists and intensifies over time; (2) our heterogeneity results indicate that the inhibiting effect is significantly more pronounced in the western, eastern, and county subsamples; and (3) the spatial DID analysis reveals that the CNSA exerts a negative spatial spillover effect on CEI. This work enhances comprehension of the tourism–carbon emissions nexus, with implications for advancing regional carbon emission reduction policy strategies.

Shadow Economy and Environmental Sustainability in Global Developing Countries: Do Governance Indicators Play a Role?

Environmental sustainability has been a challenging issue all over the globe, with air pollution posing a significant threat. One main factor contributing to air pollution is the growth of the shadow economies. This study investigates the effect of the shadow economy on air pollution and explores how these effects depend on the levels of governance indicators. We utilize key air pollution indicators: carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. Furthermore, we examine the role of key governance indicators: corruption control, the rule of law, and regulatory quality. The study utilizes an annual panel dataset of 107 selected developing countries worldwide, spanning from 2002 to 2020, and employs the System GMM technique, which effectively tackles the omitted variable bias, potential endogeneity, and simultaneity issues in the model. The estimation results indicate that a sizeable shadow economy significantly increases the levels of CO2 and N2O emissions. Moreover, the results reveal that robust governance frameworks, evidenced by enhanced corruption control, a stronger rule of law, and superior regularity quality, mitigate the adverse effects of the shadow economy on CO2 and N2O emissions. This highlights a significant substitutability between the shadow economy and governance indicators, indicating that improvements in governance formworks will not only reduce the size of the shadow economy but also weaken its harmful impact on air pollution. Policy initiatives should thus focus on strengthening governance mechanisms, particularly enhancing control of corruption and the rule of law to effectively reduce the environmental impact of the shadow economies in developing countries. Additionally, governments should prioritize reforms in regulations and legal frameworks to limit the expansion of the shadow economy, thereby decreasing their contribution to air pollution.

Idiosyncratic factors that shape shareholder reward policies in capital intensive companies

This study empirically explores multiple company-specific determinants of dividend distributions and stock buybacks, by utilizing a panel dataset of maritime shipping companies and a panel dataset of matched companies from various industries, as well as by employing Generalized Method of Moments instrumenting for endogeneity. The results provide evidence that idiosyncratic factors, such as the reputation of dividend distribution, firm market value, free cash flow, firm profitability, analyst’s coverage, free float, firm size, leverage, firm liquidity, stock liquidity, collateralizable firm assets, risk, investment opportunities, institutional ownership, and firm performance, are important antecedents of dividend distributions in both capital intensive and diverse industries. Moreover, the reputation of stock buybacks, firm market value, free cash flow, analyst’s coverage, free float, firm size, leverage, firm liquidity, stock liquidity, collateralizable firm assets, risk, institutional ownership, and firm performance, are important determinants of stock buybacks in capital intensive industries. Lastly, the reputation of stock buybacks, firm profitability, analyst’s coverage, free float, firm size, leverage, stock liquidity, collateralizable firm assets, risk, investment opportunities, institutional ownership, and firm performance are important factors of stock buybacks in diverse industries. These empirical findings enrich the literature and yield practical implications for principal officers and investors as discussed herein.

Social protection comparison across the world: a study of fiscal, structural and institutional performance discrepancies

PurposeSocial protection states the public-mandated (strategies and programmes) to address the vulnerability and risk among poor and near-poor households. Social protection must not only help people meet their basic needs but also contribute to the long-term well-being and broader societal goals of equity, social justice and empowerment. The role of social protection in achieving these goals has not been adequately documented. This paper examines the performance of the social protection mechanism from the perspective of the regional structural and institutional performance indicators. Social protection outlay dynamics are synthesized in the structural and institutional conducts.Design/methodology/approachA world regional comparability is made by considering the panel dataset for the time interval 1995–2020. In empirics, the unconditional and conditional ranks are constructed, and regression analyses are made subject to (1) the fiscal constraint of social protection, (2) structural performance indicators and (3) the institutional performance indicators of the targeted regions across the globe. The fully modified-ordinary least square (FM-OLS) method is used to construct the ranks.FindingsThe rank analysis demonstrates that the developed regions (i.e. Europe, Central Asia and North America) have relatively good welfare standards and fiscal capacity for social protection drives compared to the developing/underdeveloped regions (i.e. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia). The structural/institutional performance indicators have shown their significance in determining/utilizing their budget for social protection and maintaining welfare standards. Interestingly, most developed regions are relatively reluctant to maintain the structural/institutional performance for the determination/execution of the funds for social protection as compared to the developing and underdeveloped regions.Practical implicationsIn policy discourse, this research suggests that governments must make some market operations to enhance their regions’ structural and institutional performance to get better outcomes of social protection spending in the form of attractive welfare standards.Originality/valueMultiple studies have been done considering the social protection dynamics at nano, micro and macro levels, while this study considered the mega dataset across the globe to analyse the social protection dynamics in consideration of structural and institutional performances.

Learning or Leaking? Enforcement Spillover Effects Within and Beyond the Firm

We posit and find evidence consistent with a new mechanism of intra-firm enforcement spillovers: the leakage of scarce compliance resources across facilities within a firm. Using a facility-level panel data set of Clean Air Act (CAA) enforcement actions from 2005 to 2017, we find a facility is more likely to violate the CAA following penalties on its same-industry-same-state siblings. In contrast, there is no significant spillover across firms. We show that the intra-firm spillover is not due to changes in regulatory attention or production shifting. Instead, our results suggest it may result from the redeployment of scarce compliance resources across siblings. Consistent with this mechanism, we find compliance leakage only occurs at privately held firms and facilities that lack the resources to invest in pollution prevention. The findings contribute to understanding the efficacy of environmental enforcement and have important implications for intra-firm management of environmental performance and regulatory enforcement approaches.

Are Fiscal Transfers and Bail-Outs the Perpetrators? A Study on Moral Hazard Problem in Indian Federal Finance

The informational advantage of the sub-national governments in conjunction with central government’s involvement in bail-outs and financial assistance sometimes leads to negative incentives by relaxing the budget constraint. This produces moral hazard in terms of compromised fiscal behaviour; lower revenue effort, extravagance in expenditure, higher deficits and increased borrowings. At the same time, central assistance to low-performing states demotivates fiscally efficient states. The Indian fiscal federal structure and the fiscal transfer system are often criticized for prompting inefficiency and moral hazard in sub-national fiscal performance. Considering the issue of fiscal inefficiency in the Indian states, this study seeks to explore the fiscal mechanism of revenue effort, deficit, borrowing, capital outlay and revenue expenditure using a panel dataset of 28 states for the period 2000–2019. Accounting for the geographical and other disadvantages of the states, the findings of the panel-regression analysis confirm fiscal distress and the existence of soft-budget constraint and moral hazard in the Indian states. JEL Classification: H, H2, H21, H3, H7

Unleashing Innovation Under Sanctions: The Catalyst of National Culture

ABSTRACTThis article explores how national culture moderates the impact of economic sanctions on a targeted country's innovation performance, using a dynamic difference‐in‐difference approach. Our empirical analysis utilises a panel dataset spanning 213 nations from 2013 to 2019. We discover that economic sanctions generally have a detrimental effect on the innovation performance of targeted countries. However, not all types of sanctions have the same negative impact on innovation. Specifically, financial, arms, and travel sanctions exhibit this negative influence. Furthermore, we reveal that under the sanction circumstances, countries characterised by high power distance and high uncertainty avoidance cultures tend to experience a higher level of innovation performance. Our findings remain robust after conducting various tests. In our subsequent analyses, we focus on different types of sanctions and find that the favourable impact of power distance and uncertainty avoidance culture on the relationship between sanctions and innovation applies primarily to financial sanctions.

What drives the overall technical efficiency of farm businesses in the Wheatbelt of Western Australia? Analysis of persistent and transient efficiencies in the presence of firm effects

AbstractThis study enhances our comprehension of the performance of farm businesses in Western Australia by estimating persistent and transient technical efficiency measures in the presence of firm‐level effects. The analysis is based on a balanced panel data set of 54 farm businesses from the years 2002 to 2011. We employ Kumbhakar et al.'s (2014, Journal of Productivity Analysis, 41, 321) model to estimate persistent efficiency and firm effects separately, as well as Kumbhakar's and Heshmati's (1995, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 77, 660) model where these two factors are confounded. Furthermore, we investigate the factors that influence transient and persistent technical efficiency. Our findings reveal that failing to differentiate between persistent technical efficiency and firm effects underestimates the estimates of persistent and overall technical efficiency. This underestimation may result in misguided policy recommendations for improving the technical performance of farm businesses. We also find that persistent efficiency dominates overall technical efficiency. The significant determinants of persistent overall technical efficiency include the regional rainfall zone where a farm business is located, the managerial competency of the farm operator denoted by their age and off‐farm activities. Off‐farm income plays a crucial role in determining transient technical efficiency.

LEM-Detector: An Efficient Detector for Photovoltaic Panel Defect Detection

Photovoltaic panel defect detection presents significant challenges due to the wide range of defect scales, diverse defect types, and severe background interference, often leading to a high rate of false positives and missed detections. To address these challenges, this paper proposes the LEM-Detector, an efficient end-to-end photovoltaic panel defect detector based on the transformer architecture. To address the low detection accuracy for Crack and Star crack defects and the imbalanced dataset, a novel data augmentation method, the Linear Feature Augmentation (LFA) module, specifically designed for linear features, is introduced. LFA effectively improves model training performance and robustness. Furthermore, the Efficient Feature Enhancement Module (EFEM) is presented to enhance the receptive field, suppress redundant information, and emphasize meaningful features. To handle defects of varying scales, complementary semantic information from different feature layers is leveraged for enhanced feature fusion. A Multi-Scale Multi-Feature Pyramid Network (MMFPN) is employed to selectively aggregate boundary and category information, thereby improving the accuracy of multi-scale target recognition. Experimental results on a large-scale photovoltaic panel dataset demonstrate that the LEM-Detector achieves a detection accuracy of 94.7% for multi-scale defects, outperforming several state-of-the-art methods. This approach effectively addresses the challenges of photovoltaic panel defect detection, paving the way for more reliable and accurate defect identification systems. This research will contribute to the automatic detection of surface defects in industrial production, ultimately enhancing production efficiency.

Gendered Taxation: IMF Tax Advice and the Unintended Disempowerment of Women

Case research points to the gendered effects of the value added tax (VAT), which may particularly disadvantage women by crowding out their economic participation. A key driver of VAT introductions has been the International Monetary Fund (IMF). To counterbalance of-payments woes, IMF advice for cash-stripped countries has frequently focused on shifting toward broad-based consumption taxes while lowering trade taxes and corporate income taxes. We expect this tax policy advice – while ostensibly gender-blind – to contribute in practice to a deterioration in women’s socioeconomic well-being. To test this hypothesis, we construct a panel dataset for 147 countries from 1980 to 2016 and estimate the effect of IMF programs on women’s economic participation, education and health. Accounting for selection effects, we find that women’s life chances deteriorate relative to men’s if a country undergoes an IMF program with tax conditionality. We corroborate these findings to demonstrate the mechanism underlying these effects by showing a negative effect of IMF-induced de jure VAT adoption on women’s life chances. We provide complementary individual-level evidence from the World Values Surveys based on 98 countries from 1981 to 2019. We show that during an IMF program with tax conditionality, women are significantly less satisfied with home life and report more material hardships. Our results provide evidence of the potential for unintended consequences of IMF revenue prescriptions for women, supporting calls for increased attention to gender-responsive budgeting.

Are Boards Sensitive to CEO Masculinity? The Effect of CEO Facial and Vocal Masculinity on CEO Dismissal

AbstractDrawing on evolutionary psychology theorizing, this paper examines how chief executive officer (CEO) facial and vocal masculinity – as evolved biases shaping peoples' perceptions of an individual's leadership ability – influence boards' dismissal decisions. Specifically, we theorize that boards are likely to perceive CEO facial and vocal masculinity as costly to the firm, as they signal aggression, dominance, and risk‐taking – traits that are only valued in the narrow context of conflict. Based on this reasoning, we argue that CEO facial and vocal masculinity will be positively related to CEO dismissal. Further, we develop contingency arguments which suggest that CEO facial and vocal masculinity will interact with analysts' evaluation of firm performance to jointly influence CEO dismissal. We test and find support for our predictions using a panel dataset of CEOs from S&P 1500 firms.

Is Blood Thicker than Water? The Impact of Player Agencies on Player Salaries: Empirical Evidence from Five European Football Leagues

Abstract In this article, we analyze how different representation models of professional football players affect their salaries in salary negotiations. We distinguish between self-representation, representation by relatives and representation by player agencies. Based on the principal agent theory and against the background of asymmetric information, we hypothesize that the self-representation model has the most lucrative effect on salaries. Furthermore, we argue that the number of players represented by an agency has a negative effect on salaries. To test our hypotheses, we use a unique panel dataset containing 3,775 players from the top five European leagues over five collection dates. In addition to market values and salaries, we also include individual and team performance. Furthermore, we use information on the different representation models and, in the case of player agencies, information on the particular agency. In our study, we found no significant effect of the representation model on the salary of professional football players, which challenges the justification of agencies in general.

Trust in Government and COVID-19 Preventive Behaviors

High levels of trust are positively correlated with increased collaboration, prosocial actions, and heightened adherence to preventive behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies on trust during the pandemic have primarily focused on either cross-sectional data or its impact in conjunction with other related variables, such as political party affiliations or vaccine availability. In this study, we employed a national survey panel comprising data from 760 individuals interviewed at three intervals between July 2020 and January 2021. We used pooled datasets, panel datasets, and dependent variable lags to control for time-invariant unobservable variables and endogeneity. Our findings reveal that trust in government influences individuals’ behavior when they are requested to follow public interventions. Notably, trust in local government is associated with increased adherence to COVID-19 preventive behaviors, similar to the effect observed with an annual income exceeding $100,000.

Still dare to be different? Peers' CSR engagement and analysts' response to focal firms' CSR strategies

AbstractThis study investigates how security analysts' response to focal firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies varies with the level of CSR engagement among peer firms, about which contradictory arguments can be drawn from the perspectives of legitimacy and competitive dynamics. Legitimacy theory underscores the importance of conformity to peers' behaviors, while the competitive dynamics perspective suggests that firms should differentiate from their peers. The optimal distinctiveness theory suggests an orchestration between CSR conformity and CSR differentiation, combining the arguments of legitimacy and competitive dynamics. Based upon a sample of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2018, this study uses a second‐hand panel dataset and employs three‐way interactions and the generalized method of moments (GMM) system. The empirical results show that as CSR engagement among peer firms increases, heavier legitimacy pressure is imposed on focal firms, and their CSR scope conformity attracts more analyst coverage, and this effect is more prominent for firms in institutionally developed regions. On the other hand, the competitive advantage gained from CSR emphasis differentiation is weakened by rivals' engagement in CSR, and the influence of CSR emphasis differentiation on analyst recommendation is weakened by peers' CSR engagement, and in highly competitive industries, this effect of peers' CSR engagement is stronger. We propose that peers' CSR engagement has different impacts on the importance of CSR conformity and differentiation. Finally, both the theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Balancing excellence and equity in predictive college admissions: insights from the University of the Philippines

ABSTRACT The University of the Philippines (UP) uses high school grades and standardized test scores for predictive admissions, balancing academic performance with affirmative action for underprivileged applicants. Using a novel UP panel dataset, I find that high school grades better predict academic performance, while entrance exam scores reflect background characteristics. Simulations suggest that reducing the weight of standardized exams boosts the qualification rates for public and private school students, but lowers it for science high schools and Metro Manila students. The findings indicate that relying more on grades could enhance both excellence and equity in college admissions.

Research and development investment of Chinese chemical pharmaceutical companies under the national pooled procurement: a retrospective panel data analysis, 2013–2022

ObjectiveTo generate evidence about changes in the research and development (R&D) investment of Chinese chemical pharmaceutical companies before and after the implementation of the national pooled procurement, to respond to...

The interaction of income inequality and energy poverty on global carbon emissions: A dynamic panel data approach

Income inequality and energy poverty are critical obstacles to the worldwide low-carbon transformation and deeply affect human behavior. Applying a dynamic panel data model, this study investigates the effect of income inequality and energy poverty on global carbon emissions. We determine the effect of the interaction between income inequality and energy poverty on the global low-carbon transformation based on a panel data set of 193 countries from 1990 to 2019. A one standard deviation decrease in the Gini coefficient causes a 2.98 % decrease in carbon emissions per capita, with the median value of energy poverty. However, in poor countries where the proportion of population with access to electricity is less than 86.0 %, reducing income inequality will increase carbon emissions. The role of energy poverty on carbon emissions per capita is also affected by income inequality. When the Gini coefficient is lower than 0.461, increasing access to electricity will reduce carbon emissions. In contrast, when the Gini coefficient is higher than the critical value of 0.461, increased access to electricity will raise carbon emissions. These findings indicate a new strategy for advancing low-carbon transformation based on the interrelationship between income equality and energy poverty eradication.