Exports and Bank Shocks: Evidence from Matched Firm-Bank Data

A growing literature aims to understand the structural change and cyclical factors that contributed to the Great Trade Collapse. This paper adds to the conversation by investigating the impact of bank distress on firms’ exports using matched firm-bank data for the UK. We use two novel measures of bank distress: the Basel III net stable funding ratio, as well as the market-based bank credit default swap spreads, which best capture bank default risk, especially during crises. Our detailed database provides the crucial firm-bank relationship information that allows us to directly test for the banking channel effect on the real economy, and to carefully account for various endogeneities and biases in estimation. We also test for the possible contagion of the Sovereign Debt Crisis from the GIIPS economies to the UK. We find that the severe bank distress generated by the recent crises immediately, negatively and significantly affects UK firms’ exports, independent of demand shocks. However, not all firms were impacted equally: private firms and firms in industries more dependent on external finance were impacted the most, while publicly owned firms were less affected by their bank’s distress

Do Bank Liquidity Shocks Hamper Firms’ Innovation?

This paper highlights the importance of bank-based finance for the innovation activity of UK firms. It identifies both theoretically and empirically how bank shocks affect firms’ innovation. We develop a theoretical model, and test its predictions using a new matched bank-firm-patent dataset for the UK. We find that bank distress during the 2008 and 2011 crises negatively affected firms’ innovation behavior. After carefully controlling for several potential biases in estimation we find that firms whose relationship banks were distressed not only patented less, but those patents were of lower technological value, less original and of lower quality. The negative effect is significantly larger in the case of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). We also find that banks’ specialization in financing innovation mitigates the impact of bank distress on innovation

Corporate governance mechanisms and risk-taking in South Africa

Abstract: This study examines the relationship between the quality of corporate governance score and the risk-taking behaviour of firms using data from 120 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) from 2010 to 2016. More specifically, this study analyses the way in which: 1) compliance to corporate governance; 2) percentage of non-executive directors on the board; 3) total number of board members; 4) percentage of debt; 5) firm size affect risk-taking behaviour in South African firms. Using a dynamic panel data regression model, the research found that corporate governance score and leverage are significant and negatively related with risk. This contradicts prior studies in other markets. Furthermore, the percentage of NEDS, board size and firm size, though positively related, were found to be insignificant risk factors. This can have useful implications for managers in assessing risk behaviour of South African firms

Scientific management, the US Civil Communications Section (CCS) training system and their impacts on contemporary management thinking

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of Scientific Management on General Douglas MacArthur's Civil Communications Section (CCS) training system and subsequently on contemporary management thinking. Design/Methodology/Approach: The design and methodology of this paper is to synthesise archival twentieth-century literature on Scientific Management and the CCS course using a combination of business history and social science methods. The approach taken was interpretative and the paper narrative in style. Findings: The research demonstrates that very advanced theories coming from Taylorism and Scientific Management would not be out of place in operations management today. While Taylorism has generally been vilified, this research shows that there is enough evidence to suggest that some of the theoretical underpinnings of Scientific Management are still being used today in theories and concepts that underpin Quality, Lean, Agile and Operational Excellence, and will be expanded to explain the development of Industry 4.0. Research limitations/implications: While the CCS course is mostly forgotten and under-researched outside of Japan, the importance of the course to the Japanese and to the industrialisation of the Japanese electronics industry is acknowledged (Goto, 1999). The contribution of this research is to challenge some of the accepted views in business history on the origins of Japanese manufacturing. Originality/value: This paper provides a comprehensive review of General Douglas MacArthur's Civil Communications Section (CCS) training system, its influencers and its impact. It contains previously unpublished archival material and insights from the original authors and commentators of that period

A Multifactorial Model of Visual Imagery and its Relationship to Creativity and the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire

Visual imagery vividness (VIV) quantifies how clearly people can ‘conjure up’ mental images. A higher VIV reflects a stronger image, which might be considered an important source of inspiration in creative production. However, despite numerous anecdotes documenting such a connection, a clear empirical relationship has remained elusive. We argue that (a) a misunderstanding of visual imagery as unidimensional and (b) an overreliance on Marks’ Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), are responsible. Based on both the proximal/distal imagination framework and the distinction between the ventral/dorsal visual pathways, we propose a new Multifactorial Model of Visual Imagery (MMVI). This argues that visual imagery is multidimensional and that only certain dimensions are related to creativity: inventive combinatorial ability, story-boarding, and conceptual expansion (all distal); together with the quasi-eidetic recall of detailed images (proximal). Turning to the VVIQ, a factor analysis of 280 responses in Study 1 yielded a three-factor solution (all proximal): episodic/autobiographical imagery; schematic recall; and controlled animation. None of these factors overlap with the creative dimensions of the MMVI. In Study 2, 133 participants had to remember non-verbalizable detail of unfamiliar pictures for later recall: performance on this quasi-eidetic task again did not correlate with any VVIQ factors. We have thus demonstrated that the VVIQ is not unidimensional and that none of its factors appear suitable for probing imagery-creativity connections. The MMVI model is currently theoretical, and future research should confirm its validity, permitting a new, better targeted measure of VIV to be established which fully reflects its multidimensionality

“I will show you where your son lies”: relocating Kipling’s “The Gardener” in 1920s print culture

This article is concerned with the theoretical and methodological implications of reading “The Gardener” in the three print formats in which it made its first appearance: namely in the short story collection Debits and Credits (September 1926), where it was deliberately placed by Kipling as the final story; in the columns of The Strand Magazine (May 1926), and, earliest of all, in McCall’s Magazine (April 1926). On each occasion a more or less identical text of “The Gardener” is accompanied by complementary material in another medium or genre: in the volume edition, by Kipling’s own lyric poem “The Burden,” and, in the case of the magazines, by multiple illustrations by established artists and various kinds of editorial sign-posting. It is the primary contention of the article that this paratextual material—which has hitherto remained buried under the critical history of the story—is significant in ways that call for a re-evaluation of how the story should be approached, received, or presented. Subsequent contentions of the article relate to the problematic relationship between what is commonly construed as the “high art” aesthetic of the Modernist short story and the reality of such stories' frequent first appearance in mass-circulation magazines and cheap, illustrated miscellanies. Observing their textual transition from multi-authored periodical into monograph form involves a radical accommodation of differing print cultures no less than of critical approaches, which the article also seeks to articulate

Toric geometry of Spin(7)-manifolds

We study Spin(7)-manifolds with an effective multi-Hamiltonian action of a four-torus. On an open dense set, we provide a Gibbons-Hawking type ansatz that describes such geometries in terms of a symmetric 4×4-matrix of functions. This description leads to the first known Spin(7)-manifolds with a rank 4 symmetry group and full holonomy. We also show that the multi-moment map exhibits the full orbit space topologically as a smooth four-manifold, containing a trivalent graph in R4 as the image of the set of the special orbits