What explains the uneven take-up of ISO 14001 at the global level?: a panel-data analysis

Since its release in the mid-1990s, close to 37 000 facilities have been certified to ISO 14001, the international voluntary standard for environmental management systems. Yet, despite claims that the standard can be readily adapted to very different corporate and geographic settings, its take-up has been highly geographically variable. This paper contributes to a growing body of work concerned with explaining the uneven diffusion of ISO 14001 at the global level. Drawing from the existing theoretical and empirical literature we develop a series of hypotheses about how various economic, market, and regulatory factors influence the national count of ISO 14001 certifications. These hypotheses are then tested using econometric estimation techniques with data for a panel of 142 developed and developing countries. We find that per capita ISO 14001 counts are positively correlated with income per capita, stock of foreign direct investment, exports of goods and services to Europe and Japan, and pressure from civil society. Conversely, productivity and levels of state intervention are negatively correlated. The paper finishes by offering a number of recommendations to policymakers concerned with accelerating the diffusion of voluntary environmental standards

A Behavioural Finance Explanation of a Gearing-ß Inverse Association Referencing Weill’s Liquidity Result (in English)

The authors investigated Arnold’s conjecture that Leverage (Financial Gearing) and Operating Gearing should be positively related to the equity ß of the Sharpe/Lintner CAPM. They find for a sample of the S&P 500 firms that have been on that index continuously for more than 15 years, that ß is negatively associated with Leverage and Operating Gearing. Using Weill’s results for transitional economies, the authors suggest that liquidity may provide an explanation for this anomalous ß-Gearing inversion. The implications are: that (1) one should revaluate the positive associations posited for Financial and Operating gearing with ß and (2) consider the possibility of managing liquidity as a way to affect ß.financial gearing; leverage; liquidity; beta

Adversarial Attacks on Remote User Authentication Using Behavioural Mouse Dynamics

Mouse dynamics is a potential means of authenticating users. Typically, the authentication process is based on classical machine learning techniques, but recently, deep learning techniques have been introduced for this purpose. Although prior research has demonstrated how machine learning and deep learning algorithms can be bypassed by carefully crafted adversarial samples, there has been very little research performed on the topic of behavioural biometrics in the adversarial domain. In an attempt to address this gap, we built a set of attacks, which are applications of several generative approaches, to construct adversarial mouse trajectories that bypass authentication models. These generated mouse sequences will serve as the adversarial samples in the context of our experiments. We also present an analysis of the attack approaches we explored, explaining their limitations. In contrast to previous work, we consider the attacks in a more realistic and challenging setting in which an attacker has access to recorded user data but does not have access to the authentication model or its outputs. We explore three different attack strategies: 1) statistics-based, 2) imitation-based, and 3) surrogate-based; we show that they are able to evade the functionality of the authentication models, thereby impacting their robustness adversely. We show that imitation-based attacks often perform better than surrogate-based attacks, unless, however, the attacker can guess the architecture of the authentication model. In such cases, we propose a potential detection mechanism against surrogate-based attacks.Comment: Accepted in 2019 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN). Update of DO

Venture Capitalism as a Mechanism for Knowledge Governance: the Emergence of the Markets for Knowledge Intensive Property Rights

Venture capitalism is an outcome of the ICT Revolution, which made its appearance first in the US during the late 1970s and early 1980s and then in other countries including Israel during the 1990s. It explains the new pervasive role of small firms in the introduction of technological innovations and the rise of research and development expenditures in the US in the last decade of the XX century. Venture capitalism is a major institutional innovation based upon the identification of economies of scope in the transactions of technological knowledge bundled with managerial competence, reputation, screening procedures and equity. It has paved the way to the emergence of new surrogate markets for knowledge, i.e. financial markets specialized in the trade of knowledge intensive property rights with important benefits in terms of economic of size in portfolio management and hence profitability of investments in high-tech start- ups. The emergence of venture capitalism has important effects in national system of innovation of advanced countries, and it is a powerful mechanism for the production, dissemination and integration of knowledge in advanced capitalistic economies, and thereby a main driver of a ‘knowledge-based’ growth.Venture capitalism, Start-up companies, Nested transactions, Knowledge bundling, Knowledge intensive property rights, Market creation, Surrogate markets for knowledge, Knowledge governance mechanisms.

"Sour Milk" Corporate Branding under Surrogate Boycotts - the case of Arla Foods in the Muhammad Crisis

Surrogate boycotts are highly threatening for corporations in terms of both economical cost and image damage. All corporations are due to our globalized environment and increased stakeholder fragmentation gradually more risking to become victims of surrogate boycotts, which of nature is hard if not impossible to predict and prevent. Corporations are generally recommended to build clear and strong corporate identities, which should be reflected in their most important stakeholders, as this will secure minimum damage on the corporate image. Even a surrogate boycott situation can have positive effects on corporations, especially in terms of image, as such situation increases the brand involvement and thereby make it possible for corporations to connect with important stakeholders on an emotional level

China Incorporated

The development of entrepreneurship and a private business sector in China pose various challenges to analysis. On the one hand, neo-classically based New Institutional Economics aims to find evidence that long-term investment and long-term commitment in and around firms can not be expected without deeply entrenched and state guaranteed private property rights. On the other hand, empirical studies within the China field concentrate on the political processes, in particular the interaction between the central state and local governments, at the danger of neglecting market forces, economic interests, and economic problems at stake. The empirical study on which the following is based took a different path by using a set of framing assumptions.entrepreneurship;China;privatization;institutional economics;local governments

Banks' risk assessment of Swedish SMEs

Building on the literatures on asymmetric information and risk taking, this paper applies conjoint experiments to investigate lending officers' probabilities of supporting credit to established or existing SMEs. Using a sample of 114 Swedish lending officers, we test hypotheses concerning how information on the borrower's ability to repay the loan; alignment of risk preferences; and risk sharing affect their willingness to grant credit. Results suggest that features that reduce the risk to the bank and shift the risk to the borrower have the largest impact. The paper highlights the interaction between factors that influence the credit decision. Implications for SMEs, banks and research are discussed

Framing China: Transformation and Institutional Change

The paper offers a frame for investigating the extent to which decentralisation, and subsequent locally chosen institutions shape private organisational and institutional innovation. To include the numerous locally based “economic regimes†matters as the resulting business system reflects political institution setting and private organisational innovation. Such a frame is a necessary first step for empirical studies attempting to explain the heterogeneity of China’s business systems, the emergence of hybrid organisations, and last but none the least, the different growth rates that can be observed across China.Transition Economy;Institutional Change in China;Private Business Sector