The regulatory framework in Europe does not prevent banks from taking large or controlling equity stakes in non-financial firms, potentially contributing to higher levels of bank risk and financial instability. Using a panel of European commercial banks for the period 2004-2008, we find that higher levels of equity positions in industrial firms and higher proportions of industrial firms where t...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate environmental strategy and firm value. The major finding of this study is that corporate performance with regard to environmental responsibility is related to overall firm value. Adopting an environmentally responsible strategy appears to significantly enhance corporate financial performance for all firms except thos...

Based on Theory of Evidence and reviewing research papers concerned, a concept model of knowledge sharing network among industrial cluster firms, which can be applied to assess knowledge sharing capacity, has been built. Next, the authors create a set of assessment index systems including twelve subindexes under four principle indexes. In this study, ten experts in the same field were invited t...

The paper suggests that generic brands can develop in industrial markets as easily as they can in consumer goods markets. It briefly examines the issue of branding in industrial markets and then describes the problems that firms can face if their brand name becomes used in a generic manner. It suggests actions that such firms can take as responses to this situation. D 2002 Elsevier Science Inc....

We discuss superstatistics theory of labour productivity. Productivity distribution across workers, firms and industrial sectors are studied empirically and found to obey powerdistributions, in sharp contrast to the equilibrium theories of mainstream economics. The Pareto index is found to decrease with the level of aggregation, i.e., from workers to firms and to industrial sectors. In order to...

While it is generally accepted that industrial action can have a negative impact on a firm’s performance, the direct effects of a strike on the affected firm may be only one component of the total impact resulting from the action. The existence of indirect or ‘spillover’ effects can also have important implications for the economic performance of competing firms. This paper uses a panel dataset...

This paper examines the industrial innovation landscape of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) presenting results from its first innovation survey (2008). Analysing data collected from 304 industrial firms, this paper confirms that only 14% of the surveyed firms possessed an in-house research and development unit and around 50% of firms have no scientists or engineers working for the...

Industrial clusters are promoted by policy and generally viewed as good for growth and development, but both clusters and policies may also enable noncompetitive behavior. This paper studies the presence of non-competitive pricing in geographic industrial clusters. We develop, validate, and apply a novel screen for collusive-like behavior. We derive the screen from the solution to a partial car...

It is now generally recognized that in order to make significant advances in accident prevention, the focus of industrial firms must shift from assessing the risks of existing production and manufacturing systems to discovering technological alternatives, i.e. from the identification of problems to the identification of solutions. Encouraging the industrial firm to perform (1) an inherent safet...

We examine how industrial clustering affects biotechnology firms’ innovativeness, contrasting similar firms not located in clusters or located in clusters that are or are not focused on the firm’s technological specialization. Using detailed firm level data, we find clustered firms are eight times more innovative than geographically remote firms, with largest effects for firms located in cluste...