Business network agreements (BNA) are an innovative policy tool that allow firms to cooperate on common projects by sharing skills and knowledge. BNA can be set up either by firms working in the same geographical area or by firms geographically distant among each other. Focusing on Italian networks, we conduct a cross-section empirical analysis to investigate the relationship between geographical distance and heterogeneity in firms’ business when forming an interfirm network. It emerges that the geographical agglomeration of network firms is significantly related to a lower value of the entropy index, though in this case the network tends to be composed by a small number of firms. In other words, firms can enjoy the positive externalities arising from cooperation when they are located near each other and carry out similar activities; at the same time, the drawbacks of competition are reduced by limiting the number of partners with whom they share their efforts. On the contrary, we observe more dispersed and big networks among heterogeneous firms.
This study investigates whether pollution control bonds (PCB) affect overinvestment in utilityfirms and whether public ownership moderates this relationship. Based on a sample of 173U.S.utility companies observed from 2011to 2022, we, firstly, find a negative association between PCB and overinvestment, suggesting that PCBs are effective in curbing overinvestment. This implies that firms utilizing PCBs exhibit a reduced tendency toward excessive engagement in projects with a negative net present value, suggesting the efficacy of PCBs as a mechanism to reduce overinvestment. Secondly, we report that public ownership weakens the PCB effect on overinvestment, especially if it exceeds 50% of the capital. Our findings align with insights derived from agency theory. The use of PCBs acts as a monitoring and control mechanism, mitigating agency problems within utility firms. PCBs seem enhancing governance structures, aligning the interests of management with those of shareholders. Consequently, these bonds contribute to more efficient management of free cash flow, reducing the agency costs associated with overinvestment. However, the public ownership does not significantly contribute to monitoring and resolving conflicts of interest within utility firms. This suggests that, despite public ownership's potential governance role, the effectiveness of PCBs in mitigating overinvestment is compromised in publicly owned utility firms.
The business potential of blockchain technology in global value chains (GVCs) includes the creation of permanent records of information, to facilitate specifications regulation, to mitigate risk using smart contracts and through full, transparent transaction traceability at reduced costs. Blockchain as a general-purpose technology (GPT) thus has the potential to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of value creation for firm specific advantages owned and/or controlled by multinational enterprises (MNE), yet adoption of blockchain is uneven. This study adopts a micro-foundational lens to explain the non-adoption of blockchain technology in multinational enterprises’ (MNE) global value chains (GVC), emphasizing the influence of the technology, organization and environment (TOE) influences on the technology acceptance (TAM) for blockchain, due to the impact on managers’ perception of blockchain's usefulness and ease of use. The empirical results are based on a multiple-case study research design, that collected interview data from supply chain managers in small, medium, and large-sized manufacturing MNEs that participate in global value chains that differ in their governance patterns. The results identified fifteen different drivers of the non-adoption of blockchain technology across the technological, organizational and external environments of the MNE. The results of the study allow a parsimonious model of blockchain technology non-adoption that is aligned with the digital technology adoption literature using a TOE–TAM approach.
The export unit value is influenced by the characteristics of the export market destination. However, this influence is dampened when export subsidies are provided by the government on specific products to incentivize the exporters. We use firm-level data on Pakistani exporters merged with product-level data on the provision of export subsidies in this study. We find that the provision of export subsidies on the products exported dampens this relationship as some of the export market characteristics that otherwise influence export unit value become insignificant. We split the sample of firms according to the product classification of the products exported, such as differentiated industrial products and homogenous non-industrial products, and the size of total export sales to determine whether the provision of export subsidies dampens the impact of export market characteristics on export unit value across the different product classifications as well as across larger and smaller exporters. We believe that the results have implications for policymakers providing incentives to the exporters.
