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The aim of this study was to empirically examine how much traditional attributes and green attributes characterize products within design-oriented firms. Further, we explored how these attributes relate to the perceived level of innovation of the firms.

An exploratory research was carried out in 86 Italian manufacturing companies that are members of the Industrial Design Association. Using the questionnaire method, the entrepreneurs’ perceptions have been analyzed. Data have been treated with hierarchical cluster analysis.

The analysis shows that environmental sustainability is the least important attribute of a design product and four clusters of highly design-oriented firms differ by design-product attributes. Further, the least green firms are also the least innovative in terms of incremental and general innovation.

The small size of the sample and the provenance of firms from a single country imply limited generalizability, and further research on the topic is recommended.

Design-driven innovation based on traditional design attributes provides many competitive advantages to firms. However, given the growing concern about environmental challenges, investing in green attributes in design products allows for remaining competitive and more effective in innovation.

This study, for the first time, reveals the heterogeneity among design-oriented firms, particularly regarding the presence and assortment of traditional design attributes, as well as the incorporation of environmentally friendly attributes in their products. Moreover, the study uncovers the relationship between varying levels of green attributes in the offerings and the perception of the firm’s innovativeness.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the gender wage gap (GWG) in Spain adopting a labour market segmentation approach. Once we obtain the different labour segments (or idiosyncratic labour markets), we are able to decompose the GWG into its observed and unobserved heterogeneity components.

We use the data from the Continuous Sample of Working Lives for the year 2021 (matched employer–employee [EE] data). Contingency tables and clustering techniques are applied to employment data to identify idiosyncratic labour markets where men and/or women of different ages tend to match/associate with different sectors of activity and occupation groups. Once this “heatmap” of labour associations is known, we can analyse its hottest areas (the idiosyncratic labour markets) from the perspective of wage discrimination by gender (Oaxaca-Blinder model).

In Spain, in general, men are paid more than women, and this is not always justified by their respective attributes. Among our results, the fact stands out that women tend to move to those idiosyncratic markets (biclusters) where the GWG (in favour of men) is smaller.

It has not been possible to obtain remuneration data by job-placement, but an annual EE relationship is used. Future research should attempt to analyse the GWG across the wage distribution in the different idiosyncratic markets.

Our combination of methodologies can be adapted to other economies and variables and provides detailed information on the labour-matching process and gender wage discrimination in segmented labour markets.

Our contribution is very important for labour market policies, trying to reduce unfair inequalities.

The study of the GWG from a novel labour segmentation perspective can be interesting for other researchers, institutions and policy makers.

When CEOs are publicly weighing in on sociopolitical debates, this is known as CEO activism. The steadily growing number of such statements made in recent years has been subject to a flourishing academic debate. This field offers first profound findings from observational studies. However, the discussion of CEO activism lacks a thorough theoretical grounding, such as a shared concept accounting for the heterogeneity of sociopolitical incidents. Thus, the aim of this paper is to provide an archetypal framework for CEO activism.

The authors used a multiple case study approach on 145 activism cases stated by CEOs and found seven distinct statement archetypes.

The study identifies four main structural design elements accounting for the heterogeneity of activism, i.e. the addressed meta-category of the statement, the targeted outcome, the used tonality and the orientation of the CEOs’ positions. Further, the authors found seven distinguishable archetypes of CEO activism statements: “Climate Alerts”, “Economy Visions”, “Political Comments”, “Self-reflections and Social Concerns”, “Tech Designs”, “Unclouded Evaluations” and “Descriptive Explanations”.

This typology classifies the heterogeneity of CEO activism. It will enable the analysis of interrelationships, mechanisms and motivations on a differentiated level and raise the comprehensibility of research-results.

The framework supports executives in understanding the heterogeneity of CEO activism and to analyse personality-fits.

To the authors’ knowledge, this marks the first conceptualisation of activism developed cross-thematically. The work supports further theory-building on CEO activism.

The effects of integrated reporting quality (IRQ) have been debated in increasing empirical studies. Several IRQ measures, different theoretical approaches and multiple contexts have been adopted and investigated, leading to mixed results. By using the meta-analytic technique, this study aims to contribute to the accounting literature, reconciling the conflicting results on the effects of IRQ and providing objective conclusions to complement narrative literature reviews.

A sample of 45 empirical papers from 2013 to 2022, with 653 effect sizes, was used to assess the effects associated with IRQ. The papers were clustered into five groups (market reaction, financial performance, cost of capital, financial analysts’ properties and managerial decisions) based on the different consequences of IRQ investigated in the primary studies. A random-effects meta-regression model was used to explore all sources of heterogeneity together.

The meta-regression results confirm that IRQ positively influences firms’ market valuation and financial performance and hampers opportunistic managerial behaviour by improving corporate transparency, mitigating information asymmetry and encouraging accountability. Moreover, differences in the study characteristics affect the strength of the relationship object of interest.

Through meta-analysis, this study provides a broader overview of the effects of IRQ by enhancing the generalisability of the findings. The results also pave the way for additional evidence on the outcome variables affected by the quality of integrated disclosure.

We propose an economic model of housing markets. The model incorporates the macroeconomic relationships between prices, demand and supply. Since vacancy rates are not observable, the demand-supply mismatches are identified using a microeconomic model of search, matching and price formation. The model is applied to data on regional housing markets in England and Wales.

Economic theory combining macroeconomics and microeconomics together with new generation econometric methods for empirical analysis.

The empirical model, estimated for the ten government office regions of England and Wales, validates the economic model. We find that there is substantial heterogeneity across the regions, which is useful in informing housing and land-use policies. In addition to heterogeneity, the model enables us to better understand unrestricted inter-regional spatial relationships. The estimated spatial autocorrelations imply different drivers of spatial diffusion in different regions.

In the nature of other empirical work, the findings are subject to specificities of the data considered here. The understanding of spatial diffusion can also be further developed in future work.

This paper develops a nice way of closing macroeconomic models of housing markets when complete demand, supply and pricing data are not available. The model may also be useful when data are available but with large measurement errors. The model comes together with corresponding empirical methods.

Implications for the housing market and other regional policies are important. These are context-specific, but some implications for housing policy in the UK are provided in the paper as an example.

Unique housing market paper combining both macroeconomic and microeconomic theory as well as both theory and empirics. The rich framework so developed can be extended to much future work.

Current academic research on teacher learning is increasing in number and deepening in quality, but at the same time, the heterogeneity is growing significantly. Similar work is challenging to cross-check regarding conclusions due to the different research foci. This paper aims to provide a reliable theoretical framework and offers solid insights based on the existing research.

Based on the Onion model, 67 core literature in English and Chinese were coded through qualitative meta-analysis methods to explore environmental, behavioral, competence, belief, identity, mission and other factors that may impact teacher learning.

It was found that the quantitative structure of the current relevant studies was in an inverted triangular shape with three levels of steps, respectively, which can be summarized as structural environment, core behaviors and dominant mission. The heterogeneity between the findings mainly originated from two situations, oppositional and complementary and some structural adjustments were made to the Onion model according to the coding results to better represent the interaction of influences between the levels. It also analyzes current research trends and the centrality of learned behaviors based on the coding results.

The design of teacher learning activities should combine theoretical, practical and inquiry learning to ensure that teachers are kept fresh and motivated by sustained and varied stimuli.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyze teacher learning influences through qualitative meta-analysis and create node saturation to analyze the results, resulting in highly credible and valuable research findings.

This article explores the heterogenous social mechanisms that drive responsible environmental behaviours by investigating differences in the mean effect of the psychosocial determinants of the intention to buy organic foods.

Using data for a representative sample of the Spanish population, we estimated the mean effect of the constructs represented in the responsible environmental behaviour (REB) theory that affect sustainable food consumption, and examined the social mechanisms that may explain heterogeneity in the mean effect of those constructs. Confirmatory factor analysis, linear regression, and latent class regression were used in the analysis.

We found that the effect of REB’s psychosocial constructs varied significantly, demonstrating social heterogeneity in the estimated average effect. We identified different social mechanisms that explain variations in organic food purchase intentions: environmental attitudes and social norms shape these intentions among socioeconomically privileged consumers, whereas personal norms shape these intentions among less socially advantaged consumers.

Our research contributes to the literature by highlighting the existence of differing social mechanisms explaining organic food purchase intentions. The uncovering of three social mechanisms explaining differences in the mean effect of factors driving those intentions provides valuable insights with regard to both further developing a holistic framework for responsible environmental behaviours and developing new public policies and marketing strategies aimed at improving sustainable food consumption.

Considering the important development that research on debt financing decisions of family firms (FFs) has undergone in recent years, we aim to assess the current state of the literature with the latest advances in this field.

We undertake a systematic review of 42 journal articles published on this topic in recent years.

As a result of our work, new directions for the advancement of this research field are established, such as the consideration of different methodologies and sources of heterogeneity of FFs, the need for an integration of the supply and demand side of funds or the importance of evaluating a diversity of firm-specific and contextual factors affecting the debt financial behaviour of FFs.

Considering the notable development of the field of debt financing decisions of FFs in recent years, we find it opportune and valuable to revise the advances and trends published in the most recent papers. Thus, by connecting previous and current knowledge, we provide an updated integrative model of the state of the art and posit key research questions to solve in the future.

The purpose of the study is to assess if a policy of female inclusive education should be complemented with a policy of female ownership of bank accounts to fight female unemployment. The study therefore examines how female ownership of bank accounts moderates the incidence of female education on female unemployment.

The focus is on 44 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 2004–2018 and the empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions. The interactions are tailored such that female ownership of bank accounts influences the effect of female inclusive education on female unemployment.

From the empirical findings it is evident that female ownership of bank accounts does not effectively moderate female education in order to reduce female unemployment unless complementary policies are considered. The complementary policies should be in view of boosting the interaction between female education and female bank account ownership in increasing employment opportunities for the female gender and by extension, reducing female unemployment. The invalidity of the moderating effect is robust to the inclusion of more elements in the conditioning information set as well as accounting for other dimensions of endogeneity such as simultaneity and the unobserved heterogeneity. Policy implications are discussed.

This study contributes to the extant literature by assessing how female ownership of bank accounts complements female inclusive education to reduce female unemployment.

The aim of this study is to investigate the contribution of tangible and intangible investments in driving labour productivity growth in the European Union over the period 2000–2017 and their role in the short and medium run. Additionally, heterogeneity across countries is accounted for by performing estimates separately for Eastern and Western European countries.

The methodology used to conduct the analysis of the determinants of productivity is the two-way fixed-effect and the system generalised method of moments. We also include country-specific dummies in place of our variable on national innovative capacity as a means to further reduce the number of instruments.

The results reveal a long-term relationship of investment in intangible assets with labour productivity growth, more specifically of investment in R&D. This relationship holds both when considering the whole set of European countries and for Western European countries, demonstrating that R&D is key to enhancing labour productivity growth. On the contrary, the effect for Eastern countries is negative, probably due to the lack of capacity to turn this investment into an efficient and effective way to foster productivity.

Besides confirming the well-known role of tangible and intangible assets in productivity, the heterogeneity shown in our analysis highlights the need for improving capabilities in Eastern countries. Diversifying the decisions on the investments in European countries, depending on the specific needs and their heterogeneity, could help bridge the productivity gap and enhance specific capabilities of the country systems.