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This paper aims to build a theoretical model of the impact of farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures on the agricultural output to analyze the impact of farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures on agricultural output.

Based on the field survey data of 808 farmers households in three provinces (regions) of the Loess Plateau, this paper using the endogenous switching regression model to analyze the effect of farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures on agricultural output.

Soil erosion has a significant negative impact on agricultural output, and soil erosion has a significant positive impact on farmers’ adoption of soil and water conservation measures. Farmers adopt soil and water conservation measures such as engineering measures, biological measures and tillage measures to cope with soil erosion, which can increase agricultural output. Based on the counterfactual hypothesis, if farmers who adopt soil and water conservation measures do not adopt the corresponding soil and water conservation measures, their average output per ha output will decrease by 2.01%. Then, if farmers who do not adopt soil and water conservation measures adopt the corresponding soil and water conservation measures, their average output per ha output will increase by 12.12%. Government support and cultivated land area have a significant positive impact on farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures.

The research limitation is the lack of panel data.

Soil erosion has a significant negative impact on agricultural output, and soil erosion has a significant positive impact on farmers’ adoption of soil and water conservation measures. Farmers adopt soil and water conservation measures such as engineering measures, biological measures and tillage measures to cope with soil erosion, which can increase agricultural output.

The conclusion provides a reliable empirical basis for the government to formulate and implement relevant policies.

The contributions of this paper are as follows: the adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures and agricultural output are included into the same analytical framework for empirical analysis, revealing the influencing factors of farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures and their output effects, enriching existing research. Using endogenous switching regression model and introducing instrumental variables to overcome the endogenous problem between the adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures and agricultural output, and to analyze the influencing factors of farmers’ adoption behavior of soil and water conservation measures and its impact on agricultural output. Using the counter-factual idea to ensure that the two matched individuals have the same or similar attributes, to evaluate the average treatment effect of the behavior of soil and water conservation measures, to estimate the real impact of adaptation measures on agricultural output as accurately as possible and to avoid misleading policy recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to use difference-in-difference method (DID) to study the influences of independent directors’ political connection on firm value.

File No. 18 by the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee requires that the leading cadres in party and government offices are not allowed to act as independent directors; this restriction applies to retired officials as well. As a result, many listed companies lose the political connections of officers as independent directors. This paper takes it as an exogenous shock to evaluate the influence of the political connection of independent directors on firm value, effectively alleviating the endogeneity problem existing in previous studies.

The research finds the following: under the policy of compelled resignation, the loss of political connection of independent directors has a prominent negative impact on firm value; and compared to state-owned enterprises, the firm value of private enterprises receives a greater negative impact. However, the political advantage of state-owned enterprises is not obviously influenced. In the regions with worse external market environments, due to a greater reliance on resources brought about by political connection, the policy has a much greater influence on their listed companies.

The study faces several limitations, each of which represents a potential research direction. First, our analysis is based on the policy effects on the firm’s current Tobin’s Q and finds a negative effect of losing political connections. However, the long-term effects are still unclear, as some studies find a negative effect of political connections. Second, the paper focuses on one channel in which political connections may affect firm value. Other channels, such as subsidies and loans from state-owned banks, which need more granular data, should be explored in the future.

The use of DID model can better objectively evaluate the implementation effects of ban policies and alleviate endogenous problems, which is also enlightening for further perfection of the system of independent directors in the A-share market.

It enriches existing researches of the value of independent directors from the perspective of political connection, which is conducive to understanding the influence and channel on the firm value after the loss of political connection and the value of independent directors in the corporate governance in a more comprehensive and accurate manner.

This paper extends the relevant research on the value of the political connection of independent directors from the perspective of political connection and enlightens the evaluation of the effect of ban policies.

The case aims to deal with multi generation entrepreneurship. Families are about people and businesses are about money, therefore, conflict between the two is inevitable. Family-owned businesses develop competitive edges when they align values, vision, strategy, investment and governance to make both family and business activities more professional and mutually supportive. It is a belief that “treating the business like a family”, driven by values and concern for human needs, creates an organization with motivated people working together to create long-term value. Jitesh Ghai is the MD of Panchamrit Asbestos Ltd (PAL), which stands for PAL. Jitesh has an “experiential learning” with the cement sheet business and has understood the nuances of the business. It is supposedly required that PAL ought to professionalize owing to market infeasibility. Shashwat, his son has diversified interests and therefore desires to spin-off to “Big Apple”.

The case is based on research and secondary information, which has been tested several times, while filling the case gaps during the process. To authenticate information, multiple sources (vendors and customers) of information have been used.

There is a dilemma between the father-son relationship and decision to professionalise or spin-off! It is understood that in multigenerational business, it is not necessary that the subsequent generation keep the same business, but must preserve wealth and traditions.

The findings are based on observations on one organisation and research carried through secondary sources, which may limit to theory building.

An enterprise largely competes on the basis of available talent, knowledge, competency and capability. Therefore, knowledge must be managed. For survival and growth, business transition must be handled effectively.

The case is original with the business family in its second generation striving to survive.

Despite the growing research exploring the possibility and feasibility of financing socially oriented projects through crowdfunding, relatively little research examines which crowdfunding model is better to serve such purpose. The purpose of this paper is to offer novel insights to mitigate this research gap.

A unique data set collected from the largest Chinese crowdfunding platform is used to test the hypotheses. To solve the perceived self-selection problem, the propensity score matching method is adopted in this paper. Based on this approach, the results of similar prosocial campaigns in two different models (pure donation and hybrid donation) are compared.

The empirical results show that the hybrid donation model is negatively associated with the status of success and the extent of success of prosocial campaigns. Specifically, compared to the pure donation model, hybrid donation model leads to a lower probability of success, fewer contributors, a lower funding amount and a lower completion ratio.

The paper contributes to a relatively understudied theme in crowdfunding, namely, donations. It does so by introducing the concepts of pure vs hybrid donation models and investigates the model selection problem in financing social projects through crowdfunding based on cognitive evaluation theory.

There are two opposite views about whether the Antitrust Law is conducive to the development of the economy. One view is that the Antitrust Law can restrain monopoly, maintain market competition and benefit economic growth. The other view is that the Antitrust Law inhibits innovation by monopolistic firms and fosters rent-seeking, which is bad for economic growth. To provide a possible perspective for clarifying the controversy, this paper aims to answer the following two questions: first, will the Antitrust Law inhibit corporate innovation? Second, does the antitrust enforcement agency discriminate against private enterprises?

Based on the samples of A-share listed companies from 2003 to 2013, the authors use the implementation of China’s Antitrust Law in 2008 as a policy shock, take the monopoly enterprises in each industry as the treatment group and competitive enterprises as the control group, using the difference-in-differences method to test the impact of the implementation of the Antitrust Law on corporate innovation activities.

The results show that compared with competitive enterprises, the patent output of monopolistic enterprises was significantly reduced after the implementation of the Antitrust Law, which indicates that the Antitrust Law does inhibit the innovation activities of monopolistic enterprises. Further research finds that the innovation suppression effect of the Antitrust Law is more prominent in state-owned enterprises, which means that the government does not have “selective law enforcement” against private enterprises in the process of law enforcement. Therefore, the results provide evidence for the idea that government intervention is neutral.

First, the paper enriches and expands the research on the factors affecting corporate innovation from the perspective of market structure. Second, it enriches and expands relevant research on the consequences of implementing the Antitrust Law from the perspective of corporate innovation. Third, it not only provides the relevant empirical evidence for clarifying the dispute about the Antitrust Law but also is helpful to clarify whether the Chinese Government has “selective law enforcement” against private enterprises.

The purpose of this study is to find the relationships among the high- and new-technology enterprise (HNTE) identification policy, firm’s total factor productivity (TFP) and the marketization process by using data obtained from China manufacturing firms.

Propensity matching score – difference-in-difference modeling are used to investigate the relationships among the HNTE identification policy, firm’s TFP and the marketization process. In addition, the complex relations between policy and firm’s TFP, including in the proposed model, are assessed in detail through the mediation analysis.

The results show that the HNTE identification policy can promote firm’s TFP, but its effect depends on the marketization process. The transmission path of HNTE identification policy to promote enterprise productivity lies in the optimization of incentive mechanism, including the improvement of enterprise labor productivity, the reduction of income tax burden and cost and the reduction of financing constraints. In industries and regions with more effective market mechanism, as well as industries with more intense market competition, the productivity promotion effect of the HNTE identification policy is stronger. In industries and regions with low degree of marketization, as well as industries with low degree of market competition, the productivity promotion effect brought by the improvement of incentive mechanism is distorted, which actually inhibit the promotion of enterprises’ TFP.

The study confirms that the HNTE identification policy plays an important role in enhancing the TFP of China’s manufacturing firm. Policy makers can adopt industrial policy in the key industries and technology areas that are meaningful but market failure. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the effect of the HNTE identification policy largely depends on the marketization process. These finding imply that when formulating an industrial policy, the marketization process of the industry and region should be taken into account.

The paper analyzes the relationship among the HNTE identification policy, firm’s TFP and the marketization process. Panel data are used to discuss the mechanism of HNTE identification policy affecting firm’s TFP. The paper also reveals the effect of the marketization process on the effectiveness of the HNTE identification policy.

This paper addresses the interaction relationship between debt financing and ownership structure towards firms’ value in Malaysia. Two issues are addressed in this study. The study examines whether managers and controlling large shareholders pursue rent-seeking objective through excessive leverage in a firm. Second, the paper examines whether financial restraint policy is effective in enhancing corporate governance. The sample of the study covers a small economy – Malaysia where rent-seeking opportunities prevail. A total 256 manufacturing firms are examined. The hypotheses are set to examine whether rent seeking prevails in firms with high intangible asset and less competitive industries. The findings show that first, financial restraint policy is only effective when managerial equity interest is relatively low. Managers with a higher equity interest hinder the positive effects driven by financial restraint policy. Second, at a higher threshold of equity interest, the use of excessive leverage by managers leads to a lower firm value, confirming the presence of rent-seeking motive. The presence of the largest shareholder as directors also follows the same conjecture despite at a lower magnitude. Both findings could not be refuted in less competitive industries. Other findings from this paper conclude that a high industrial concentration industry increases firms’ value in this economy. Financial institutions can also exert corporate governance on firms in less competitive industries. It is, however, the agency problem mitigates the positive effects brought forth by financial rent in this emerging economy.

This paper aims to re-examine the effect of middle managers’ participation in decision-making (DM) on the innovation performance of Chinese manufacturing firms. It also testifies the intermediation channels regarding how middle managers’ participation influences firm innovation performance by testing the mediating effect.

This paper constructs a model that determines firm innovation and tests the hypotheses with econometric regressions using first-hand data from the China Employer–Employee Survey. Semiparametric and intersectional regressions are used to show how middle managers’ participation in DM influences Chinese firm innovation after controlling for the characteristics of middle manager personnel, entrepreneurs, frontline workers, firm, industry and country.

This paper empirically shows that middle managers’ participation in DM has a significantly positive effect on firm innovation. After testing the mediating effect, the findings show that the improvement of middle managers’ DM participation leads to a certain increase in technicians and a reduced dependence on government. In this regard, middle managers’ participation is complementary to the human capital of entrepreneurs.

This paper measures the degree of middle managers’ participation in DM according to four indicators. It focuses on the influence mechanisms of middle managers’ participation in DM on firm innovation performance, based on their ability to allocate external and internal resources. These findings will be useful for investigating management resource reallocation within firms for developing countries.

The objective of this study is to investigate the simultaneity between farm couples’ decisions on labor allocation and production efficiency. Using an unbalanced panel data set of Norwegian farm households (1989–2008), we estimate off-farm labor supply of married farm couples and farm efficiency in a three-equation system of jointly determined endogenous variables. We address the issue of latent heterogeneity between households. We solve the problem by two-stage OLS and GLS estimation where state dependence is accounted for in the reduced form equations. We compare the results against simpler model specifications where we suppress censoring of off-farm labor hours and endogeneity of regressors, respectively. In the reduced form specification, a considerably large number of parameters are statistically significant. Davidson–McKinnon test of exogeneity confirms that both operator and spouse's off-farm labor supply should be treated as endogenous in estimating farming efficiency. The parameter estimates seem robust across model specifications. Off-farm labor supply of farm operators and spouses is jointly determined. Off-farm work by farm operator and spouses positively affects farming efficiency. Farming efficiency increases with operator's age, farm size, agricultural subsidises, and share of current investment to total farm capital stock.