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In this paper, the authors study the long-run determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) in three major European economies over the period 1983–2017, namely Germany, France and Italy.

The authors focus on the capital misallocation effects, scale effects and labor misallocation effects. To this end, the authors study how real interest rate shocks, real exchange rate shocks, real wage shocks and changes in labor regulation affected TFP in major European countries over the last decades. The authors employ a theoretical and an empirical model to investigate the issue. The empirical results are obtained using a VAR model for estimation.

A stripped-down model of labor market in open economy with technology progress allows to identify the relevant variables affecting TFP. On the empirical ground, the authors find a positive relationship between TFP and real interest rate in the long run. Importantly, the authors detect a positive relationship between TFP and real exchange rate. Further, the authors show that the TFP can respond positively to a stricter labor market regulation and to a higher real compensation per employee. The results provide support to the idea that TFP has a positive relation with prices in the long run, while it may be biased along the cycle because of price rigidity.

The present model is stylized and may not capture all of the details of reality. The analysis should be extended to a larger number of countries. Technology progress could be proxied using different variables, as the R&D expenditure or the number of patents. Micro data, for specific sectors and industries, can improve the quality of the empirical investigation.

Mainly the authors find that TFP has a positive relationship with price changes in the long run, while it may be biased along the cycle because of price stickiness. Capital misallocation and labor misallocation can negatively affect TFP. Thus, the observed divergences in European TFP can be traced back to the misallocation effects attributable to the decrease of real interest rate and real wages, together with the raising labor flexibility. Mainly, the authors detect a positive long-run relationship between TFP and real exchange rate. This outcome strengthens the supply-side view of the relationship between productivity and real exchange rate.

The authors believe that the present setup can be helpful to reflect critically on the nodes at the core of the productivity slowdown and asymmetries in the eurozone. The aim is to implement renewed policies in order to favor economic growth, convergence and stability in the euro area.

This research addresses the issue of asymmetries among European economies by focusing on the role played by real prices in the long run. Traditionally, the dynamics of TFP have been attributed only to technological components, human capital and knowledge. This work shows that the dynamics of prices such as the real interest rate, the real exchange rate and the real wage can also influence the technological process by pushing the production system toward choices that are not always optimal for economic growth. An interesting result of this research concerns the positive relationship between real exchange rates and TFP in the long term, evidence of an important supply-side effect on the technological process.

This paper aims to exploit the varying level of responses to the carbon disclosure project (CDP) to assess the economic consequences of carbon emission disclosure by disclosure level. Economic theory suggests that increased disclosures by a firm should lower the information asymmetry component of the firm’s cost of capital. Using CDP disclosures by US firms, the authors study the effect of voluntary carbon emission on the information asymmetry risk in capital markets.

The authors conduct cross-sectional analyses to examine whether, from the investor perspective, firms with varying CDP disclosure levels experience differential information asymmetric risk. The authors also conduct a pre- and post-disclosure comparison to examine whether the market responds to first-time carbon emission disclosure with decreases in the relative bid-ask spread.

In the cross-sectional analysis, the authors find that firms that decline to disclose carbon emission information, firms that provide incomplete information and firms that do not respond to the CDP survey have higher information asymmetry than firms that provide complete information and opt to make it available to the public. Using a pre- and post-disclosure comparison, the authors find that the market responds to first-time carbon emission disclosure with decreases in the relative bid-ask spread. Additionally, only firms that participate, provide complete disclosures and opt to make it available to the public enjoy the largest reduction in bid-ask spreads, which is followed by firms that provide incomplete information. Other firms do not experience a reduction in information asymmetry.

This study examines the impact of CDP disclosures on information asymmetry using a US sample. The results of the study may not be generalizable to other countries that have different institutional arrangements and settings.

The study has important social and policy implications. The findings on the role of carbon emission disclosures in reducing information asymmetry in the capital markets suggest the need for policymakers to promote greater carbon emission disclosures in the USA and other countries where such disclosures have been traditionally less emphasized. As to stakeholders, bringing corporate carbon emission disclosure in line with recommended guidelines will require them to exercise more direct stakeholder pressure to encourage firms to fully participate in the CDP project. This is particularly critical in settings of regulatory inaction and weak enforcement with respect to environmental policies and disclosure such as the USA.

The results span the current gap between two broad perspectives on corporate social responsibilities. The traditional shareholder perspective argues that companies only participate in socially responsible activities which increase shareholder value, while an alternate perspective argues that companies also undertake social responsibilities to benefit society even at the cost of shareholders (Moser and Martin, 2012). The study demonstrates that the two perspectives are not always at odds, carbon emission disclosure not only provides important information on the corporate social responsibility of the firm but also contributes to enriching the information environment leading to reduced information asymmetry in the equity markets for US firms. Thus, from both a stakeholder and capital market perspective, firms have incentives to provide carbon emission disclosures voluntarily. More direct stakeholder pressure may be helpful to encourage more firms to provide complete carbon emission information and opt to make it available to the public.

Few studies investigate the impact of CDP disclosure on the information environment of public companies. The lack of research on this key connection between new disclosures on carbon emissions and information asymmetry in the capital markets is the primary motivation for the paper. The study also provides important insights on disclosure level; just participating in the CDP survey is not enough, the degree of participation is also important. The results of the study suggest that the varying level of disclosure matters, the greatest benefits in terms of reduction of information asymmetry accrue to firms that provide complete information and opt to make it available to the public.

The current study aims to investigate the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and information asymmetry, as well as the moderating effect of board characteristics (gender diversity, size and independence) on this relationship.

This paper uses a panel data regression analysis with the system generalized method of moments (SGMM) estimator of nonfinancial French firms included in the SBF 120 index. The environmental and social disclosure scores are collected from the Bloomberg database, while financial data are collected from the FactSet database.

The empirical results demonstrate that environmental disclosure has a positive impact on the level of information asymmetry, while social disclosure has no effect on the information environment. Gender diversity and board independence negatively impact the opacity index, while board size has a positive effect. The presence of women in board composition has a substitution effect on the relationship between environmental disclosure and information asymmetry. There is no moderating effect of board size on the association between CSR disclosure and information asymmetry. However, the proportion of independent female directors and board independence operates as substitutes to social disclosure on reducing information asymmetry.

Although the models include the most common control variables used in the literature, they omit some variables. Second, the results should be interpreted with caution and should not be generalized to the entire stock market since the sample is based on large French companies.

The results of this study may be of interest to managers, investors and French market authorities since France is characterized by highly developed laws and reforms in the area of CSR. In addition, the paper leads to a better understanding of how women on the board, in particular, independent female directors, affect the relationship between CSR disclosure and information asymmetry. This could be of interest to French authorities, which has encouraged the appointment of women through the adoption of the Copé–Zimmermann law.

First, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to explore the moderating effect of board characteristics on the relationship between CSR and information asymmetry. Second, unlike previous studies using individual proxies to measure information asymmetry, the authors favor the opacity index of Anderson et al. (2009). They calculate this index by including a fifth individual measure, namely, share price volatility. The opacity index better describes the information environment of companies than individual measures since it reflects the perceptions of investors and analysts together.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of policy uncertainty on firm performance and to examine how the different cultural societies deal with the policy-induced uncertainty.

The authors use data of European non-financial firms to extend the growing literature on policy uncertainty, firm performance and national culture. The authors consider financial as well as market proxies to measure firm performance and use Hofstede's cultural dimensions as a proxy for national culture. The authors apply the generalized method of moments (GMM-system) regression technique on a dataset of 702 non-financial European firms, listed during the period 2002–2018.

The authors find overwhelming evidence that policy uncertainty reduces the performance of the European firms; however, cultural differences among different European countries moderate the impact of policy uncertainty on the financial as well as the market performance of the firms. The results of this study show that European cultures with high power distance, individualism, masculinity and indulgence efficiently deal with the economic policy uncertainty. While the European societies with high uncertainty avoidance fail to cope with policy-induced uncertainty. The results are robust to different regression models, alternate proxies of firm performance and endogeneity issues.

The authors argue that policy uncertainty increases information asymmetry and decreases firm performance, therefore, the policymakers shall be considerate of the consequences of the policy-induced uncertainty in the society and business arena that would not only adversely affect the firms but also the economy.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the role of national culture on the relationship between policy uncertainty and firm performance in the European context.

A substantial minority of bidding firms disclose synergy forecasts during mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Using these hand‐collected synergy announcements, the purpose of this paper is to investigate synergy characteristics as well as explore their shareholder wealth effects within the European energy sector between 1998 and 2010.

The authors employ the market model event study methodology to infer short‐term wealth implications as well as the Fama French 3 Factor model to estimate long‐term effects.

The paper provides evidence for a positive correlation between the synergy size and combined bidder and target returns. However, the market discounts disclosed synergies to a degree which reveals that managers in the energy sector are likely to overestimate the actual, realizable size of the emerging synergies. Additionally, the results show that post merger long‐term returns of synergy disclosing firms remain significantly positive, indicating that projected synergies are continuously realized.

As the first study the paper shows that a synergy disclosure effect exists within the European market and hence demonstrates that synergy forecasts serve as an efficient instrument to decrease existing information asymmetries.

This study examines the cross‐autocorrelation of size‐based portfolio returns in a sample of 15 major European markets using daily data from January 1990 through December 1999. Previous studies have primarily used U.S. data. This study extends previous research by considering results in multiple European exchanges. We examine whether a difference in size‐based portfolios exists by testing cross‐autocorrelation, granger‐causality, and asymmetric responses in the European markets. The results confirm that large stock portfolio returns lead small stock portfolio returns in most European countries, and that cross‐autocorrelation is present both within and between European financial markets.

The aim of this study was to determine if there are asymmetries in the pass-through of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices to its derivatives (diesel and gasoline) in the Brazilian market.

Initially, the future WTI oil price series was analyzed using the self-exciting threshold autoregressive (SETAR) and logistic smooth transition autoregressive (LSTAR) non-linear models. Subsequently, the threshold autoregressive error-correction model (TAR-ECM) and Markov-switching model were used.

The findings indicated high prices throughout 2008 due to the subprime crisis. The findings indicated high prices throughout 2008 due to the subprime crisis. The results indicated that there is long-term pass-through of oil prices in both methods, suggesting an equilibrium adjustment in the prices of diesel and gasoline in the analyzed period. Regarding the short term, the variations in contemporary crude oil prices have positive effects on the variations in fuel prices. Lastly, this behavior can partly be explained by the internal price management structure adopted during almost all of the analyzed period.

This paper contributes to the literature at some points. The first contribution is the modeling of the oil price series through non-linear models, further enriching the literature on the recent behavior of this time series. The second is the simultaneous use of the TAR-ECM and Markov-switching model to capture possible short- and long-term asymmetries in the pass-through of prices, as few studies have applied these methods to the future price of oil. The third and main contribution is the investigation of whether there are asymmetries in the transfer of oil prices to the price of derivatives in Brazil. So far, no work has investigated this issue, which is very relevant to the country.

To transcend the view of employment as either formal or informal, this paper evaluates the prevalence of quasi-formal employment where formal employers pay formal employees an unreported (“envelope”) wage in addition to their formal reported salary. To explain the individual-level variations in quasi-formal employment, the “marginalisation” thesis is evaluated that this practice is more prevalent among vulnerable groups and to explain the country-level variations, and a neo-institutionalist theory is evaluated that it is more prevalent where formal institutional failures lead to an asymmetry between the formal laws and regulations and the unwritten socially shared rules of informal institutions.

To evaluate the individual- and country-level variations in the prevalence of quasi-formal employment, a multi-level logistic regression is provided of data from special 2019 Eurobarometer survey 92.1 involving 11,793 interviews with employees across 28 European countries (the 27 member states of the European Union and the United Kingdom).

Of the 3.5% of employees (1 in 28) who receive under-reported salaries, the marginalisation thesis is supported that it is largely vulnerable population groups. So too is the neo-institutionalist explanation that quasi-formal employment is more common in countries where the non-alignment of formal and informal institutions is greater, with the formal institutional failings producing this identified as lower levels of economic development, less modernised state bureaucracies and lower levels of taxation and social protection.

The policy implication is that tackling quasi-formal employment requires not only enforcement authorities to improve the risk of detection of this illegal wage practice but also governments to change wider macro-level structural conditions. These are outlined.

Contemporary new evidence is provided of the prevalence of quasi-formal employment along with how this illegal wage practice can be explained and tackled.

Until now, there has been scant evidence on the proportion and characteristics of employees working without a written contract or terms of employment. To begin to fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the prevalence and distribution of employees without written contracts or terms of employment in the European Union (EU), examining whether they are unevenly distributed across countries and EU regions, and whether it is vulnerable population groups who are more likely to be without such written contracts.

A 2013 Eurobarometer survey comprising 11,025 face-to-face interviews with employees in the 28 member states of the EU (EU-28) is reported.

The finding is that it is less socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics, and more firm size, institutional environment and spatial factors that are important in explaining the prevalence of employment without a written contract. Thus, governments should address not individuals but rather the formal institutional failings and asymmetry between civic and state morality, in order to reduce the level of employment without a written contract, and focus their attention on smaller firms, larger towns and Southern European countries, especially Cyprus, Malta and Portugal.

Future research needs to evaluate whether and how the conditions of employment (e.g. wage rates, health and safety conditions, holiday entitlements) of employees without written contracts or terms of employment differ to their equivalents who have written contracts or terms of employment. This will reveal the implications of workers not being issued with written contracts or terms of employment.

This is one of the first extensive evaluations of the prevalence and distribution of employees without written contracts or terms of employment.

The paper aims to explore how the participants in the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) select collecting strategies under the scenarios of information symmetry and asymmetry, and to investigate the value of corporate social responsibility (CSR) cost information for participants.

This paper constructs a two-echelon CLSC Stackelberg game consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer, where the manufacturer undertakes CSR and is responsible for the remanufacturing of used products. First, the authors establish two collecting models under information symmetry: manufacturer-collecting and retailer-collecting. Second, the authors construct two collecting models under information asymmetry and propose a two-part tariff contract to coordinate the participants’ profits. Finally, the authors make a numerical analysis to verify the results.

Under information symmetry, the profit of the participant who does not undertake collecting is positively related to the collecting rate, and the other participant may not benefit from the increase in the collecting rate. Under information asymmetry, the manufacturer will still select the retailer-collecting channel. Asymmetric information only affects the retailer’s selection. In addition, the manufacturer’s private CSR cost information is always valuable to the retailer.

This paper first explores the influence of the CSR cost information value on the selection of collecting channel under information asymmetry in the CLSC. The results can help company managers choose optimal collecting channel under information symmetry or under information asymmetry.