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Earlier studies have found that the country characteristics play important role in measuring the corporate transparency. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the firm-level determinants play an important role in corporate transparency measured as the quality of disclosed earnings across transitional Europe and what role an overall transparency measured by the Corruption Perception Index plays in it. This paper further tests if the market reacts similarly to discretionary and non-discretionary components of earnings across different groups of countries with respect to transparency.

The financial and ownership data of listed companies in ten European countries is obtained from Amadeus. The transparency ratings are obtained from Transparency International. The sample consists of a panel of 2001 listed companies and modified Jones model of Dechow et al. (1995) is used to measure the quality of earnings.

This paper shows that the firm-level determinants (except firm size) of the quality of earnings are different among different groups made on the basis of transparency ratings. However, the determinants of the quality of earnings are not different within each group. The ownership structure of companies plays important role in determining the quality of earnings in most transparent countries whereas financial factors play significant role in least transparent countries. The markets respond positively to earnings quality in most transparent group of countries.

The results of this study provide interesting basis for future research on economic and social integration of Europe. Although the policy makers are trying to integrate the countries through common Laws and decrees but examining the firm-level factors such as size, growth and ownership are still important. The regulators should address the issue of corporate transparency in Europe by looking at the importance of these factors with respect to overall transparency.

This study extends the knowledge, not only for academicians and investors but for policy makers as well. This study re-emphasizes the role of country-level transparency and firm-level determinants of the corporate transparency within Europe.

The objective of the study is to identify and explore factors affecting the productivity of companies in the Czech Republic with a focus on the role of firm size, firm age, indebtedness and long-term negative equity, efficiency of assets usage, liquidity, legal form, location and sector affiliation.

The study utilizes a large unbalanced panel dataset of 91,257 firms (548,998 observations in total) covering the period 2000–2019. The dependent variable, i.e. total factor productivity (TFP), reflecting the overall firm productivity, was estimated by ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The main findings were obtained through the estimation of two econometric models explaining the effects of factors on firm-level TFP. First, the OLS regressions together with Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) 3 regions, year dummies and robust standard errors were estimated. Second, as a robustness check, the very same model was estimated with the random effects (RE) generalized least squares (GLS) method.

The analysis has shown a statistically significant U-shaped relationship (with the turning point of 38, resp. 36 years) between firm age and the overall TFP among the Czech enterprises. The authors provide two key findings in terms of a firm size-productivity relationship. Firms with fewer employees, often officially registered as self-employed individuals/freelancers, report higher levels of productivity. Nevertheless, when it comes to firm property (assets), the authors find a positive relationship between firm size and TFP. A high proportion of debts in the capital structure of analysed companies, or even negative equity, has been negatively associated with TFP levels.

More research is needed in the deeper exploration of sectoral and regional determinants of firm TFP, as both regional and sectoral heterogeneity were observed in the study. The authors propose the employment of a multi-level modelling approach, including a range of continuous variables and investigation of their role in shaping firm-level productivity.

Concerning the results, managers should be mindful of optimal capital structure principles due to the negative impact of a high level of debts on the productivity level. High indebtedness means high-interest payments drawing earnings off, which may be, especially in the long term, a hindrance to investments. The entrepreneurship and small- and medium-sized enterprise policies may be targeted at the soft policy actions, including advisory services and counselling on business development or risk and on the provision of financial capital allowing firms to strive for growth-oriented projects.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt to provide insight into the firm-level productivity determinants, based on the large dataset covering enterprises across the whole economy over the long term, representing the structure of the country's entrepreneurial activity.

The purpose of this research is to bring upfront some unconventional attributes of inflationary expectations of entrepreneurs. Firm-level attributes are instrumental in shaping the behavior of entrepreneurs, which affect the way in which they form their expectations regarding some key economic variables, like inflation. Inflationary expectations are considered important based on their significant role in affecting decisions taken by individuals, firms and policy makers. Among all economic segments, it is vital to account the inflationary expectations of entrepreneurs representing firms because their decisions critically define the future path of actual inflation and inflation inertia. This basic purpose of this paper is to offer a deterministic framework for these expectations contingent upon the firm-level attributes.

This paper provides survey-based evidence on inflationary expectations of entrepreneurs of the selected manufacturing, trading and service sector firms from Pakistan. Additionally, the study has focused on identifying some firm-level attributes, including market experience of the firm, scale of production, myopia in price setting behavior, forward and backward-looking behavior, rationality of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur's relative firm-level experience as determinants of these expectations. The specified variables are constructed based on responses captured through a structured questionnaire.

Within an ordinal logistic framework, the study finds that the said attributes including market experience of the firm, scale of production, myopic tendency of entrepreneur in price setting, forward and backward-looking behavior, rationality of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur's relative firm-level experience play a pivotal role in explaining differentials and heterogeneity in reported level of inflationary expectations.

The study brings upfront some unconventional attributes of inflationary expectations at entrepreneurial level. The work is unique in a sense that it provokes researchers to account behavioral and individualistic attributes within a deterministic framework for inflationary expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles of country-level characteristics versus firm-level characteristics in explaining variations in firms’ voluntary strategy disclosures.

Strategy disclosure in annual reports is measured using an index of 40 items derived from the strategy literature. The sample is 204 large companies from 12 Asian and European countries in 2005. The disclosure index is subdivided into four underlying latent constructs using principal components analysis. The authors then use OLS regression to test whether total disclosure score, and the latent constructs are associated with country-level characteristics and firm-level characteristics.

The authors find that total strategy disclosures are more prevalent in stakeholder-oriented countries, in countries with greater levels of financial transparency, but are less prevalent in countries with a culture of secrecy, and strategy disclosures are more likely to occur in companies with greater economic incentives to disclose, with a Big 4 auditor or which are listed in New York. These findings also occur but not as consistently with the four latent constructs.

The sample used in this paper comprises large public companies, so the findings may not be generalisable to all companies. Nevertheless, the findings demonstrate that both country- and firm-level variables matter in explaining voluntary strategy disclosure.

The IASB released an IFRS Practice Statement in 2010, which recommends, but does not require, disclosure of information about corporate strategy in Management Commentary statements. The findings of this paper may help inform the issue of whether regulators should make strategy disclosures mandatory.

The paper contains the first detailed examination of the roles of country-level characteristics versus firm-level characteristics in explaining variations in corporate voluntary strategy disclosures.

The paper aims to investigate factors that drive the total factor productivity (TFP) and its growth in the Czech food industry over 2003–2017. The authors’ analysis focuses on firm-level characteristics such as location choice, sub-sector affiliation, use of debt, liquidity, asset turnover, firm size and firm age.

The determinants of productivity were tested econometrically by estimation of multivariate regression models. The firm-level panel data set consisted of 14,488 observations (data of 980 firms spanning 15 years). TFP was estimated by three regression-based techniques – ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, instrumental variables (IV) approach and two-way generalized method of moments (GMM) regression. All three measures of TFP were used as outcome variables to estimate the impact of firm-level determinants on both TFP level and growth.

The results have shown statistically significant and reversed U-shaped relationship between the firm age and the TFP level (with a turning point in the age of 12.5 years). However, the dynamic models investigating the TFP growth have found that younger firms achieve higher productivity growth in comparison with older ones. Higher market share and assets turnover were positively associated with both TFP level and its growth.

This study brings several relevant propositions for future research. First, the authors recommend future researchers to study not only differences in the levels of productivity but also determinants of its growth. Second, the authors believe that adding a non-linear component to age as a factor explaining changes in the levels of productivity might be a very relevant contribution to the literature.

Although it is generally accepted that successful and sustainable growth of firms, regions and economies can be achieved particularly through viable companies with high productivity, there is still a limited number of firm-level studies explaining the determinants of productivity levels and growth in agribusiness sectors in transition economies. Therefore, this study is expected to contribute to a better understanding of this important topic.

This paper aims to analyze the firm level determinants of profitability of Indian drug and pharmaceutical industry which is known for historically weak R&D initiatives.

The change in the economic environment brought out by the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) compliance, this industry was found to have fast adjusted to a new working environment by substantially modifying its strategies. This study aims at using inflation-adjusted panel data for a period 2000-2013 and applies the fixed effects regression model with cluster standard errors.

The study has found that export intensity, A&M intensity, firm’s market power and stronger patent regime dummy have exercised positive influence on profitability. The negative and statistically significant influence of R&D intensity and raw material import intensity points to the need for firms to adopt suitable investment strategies.

The study suggests that firms are required to pay far more attention to optimize their operating expenditures, advertisement and marketing expenditures and improve their export orientation, as part of the long-term strategy.

This study uses a recent data-set to analyze the firm level profitability determinants in the Indian pharmaceutical industry and captures the effect of change in profitability pre and post-TRIPS.

This paper aims to enhance empirical research on foreign divestment and international relocation by multinational firms are still limited and understudied, although these issues have been a frequent phenomenon and carry important economic implications.

The paper investigates the trends of foreign divestment in South Korea and examines firm- and host country-level determinants in total, manufacture and service sectors from 2010 to 2019.

Using probit model analysis, the main findings are first, among the firm-level factors, sales revenue and parent firm dummy are shown as negative and significant determinants of foreign divestment especially in manufacturing sector. Second, among the country-level factors, gross domestic product growth rate and regulatory quality that measures perceptions of sound policies that promote private sector development are shown negative and significant determinants of foreign divestment. On the other hand, relationship between the environmental policy stringency and foreign divestment is shown positive and significant.

The results suggest that these nonfirm-specific characteristics are also important factors in firm decision to divest from the host country.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are common strategies of firms to increase its performance. Although the motives of M&A are different, the determinants are discreet. The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors affecting M&A activities in the Indian pharmaceutical sector.

Using a balanced panel data of the pharmaceuticals sector in India, this study arrives at the determinants of M&A. The authors use regression techniques such as panel probit models, ordered probit models and matching techniques for a comparable and robust estimates for the factors related to M&A activities at firm level.

The empirical findings suggest that export intensity, import intensity, firm size and R&D intensity as the major determinants of M&A in the Indian pharmaceutical sector. In the context of acquisition, there is a riskiness associated with the any business strategy, for to which a firm may choose to finance the deal either via cash, stock or assets. This study further looks at the firm’s decision on the types of acquisitions and arrives at the determinants of such decisions. The factors such as capital intensity were found more important when acquisition by share was undertaken compared to others. The success of the M&A is observed by considering the financial performance of the firm measured in terms of the profit margin at firm level. Using the propensity score matching technique, this study concludes that M&A have a positive effect on the profit margin in the post-M&A scenario.

The study seeks to add to the existing literature and empirical work done in the field of M&A, by not only looking at determinants that motivate a firm to merge and/or acquire but also if the decision of the firm is reflected positively in the firm’s performance. The study concludes that export intensity is an important factor for the pharmaceutical firms in India since exports are a major proportion of firm’s total sales. Technology transfers as technology imports and R&D conducted by the firm are both very important for the drug manufacturers. Any gap in the flow of drugs to the market would hamper the growth of the firm. The growth of the pharmaceutical industry depends on the close collaboration between small R&D units that lack resources to sell their work and large business houses, both domestic and foreign affiliated that will provide them the required market. However, all comprehensive work has been done in this study to cover all aspects of M&A including the financial pathway taken by the firm yet, the study has certain limitations as it does not take into account the entry and exit of firms from the industry.

Policies related to small and large firms should aim at making them export oriented and multinational affiliated to compete at the international market with corporate restructuring through M&A. This will help in firm’s growth and sharing of knowledge capital.

No such study is conducted that differentiate type of M&A and their determinants for the Indian pharma sector.

The purpose of this study is to see how the economy-wide spillover effect affects company process innovation.

To account for national differences, the current study used a hierarchical model.

The findings of this study show that knowledge spillover is related to and influences the innovation process of businesses. Only a level two study that takes into account country-specific differences may reveal this. The current work uses a hierarchical model to try to capture knowledge spillover. Furthermore, the findings suggest that medium and large businesses, as well as businesses conducting research and development (R&D), are more inventive than small businesses and firms not conducting R&D. Furthermore, female-owned businesses are more likely than their male counterparts to innovate their processes.

This study is unique in that it makes predictions about how businesses innovate (behave) based on firm-level characteristics, or macroeconomic structure, without sacrificing information and variance. Furthermore, this study attempts to solve the difficulty of prior empirical research’s single-level analysis and cross-level inference. The research is based on data from the 2019 World Bank regular Enterprise Survey, which includes 18,148 businesses from 38 countries.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of firm-, industry- and country-level determinants on real annual sales growth in the context of a cross-classified multilevel perspective.

The authors studied 11,381 firms from 17 industries in six Latin American countries based on the data collected up to 2015. Since the data are nested in two levels (level 1: firms; level 2: cross-classification of industries and countries), the authors use a cross-classified multilevel model. The significant variability in all levels of analysis confirms the option for the multilevel model.

Differences in industries account for the largest proportion of variance (77.2 percent). This finding indicates that industry-level characteristics should be explored in the sales growth literature (it seems to the authors that they were neglected). This finding also calls attention to the roles of policy-makers in facilitating firm growth. The final model indicates that the considered variables explain approximately 55 percent of the differences in real annual sales growth in the same industry and country after having accounted for the impacts of the differences in firms. After accounting for the impacts of the differences in firms’ and countries’ characteristics, 43 percent of the variation in average real annual sales growth is due to differences in industries. The obtained results indicate that while firms from countries with higher GDP growth and more effective corporate boards present higher real annual sales growth, firms that operate in commodity producer industries have worse performance in this indicator. With respect to firm’s characteristics, larger firms (contradicting Gibrat’s law) and exporters grew less. Some results could be explained by the decrease in commodities’ prices and global purchases between 2012 and 2015.

The paper fills some gaps in the firm growth literature by testing Gibrat’s law in non-developed countries (not yet done, to the best of the authors’ knowledge) and exploring variables other than size in the explanation of firm growth (rarely used, to the best of the authors’ knowledge). Moreover, the adopted model correctly estimated the origin of the variability in firm growth in its natural cross-classified distinct levels.