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The purpose of this study is to segment and profile socially responsible investment (SRI) funds based on investment strategies they use. Specifically, the paper investigates how different SRI strategies are applied and how they are related to fund-level characteristics, with the goal of recognising their potential dominant combinations in SRI practice.

Cluster analysis was complemented with one-way ANOVA to classify 147 SRI funds from 11 European countries into different groups based on the diversification (number and type) and application (intensity of usage) of the investment strategies. Discriminant analysis and chi-square tests were conducted to profile the clusters. Financial performance was examined by running multiple hierarchical regression and dominance analyses to determine meaningfulness of particular investment strategies within each of the SRI fund clusters.

Three basic SRI fund clusters were recognised: strong-intensity strategic heterogeneity, weak-intensity strategic heterogeneity and weak-intensity strategic homogeneity. The combination of SRI strategies used in the weak-intensity strategic homogeneity cluster significantly explained the variance in mid-term financial returns.

Fund managers may use these results to make more informed investment decisions on the selection and the application of SRI strategies.

Financial industry has significant and broad and not only economic but also social implications. This research effort results in better understanding of the SRI universe, potentially leading to a broader consideration of the societal impact of financial investment.

The author provided useful insights into existing bundles of SRI strategies used in the European SRI market, recognised dominant investment strategies within SRI strategy portfolios and reported how strategic variety is related to fund-level characteristics.

This study provides a large sample comparison of research and development (R&D) spending intensity in private and public firms and the extent to which these firms' unique characteristics affect their R&D spending rate.

The study compares both private and public data from UK firms for the period 2006–2016, generating a total matched 232,029 firm-year observations, and applies a probability model technique to our large panel datasets.

The authors uncover that private firms show lower R&D spending intensity compared to their public counterparts. The authors evidence also shows that privately owned firms in the technological (non-technological) sector display higher (lower) probability of R&D spending intensity. Compared with public firms, the authors further observe that the intensity of private firms' R&D spending increases with higher internal cash flow, leverage and industry information quality. The authors results remain robust to alternative econometric models.

Despite the findings of this study, the authors would like to point out that the use of a single country's data limits the generalisability of our findings. Thus, future studies may also consider extending this study across multiple countries.

A key implication of our study is that private firms are more likely to finance R&D intensity from the internally generated cash flow compared to the public ones. This stems from the fact that private firms are more likely to experience higher costs in raising external finance for innovative activities than public firms. Thus, easy access to funding for private firms is vital for enhancing R&D activities of the private firms.

By combining both private and public firms' datasets, the authors are able to provide new evidence to suggest that the intensity of private firms' R&D spending is dependent on internal cash flow, leverage and the industry information level. In fact, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores these relationships.

The study aims to examine the military-connected firms' risk preference, specifically in the innovation intensity level context. The authors argue that firms with military-experienced top management have conservative and risk-averse behavior, influencing the innovation investment policy.

The authors use nonfinancial Indonesian-listed firms from 2010 to 2018 amounted to 2,504 firm-year observations.

The authors document a negative relationship between military connection with both innovation activities and outputs. The additional analysis documents that risk-preferences of military-connected firms will be drastically changed when the industry has a high digital level, which confirms that risk-averse military-experienced management is less dominant with adaptation skill. The authors also identify that veterans did not need a long tenure to influence firms' innovation investment policy. Lastly, the result is robust due to various endogeneity tests employed.

This study further examines military-connected firms' technological innovation compared to prior studies and enriches the related literature.

Performance of firms in network industries depends much on the creation of standards around their technologies, products, or services. Establishing standards requires committing large, irreversible, upfront investment while demand remains uncertain. This paper focuses on the real options involved in this investment problem. The conventional real options literature recognizes the waiting-to-invest option where firms could avoid regret by waiting until at least some of the uncertainty is resolved. However, early commitment of network investment has vital strategic effects on shaping the expectations of potential users and inducing them to adopt the standard, thus creating a strategic growth option. We develop a simple model to explore the tradeoff between this strategic growth option and the waiting-to-invest option. We solve for the optimal investment rules and find that for high uncertainty, the strategic growth option often dominates the waiting-to-invest option and reduces the investment threshold. Furthermore, the intensity of network effect enhances the strategic growth option. Our results have important implications to the strategies of firms in technology industries.

To better understand the impact of choosing a carbon data provider for the estimated portfolio emissions across four asset classes. This is important, as prior literature has suggested that Environmental, Social and Governance scores across providers have low correlation.

The authors compare carbon data from four data providers for developed and emerging equity markets and investment grade and high-yield corporate bond markets.

Data on scope 1 and scope 2 is similar across the four data providers, but for scope 3 differences can be substantial. Carbon emissions data has become more consistent across providers over time.

The authors examine the impact of different carbon data providers at the asset class level. Portfolios that invest only in a subset of the asset class may be affected differently. Because “true” carbon emissions are not known, the authors cannot investigate which provider has the most accurate carbon data.

The impact of choosing a carbon data provider is limited for scope 1 and scope 2 data for equity markets. Differences are larger for corporate bonds and scope 3 emissions.

The authors compare carbon accounting metrics on scopes 1, 2 and 3 of corporate greenhouse gas emissions carbon data from multiple providers for developed and emerging equity and investment grade and high yield investment portfolios. Moreover, the authors show the impact of filling missing data points, which is especially relevant for corporate bond markets, where data coverage tends to be lower.

The number of patents in China has grown rapidly in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how patents impact economic development in China.

This paper developed an empirical model by using panel data of 42 China's patent-intensive industries to investigate the economic contribution made by Chinese patent-intensive manufacturing industries.

This paper found that the intensity of valid patents is strongly positively related to economic growth. The intensity of yearly added patents presented an inverse U-shaped and a U-shaped curve with the economy made by China’s patent-intensive industries. The correlativity mainly depended on whether the patent intensity converges near the economic indicators. Meanwhile, from the perspective of input–output efficiency, for China’s patent-intensive industries, R&D institutes were overinvested, followed by R&D intensity and R&D staff.

Investigating patent influence on economic development is quite complex research. Existing studies have mainly focused on patent protection in legal systems, but have not provided a definitive answer to what the real influence is. This study sought to narrow this gap from the patent economy perspective.

This paper aims to discuss how firms make investment decisions and the impact of these decisions on firm value, considering the strategic impacts of such investments.

Built on real options and game‐theoretic models, simulations are used to find out how investment decisions and firm values change in face of network effects and potential competition.

It is found that high intensity of network effects lowers the investment threshold as well as the expected value of the firm at the investment threshold. It is also found that potential competition makes an innovating firm less likely to invest. Moreover, in a more competitive environment, the value of the firm when it is indifferent between investing and waiting tends to be high.

It is shown that overestimating and failure to capture the network values may lead to poor investment decisions, resulting in firms or projects with little value. The research also has important implications for the management of R&D. When an innovation is likely to face fierce competition, the owner may invest more aggressively under high uncertainty. However, if competitors are likely to provide substitutes, firms should be cautious making upfront investments under high uncertainty.

This paper discusses the implications of new developments in the field of real options to firms’ strategic investment decisions and the valuation of firms.

Previous studies have shown that the application of information technology (IT) can help break through the innovation boundaries of firms and has undoubtedly become a key enabler of collaborative innovation. These studies, however, are mainly based on theoretical analysis and case studies, and little is empirically known about the relationship between IT investments and collaborative innovation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to empirically explore how firms' IT investments affect the firms' collaborative innovation performance. The authors also examine the moderating roles of the top management team's (TMT's) educational background and absorptive capacity in this relationship.

The authors collected data on 2,097 listed Chinese manufacturing companies and used the ordinary least squares (OLS) method to perform regression analysis. In addition, the authors conducted robustness tests using the propensity score matching (PSM) method and the instrumental variable method.

The results show that the relationship between IT investments and collaborative innovation is inverted, U-shaped and curvilinear. In addition, the TMT's educational background and absorptive capacity positively moderate the inverted U-shaped relationship between IT investments and collaborative innovation.

The study's findings on the relationship between IT investments and collaborative innovation differ from previous mainstream findings that recognized a positive linear relationship. The authors' findings deepen the understanding of the dual role of IT investments. Moreover, this research helps expand the contingency perspective in IT investments and collaborative innovation research.

The paper discusses the new concept of “Multinational Investment Projects” (MIPs) and its application in the context of international business operations in China. The petrochemical industry in China is used as the industrial context in which we investigate the interplay between the Chinese government, which encourages growth and investment activities in the sector, and the multinational petrochemical firms competing for global market share in this sector.

The paper investigates the nature of the petrochemical value chain and the investment activities in all of its segments. Using an originally created database of the top 180 MIPs in the petrochemical industry in China and additional context information the business environment in China, the paper reviews the investment strategies of multinational petrochemical corporations, and discusses their strategic choices for mode of entry in China, geographic location and location within the value chain.

The overview of MIPs in the Chinese petrochemical industry confirms the theoretical expectations of the critical impact of Chinese Government policies. The paper explains the emerging shape of international competition in this sector of the Chinese economy.

The main contributions of this paper are the new conceptual framework for analysis of the drivers for strategic investment choices, the assembly of a database with the top 180 MIPs in the petrochemical industry in China, and the analysis of the relationships between the regional endowments, concentration of value‐chain activities and location choices by multinational firms from different countries of origin. The results demonstrate the factors that drive growth in a knowledge‐, technology‐ and capital‐intensive sector.