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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cross-country characteristics on acquirers' target status choice in cross-border mergers and acquisitions across 41 emerging markets.

The paper first reviews the existing literature and develops the related hypotheses, in conjunction with the objectives of this paper. We then describe the data employed, variable measurement and examine the effects of cross-country characteristics on the acquirers' target status choice in cross-border mergers and acquisitions while controlling for firm-level and deal-specific characteristics. The paper continues to conduct the robustness check on cross-country determinants of target status choices using the difference independent variables rather than target country-level variables only.

This research found that the likelihood of a public firm acquired relative to private one is higher if the target firm is located in countries with stronger government quality, weaker economic freedom, better financial market development and lower cultural distance between the host and home countries. The results suggest that bidders actively assess cross-country characteristics as part of their acquisition planning.

Rather than commonly analysed determinants in the previous research such as firm- and deal-specific attributes, value creation and shareholder protection, this paper indicates that institutional environments and economic conditions are closely associated with acquisition risks and benefits and have direct influences on bidder firms' acquisition bidding planning and target choice decision-making.

Institutions, social norms and the nature of industrial relations vary greatly between Latin American and Western European countries. Such institutional and organizational differences might shape firms’ operational environment in general and the type of competition in product and labor markets in particular. The purpose of this paper is to identify and quantify industry differences in product and labor market imperfections in Chile and France.

The authors rely on two extensions of Hall’s econometric framework for estimating price-cost margins by nesting three labor market settings (LMS) (perfect competition (PC) or right-to-manage bargaining, efficient bargaining (EB) and monopsony). Using an unbalanced panel of 1,737 firms over the period 1996-2003 in Chile and 14,270 firms over the period 1994-2001 in France, the authors first classify 20 comparable manufacturing industries in six distinct regimes that differ in the type of competition prevailing in product and labor markets. The authors then investigate industry differences in the estimated product and labor market imperfection parameters.

Consistent with differences in institutions and in the industrial relations system in the two countries, the authors find regime differences across the two countries and cross-country differences in the levels of product and labor market imperfection parameters within regimes.

This study is the first to compare the type and the degree of industry-level product and labor market imperfections inferred from consistent estimation of firm-level production functions in a Latin American and a Western European country. Using firm-level output price indices, the microeconomic production function estimates for Chile are not subject to the omitted output price bias, as is often a major drawback in microeconometric studies of firm behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether religion or national culture can explain previously observed cross-country variation in trade credit.

Using the firm-level SME data from 35 European countries, religion and cultural factors of Hofstede and Schwartz, the authors provide new evidence on the determinants of the cross-country variation in trade credit.

The results indicate that religion and national culture are associated with trade credit. The authors find that the levels of trade credit are higher in Catholic countries than in Protestant ones and that peoples’ religiousness has an impact on trade credit only in Catholic countries. The authors also find that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, such as power distance and uncertainty avoidance, are positively associated with trade credit.

Overall, authors’ findings indicate that religion and national culture are important determinants of trade credit management, and that the association between commonly used cultural values and trade credit depends on the religious, legal, and financial environment.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to research the relationship between national culture and trade credit.

Homeownership has been the main focus of housing policies in most countries. Typical means that households use to achieve homeownership is to take out a loan and supplement this with accumulated wealth for a downpayment. This paper aims to analyze the mortgage demand behavior of households in the UK, Australia and Japan.

Using three panel data sets, HILDA for Australia, KHPS for Japan and USS for the UK, the paper estimates three equations using ordinary least squares: mortgage demand function, housing demand function and initial loan to value ratio function.

Though homeownership is a preferred tenure and the mortgages are “recourse” loans, housing markets in these three countries operate in different mortgage market institutional structures. Results indicate that income elasticity of mortgage demand differ despite income elasticity of housing demand being similar. Different mortgage institutions in countries that pose constraints for borrowers also determine mortgage demand. Other factors such as demography and economic conditions have also played an important role in determining mortgage and housing demand.

The paper is first, to the authors’ knowledge, that explores the role of institutions in mortgage demand in a comparative framework for the UK, Japan and Australia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine two channels through which accounting standard differences could affect cross-listing: compliance costs and/or comparability benefits.

The authors use two settings to disentangle the two channels. First, financial reporting requirements are more stringent for cross-listings via direct listings than cross-listings via depositary receipts; as a result, the effect of compliance costs (if any) would be manifested differently in the two venues of cross-listings. Second, some host countries allow foreign firms to report under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) without mandating IFRS for domestic firms; compared to host countries that mandate IFRS for both domestic and foreign firms, these IFRS-permitting countries provide a setting to test the importance of comparability benefits while holding constant compliance costs.

The authors find that prior to IFRS adoption, direct listings decrease with accounting standards differences between two countries while depositary receipts increase with such differences, consistent with the costs of complying with host country’s accounting standards affecting firms’ cross-listing decisions. After the harmonization of accounting standards, the authors find that IFRS-mandating host countries gain cross-listings from other IFRS-mandating jurisdictions, while IFRS-permitting countries do not experience such gains. These combined results suggest that accounting related compliance costs and comparability benefits both influence cross-listing decisions.

The paper employs unique settings that enable an in-depth examination of the role of compliance costs vs that of comparability benefits on cross-listing decisions. The settings employed by the authors allow them to disentangle the two channels and provide an important insight that accounting standard-related compliance costs and comparability benefits both affect cross-listing decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine global trajectories, dynamics, and tendencies of software piracy to ease the benchmarking of current efforts toward harmonizing the standards and enforcements of intellectual property rights (henceforth IPRs) protection worldwide.

For that purpose, the authors estimate dynamic panel data models for 99 countries over the period 1994-2010.

The main finding suggest that, a genuine timeframe for standardizing IPRs laws in the fight against software piracy is most feasible within a horizon of 4.3-10.4 years. In other words, full (100 percent) convergence within the specified timeframe will mean the enforcements of IPRs regimes without distinction of nationality or locality within identified fundamental characteristics of software piracy. The absence of convergence (in absolute and conditional terms) for the World panel indicates that, blanket policies may not be effective unless they are contingent on the prevailing trajectories, dynamics and tendencies of software piracy. Policy implications and caveats are also discussed.

It is the first attempt to empirically assess the convergence of IPRs systems across countries.

This paper aims to illustrate the scope and challenges of using computer-aided content analysis in international marketing with the aim to capture consumer sentiments about COVID-19 from multi-lingual tweets.

The study is based on some 35 million original COVID-19-related tweets. The study methodology illustrates the use of supervised machine learning and artificial neural network techniques to conduct extensive information extraction.

The authors identified more than two million tweets from six countries and categorized them into PESTEL (i.e. Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal) dimensions. The extracted consumer sentiments and associated emotions show substantial differences across countries. Our analyses highlight opportunities and challenges inherent in using multi-lingual online sentiment analysis in international marketing. Based on these insights, several future research directions are proposed.

First, the authors contribute to methodology development in international marketing by providing a “use-case” for computer-aided text mining in a multi-lingual context. Second, the authors add to the knowledge on differences in COVID-19-related consumer sentiments in different countries. Third, the authors provide avenues for future research on the analysis of unstructured multi-media posts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between investors' divergence of opinions and the asset prices of foreign stocks and also examine the effect of home market country-level factors on the influence of divergency of opinions on stock price.

The authors employ panel data estimation with fixed effects to examine the host market response in divergent opinions to the earnings announcements. The paper uses the American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) of 42 countries from 1985 to 2011.

The authors find a negative relationship between differences of opinions and excess quarterly earnings announcement returns, and investors do process information asymmetrically based on good and bad earnings shocks. In addition, the authors find the negative relationship between divergent opinions and excess earnings announcement returns in ADRs is more pronounced in countries with short-sales restrictions, while other home-market country-level factors – the enforcement of insider trading law, legal origin, investor protection and rating on accounting standard – do not influence the relationship between investors' divergency of opinion and stock returns.

This paper is among the first to bring asymmetric effects on convergence in Miller framework and enhance the understanding of price convergence documented in Miller (1977). In addition, this study incorporates home-market country-level factors in explaining the relationship between investors' divergency of opinions and stock returns.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of corporate investments in corporate social responsibility (CSR), measured by the environmental, social and government (ESG) rating, on the market valuation of a firm's stocks and to explain the regional differences in the degree of this influence.

The empirical study uses linear and non-linear panel regression models for a panel sample of 951 firms listed in Asia, North America and Europe operating in innovative industries.

The CSR score was found to be significant in terms of stock excess return on the regional level. However, this finding cannot be extrapolated to the global scale. ESG rating is priced by the European and North American markets negatively, while in the Asian market, it is positive. This penalty (negative influence) is greater than the reward for one point increase in ESG rating.

The results of this empirical study could be used by firms' managers to adjust strategies aimed at stock value growth and by investors to select an investment strategy to maximize return.

The impact of investments in CSR on stock excess return over a defined benchmark is assessed. The study reveals regional differences in the impact of CSR investment using a sample of Asian, European and North American firms. The authors apply a more advanced lagged CSR performance (d.ESG) assessment based on the methodology of Zhang and Rajagopalan (2010).

The purposes of this research are to examine how individuals' cognition is related to the rate of entrepreneurial start-ups and how this relationship can be modified by three institutional pillars.

Drawing upon a multilevel analysis and a global context comprising 67 countries, cross-level analyses are performed to assess the joint effects of entrepreneurial cognition and institutions on the rate of entrepreneurial start-ups.

The findings confirm the role of entrepreneurial cognition (i.e. self-efficacy, risk attitude and opportunity perception) in individuals' decisions to start new businesses and reveal how this relationship can be diversely influenced by country-level institutional pillars.

This paper could be useful for designing policies to promote entrepreneurial activity through institutions in different countries.

The results contribute to the development of theoretical and knowledge bases by offering a multilevel perspective on how entrepreneurial cognition and institutional environments operate as interacting determinants that influence entrepreneurship.