Search results

While the peer effects of technology adoption are well established, few studies have considered the variation in peer effects resulting from the mutual proximity between leaders and followers and the heterogeneity of farmers' learning technology. This study addresses the gap in the literature by analyzing the peer effects of technology adoption among Chinese farmers.

Drawing on a government-led soil testing and formulated fertilization program, this study uses survey data of farmers from three Chinese provinces to examine the peer effects of technology adoption. This study uses a probit model to examine how mutual proximity influences peer effects and their heterogeneity. Accordingly, farmers were divided into two groups, namely small- and large-scale farmers, and then into leaders or followers depending on whether they were selected by the government as model farmers.

Both small- and large-scale farmers are more likely to use formula fertilizer if their peers do so. However, a large-scale farmer is more likely to adopt formula fertilizer if the average adoption behavior of other large-scale model (leader) farmers is higher, while a small-scale farmer is more likely to adopt formula fertilizer if other small-scale non-model (follower) farmers have higher average adoption behavior. Moreover, the peer effect was weakened by geographic distance among small-scale farmers and by economic distance among large-scale farmers.

This study elucidates the means of optimizing social learning and technology adoption among farmers.

The purpose of this paper is to identify if peer firms’ capital structure decision plays a role in determining focal firms’ capital structure decision, despite the fact that correlated effects can also lead to co-movement of financing behavior among firms from the same industry (i.e. industry-specific capital structure).

Instead of using relative measurement (of individual outcome variable over industry variable) as in previous work, this paper borrows the linear-in-means model and, after controlling for potential endogeneity problems, directly identifies the existence of peer effects with coefficient estimation. To deal with correlated effects, additional empirical investigations such as test of heterogeneity in direction and scale, social multiplier identification test and instrumental regression test based on another instrumental variable (that is less influenced by correlated effects) are performed.

Using data from Chinese listed firms, this paper, for the first time, identifies the presence of peer effects in capital structure and debt maturity decision. Further investigations show that first, focal firms react asymmetrically to peer firms’ debt adjustment of different direction and scale. Second, social multiplier, a unique attribute of peer effects, is identified in the leverage choices. Third, the significant correlation of capital structure decision remains even if we use another “correlated effects-immune” instrument. All these results point to the fact that peer effects, rather than correlated effects, play a significant role in determining capital structure.

The empirical results of this paper provide strong evidence that firms, driven by motivations such as either learning or competition, will actively react to peers’ financial decisions. As the bridge between individual firms and the industry, social multiplier can be fully taken advantage of to induce positive spillover of good management practices and prohibit inefficient decisions from spreading.

This paper theoretically and empirically introduces peer effects – a well-acknowledged social concept – into capital structure decision of Chinese listed firms, thus both complementing the traditional capital structure theory and providing an empirical paradigm for peer effects research.

This study aims to investigate the effects of peers on corporate payout policies in one of the largest emerging markets – India. It also examines the motives for mimicking payout decisions.

The sample is composed of 3,024 non-financial and non-government firms listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for the period 1995 to 2020. To encounter the endogeneity problem, the instrumental variable technique based on peer firms' idiosyncratic risk is used to estimate the effects of peers on firms' payout policy. To define peer reference groups, the authors use the basic industry classification of the firms.

The results indicate a significant positive impact of peers on firms' dividend policies in India. A firm with all dividend-paying peers is more likely to declare dividends than the one with no dividend-paying peers. Further, peer effects are found to be more pronounced amongst larger and older firms, thus supporting the rivalry theory of mimicking.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, the present study is the first of its kind that attempts to understand peer effects on payout decisions in an emerging market India, that offers a unique institutional setting. Moreover, the authors extend the existing literature by investigating the peer effects on a firm's payout policies considering various firm-level characteristics, such as growth opportunity, cash holding, financial constraint and profitability, which previous studies have not taken into consideration. These results provide additional insights into the heterogeneity and motives behind peer effects.

The use of digital technology in firms has drawn attention of innovation management scholars and policy-makers, especially the imitation of digital technology and competition among peer firms. Drawing on dynamic competition theory, this paper examines how firms react to their peers' digital innovation behavior and the effect of external environment mechanisms on the magnitude of peer effects.

This paper utilizes a text mining method to construct a baseline model with a Tobit estimator using data obtained for Chinese listed firms.

The findings suggest that peer effects on digital innovation behavior are robust and significant positive in China. Moreover, peer effects on digital innovation participation are positively magnified by firms' strong social network and high Fintech development. However, peer effects are relatively higher in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), low-profitability and high R&D firms.

The authors' findings contribute to the digital management literature by showing that firms need digital technological imitation and diffusion of innovations in the digital era.

Managers should provide insights into firms' imitation of their peers' acts to preserve competitive parity. Besides, firms should integrate employees within the organization and communicate digital innovation concepts and behaviors to external peer firms.

First, this paper contributes to explaining how firms change their digital innovation strategy through the influence of peers' digital innovation behavior. Second, this paper fills the literature gaps related to the moderating effects of external environment factors in peer effects of digital innovation behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships of technical training and the peer effects of technical training with farmers' pesticide use behaviors.

This study uses survey data from 300 peanut growers in Zoucheng County, Shandong, China, in 2016 and employs spatial econometric models to examine the relationships of technical training and the peer effects of technical training with farmers' pesticide use behaviors.

This paper reveals that important peer effects can be channeled through technical training and that these peer effects are sufficiently significant to encourage neighboring farmers to reduce the amount of pesticide use, to transform the structure of pesticide use, and to increase the usage amount of low-toxicity, low-residue pesticide use per hectare. The estimated parameters for the peer effects from technical training are significantly larger than those from technical training alone, which suggests that the technical training of neighboring farmers plays a greater role than technical training for farmers individually.

The research finds that technical training within smaller, localized, groups can induce previously unobservable spillover effects, and this provides a scientific, theoretical and empirical justification for agricultural technology extension that can lead to a rapid, effective transformation of applying new agricultural technologies in an environmentally sensitive and economically sustainable manner.

The purpose of this paper is to capitalise on three waves of longitudinal data from a cohort of 4,351 secondary school pupils to examine the effects on individuals’ cannabis use uptake of both peer cannabis use and position within a peer network.

Both cross-sectional and individual fixed effects models are used to estimate the effect on cannabis use of nominated friends’ cannabis use, of reciprocity and transitivity of nominations across the friendship cluster, and of interactions between these nominated friends. Post hoc analyses parsed the behaviour of reciprocating and non-reciprocating friends.

Cannabis use varied depending on the stability of friendship network and the degree of reciprocity and interconnectedness within the group. Behavioural influence was strong, but interaction effects were observed between the prevalence of cannabis use among friends, the structure of the friendship group and ego’s proximity to group members. These interactions demonstrate that behavioural influence is more salient in more cohesive groups. When reciprocating and non-reciprocating friends’ mean cannabis use were separated, influence from reciprocating friends was estimated at twice the magnitude of other friends.

While preventing any one individual from using cannabis is likely to have a multiplier effect on classmates, the bonds and interactions between classmates will determine which classmates are affected by this multiplier and the salience of that effect.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of scholastic performance using an efficiency analysis perspective.

The authors apply data envelopment analysis (DEA) at the pupil level using the 2009 PISA survey in Azerbaijan. Before applying DEA with multiple outputs, this paper integrates the maximum amount of available information on inputs via the use of correspondence analysis.

The results show that scholastic efficiency depends positively on the externalities due to the resources of the school and to a peer effect. The analysis of the determinants of these externalities shows how they influence scholastic performance and has some policy implications.

Education policies should promote the resource externality, because its effect is more homogeneous among pupils. The mechanisms generating school externalities should be taken into consideration by educational authorities, when allocating resources to school and should give some guidelines about how to use these resources and how to manage a school in order to promote peer effects externalities.

The authors distinguish various sources of efficiency: that of the pupil and that due to school externalities operating via resources and peer effects. The authors relate the efficiency due to school externalities to individual, family and school characteristics.

This article aims to analyze the impact that the inclusion of students with disabilities has on the achievement of their schoolmates and to analyze the impact that this inclusion has on the achievement of the students with disabilities themselves.

The author begins investigating how the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular schools affects achievement of schoolmates. To answer this research question, the author explores the natural variation in time in the number of students with disabilities and use data from National Exam of Upper Secondary Education (Enem). Then, the author investigates how the inclusion affects achievement of the students with disabilities themselves and uses propensity score matching methodologies and, again, data from Enem.

The results show that an additional percentage point in the proportion of students with disabilities would reduce schoolmates' writing scores by a 0.0031 standard deviation. In other subjects, the author finds weak or none evidence of a significant peer effect. In addition, using Propensity Score Matching methodologies, the results show that the mean scores are up to 44% of a standard deviation, which is higher among students with disabilities enrolled in regular schools compared to those who are enrolled in special schools. In summary, the evaluation is that inclusion policies achieve the goal of improving the performance of students with disabilities but such policies have a small and adverse side effect.

For this reason, the present study proposes to fill this gap in the literature by analyzing the impact of the inclusion of students with disabilities on both groups. In addition, this paper contributes to the empirical literature of peer effect with an analysis of the peer effect of students with disabilities per competency. Finally, the article is important given the existence of few articles in Brazil on the topic of education and people with disabilities.

This study aims to complement existing studies by investigating the impact of different corporate social responsibility (CSR) information disclosed by peer listed stars (i.e. governance information [GI] and output information [OI]) on focal firms’ responsive CSR (RCSR) and strategic CSR (SCSR) practices. The authors also investigate the influence of different boundary conditions (i.e. founders’ social status [SS] and industry pollution intensity).

Based on the listed stars of 16 industries and their 4,096 private peers in China, the authors use the least squares method and logistic regression models to analyze the data set.

The results indicate that the GI of peer listed stars can only positively affect firms’ RCSR behavior. The OI of peer listed stars has a positive effect on firms’ SCSR behavior while negatively affecting firms’ RCSR behavior. The SS of focal firms’ founders and their interaction with the industry’s pollution level strengthen the abovementioned positive relationships while weakening the negative ones.

This study provides insights into the role of listed stars in influencing peer firms’ CSR activities, offering important practical implications for both policymakers and managers.

This study extends the recent discussion on peer effects of CSR by elucidating the peer star effect on CSR and confirms that firms may adopt heterogeneous CSR practices to achieve sustainable growth by investigating peer firms’ different responses to their listed stars’ different CSR information. Moreover, by introducing the SS of founders and the pollution intensity of the industry as boundary conditions, this study enriches the research context on CSR activities.

Despite the importance of research and development (R&D), information on its value is not readily available to managers. This study aims to explore the role of common auditors, who audit multiple peer firms in the product market, in clients’ R&D investment decisions. This study highlights common auditors as information intermediaries who affect corporate R&D investment, focusing on the importance of knowledge resources in R&D investment and the limited ability of peers’ public information to communicate the value of R&D.

This study employs pairwise data of firm-peer-year observations to identify a common auditor who provides audit services to the focal firm and its peer firm. This study examines how a firm’s R&D investment changes when the firm’s incumbent auditor provides audit services to peers and analyzes various factors that moderate the effect of common auditors.

Peer firms audited by the same auditor make similar R&D investment decisions. This effect is more pronounced when the auditor specializes more in auditing R&D, when the auditor has a long-term client relationship, and when the firms exhibit a higher level of demand for incremental information relevant to R&D investment. Consistent with the beneficial role of common auditors, firms that are more responsive to auditor-provided information engage more actively in innovation activities in subsequent years.

This study deepens the understanding of how networks created by common auditors facilitate information flow among client firms and shape these firms’ R&D investment decisions.