Managerial and Decision Economics最新文献

The cyclical and non-cyclical nature of the consumer goods industry presents unique dynamics that require discernment in analyzing working capital (WC). These firms often deal with considerable inventory levels that create costs and liquidity challenges, particularly during economic downturns. This paper investigates the impact of inventory days (InvD) on operating margin (OM) in both demand-stable and demand-sensitive businesses. The empirical analysis employs system GMM regression with a sample of publicly traded US consumer goods firms from 2010 to 2022. The findings reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between InvD and OM among cyclical companies, indicating that these firms require a comparatively lower optimal inventory level (108 days) to maximize profitability at 3%. The results highlight the importance of strategic inventory management (IM) under varying economic and demand conditions and balancing the risks of stock-outs against the costs of overstocking to optimize profitability. This paper contributes to the literature on the impact of inventory dynamics on operating profit in stable and volatile markets. It estimates the optimal inventory level that enhances profitability and predicts the optimal inventory dynamics for maximum profit.

In many emerging economies with antiquated laws, bribes paid to government officials reduce economic impediments and serve as a device to improve market competition, thereby contributing to the modernization of an economy. In this context, this paper uses a simple two-stage game theoretic model to investigate the effects of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) on such economies. We demonstrate, among others, that while an increase in fines under FCPA reduces overall corruption, it leads to a deterioration in the market quality in an emerging economy. In the presence of FCPA, an increase in the US firm's technological advantage unambiguously leads to a decrease in the market quality in an emerging economy.

This study investigates retailer's sharing decisions concerning ex ante information about demand when the encroaching manufacturer can reduce production cost. Equilibrium information sharing decisions with encroachment are quite different from that with no encroachment. The encroaching manufacturer's cost reduction efficiency is key to determine equilibrium results, and these thresholds regarding cost reduction efficiency depend on competition intensity between the encroaching manufacturer's direct channel and retailer channel. Furthermore, through investigating the encroachment decisions of the manufacturer, we prove that the equilibrium information sharing decisions under encroachment is robust in general.

We investigate behavior in long-run projects and its relationship with experimentally elicited time preferences. Participants engage in a longitudinal project requiring sustained real effort, with their time preferences estimated through monetary outcomes. We observe a tendency to front-load real effort, with choices reflecting both present and future bias, the former being more prevalent and severe. We also find evidence of naive choice reversals. However, there is no support for the quasi-hyperbolic discounting model in monetary choices, and its predictions do not align with real effort allocation patterns. Nevertheless, discount rate and present bias parameters derived from monetary outcomes demonstrate predictive power over real effort allocation.

Corporate physical investments are an important foundation for sustainable economic development. This study investigates the causal relationships and complex mechanisms of the five antecedent conditions under the “Merger–Organization–Environment” (MOE) framework with corporate physical investments. These antecedent conditions include green mergers and acquisitions (M&A), financing constraints, main business performance, corporate governance capacities, and government environmental concerns. Combining the necessary condition analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, a sample of 40 heavily polluting listed enterprises in China's A-share market from 2016 to 2020 is used. The results found that (1) individual antecedent conditions do not constitute the necessary conditions for corporate physical investments; (2) there are four configurations that generate high corporate physical investments, i.e., proactive change-oriented type, main business focus-oriented type, performance-driven oriented type, and passive change-oriented type; and (3) there are four configurations that generate non-high corporate physical investments, i.e., performance-bound type, funding-bound type, M&A-bound type, and strategically bound type. This demonstrates the asymmetry of the configurations that generate high and non-high corporate physical investments, which helps to formulate incentives for corporate physical investments from multiple perspectives.

We examine the relationship between excess control of family board seats (ECFBS) and financing constraints (FCs) using 2008–2021 data for listed family firms in China. We find that ECFBS intensifies Type II agency problems, thereby worsens corporate FCs. We also investigate the impact of family firm founder characteristics, family owner characteristics, and external shareholder equity structure on the ECFBS and FCs. Our findings provide evidence of the encroachment effect of family control.

This paper developed a global supply chain with a supplier and a retailer in different countries. When exchange rate and demand risks are concentrated in retailer, a distributionally robust approach is used to formulate an optimized robust ordering strategy. Furthermore, the effect of financial hedging incentive contracts on the robust decisions and the profits of the global supply chain is explored. Our findings show that the correlation between exchange rate and demand does not affect the robust decisions of retailer. The effectiveness of financial hedging incentive contracts depends on the trade-off between transaction costs of financial hedging and the degree of supplier incentives and the growth rate of order quantity.

This study constructs a Stackelberg game model between low-carbon manufacturers and capital-constrained retailers. Considering the manufacturer's financing model, the manufacturer's investment model, and the internal blended financing model, it studies the optimal wholesale price of manufacturers. This paper investigates the impact of consumers' low-carbon preference, the financing interest rate of manufacturers, investment ratio, investment return on carbon emission reduction investment, and supply chain pricing. The conditions for low-carbon supply chain participants to choose the best financing mode and the impact of different financing models on the performance of low-carbon supply chains were obtained.