Paris West University Nanterre La Défense

About: Paris West University Nanterre La Défense is a education organization based out in Paris, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Finite element method. The organization has 895 authors who have published 1430 publications receiving 21712 citations.

The determinants of growth for SMEs. A longitudinal study of French manufacturing firms

Abstract: This paper investigates the structural and strategic determinants of firmgrowth using a unique data set covering French firms with between 10 and 250employees and active from 1997 through 2007. On the basis of the propositionthat Gibrat’s Law does not hold in this case, we consider a growth model thatcombines different factors that may be determinants of the firm’s growth path.The results, which are based on two families of multinomial logit models, confirmthat firm growth is not only a random process. Instead, size, legal structure,market share and localization are found to have a significant impact on thedevelopment of the individual growth path. These environmental and structuralelements are not the only elements on which to focus when attempting to explainemployment growth on the firm level - strategic factors matter as well. In thisregard, we demonstrate the critical role of labor costs and financial structure asexplanatory variables in firm growth.Keywords: Firm growth, SMEs, Gibrat’s law, French manufacturing, multi-nomial logistic regression.JEL Codes: L25, C51, D22.

I hate my workplace but I am very attached to it: workplace attachment style: An exploratory approach

Abstract: Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether different patterns of workplace attachment exist and to explore the relations between adult attachment styles and the level of workplace attachment. Design/methodology/approach Participants were 351 Italian employees who completed a questionnaire composed of the Workplace Attachment Scale and the Relationship Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using correspondence analysis. Findings The results showed that high scores on workplace attachment correlated significantly with secure attachment style, while low scores correlated with insecure attachment styles. These results shed light on different workplace attachment styles. Research limitations/implications The limitation in this study mostly concern the use of self-reporting instruments to measure the participants’ attachment style, since they may be susceptible to distortions. However, the distribution of attachment styles in this sample is similar to the worldwide distribution, which supports the authors’ choice. Practical implications To the extent that it is possible to identify a specific workplace attachment style, it should also be possible to change some of the human resource management practices inducing employees to develop a workplace secure attachment style. Originality/value Researchers tended to ignore the extension of the adult attachment behavioral system to examine core environmental relationships. The present study, applying attachment theory to workplace attachment, provides theoretical support that the bonds that an individual forms with workplace can be classified as attachment bonds.

Index Trading and Agricultural Commodity Prices: A Panel Granger Causality Analysis

Abstract: Since the 2008 global food crisis, and with the new price surge in 2010-2011, agricultural commodity markets have been at the heart of the world economic concerns. It is likely that several fundamental factors (crop failures, extreme weather events, biofuel development, emerging economies growth, monetary instability) have played a role, but there are also reasons to suspect that financial markets could have been partly responsible for the price increase. Indeed, at the same time prices of commodities rose substantially, financial investments in agricultural commodities soared. This increase was mainly driven by index-based investments, that led to the 'financialization' of agricultural commodity markets.Several studies have examined the causality between commodity prices and positions on futures markets. Overall, they generate no evidence that index trading had an impact on price changes (see Irwin and Sanders (2011) for a survey). However, as stated by Sanders and Irwin (2011b), the power of the standard statistical tests might be too low. Accordingly, they suggest to consider SUR estimations to take cross-sectional dependence across markets into account. In this paper, we aim to contribute to the literature by using the panel Granger causality testing approach recently developed by Konya (2006). More precisely, we consider SUR estimation and bootstrap specific critical values. This approach does not suppose homogeneity in the panel and does not require preliminary tests for unit roots and cointegration.Our causality tests are applied to the relationship between index-based positions and futures prices on weekly data for twelve grain, livestock and other soft commodity markets (cocoa, coffee, corn, cotton, feeder cattle, live cattle, lean hogs, soybeans, soybean oil, sugar, wheat-CBOT and wheat-KCBT) over the period 2006-2010. Our results confirm the absence of direct effect between index-based trading and commodity prices.