The influence of carbon risk on firm value: Evidence from the European Union Emission Trading Scheme.

This paper examines the impact of carbon risk induced through carbon price uncertainty in cap-and-trade policies on the value of covered firms. Specifically, the study explores the effects of policy adjustments made at the start of the third phase of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), which aimed to address an oversupply of carbon allowances. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find that the resulting increase in policy-induced carbon risk led to value discounts for firms with insufficient carbon allowances to offset their emissions, even when carbon prices themselves remained low.

The influence of environmental regulation on the FDI location choice of EU ETS-covered MNEs.

This paper explores how cross-country differences in environmental regulatory stringency among member states of the world's largest multinational cap-and-trade system, the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), influenced the FDI location choice of listed multinationals (MNEs) regulated by the environmental policy. After controlling for other country characteristics driving FDI location choice, we find that the likelihood of EU ETS-covered MNEs locating new FDI projects in less environmentally stringent member states strongly depends on firm- and industry-specific environmental characteristics during the system's first two phases. Our results are robust to different measures of environmental stringency and provide evidence for the existence of an intra-regional pollution haven effect (PHE).

Legitimacy, trustee incentives, and board processes: the case of public and private non-profit nursing homes.

Using a unique data set, this study explores how type of ownership (government/private) is related to processes of governance. The findings suggest that the neo-institutional perspective and the self-interest rationale of the agency perspective are helpful in explaining processes of governance in both government- and privately owned non-profit organizations. Due to adverse incentives and the quest for legitimacy, supervising governance bodies within local government-owned non-profit institutions pay relatively less attention to the development of high quality supervising bodies and delegate little to management.

Do non-profit nursing homes separate governance roles? The impact of size and ownership characteristics.

Separation between operational responsibilities and those of oversight is an important point of discussion in governance. Novel to the literature, this paper not only offers direct evidence on the degree of separation, but also shows its relationship with size (ceteris paribus efficiency prescribes that large organizations implement more separation) and ownership characteristics of non-profit institutions. Using a sample of Belgian (Flemish) nursing homes, we find that in private nursing homes this separation increases with size while this is not the case in public homes.

From corporate governance to hospital governance. Authority, transparency and accountability of Belgian non-profit hospitals' board and management.

As a result of multiple developments in health care and health care policy, hospital administrators, policy makers and researchers are increasingly challenged to reflect on the meaning of good hospital governance and how they can implement it in the hospital organisations. The question arises whether and to what extent governance models that have been developed within the corporate world can be valuable for these reflections. Due to the unique societal position of hospitals--which involves a large diversity of stakeholders--the claim for autonomy of various highly professional groups and the lack of clear business objectives, principles of corporate governance cannot be translated into the hospital sector without specific adjustments.