O. Homer Erekson

Approaching Socially Responsible Investment with a Comprehensive Ratings Scheme: Total Social Impact

The socially responsible investment industry (SRI) is slowly changing from a screening, avoidance paradigm to a comprehensive paradigm that seeks to affect corporate behavior. Credible rating systems are a key component of this sea change. Reliable and recognizable social and environmental metrics are critical to this progress. The Total Social Impact (TSI) rating approach is a new social metric scheme based on a comprehensive rating of stakeholder issues. This paper describes the evolution of SRI ratings and the role that TSI hopes to play in affecting business behavior by promoting principled business leadership.

Factors influencing the adoption of state lotteries

This paper explores the factors influencing the adoption of state lotteries in the United States. The conceptual framework utilizes a common utility framework in which a representative legislator maximizes utility derived from the current and expected fiscal position of a state, subject to a political constraint. The empirical results support the theoretical hypotheses, including the finding that changes in the fiscal health of the state, the predicted profit potential of a lottery, and the political climate of the state all affect the likelihood that a lottery is adopted. By introducing a sound conceptual framework, using better data than used in previous studies, utilizing an appropriate estimation technique, and obtaining strong results, this study advances our knowledge of why states adopt lotteries.

Innovations in environmental performance: the importance of financial performance and management quality

Empirical analyses exploring the relationship between environmental and financial performances hypothesise that good corporate environmental performance and the associated re-evaluation of production processes and adoption of innovative solutions increase the resource productivity and/or competitive advantage, thereby creating opportunity for improved financial performance. Although recent studies provide evidence supporting this hypothesis, they do not establish that good environmental performance causes good financial performance, nor do they control for underlying firm characteristics, such as management quality, that may enhance both environmental and financial performances, thus overstating the relationship between the two. The primary objective of this study is to explore the relationship between environmental performance, risk and expected cash flows/earnings, and the resulting impact on stock returns so that managers and investors can make more informed decisions. In addition, this study examines potential factors driving corporate environmental performance. The empirical analysis suggests that to the extent that investors consider environmental performance, they perceive environmental improvements and management as costly, unless made to avoid non-compliance penalties. Furthermore, the empirical analysis indicates that corporate financial performance does not influence environmental performance. Instead, the level of corporate sophistication and trust and transparency are the driving factors behind environmental performance improvements.

Estimating an hedonic translog cost function for the home health care industry

Medicare home health care plays an important role in providing cost effective care for the chronically ill and elderly. Long seen as a cost effective substitute for nursing home care, home care has become even more important with expenditures increasing by 31.4% from 1990 to 1996. The purpose of this paper is to provide a short run cost analysis of a sample of home health care providers to gain insight into the efficient provision of home health care services. This paper is a significant improvement over previous studies in that it uses a nationwide database to more accurately represent the multiproduct nature of the industry and uses an hedonic translog cost estimation with desirable economic properties.

Characteristics of self-regulating environmental management systems: a survey of academic experts

This paper examines the characteristics of self-regulating approaches used by industry with regard to environmental management systems. Four self-regulating environmental management systems are considered: Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM); ISO 14001 certification; the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) Principles; and the American Chemistry Councils Responsible CareR initiative. The results of a survey of academic experts in self-regulating environmental management systems are provided.