A commentary on the impacts of ‘Great Lockdown’ and its aftermath on scaling firms: What are the implications for entrepreneurial research?

This commentary argues that scaling fast growth firms drive economic development, even in recessionary periods. While the coronavirus induced the ‘Great Lockdown’ and its aftermath poses particular challenges, we argue that the crisis presents the entrepreneurial scholarly community with an opportunity to re-orientate our research. Rather than more narratives of business success in the face of adversity, the Great Lockdown presents us with a fresh opportunity to examine how scaling is affected by context, by luck and by the porous nature of business growth. In so doing, our hope is that it will encourage our community to adopt a more proactive agenda to support policy makers and entrepreneurs.

Financial inclusion and business cycles

Purpose This study aims to investigate the relationship between financial inclusion and the business cycle. Design/methodology/approach Regression methodology is used to analyze the association between financial inclusion and the business cycle. Findings Using regression estimation, the findings reveal that the level of savings and the number of active formal account ownership are pro-cyclical with fluctuations in the business cycle. Also, savings by adults particularly for women and poor people declines during recessionary periods while the number of active formal account ownership declines for the adult population especially for women during recessionary periods. The findings also reveal that not all indicators of financial inclusion are pro-cyclical with fluctuating business cycles. Practical implications The implication of this observed pro-cyclical effect is that individuals and households will exit the formal financial sector during a recession, as banks become unwilling to lend money to individuals and households during bad times and this will lead to financial exclusion and vice versa. Policymakers seeking to increase the level of financial inclusion in their countries should focus on the timing of financial inclusion policies along the business cycle as the findings suggest that it might be more difficult to achieve financial inclusion objectives during recessions or periods of economic downturns. Originality/value The current debate on financial inclusion pays little attention to whether financial inclusion is pro-cyclical with the fluctuating business cycle. This study explores the association between financial inclusion and the business cycle.

The Impact of Technological, Governance, and Political Capabilities on Firms' Performances Under Economic Turbulence

Although there have been various studies exploring the effects of capabilities on firms' performances, it is not clear whether particular capabilities would create more competitive advantage for firms under recessionary periods compared to expansionary periods. The main focus in this chapter is to examine the impacts of technological, governance, and political capabilities on firms' performances under recessionary and expansionary periods. The aim of this chapter is to explore these effects by drawing upon resource-based theory, transaction cost theory, and resource dependence theory.

Strategic CSR for airlines: does materiality matter?

Purpose Considering the increasing significance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the corporate world and the mixed findings of the financial implication of CSR investment in the financial economics literature, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between (im)material CSR investment and firm performance and the moderating role of airline type and economic conditions based on the stakeholder theory and institutional pressure argument. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a two-way random-effects model by firm and year along with using clustering coefficient estimation by firm to control for the possibility of inflated standard errors because of autocorrelation across years within a given firm. Findings This study finds that both material and immaterial CSR initiatives do not directly influence firm performance, but airline type and economic conditions do moderate the relationship. In specific, the study found that airlines’ investments in material CSR initiatives show an indifferent effect on firm performance between low-cost and full-service carriers and also between non-recessionary and recessionary periods. On the other hand, investments in immaterial CSR initiatives present different impacts on firm performance between low-cost and full-service carriers and between non-recessionary and recessionary periods. In details, the effect is more negative for low-cost carriers and recessionary periods than full-service carriers and non-recessionary periods. Originality/value This is the first empirical investigation of materiality for the airline industry in relation to firm performance using the industry-specific Materiality Map developed by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. Further, this study incorporates two additional moderators (airline type and economic conditions) to enhance the understanding of the proposed relationships between (im)material CSR and firm performance.

The Business Cycle and Bank Failures

In this study, we examine the relation between the business cycle and bank failures in the US. We first look at the frequency of bank failures across expansionary and recessionary periods. Then, we examine the treatment of the failed banks by the FDIC across expansionary and recessionary periods. Finally, we compare the failed banks’ characteristics like total deposits, total assets, and estimated losses across expansionary and recessionary periods. Our results show that the 2001 recession was not a significant period in terms of bank failures. In fact, in terms of failures, the 2001 recession was not worse than the expansionary periods that come before and after it. However, our findings indicate that the 2008 recession has been much more severe compared to the 2001 recession and the expansionary periods. Also, the failed banks during the 2008 recession have been much larger firms with significantly higher loss figures when compared to the banks that failed during the 2001 recession and the expansionary periods. Our results also show that the banks that failed during the 2001 recession had similar characteristics to the banks that failed during the expansionary periods.

Evaluating the impact of the labor market conditions index on labor market forecasts

This paper examines the usefulness of the labor market conditions index (LMCI) in forecasting key labor market variables, particularly unemployment rates. Using a number of models, we compare out-of-sample forecasts of the unemployment rate with the LMCI to those without the LMCI. We also estimate models of the disaggregated unemployment rates by gender, race, and race by gender, with and without the LMCI, to identify disparities in the predictive power of the LMCI for different subgroups. Last, to determine how the LMCI performs in the presence of labor market shocks, we compare the forecasting performance of the LMCI during recessionary periods and expansionary periods. Our results confirm the potential usefulness of the LMCI as a parsimonious forecasting tool; we find that the LMCI generally improves unemployment forecasts. But, disparities exist in the predictive power of the index across subpopulations and the index forecasts slightly better during recessionary periods than expansionary periods.