Does Religion Matter to Employment Protection? Evidence from Chinese Private Firms

Employers incur costs while fulfilling the requirements of employment protection legislation. The article contains a review of the core theoretical models and empirical results concerning the impact of these costs on firms’ practices in hiring, firing, training and remuneration. Overall, if wages are flexible or enforcement is weak, employment protection does not significantly influence employers’ behavior. Otherwise, stringent employment protection results in the reduction of hiring and firing rates, changes in personnel selection criteria, types of labour contracts and dismissal procedures, and, in some cases, it may lead to the growth of wages and firms’ investments to human capital.

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Employment Protection, Collective Bargaining, and Labour Market Adaptability. The Swedish Employment Security Councils in a Comparative Context

GIORNALE DI DIRITTO DEL LAVORO E DI RELAZIONI INDUSTRIALI ◽

10.3280/gdl2018-160009 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 887-905

Author(s):

Samuel Engblom

Keyword(s):

Collective Bargaining ◽

Labour Market ◽

Employment Protection ◽

Employment Security

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Discretionary Accruals in Italian Private Firms and Non-Linear Bank Loan Granting

FINANCIAL REPORTING ◽

10.3280/fr2017-001004 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 83-99

Author(s):

Elisabetta Mafrolla ◽

Viola Nobili

Keyword(s):

Financial Reporting ◽

Banking System ◽

Regulatory System ◽

Discretionary Accruals ◽

Bank Loans ◽

Bank Loan ◽

Banking Union ◽

Private Firms ◽

European Banking Union

This paper investigates whether and at what extent private firms reduce the quality of their accruals in order to signal a better portrait to the bank and obtain new or larger bank loans. We measure earnings discretionary accruals of a sample of Italian private firms, testing whether new and larger bank loans are associated with a higher (lower) quality of earnings in borrowers' financial reporting. We study bank loan levels and changes and how they impact discretionary accruals and found that, surprisingly, private firms' discretionary accruals are systematically positively affected by an increase in bank loans, although they are negatively affected by the credit worthiness rating assigned to the borrowers. We find that the monitoring role of the banking system with regard to the adoption of discretionary accruals is effective only when the loan is very large. This paper may have implications for policy-makers as it contributes to the understanding of the shortcomings of the banking regulatory system. This is an extremely relevant issue since the excessive amount of non-performing loans held by Italian banks recently threatened the stability of the European Banking Union as a whole.

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