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The previous literature shows that firms’ purposes and behaviors vary across countries, but few studies have empirically examined whether firm performance varies across countries. This study compares the performance of the world’s largest corporations across 47 countries. Using the data for firms listed in the Fortune Global 500 from 1973 to 2020, we explore whether there are cross-country variations in two dimensions of corporate performance: profitability and longevity. We find significant variations in both profitability and longevity across countries. We also observe that firms in some countries are highly (less) profitable but less (more) likely to survive for a long time. We regress profitability and longevity on country-level institutional factors: financial systems, laws, and national cultures. We find that (i) a market-based (bank-based) financial system is positively (negatively) related to a firm’s profitability, but negatively (positively) related to its longevity; (ii) common law (civil law) is positively (negatively) related to the profitability of a firm, but negatively (positively) related to its longevity; and (iii) high individualism, low uncertainty avoidance, and low long-term orientation are positively related to profitability, but negatively related to longevity. These results suggest that a country’s formal and informal institutions significantly affect a firm’s purpose, behavior, and performance.

Background Muscle and bone are physiologically interconnected, but joint changes of muscle and bone with aging, and whether the muscle‐bone changes are different by sex and by country has been little studied. We examined longitudinal associations of bone mineral density (BMD) and muscle mass or muscle strength in community‐dwelling 65 years or older in the United States and Japan. Methods The present analytic sample included 1129 women and men from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) (mean age, 74.5 ± 7.5 years; women, 49.8%) and 1998 women and men from the National Institute for Longevity Sciences‐Longitudinal Study of Aging (NILS‐LSA) (mean age, 70.0 ± 4.5 years; women, 51.4%). Median follow‐up was 4.6 (min‐max, 0–15.4) years in the BLSA and 4.0 (min‐max, 0–13.4) years in the NILS‐LSA. We selected visits at which participants had BMD (whole body, pelvic, femoral neck, trochanter, and Ward's triangle BMDs) and muscle mass [appendicular lean mass, (ALM)] measured by DXA scan. In each bone site, we ran cohort‐specific bivariate linear mixed‐effects models adjusted for baseline age, sex, body height, body weight, fat mass, education year, and smoking status. Race was an additional adjustment in the BLSA. Additionally, we performed sex‐specific analyses. Results In the BLSA, the rate of change in ALM positively correlated with the rate of change in the whole body (rho = 0.30, P < 0.0001) and pelvic BMD (rho = 0.24, P < 0.0001), but not in trochanter, femoral neck, or Ward's triangle BMD (P > 0.05). In the NILS‐LSA, ALM positively correlated with the rate of change in all bone sites (rho ranged from 0.20 to 0.71, P < 0.01). In women, ALM positively correlated with the rate of change in all bone sites in both cohorts (in the NILS‐LSA, rho ranged from 0.35 to 0.91, P < 0.01; in the BLSA, rho ranged from 0.26 to 0.56, P < 0.05) except for femoral neck BMD in the BLSA. In men, ALM positively correlated with pelvic, trochanter, and Ward's triangle BMD in the NILS‐LSA (rho ranged from 0.45 to 0.68, P < 0.0001), and whole body and trochanter BMD in the BLSA (both, rho = 0.20, P < 0.05). Conclusions Muscle loss co‐occurred with bone loss in both cohorts, but the association in the NILS‐LSA tended to be stronger than in the BLSA, and the association was higher in women than in men, implying that the association may differ by sex and country.

Context: This article compares cervical cancer screening intensity and cervical cancer mortality trends in the United States and the Netherlands to illustrate the potential of cross-national comparative studies. We discuss the lessons that can be learned from the comparison as well as the challenges in each country to effective and efficient screening. Methods: We used nationally representative data sources in the United States and the Netherlands to estimate the number of Pap smears and the cervical cancer mortality rate since 1950. The following questions are addressed: How do differences in intensity of Pap smear use between the countries translate into differences in mortality trends? Can population coverage rates (the proportion of eligible women who had a Pap smear within a specified period) explain the mortality trends better than the total intensity of Pap smear use? Findings: Even though three to four times more Pap smears per woman were conducted in the United States than in the Netherlands over a period of three decades, the two countries' mortality trends were quite similar. The five-year coverage rates for women aged thirty to sixty-four were quite comparable at 80 to 90 percent. Because screening in the Netherlands was limited to ages thirty to sixty, screening rates for women under thirty and over sixty were much higher in the United States. These differences had consequences for age-specific mortality trends. The relatively good coverage rate in the Netherlands can be traced back to a nationwide invitation system based on municipal population registries. While both countries followed a \"policy cycle\" involving evidence review, surveillance of screening practices and outcomes, clinical guidelines, and reimbursement policies, the components of this cycle were more systematically linked and implemented nationwide in the Netherlands than in the United States. To a large extent, this was facilitated by a public health model of screening in the Netherlands, rather than a medical services model. Conclusions: Cross-country studies like ours are natural experiments that can produce insights not easily obtained from other types of study. The cervical cancer screening system in the Netherlands seems to have been as effective as the U.S. system but used much less screening. Adequate coverage of the female population at risk seems to be of central importance.

Employing a sample of 26,473 firms across 42 countries from 1990 to 2013, we find that firms located in countries with higher individualism have higher stock price crash risk. Furthermore, individualism can be transmitted by foreign investors from overseas markets to influence local firms’ crash risk, and can exacerbate the impact of firm risk taking and earnings management on crash risk. Moreover, the positive relation between individualism and crash risk is amplified during the global financial crisis and attenuated by enhanced country-level financial information transparency and the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards.

This cross-country study statistically investigates the determinants of environmental orientation of entrepreneurial activity. It builds on a new institutional theory framework and uses data gathered in the course of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor to examine the institutional impacts and individual characteristics which influence the degree of environmental orientation of entrepreneurial activity, using a multilevel analysis. Our key findings are threefold: First, the results indicate that environmental orientation is frequently used as a source for securing legitimacy of entrepreneurial ventures. Second, we find lower degrees of environmental orientation among more educated entrepreneurs. Third, for many variables, such as age, gender and income, differences are observed when compared to earlier findings on the determinants of social entrepreneurship. Policy makers can learn from the analysis that policy measures should not only be designed specifically for environmental entrepreneurship, but also be adapted to the domestic economic circumstances, as, for example, environmental taxes only show significant effects on environmental orientation of entrepreneurial ventures in OECD countries. From a practitioner's perspective, this indicates that a lack of regulation can provide opportunities for environmentally oriented entrepreneurial ideas.

This paper investigates how the structure of political institutions influences the effectiveness of corporate political lobbying by shaping the “veto points” and “entry points” that lobbying firms encounter and require, respectively, when attempting to influence public policies; in so doing, this study deepens our understanding of the strategic implications of institutional environments. Using large-sample and cross-country firm-level data, we find that the influence of firms’ lobbying activities on public policies is weakened when there are tighter constraints generated as a result of greater political (partisan) competition and more subnational government tiers. We find that the negative association between the effectiveness of lobbying and political (partisan) competition is particularly pronounced in countries with lower electoral accountability and that the negative association between the effectiveness of lobbying and subnational government tiers is particularly pronounced in more centralized political systems.

Motivated by the international business literature that examines the interactions between political forces and business environments, we investigate whether and how political connections affect managers’ voluntary disclosure choices. We show that compared to non-connected firms, connected firms issue fewer management earnings forecasts. In addition, relative to nonconnected firms, connected firms have a greater increase in the frequency of management forecasts subsequent to the elections that damage their political ties. Further analyses suggest that lack of capital market incentives, reduced litigation risk, and lower proprietary costs shape politically connected firms’ unique voluntary disclosure choices.

Supply chain risk management (SCRM) literature is heterogeneous. While much attention has been given to the economic and environmental dimensions, the social dimension has so far received less focus. Thus, this study analyzes the social risks involved in the agri-food supply chains (AFSCs) of Argentina and China by employing an integrated approach. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data, followed by using a combination of three complementary data analysis methods: thematic analysis to identify social risks, total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to build interrelationships among the identified social risks, and fuzzy MICMAC (cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification analysis) to cluster social risks into four categories. Next, we conducted a comparative analysis between the two countries. Theoretical contributions are mainly threefold. First, we identified various social risks involved in the AFSCs of Argentina and China, including those just touched on by scholars, such as cultural issues, government’s weak monitoring system, the power differential between managers and subordinates, inappropriate disposal of agrichemical containers, and the lack of basic literacy skills. Second, we believe that our study is the first to establish connections among the identified AFSC social risks, which represents the originality of this work. Third, we discover that cultural issues is the key risk that has the highest capability to elicit other social risks involved in the AFSCs. Our work extends scholarship’s knowledge to understand AFSC social risks from the cultural perspective. This study also generates contributions to policymakers, migrant associations, and the government tax departments of Argentina and China.

We examine how boardroom gender diversity reforms impact the monitoring role of institutional investors. Using reforms from 25 countries that aim to improve gender diversity on boards, we find that the reforms increase the association between institutional ownership and subsequent female directorships for foreign investors, but not for domestic investors. This result is driven by foreign institutional investors from countries with a high social equity norm and by foreign pension funds and independent institutions. Furthermore, firms experience improved valuation and profitability following reform compliance. Overall, our findings suggest that boardroom gender diversity reforms empower socially conscious foreign institutional investors to drive value-enhancing governance change.

Recruitment is one of the main strategic tools for universities, which aim to hire the best possible candidates for their academic positions. However, not every institution can hire whom they perceive as the best. Our paper investigates what are perceived to be the most pressing hindrances to attracting the best researchers. We focus on national and disciplinary differences in researchers’ perceptions of barriers to recruiting the best scholars in their fields. We surveyed researchers in economics and physics in the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK and find that economists emphasize salary level and institutional prestige as the main barriers, while physicists underline competition from non-academic actors and career development opportunities. We further find differences by country. In Norway, limited institutional prestige is a key barrier to attracting the best researchers, while researchers in the UK highlight salary levels. Respondents at Dutch universities claim that they experience multiple, equally important barriers.