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Middle managers responsible for sustainability operationalize top management decisions on the organization's social and environmental activities. With their focus on sustainability, they could be expected to consider ethical issues particularly well in their decisions and to possess ethical personality traits. While earlier research has focused on top management this paper examines the influence of personality traits of middle managers on their corporate sustainability preferences. Based on a primary survey sample of 204 professionals responsible for sustainability in their company, we study the relationship between dark triad personality traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) of sustainability managers and their environmental and social responsibility preferences. The analysis shows that managers who score higher on the dark triad personality scale are less concerned about environmental and social responsibility issues. The business environment, analyzed in a cross‐cultural comparison between the United States and Europe, and the organizational context function as a moderator of the influence of personality traits on sustainability preferences. The results suggest that dark triad personality traits should be considered in recruitment and assessment processes of middle managers responsible for corporate sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We exploit a unique sample of structured financial products (SFPs) to analyze pricing and issuance dependencies among different types of such market‐linked investment vehicles. Our study provides evidence of cross‐pricing between products with complementary payoff profiles. Such dependencies may be explained by issuers' efforts to generate order flow for products that supplement their current SFP risk exposure. Additionally, we observe issuance patterns in line with the argument that issuers exploit the complementarity payout profiles when bringing SFPs to market. Our study emphasizes cross‐pricing from a perspective not previously considered in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the effect of bank capital, regulation, and supervision on the annual stock performance of global banks during the period of 1999–2012. We study a large comprehensive panel of international banks and find that higher Tier 1 capital decreases a bank's stock performance over the whole sample period. However, during turbulent times stocks of more highly capitalized banks perform significantly better. Additionally, we find strong evidence that banks that are more likely to receive government bailout during financial distress realize smaller stock performance. In contrast, we find no convincing evidence that banks that generate higher non-interest income have a higher performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note studies the influence of a financial transaction tax and transaction costs on the optimal production and hedging strategies of a duopoly. Firms are exposed to demand uncertainty that leads to price risk and can hedge their risk exposure on a forward market. However, the forward position is subject to transaction costs. We investigate two settings: first, we explore the Cournot duopoly with a simultaneous hedging opportunity; second, we analyze the case with a sequential forward market. We show that in both settings transaction costs lead to a less competitive market and that prices increase as the producers limit their output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]