Publications

When Formal Management Practices Meet Informal Control: Family Governance and Productivity in UK Firms

Small Buiness Economics (forthcoming)

• with Andrew Henley and Anna Kochanova

Working paper: “The Role of Management Practices in Productivity: Does Family Ownership Matter? ” The Productivity Institute, Working Paper No. 051. (2025)  [Download]

Summary: This study uses UK management survey data and examines how management practices affect productivity in UK firms, highlighting the moderating role of family ownership. Results show that while better management is associated with higher productivity, this effect is weakened in family-managed firms—especially SMEs and those in services. Professional management can offset this negative effect, though the impact remains smaller in manufacturing.

Government attention on environmental protection and firms’ carbon reduction actions: Evidence from text analysis of manufacturing enterprises

Journal of Cleaner Production  [Download]

• with Kunyan Zhu and Lei Du (2023)

Summary: This study examines how government attention to environmental protection (GAEP) influences firms’ carbon reduction actions in China. Using text analysis of listed manufacturing firms (2012–2021), results show that GAEP enhances carbon reduction, partly by improving environmental subsidy allocation. The effect is stronger for state-owned firms and those in eastern and central China.

Working in progress

Do Innovation Partners Raise Productivity? Evidence from a Multi-Stage CDM Model for UK Firms

Submitted and under review

• with Kunyan Zhu

Summary: This study uses UKIS–ARDx data and a CDM framework to examine how different innovation partners shape firms’ productivity through stage-specific channels. We show that capability-oriented cooperation drives innovation inputs, while market-oriented partners enhance outputs, highlighting a trade-off between constraint relaxation and coordination costs.

Truthfulness or Hypocrisy? Speculative Culture and Corporate Environmental Engagement

Submitted and under review

• with Xiaoyu Wei and Kunyan Zhu

Summary: This study explores how speculative culture influences corporate environmental engagement in China. Findings suggest that speculative culture promotes engagement primarily as a strategic response to acquire external resources, especially under high competition and regulatory pressure. However, its effect weakens with Confucian culture or financially experienced chairpersons and often leads to symbolic rather than substantive actions.

Managerial remote working and productivity: Evidence from UK firms

Submitted and under review

• with Kunyan Zhu

Summary: Using the 2023 UK Management and Expectations Survey, we find that an additional day of managers’ weekly remote work is associated with about a 3% decline in labour productivity, while employees’ remote work is not. The negative association is substantially weaker in firms with stronger management practices and better digital infrastructure, highlighting the role of organisational capabilities in mitigating coordination and supervision frictions.

Do workers share in the returns to firm level R&D activity? Evidence from UK manufacturing firms

• with Jin Ho Kim and Kunyan Zhu

Summary: Using matched data from ARDx and BERD (1997–2019), we estimate labour market power via markdown measures. A 10% increase in R&D reduces markdown by 0.7%, indicating weaker monopsony power. The effect is stronger for internally funded R&D and in high-tech, labour-intensive firms, driven by increased employment and labour share rather than higher markups.

Understanding Wales’ Productivity Gap: A Firm-Level Decomposition Analysis

Funded by Wales Productivity Forum

• with Melanie Jones

Summary: This paper uses ARDx data (2011–2020) to assess firm-level TFP in Wales relative to the rest of Great Britain. Wales shows a 4% productivity gap, with 55% explained by firm characteristics and 45% by structural factors. Unlike London, where gaps are structural, Wales’s disadvantage is mainly compositional, highlighting the need to improve firm mix and attract high value-added industries.