Mircea Epure

• PhD
• Associate Professor at Pompeu Fabra University

By imposing a market like governance and directing entrepreneurs towards professional management, debt, and especially business debt, can serve as a reliable signal for outside equity investors. Such signals of firm accountability can alleviate the stringent information asymmetry at the early stages of the firm, and become stronger for bank busines...

We study how generalized trust shapes the ability of firms with different ownership forms to obtain trade financing and perform during a financial crisis. Exploiting geographic variations in trust across Italian regions and the occurrence of the 2008-09 financial crisis in a difference-in-differences setting, we show that generalized trust makes fa...

Research Summary We argue that the positive relationship between pro‐market institutions and entrepreneurial growth aspirations is dampened for individuals with general human capital (higher education), but augmented for those with specific human capital (experience in the marketplace). However, during a crisis, the differential effect of pro‐marke...

We show that macroprudential policies dampen the impact of global financial conditions on local bank credit cycles. For identification, we exploit variation in the U.S. volatility index (VIX) and household and business credit registers in an emerging market economy in which banks depend on foreign funding and macroprudential measures vary over the...

This study proposes a production framework in which capital, labor, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) generate sales. Estimating a stochastic frontier on an international sample of large manufacturing firms reveals that CSR has asymmetric effects on efficiency. In a matched sample, the processes of high as compared to low CSR firms are affe...

Research summary Drawing on the “varieties of capitalism” literature, we develop an actor‐centered framework that explains firm‐level corporate social performance (CSP) by emphasizing the importance of considering owners’ and other stakeholders’ motives towards CSP—which can be instrumental, relational or moral—and their salience in the national in...

We analyze the effects of macroprudential policies on local bank credit cycles and their interactions with international financial conditions. To this end, we exploit the comprehensive credit register containing all bank loans to individuals in Romania, a small open economy subject to external shocks. Our sample period from 2004 until 2012 covers a...

We analyze the effects of macroprudential policies on local bank credit cycles and their interactions with international financial conditions. To this end, we exploit the comprehensive credit register containing all bank loans to individuals in Romania, a small open economy subject to external shocks. Our sample period from 2004 until 2012 covers a...

This paper investigates whether, and how, firms’ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Performance influences the auditors’ assessment of the risk of material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, at the financial statement level by analysing their pricing decision (i.e., audit fees). Using a panel data set of 12,330 firms from 28 countries...

This study proposes a managerial accounting research design that bridges a gap between firm productivity based on frontier techniques and strategic management. In doing so, it operationalizes the theoretical frameworks based on the endogenous components of across-firms heterogeneous resources and routines, which are fundamental for firm performance...

This paper takes a regional studies approach to assess spin-offs from a university-based technology transfer network. We first detect the regional objectives, inputs and outputs needed to assess spin-offs from support programmes. We then provide evidence on regional mechanisms for firm creation. We analyse spin-offs created at Catalan universities...

This study analyzes the relationship between debt and outside equity investments in early stage firms. The existing evidence on this relationship is scarce and inconclusive, mostly due to the pervasive opaqueness of early stage firms. We argue that outside investors who face the severe information asymmetries that exist in entrepreneurial firms may...

This paper proposes a managerial control tool that integrates risk in efficiency measures. Building on existing efficiency specifications, our proposal reflects the real banking technology and accurately models the relationship between desirable and undesirable outputs. Specifically, the undesirable output is defined as non-performing loans to capt...

This study systematically analyzes how within-firm variations in board independence and ownership concentration affect the firm’s corporate social performance (CSP). Drawing from the agency and stakeholder perspectives, we argue that recognizing differences in the distribution and timeframe of the costs and benefits to shareholders and other stakeh...

We analyze how ownership concentration and type, and board independence are related to corporate social performance (CSP). Drawing from agency and team production theories, we argue that the distribution of costs and benefits to shareholders and other stakeholders is crucial to understand what drives CSP. We analyze an international panel of listed...

By integrating the agency and stakeholder perspectives, this study aims to provide a systematic understanding of the firm- and institutional-level corporate governance factors that affect corporate social performance (CSP). We analyze a large global panel dataset and reveal that CSP is positively associated with board independence, but negatively w...

This paper takes a regional studies approach to assess spin-offs from a university-based technology transfer network. We first detect the regional objectives, inputs and outputs needed to assess spin-offs from support programmes. We then provide evidence on regional mechanisms for firm creation. We analyse spin-offs created at Catalan universities...

This study proposes a managerial accounting research design that bridges a gap between firm productivity based on frontier techniques and strategic management. In doing so, it operationalizes the theoretical frameworks based on the endogenous components of across-firms heterogeneous resources and routines, which are fundamental for firm performance...

This paper proposes a managerial control tool that integrates risk in efficiency measures. Building on existing efficiency specifications, our proposal reflects the real banking technology and accurately models the relationship between desirable and undesirable outputs. Specifically, the undesirable output is defined as non-performing loans to capt...

The present study fills a gap between the benchmarking literature and multi-output based efficiency and productivity studies by proposing a benchmarking framework to analyze total factor productivity (TFP). Different specifications of the Hicks–Moorsteen TFP index are tailored for specific benchmarking perspectives: (1) static, (2) fixed base and u...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, in the framework of the strategic groups' literature, it analyZes changes in productivity and efficiency of Spanish private and savings banks over an eight-year period (1998-2006). Second, by adapting the decomposition of the Malmquist productivity indices suggested by Färe et al. (1994), it proposes sim...

In this paper we offer an approach to learning about the unique features of industrial districts as a socio-economic phenomenon that is based on differences. Instead of searching for one generic theory that may explain the unique construction of an industrial district or one universal way of getting under the skin of its subjects we propose ‘inters...

This paper has a dual aim. First, it analyses the total factor productivity of the Spanish banking sub-sectors throughout an eight-year time span. Second, derived from the Färe et al. (1994) Malmquist decomposition, it proposes a Luenberger indicator adapted to benchmarking purposes. Hence, by means of an application where the base period is an est...

The Spanish savings banks attracted quite a considerable amount of interest within the scientific arena, especially subsequent to the disappearance of the regulatory constraints during the second decade of the 1980s. Nonetheless, a lack of research identified with respect to mainstream paths given by strategic groups, and the analysis of the total...