Quality Assurance and the Home Market Effect

The home market effect is considered as a distinguishing feature of models of trade with increasing returns to scale in production and imperfect competition. However, some empirical studies found the existence of home market effect even in constant returns to scale industries. This paper builds a model of intra‐industry trade based upon quality assurance and shows the existence of the home market effect without increasing returns in the production technology. This throws into question the rationale of empirical studies attempting to validate the increasing returns model of trade based upon testing the existence of the home market effect.     

A note on put-call parity and the market efficiency of the London traded options market

Put-call parity and the efficiency of the London traded options market are tested via the construction of long and short hedges which incorporate the effects of ‘known’ dividend payments. Examination of the resulting returns and their subsequent analysis via regression models yield findings which support the put-call parity theorem and market efficiency.     

The Interplay of Wage and Exchange Rate Policies in Singapore: A Case of Collective Bargaining in Macroeconomic Management

This article analyzes an optimization model of the policy game between Singapore's National Wage Council and the Monetary Authority of Singapore and further simulates the model over policy rules (Nash game versus non-Nash game), economic scenarios, and the game players' preference and bargaining power. The results indicate that the exchange rate appreciation and wage growth act as substitutes under the Nash rule of policy responses, whereas they act as complements under the non-Nash rule. Under the Nash rule, the exchange rate appreciation tends to be procyclical and wage growth countercyclical; union workers' bargaining power relative to employers' strengthens the procyclical appreciation uniformly but reinforces the countercyclical wage growth only when the economy undergoes a downturn. Both the Nash and non-Nash rules call for more moderate appreciation and more flexible wage adjustments than their actual movements. (JEL E64 , E61 , F41 )     

R&D Returns,Spillovers and Firm Incentives: Evidence from China

Using a new data set of 12,000 firms in China, this paper estimates the returns to R&D investment and its spillover effects, and investigates how the returns to R&D depend on firm incentives. For the firms in the sample, the results show that on average firm output increases around 0.4 yuan for each additional 1 yuan spent on R&D in the previous year, and there is high R&D return regardless of whether the endogeneity of R&D intensity is dealt with or not. Interestingly, the marginal return to R&D is significantly higher in firms whose CEOs were not appointed by the government, and lower when CEO pay is directly related to annual performance. The return to R&D is higher in relatively poor regions and for firms with worse access to finance. There are also non-trivial R&D spillover effects.     

Conditional Conservatism and Debt versus Equity Financing

Extant research suggests that conditional conservatism reduces information asymmetry between a firm and its shareholders as well as its debtholders. However, there is little evidence on whether conditional conservatism reduces information asymmetry differentially for shareholders and debtholders. We use the setting of a firm's choice between equity versus debt when it seeks a significant amount of external financing to examine this research question. We find that when firms raise a significant amount of external financing, the use of equity (versus debt) increases with the level of conservatism. We also find that the reduction in cost of equity associated with conservatism is greater for equity issuers than for debt issuers, but find no such difference when we examine cost of debt. In addition, we find that the positive effect of conservatism on the choice of equity issuance (versus debt issuance) is accentuated when the information asymmetry between the firm and its shareholders is more severe. Overall, our results suggest that conservatism reduces information asymmetry more between firms and shareholders than between firms and debtholders.     

Trade Unions as Agents for Skill Formation: The Case of Singapore

Trade unions can influence the quality and quantity of training provided to workers. This article delineates the role played by unions in Singapore’s skill formation system, during the 1980s and 1990s. This role is framed by the context of the developmental state and of a collaborationist union movement. Singapore unions act to support the state’s drive to upgrade the skills of the workforce. They put pressure on employers to sign up to collective agreements including statements about training, and they act as both agents and providers of training and education for basic and core skills. They also devote considerable resources to persuading their members to take up training opportunities. What evidence there is suggests that these various strategies have had some success. The unions’ role in Singapore is contrasted with their role in some other countries.     

Corporate Tax Aggressiveness and Insider Trading

We examine the association between corporate tax aggressiveness and the profitability of insider trading under the assumption that insider trading profits reflect managerial opportunism. We document that insider purchase profitability, but not sales profitability, is significantly higher on average in more tax aggressive firms. We also find that the positive association between tax aggressiveness and insider purchase profitability is attenuated for firms with more effective monitoring and is accentuated for firms with a more opaque information environment. In addition, we provide empirical evidence that tax aggressiveness is significantly associated with greater insider sales volume in the fiscal year prior to a stock price crash. Finally, we find that the association between tax aggressiveness and insider purchase profitability weakens after the introduction of FIN 48, consistent with the increased transparency of tax positions under the new disclosure requirement reducing insiders' information advantage and hence their ability to profit from insider trading. To the extent that insider trading profits reflect managerial opportunism, our results are consistent with managers exploiting the opacity arising from tax aggressive activities to extract rent from shareholders, particularly those shareholders who sold their shares to the managers. Our findings are particularly important in light of the number of studies relying on the agency view of tax avoidance to develop arguments or to draw inferences.     

Transformation of China's sovereign wealth fund since the 2008‐2009 global crisis

China Investment Corporation (CIC) transformed its initial investment strategy of focusing mainly on the US financial sector during 2007‐2008 into a new strategy of diversified investments across geography and sectors since 2009. Massive financial losses and domestic political backlash during the global financial crisis of 2008 gave impetus to CIC's rethinking of strategy. In the midst of the crisis, CIC engineered a capacity‐building and reorganization exercise to reposition itself for a new strategy that has since allowed for more diversification of investments. A more receptive global investment climate for sovereign wealth funds has also aided CIC's efforts to present itself as a responsible global investor and facilitated its investments. Postcrisis, CIC's new strategy of diversification is characterized by continued investments in the financial sector, but with new investments increasingly directed to real sectors of energy, natural resources, and real estate in both developed and emerging economies. Notwithstanding a global recovery that is fraught with uncertainties, CIC's judicious timing in making diversified investments, and its attention to reducing risks and enhancing returns, have been rewarded by an impressive turnaround in performance since 2009. Going forward, the success and sustainability of the new strategy will be contingent on how well CIC can navigate domestic bureaucratic rivalry and the shifting climate of the international investment environment in the medium to long term. Ultimately, CIC's shareholder, the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC), holds the key to its future direction and goals. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Volatility and Market Risk of Rubber Price in Malaysia: Pre- and Post-Global Financial Crisis

The volatility in rubber price is a significant risk to producers, traders, consumers and others who are involved in the production and marketing of natural rubber. Such being the case, forecasting the rubber price volatility is desired to assist in decision-making in this uncertain situation. The 2008 Global Financial Crisis caused some disruptions and uncertainties in the future supply or demand for natural rubber and thus leading to higher rubber price volatility. Using ARCH-type models, this paper intends to model the dynamics of the price volatility of Standard Malaysia Rubber Grade 20 (SMR 20) in the Malaysian market before and after the Global Financial Crisis. Additionally, Value-at-Risk (VaR) approach is implemented to evaluate the market risk of SMR 20. Our empirical result denotes the existence of volatility clustering and long memory volatility in the SMR 20 market for both crisis periods. Leverage effect is also detected in the SMR 20 market where negative innovations (bad news) have a larger impact on the volatility than positive innovations (good news) for post-crisis period. When tested with Superior Predictive Ability (SPA) test, FIGARCH model is the best model across five loss functions for short- and long-term forecasts for pre-crisis period. Meanwhile, over post-crisis period, FIGARCH and GJR GARCH indicate the superior out-of-sample-forecast results and better forecasting accuracy over short- and long-term horizons, respectively. In terms of market risk, the short trading position encounters higher risk or greater losses than the long trading position at both 1 and 5 % VaR quantile for pre-crisis period. In contrast, over post-crisis period, long traders of rubber SMR 20 tend to face limited gains but unlimited losses.

     

Collaborative academic–industry SCM research and knowledge building

This empirical study represents the first attempt to explore how academics and practitioners engage each other in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) discipline, and provides a better understanding of collaborative SCM research between both parties. A two-pronged approach, involving a content analysis and an e-mail survey, is employed to explore the issues on collaborative SCM research. We examine 131 articles co-authored by both scholars and practitioners of 6 SCM journals from 2003 to 2013. Specifically, we analyse the motivations, expectations, and communication involved in the process of collaborative research. Our findings suggest that academics and practitioners can partner as co-investigators in research collaboration to better explore an array of SCM phenomena embedded in SCM practice. Further, building collaborative SCM knowledge relationships expedites collaboration and benefits SCM knowledge learning, transfer, and co-production. The development of practice-based scientific SCM knowledge is useful for SCM theory building and serves to bridge the gap between rigour and relevance.