Corruption and corporate leverage in an emerging economy: The role of economic freedom

This study investigated the effects of corruption and economic freedom on corporate leverage. We also evaluated how economic freedom shapes the effect of corruption on corporate leverage. Using a sample of Vietnamese firms covering a nine-year period from 2010 to 2018, we find evidence that increased control of corruption has a significant positive impact on firm leverage, whereas the opposite is true for economic freedom. This effect is robust to alternative measures of control of corruption as well as advanced estimation methods, such as firm-fixed effects and quantile regressions. Our results also reveal that the positive impact of corruption controls on corporate leverage is more pronounced for firms with high economic freedom. Econometrically, our findings indicate that firms with better control over corruption prefer debt financing, as demonstrated by their higher leverage ratio.     

The impact of world oil price shocks on macroeconomic variables in Vietnam: the transmission through domestic oil price

This study examines the impact of world oil price shocks on macroeconomic variables in Vietnam with a focus on the transmission channel of domestic oil prices. The Structural Vector Autoregression model with two blocks of real economy variables and monetary variables is employed. The world oil price follows an autoregressive process to reflect the exogenous nature of world oil price shocks to the domestic economy. The retail domestic oil price is determined simultaneously by only the world oil price due to the government's control of the domestic oil market. Using monthly data in the period between 2009 and 2021, the study indicates that a positive shock to world oil prices will increase the domestic oil prices significantly, industrial production (slightly and only statistically significant in the third month after), and inflation (significantly in 8 months). Besides, the domestic oil price is not the only transmission channel of world oil price shocks to the economy. This result implies forecasting, assessing, and controlling the impact of the world oil price shock on the economy should focus on both domestic oil prices and other indirect channels.     

Decomposing industry leverage: The special cases of real estate investment trusts and technology & hardware companies

Different industries exhibit significantly different leverage; companies in the real estate investment trust (REIT) and technology/hardware sectors are extreme examples. In the United States, the leverage ratio is twice as high for REITs (50%) as compared to non-real-estate firms (around 25%), and the technology/hardware sector has the lowest ratio (around 17%). We theoretically and empirically analyze their differences. By decomposing the difference into three channels, we find that the industry-specific channel explains around 67% for REITs and 68% for technology/hardware firms; the value-based channel is mostly responsible for the remaining portion. Taking the nonlinear influences of extreme values into account, the relevance of the industry-specific channel is considerably reduced.     

Supporting worklife learning at work to sustain employability

The concept of employability extends beyond initial occupational preparation into the ability to remain employable as, inevitably, occupational capacities and workplace requirements change frequently across working lives. Hence, the need to continually learn to remain occupationally current and respond to changing workplace requirements becomes paramount. The evidence suggests that much of that learning arises through individual efforts and the support of co-workers through work activities. So, there is a need to understand how that learning can be supported to sustain employability across lengthening working lives. Drawing on an Australian study, reported here are perspectives from managers and workers in diverse workplaces about current modes of continuing education and training and about how workers are assisted with their learning to meet personal needs and qthose of employers. Employers want an occupationally current workforce that can meet specific workplace needs; workers want the capacities to remain employable, which may extend to advancing their careers elsewhere. The data indicate differences in perceptions about what is being provided, how frequently the provisions are used, and the worth of its certification. Whilst the findings indicate shared concerns about the importance of learning, there were clear differences in views about the models and processes used to support that learning. Across both sets of informants can be seen distinctions between ‘training solutions’ and ‘learning solutions’. A more nuanced analysis suggests that the training solution is appropriate and effective at some point in workers' worklife trajectories but in other circumstances, learning through practice is proposed as being more efficacious.     

Client corruption culture and audit quality: the conditioning effect of the competitive position of the incumbent auditor

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Prior research suggests that corporate corruption culture captures an audit client’s general attitude towards opportunistic behavior. In this...     

Ex-ante performance of REIT portfolios

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - The Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) market has become an increasingly important vehicle for alternative investment for equity investors. While...     

Impacts of switching from business households to enterprises on the financial performance

Portuguese Economic Journal - This study aims to elucidate whether switching from business households to enterprises brings higher financial performance than not switching. The study was carried...     

Impact of China on trade in electronic products

Using 6-digit product-level data of exports in electronics, this paper finds robust evidence that China's exports adversely affect both the intensive export margin and the extensive export margin of its competitors for the 1992–2018 period. The displacement effects of China's exports on the intensive margin apply especially for the group of intermediate and capital electronic goods and are much more robust and significantly larger in magnitude than the displacement effects found in other studies using aggregated trade data. Finally, we find that China's displacement effect is increasing in China's advantage relative to its competitors in terms of human capital index and internet access of its population.     

Optimal consumption with reference to past spending maximum

Finance and Stochastics - This paper studies the infinite-horizon optimal consumption problem with a path-dependent reference under exponential utility. The performance is measured by the...     

Internet use and agricultural productivity in rural Vietnam

The use of the internet is growing rapidly and has become an engine for economic development. However, few studies have examined the impact of internet use on agricultural production, and the results are not yet conclusive. Employing a dataset of more than 2000 observations in rural Vietnam, our study analyses the impact of internet use on agricultural productivity using the heteroscedasticity-based instrument approach suggested by Lewbel, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 2012, 30, 67–80 and examines the heterogeneity and distribution of the impact using quantile regressions. Our results show that internet use has significant and positive effects on agricultural productivity. However, these effects are heterogeneous across population groups. The positive effects of internet use are stronger for households with a lower level of education, with a young and female head, and from ethnic minorities. The benefits are also found to be skewed towards the group of farmers at the bottom of the productivity distribution. Therefore, we propose facilitating the diffusion of the internet, since it not only boosts agricultural productivity, but also reduces productivity inequality. In addition, we recommend promoting rural education, supporting local markets, investing more in irrigation systems, and facilitating farm mechanisation as these factors are found to contribute to increasing agricultural productivity.