Determinants of retail bank choice in Nigeria: a focus on gender-based choice decisions

As the Nigerian retail banks customers become more sophisticated, it is now very important that retail banks determine the factors that are important and relevant to the customers’ retail bank choice decisions. By using a survey of retail bank customers, this study evaluates the relative importance attached to retail banks’ choice criteria used by male and female customers in Nigeria. The results show that there are some differences in choice factors used by male and female customers in selecting a retail bank for patronage. The recommendation is that bank managers should take both female and male market segments into consideration when making retail bank strategic planning in order to become competitive. The findings can assist retail bank managers in refining their marketing strategies as a means of overcoming the intense competition that exists in the Nigerian banking system.     

Price supply response of vegetable growers in the Sultanate of Oman

Information on supply price elasticities has been acknowledged as being very important for decision makers at the macro and micro levels. This paper presents an empirical investigation of vegetable growers' responses to prices in Oman. It develops a single supply response function incorporating adaptive expectation model for prices. Results indicate that growers adjust relatively fast to changes in expected prices. However, these adjustments tire rather low for some crop in the short-and long-run. Growers' production decisions have also shown a significant response to prices of other products competing for farm space and other production resources. These results will support efforts aimed at market development and crop enhancement programs.     

An Intra-City Analysis of House Price Convergence and Spatial Dependence

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - This paper seeks to test the intra-city convergence of house prices using the comprehensive suburban house price and census data for a key...     

Optimal make–take fees for market making regulation

We address the mechanism design problem of an exchange setting suitable make– take fees to attract liquidity on its platform. Using a principal–agent approach, we provide the optimal compensation scheme of a market maker in quasi‐explicit form. This contract depends essentially on the market maker inventory trajectory and on the volatility of the asset. We also provide the optimal quotes that should be displayed by the market maker. The simplicity of our formulas allows us to analyze in details the effects of optimal contracting with an exchange, compared to a situation without contract. We show in particular that it improves liquidity and reduces trading costs for investors. We extend our study to an oligopoly of symmetric exchanges and we study the impact of such common agency policy on the system.     

Human resource differentiation: A theoretical paper integrating co‐workers' perspective and context

This paper conceptualises “human resource (HR) differentiation” as a set of deliberate and differentiating HR practices across individuals within the organisation to address employees' unique work needs and preferences as well as reward them for their input. Despite the importance of HR differentiation, research has mainly focused on the recipients of such practices, overlooking the consequences of HR differentiation from co‐workers' perspective. This is a significant omission because a growing concern suggests that HR differentiation might be a double‐edged sword, as the presumed positive effects might only be confined to employees benefiting from it. Taking a first step, this paper offers a conceptual model that explains how co‐workers of a focal employee, who is entitled to an advantageous outcome through HR differentiation, are likely to react, either positively by showing contentment or negatively by showing anger, with behavioural consequences towards the focal employee and organisation. In so doing, we rely on deontic justice theory and explore contextual conditions at the individual and team level under which co‐workers react. As a result, our model can inspire future research by adopting a broader and more inclusive approach to HR differentiation, underlining the need for caution when implementing HR differentiation in a team setting.     

Teaming Up? China,India and Brazil and the Issue of Benefit-Sharing from Genetic Resource Use

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on an area that has not been systematically addressed but is of crucial importance to China, India and Brazil: the global governance of genetic resources. All three are biodiversity-rich and, ever since biotechnology promised to turn DNA into gold, have been significant players in the genetic-resources regime complex. Shortcomings notwithstanding, the establishment of a new access and benefit-sharing regime constitutes a rare instance where emerging countries have succeeded in becoming rule-makers of sorts. We analyse how these three countries have sought to pursue their interests in this area, especially after the extension of national sovereignty over previously ‘free’ genetic resources and the erection of a complex set of rules attempting to regulate access to and benefits from their utilisation from the early 1990s onwards. Despite presenting a generally unified front in international fora, their domestic implementation differs significantly and raises questions about the continuation of a common international position. The article adds to our understanding of emerging countries’ engagement with global governance by focusing on the concrete drivers and domestic processes that have motivated and shaped the agency of China, India and Brazil in this new policy regime.     

Resource abundance,financial crisis and economic growth: did resource‐rich countries fare better during the global financial crisis?

This study examines the role of resource abundance in the cross‐country differences in the impacts of the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008–2009. Using forecasts from the unobserved components model and exponential smoothing technique, we estimate the output levels a country would reach in 2009 and 2013 in the absence of the GFC, and compare these with the realised output levels. We find large variations in the output losses across 72 countries. The mineral‐rich countries have been found to be in a strong position to survive any adverse shocks stemming from the GFC. Income per capita, trade openness, and institutional quality and government effectiveness are also found to be key factors determining the differences in output loss in the post‐crisis period. These findings have strong implications for resource‐rich countries such as Australia and are expected to shed new light on alternative policy designs and appropriate strategies to deal with any future economic crisis.     

Impact of environmental information disclosure and real estate segments on cost of debt: Evidence from the Chinese real estate industry

The novel part of this paper is to examine the individual and joint effects of the real estate segments (RETs) and environmental information disclosure (EID) on the cost of debt (COD) in the real estate industry in China. Building on extant literature, using 1,250 firm‐year observations from 2006 to 2016 and applying both Feasible General Least Squares and Two‐stage Least Squares Instrumental Variable approaches, we provide evidence that the commercial RET leads to an increase in the COD, while EID leads to a decrease in the COD. The joint effects of the RETs and EID on the COD indicate a significantly positive relationship with the COD. This signifies that even with the increased levels of EID in commercial real estate sectors, its COD is higher than for residential real estate sectors. These findings have important policy implications for environmental risk assessments for real estate sectors, their lending institutions and wider stakeholder groups.     

Cultural indicators in Abu Dhabi: theoretic framework and challenges for their building

Quality & Quantity - Evidence-based decision-making in Abu Dhabi cultural sector is increasingly being influenced by the development of data generation from a coordinated statistical system....     

Board Connections and Dividend Policy

We examine the role of firm board connectedness in shaping a firm's dividend policy. We show that firms with well-connected boards not only have a higher likelihood of paying dividends in the pooled sample of both dividend payers and non-payers but also pay more dividends in the sample of dividend payers, compared with those with poorly connected boards. Further analysis reveals that the relation between board connectedness and dividend-paying behaviour tends to be economically stronger in firms pre-identified to have more severe agency conflicts, suggesting that well-connected boards tend to use dividends to mitigate agency problems in these firms. These findings are robust to different measures of board connectedness, different dividend payout measures, alternative estimation methods, and tests that account for endogeneity.