Remittances,Exchange Rate Regimes and the Dutch Disease: A Panel Data Analysis

Using disaggregated sectorial data for developing and transition countries, this study shows that rising levels of remittances have spending effects that may lead to real exchange rate appreciation, and resource movement effects that favor the nontradable sector at the expense of tradable goods production. These are two characteristics of the phenomenon known as “Dutch disease”. The results further suggest that resource movement effects that favor the nontradable sector should operate stronger under fixed nominal exchange rate regimes.     

Does pedigree matter? Earnings quality of U.S. listed domestic firms via reverse mergers

This paper examines earnings quality of U.S. domestic firms that access capital markets via a reverse merger transaction (RM firms) compared to those via the more traditional initial public offering (IPO firms) during the period from 1997 to 2011. In order to mitigate confounding effects of legal regime, law enforcement, and culture, we require both the acquiring and target firms to be incorporated and headquartered in the U.S. to be included in our sample. We also use the Heckman (1976) procedure to control for self-selection bias. To capture earnings quality, we use a battery of measures established in prior literature, including discretionary accruals, discretionary revenues, real activities earnings management, and accrual estimation errors. Our measures have both convergent and discriminant validity and therefore appear to capture earnings quality fairly well. We find consistent evidence that U.S. domestic RM firms have lower earnings quality compared with U.S. IPO firms. Our evidence suggests that investors and other stakeholders should take into account the fact and consequences of the method that firms use to access capital markets in their investment decision making process.     

Idiosyncratic Volatility and Firm‐Specific News: Beyond Limited Arbitrage

We examine the relation between idiosyncratic volatility and returns around news announcements. Mispricing is most likely to occur during news announcements. If idiosyncratic volatility generates a limit to arbitrage, then the negative relation between returns and news volatility should be stronger than the relation to nonnews volatility. Instead, we find nonnews volatility has a robust negative relation to returns and lacks key features expected if volatility were a reflection of limits to arbitrage. Pricing of nonnews volatility is related to lottery‐like features of a stock's return. Our results suggest that volatility has a price effect beyond a limit to arbitrage.     

Executive Network Centrality and Stock Liquidity

We examine the relationship between stock market liquidity and the network centrality of firm executives. We find that firms whose executive officers are more central in the network of executives have narrower bid‐ask spreads. We use an exogenous network centrality shock of executive turnover and report that liquidity improves after firms hire executives with greater centrality. We present evidence that improved liquidity is attributable to efficient information flows around executives in more advantageous network positions.     

Retail Shelf Allocation: A Comparative Analysis of Heuristic and Meta-Heuristic Approaches

This research presents a retail shelf-space decision model that incorporates a nonlinear profit function, vertical and horizontal location effects, and product cross-elasticity. We propose a linear programming formulation of the nonlinear profit function that can solve the shelf-space problem optimally. We describe potential advances in heuristic and meta-heuristic algorithms and compare the approaches through simulations and a field experiment. We discuss the impact of the number of item facings, vertical location, and horizontal location (e.g., we find the vertical location effect is approximately double the size of the horizontal location effect on profit performance).     

CEOs' reputation,quality management and environmental innovation: The roles of stakeholder pressure and resource commitment

In this paper, we examine how and when chief executive officers' (CEOs') reputation enhances environmental innovation by considering quality management as a mediating mechanism of this relationship. In addition, we introduce stakeholder pressures (primary and secondary stakeholder pressures) as important contingencies of the relationship between CEOs' reputation and quality management. Moreover, we test the moderating role of resource commitment on the quality management‐environmental innovation relationship. We test our research model using data from a manufacturing industry sample of 217 firms from Ghana. We find that quality management mediates the relationship between reputation and environmental innovation. Moreover, the relationship between CEOs' reputation and quality management is amplified when levels of both primary and secondary stakeholder pressures are greater. Finally, our findings show that the effect of quality management on environmental innovation is enhanced when resource commitment is greater. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Reading, writing, and religion: Institutions and human capital formation

In this paper, we empirically test the role that religious and political institutions play in the accumulation of human capital. Using a new data set on literacy in colonial India, we find that Muslim literacy is negatively correlated with the proportion of Muslims in the district, although we find no similar result for Hindu literacy. We employ a theoretical model which suggests that districts which experienced a more recent collapse of Muslim political authority had more powerful and better funded religious authorities, who established religious schools which were less effective at promoting literacy on the margin than state schools. We test this hypothesis econometrically, finding that the period of Muslim political collapse has a statistically significant effect on Muslim literacy while controlling for it eliminates the significance of the proportion of Muslims on Muslim literacy. This suggests that the “long hand of history” has played some role in subsequent differences in human capital formation through the persistence of institutions discouraging literacy.     

Integration to Fragmentation: Post-BSE Canadian Cattle Markets, Processing Capacity, and Cattle Prices

This paper examines the potential impacts of expansions to Canadian cattle slaughter capacity with varying assumptions about the ability to export live cattle to the United States. A synthetic model is calibrated to historic data and then used to gauge the impacts of changing slaughter capacity, commercial grade beef import competition, and export potential for lower quality cuts on the Canadian cattle and beef sector. Expanded slaughter capacity improves fed cattle prices, but cull prices remain below pre-BSE levels. Reduced ability to export lower quality beef and increased import competition from commercial grade beef also further depress cattle prices .
Le présent article examine les répercussions potentielles d'une augmentation de la capacité d'abattage au Canada à l'aide de diverses hypothèses sur la capacité d'exporter des bovins vivants aux États-Unis. Un modèle synthétique est calibré selon les données historiques et utilisé pour évaluer les répercussions qu'une modification de la capacité d'abattage, de la concurrence quant à l'importation de bœuf de qualité commerciale et de l'exportation éventuelle de coupes de viande de qualité inférieure aurait sur le secteur canadien du bœuf. Une capacité d'abattage accrue améliore les prix des bovins finis, mais les prix des animaux de réforme demeurent inférieurs aux niveaux de prix observés avant la découverte de l'ESB. La diminution de la capacité d'exporter du bœuf de qualité inférieure et l'augmentation de la concurrence pour l'importation de bœuf de qualité commerciale contribuent également à faire baisser davantage les prix des bovins .