The effects of acculturation and uncertainty avoidance on foreign resident choice for Korean foods

This study attempts to identify dining-out patterns among foreign residents in South Korea, examining the differences in foreign residents’ attitudes toward Korean foods and behavioral intentions to patronize Korean restaurants based on their acculturation and uncertainty avoidance levels. The results show that foreign residents in South Korea dine out frequently and intend to revisit Korean restaurants. However, the high acculturation group has a more positive attitude toward, better understanding of, and more preference for Korean foods than the low acculturation group. Satisfaction, revisiting, and recommendation intentions for Korean restaurants are higher among the high acculturation group than the low. The low uncertainty avoidance group spends more money for dining out than the high uncertainty avoidance group, who perceive Korean foods as expensive. Attitudes toward, understanding of, and preference for Korean foods, do not differ significantly between the two uncertainty avoidance groups; nor do satisfaction and behavioral intentions to Korean restaurants.     

Effect of diversification on firm performance: Application of the entropy measure

This study investigated the effects of diversification on firm performance in the restaurant industry. In prior studies, the theoretical rationales and empirical results appeared to contradict each other. These contradictory results may be due to factors such as industry-specific characteristics or a linear understanding of the relationship between diversification strategies and firm performance. Thus, this study suggested a non-linear hypothesis based on the costs and benefits of diversification strategies with businesses categorized based on their level of diversification. The results of this study showed that restaurant firms do not benefit from a low level of related diversification. This study also found that when restaurant firms are involved in both related and unrelated businesses, the optimal mixed ratio of diversification is approximately half and half. More detailed results, as well as academic and practical implications, are discussed in this paper.     

Do hotel REIT companies face investment constraints? A comparison with C-corporation hotel companies

This study investigates whether corporate investment by REIT hotel companies (hotel REITs hereafter) is more constrained than investment by C-corporation hotel companies (hotel C-corps hereafter). The investments of hotel REITs and hotel C-corps are examined by comparing the sensitivities of investment to cash flow and investment opportunities between the two groups. Results show that the sensitivity of investment to cash flow is positive and significantly higher for hotel REITs than for hotel C-corps, suggesting that hotel REITs are likely to experience more constraints on their corporate investment. This finding suggests that hotel firms and owners should be more cautious about electing to be a REIT if they are planning large investments in the future. In addition, this finding has policy implications; even a small reduction in the rate of mandatory dividend payouts could significantly increase hotel REITs’ corporate investments.     

国有商业银行产权改革方案选择

国有商业银行产权改革关系重大，需要有成熟的理论作为指导，有成熟的方案才可操作。本文对国有商业银行产权的委托代理方式、经营代理方式、改革的路径、改革的模式及股份制改造中的国有控股权的安排等问题在理论上进行分析和论述，并从各种方案中选择出了最适合我国国情的改革方案。     

The linkage between the US and Korean stock markets: the case of NASDAQ, KOSDAQ, and the semiconductor stocks

This paper examines the interrelationship between stock prices in the US and Korea by applying the vector autoregression (VAR) model to the daily stock prices at three different level of aggregation – the national aggregate index level, the high-tech industry level and the semiconductor firm level – for the period of July 1996 through February 2001. The major findings of this study are as follows. First, the US stock market plays a leading role over the Korean market at every level of aggregation. The reverse direction of influence, from Korea to the US, was found to be minimal. Second, the evidence also suggests that the speed of transmission of innovation from the US to Korea is swift and finished for the most part within a 24-h period, although it takes three or four days to complete the whole process. Third, the influence of the US stock prices on Korean stock prices, which is measured by the innovation transmission using the impulse–response function (IRF) analysis, seems to be somewhat stronger in the composite national stock price indices and the tech-laden indices than high-tech firms. Fourth, at the firm level, the influence of Micron Technology on the leading semiconductor manufacturers in Korea is shown to be strong and persistent by passing about 34 percent of its innovations to the Korean firms within the three-day period. The impact of IBM and Intel on the Korean chip makers seems to be relatively smaller. Finally, stock prices in Korea, national stock price indices and individual high-tech stocks alike, have become much more responsive to innovations in the US stock prices after the 1997 financial crisis. The implications of the main findings in this paper are also discussed.     

World Ranking of Real Estate Research: Recent Changes in School Competitiveness and Research Institutions

Real estate programs are ranked based upon page counts of articles published in three major real estate journals. The page counts are employed to capture many variations in the length of articles. For each author, his/her most recent affiliation is used to evaluate the school competitiveness of current faculty members rather than a perceived school reputation of the past. In this study, we find that top-tier schools in real estate research are not necessarily the most famous schools in economics and finance; progressive universities specializing in real estate research hold the top ranks. Furthermore, school competitiveness has changed substantially in the United States. The changes are mainly because of a mobility of faculty members. The results also show that U.S. institutions dominate research in real estate.     

Portfolio optimization with a defaultable security

In this paper we derive a closed-form solution for a representative investor who optimally allocates her wealth among the following securities: a credit-risky asset, a default-free bank account, and a stock. Although the inclusion of a credit-related financial product in the portfolio selection is more realistic, no closed-form solutions to date are given in the literature when a recovery value is considered in the event of a default. While most authors have assumed some recovery scheme in their initial model set up, they do not address the portfolio problem with a recovery when a default actually occurs. Given the tractability of the recovery of market value, we solved the optimal portfolio problem for the representative investor whose utility function is a Constant Relative Risk Aversion utility function. We find that the investor will allocate larger fraction of wealth to the defaultable security as long as the default-event risk is priced. These results are very intuitive and reasonable since it indicates that if the default risk premium is not priced properly the investor purchases less defaultable securities.     

The content and focus of Canadian corporate codes of ethics

This paper primarily reports the findings of content analyses of seventy-five codes of ethics ofFinancial Post 500 corporations. The contents of each code were comprehensively evaluated along sixty-one criteria according to four levels. It was found that the focus of these codes was the protection of the firm. While some of them refer to issues of social responsibility, they are principally concerned with conduct against the firm.Maurica Lefebvre holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology from the University of Western Ontario and a Bachelor of Commerce degree and MBA from the University of Windsor. She is presently employed marketing consumer packaged goods.Jang B. Singh, B. A. (Toronto), M. A. (St. Thomas), M. A. (Toronto), M. B. A. (Windsor), Ph. D. (Toronto) is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Business Administration of the University of Windsor. His research focus is on ethical issues involved in the management process.     

Does economic performance affect officials’ turnover? Evidence from municipal government leaders in China

As is well known, Chinese central government has full authority to determine the provincial and local officials’ turnover. However, China has not in detail interpreted the standards of officials’ promotions so far. In this paper, the latest database of city-level leaders for the period between 2002 and 2013 is utilized to investigate the influences of economic performance on party secretaries’ odds of being promoted. The estimation results by a panel multinomial logit method indicate that municipal annual GDP per capita is significantly positively associated with leaders’ chances of promotion. Specifically, the average GDP growth rates during leaders’ tenures have much higher effects. Moreover, some important factors of leaders’ personal characteristics also affect the political turnover. For instance, party secretaries’ connection with China’s Communist Youth League, political experience, educational level and professional expertise all have positive impacts on their chances of obtaining a promotion. In contrast, leaders’ ages and tenures are found to be negatively related to their promotion possibilities.

     

New perspectives on East Asian leadership in the age of globalization: local grounding and historical comparisons in the Asia Pacific region

ABSTRACT

Many management and leadership studies have traditionally been dominated by Western theories, perspectives and cases. Non-Western leadership requires additional caveats in arriving at generalizations. The theoretical trap of conceiving Asian corporations either as irrelevant concerning leadership effectiveness or as maintaining only culturally determined leadership derives from the lack of historical understanding of Asian cases. Our collection used both historical and contemporary cases of Japan, South Korea and China to show that these Asian economies have tried to some extent balance their traditional norms and values of leadership with those from the West. A key to understanding Asia is that all three countries have historically pursued leadership mandates in running both public and private corporations, although ‘corrupt’ leadership practices were also rampant during different historical periods. Further studies of leadership in non-Western cases are necessary to devise methodological and theoretical alternatives to Western-centric perspectives. In our collection, we analysed how a dynamic and evolutionary view of leadership fared in its attempt to clarify some of the conundrums surrounding East Asian leadership. From our results, it is indicated that historical and comparative methods must accompany any analysis of leadership.