Political booms and currency crises

This paper shows evidence that political booms, defined as the rise in governments’ popularity, are associated with a higher likelihood of currency crises. The reasoning behind this finding is that prudent economic policies to address underlying weaknesses in the economy may be political costly for incumbent governments in the short-term. Hence, popularity-concerned governments may not have enough incentives to take such corrective actions in a timely manner. This approach, in turn, can deteriorate economic fundamentals and increase related risks in the economy which can eventually lead to crises. This paper sheds light on this phenomenon in the case of currency crises, suggesting that currency crises can be viewed as “political booms gone bust” events. Moreover, it finds that higher international reserves, higher exports, and a higher degree of financial openness alleviate the effect of political booms on currency crises.     

近10年国外远程办公研究进展与本土化启示——基于CiteSpace的可视化分析

新冠肺炎疫情严重影响了企业经营活动，但在一定程度上也推动了远程办公这种新型工作方式。为探究该领域研究进展，收集近10年Web of Science（科学引文索引）数据库中收录的“远程办公”或“线上办公”为主题的242篇核心文献，通过文献计量软件CiteSpace分析国外远程办公研究文献间的关联关系，探寻国外远程办公领域的发展脉络和研究前沿。在此基础上，对近10年国内中国知网数据库20篇中文核心文献进行综述，希望为未来国内远程办公的本土化研究提供参考。     

Do foreign exchange forecasters apply asymmetric loss functions? Evidence from three major exchange rates

This article investigates which type of loss function is consistent with the hypothesis that major exchange rate forecasts, i.e. the euro, the British pound, and the Japanese yen vis-à-vis the US dollar, are rational. We apply a comprehensive data set, which also allows us to examine different forecast horizons and heterogeneity of forecasters.     

Effects of financial constraints on export performance of firms during the global financial crisis: microeconomic evidence from Korea

This study uses a manufacturing firm-level panel data set of South Korea for 2006–2013 to investigate the effect of financial constraints on the export performance of firms, with particular emphasis on the corporate ownership structure. The empirical results show that foreign multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries are not affected by financial constraint during both crisis and noncrisis periods, implying advantages of foreign ownership. However, domestic firms suffer more from financial constraints on exports during crisis years. In particular, domestic firms without parent firms are financially constrained during both crisis and noncrisis periods. However, those with parent firms do not experience financial constraints during noncrisis periods, although they too suffer from them during crisis periods. Thus, parent–subsidiary linkage among domestic firms plays an important role in alleviating financial constraints on export activity in noncrisis years but not as much during crisis years. Therefore, domestic parent firms exhibit less resilience to the global financial crisis, in comparison to foreign MNC parent firms.     

Chinese investment in the Brazilian soybean sector: Navigating relations of private governance

This paper examines how Chinese agribusiness firms are engaging with established systems of private governance in the Brazilian soybean sector and how that engagement is variously accommodated, contested, and configured by local realities that reflect the uneven history of transnational agribusiness development across the Brazilian agro‐export region. Using qualitative data collected at three research sites that represent different historical moments in the Brazilian agro‐export region (Mato Grosso, Goiás, and Bahia), the paper argues that the social structures underlying the particular agrarian histories of these three subregions create unique contexts Chinese firms must navigate, which in turn shapes their engagement with the private agribusiness regime across space. Although the private agribusiness regime is often portrayed as a top‐down system of governance that subjugates the polity to the demands of capital, this framing neglects to understand how that system of power is contested, negotiated, and reshaped on the ground. These three cases serve to historicize the uneven penetration of Chinese firms across the Brazilian soybean sector.     

How and why auditors’ social exchange relationships influence their attitudes and behaviors: Implications for audit quality

External auditors regularly interact with various parties at work, such as their accounting firms, engagement team members, and clients. These interactions can help shape the nature of auditors’ social exchange relationships with these entities, which in turn may influence their behavior toward these targets. This installment of Accounting Matters draws from recently published research by Herda and colleagues to (1) explain how constructive auditor-target connections can develop and lead to beneficial outcomes like reduced auditor burnout and turnover intentions, as well as more citizenship behavior, and (2) discuss how these upshots might ultimately affect audit quality. This topic is important because audit quality translates into improved financial reporting, which helps stakeholders who rely on audited financial statements to make informed business decisions. Specifically, we underscore the key role auditors’ perceptions of fair treatment from a relationship partner play in fostering a strong psychological bond with the target via perceived support. We further consider how auditors’ consequent commitment to the target can result in favorable organizational outcomes, including enhanced audit and financial reporting quality. We also discuss practical implications for accounting firms.     

INTERNATIONAL RESERVE MANAGEMENT: A DRIFT‐SWITCHING REFLECTED JUMP‐DIFFUSION MODEL

We study the cost of shocks, that is, jump risk, with respect to reserve management when the reserve process is formulated as a drift‐switching jump diffusion with a reflecting barrier at 0. Inspired by the Brownian drift switching model, our model results in a more realistic dynamic behavior of international reserves than the buffer stock model. The new model can capture both the jump behavior in reserve dynamics and the leptokurtic feature of the increment distribution which has a higher peak and two asymmetric heavier tails than the normal distribution. Through the selection of an initial distribution that reflects certain steady state behaviors, the reserve process becomes a regenerative process. This selection enables us to derive a closed‐form expression for the total expected discounted cost of managing reserves, thus helping us to numerically find management strategies that minimize costs. The numerical results show that shocks at the reserve level have a significant effect on reserve management strategies and that model misspecification can result in nonnegligible additional costs.     

Human resource management practices and voluntary turnover: a study of internal workforce and external labor market contingencies

We tested relationships between employee quit rates and two bundles of human resource (HR) practices that reflect the different interests of the two parties involved in the employment relationship. To understand the boundary conditions for these effects, we examined an external contingency proposed to influence the exchange-based effects of HR practices on subsequent quit rates – the local industry-specific unemployment rate – and an internal contingency proposed to shape employees’ conceptualization of their exchange relationship – their employment status (i.e. full-time, part-time and temporary employment). Analyses of lagged data from over 200 Canadian establishments show that inducement HR practices (e.g. extensive benefits) and performance expectation HR practices (e.g. performance-based bonuses) had different effects on quit rates, and the former effect was moderated by unemployment rate. The effects of HR practices on quit rates did not differ between FT and PT employees, but a different pattern of main and interactive effects was found among temporary workers. These findings suggest that employees’ exchange-based decisions to leave may be less affected by the number of hours they expect to work each week, and more by the number of weeks they expect to work.     

Dynamics of capital account and current account in Sri Lanka

This paper enquires the dynamics of current account and capital account in Sri Lanka for the period 2001:Q1 to 2016:Q1 and also examines the role of some policy variables such as exchange rate and interest rate in this dynamics. Estimated autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach to cointegration followed by error correction representation of the ARDL model have found that current account is caused by capital account and exchange rate, where capital account causes to produce a deficit in current account. In the dynamic adjustment of current account due to exchange rate, an evidence of J-curve phenomenon is noticed. Capital account is neither caused by current account nor by exchange rate but interest rate has a positive impact on it. Robustness of these findings is testified by the vector autoregression model, Wald test of Granger causality followed by an impulse response analysis and a variance decomposition analysis. These analyses, in addition, establish a negative impact of interest rate on current account. With the best of knowledge this is the first study that reveals the dynamics of current and capital account of Sri Lanka. Such a dynamics is critical from the policy perspective. Policy makers should caution before capital account liberalization.     

美国需求端产业结构的变化及对中国的启示

对产业结构演化的研究都是从供给端计算的产业结构，本文构造了从需求端计算的产业结构并依此对美国需求端产业结构的演化进行了实证分析。研究表明，当年价所计算的美国需求端三次产业结构的变化小于供给端产业结构的变化；1970年以来美国第二产业的变化差异中近40%可以用外贸因素来解释。进而本文采取不变价计算了美国产业结构的变化，研究表明，自1970年以来按不变价计算的美国需求端的产业结构变化很小，且美国第三产业比例提升中有31%可以用不同产业价格因素变化来解释，44%可以用国际贸易来解释，仅有25%可以用第三产业收入弹性的变化来解释，因而收入弹性不是美国第三产业比例提升的重要原因。美国能够维持经常账户的逆差，将第三产业作为动力产业的根本原因在于美元的霸权地位。相比较而言，中国一直以来处于国际收支“双顺差”的状态，中国的具体国情和国家实力均无法满足大规模输出人民币使之成为其他国家储备货币的条件。