Asymmetric J-curve: evidence from UK-German commodity trade

Empirica - Previous studies that have investigated the J-curve phenomenon between the UK and its largest trading partner from the European Union (EU), Germany, used aggregate bilateral trade data...     

Bilateral Trade Balances of Malaysia with Her 11 Largest Trading Partners: New Evidence from Asymmetry Cointegration

Research on the effects of exchange rate changes on the trade balance is now moving in a new direction, by investigating whether exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects. The approach that relies upon separating depreciations from appreciations introduces nonlinearity into the adjustment process and relies upon the nonlinear ARDL approach of Shin et al. [2014. Modelling asymmetric cointegration and dynamic multipliers in a nonlinear ARDL framework, in: R. Sickels and W. Horrace (Eds), Festschrift in Honor of Peter Schmidt: Econometric Methods and Applications, 281–314 (Springer)]. When we applied this new method to the bilateral trade balances of Malaysia with each of her 11 largest partners, we found adjustment asymmetry in all models, short-run impact asymmetry effects and long-run asymmetry effects in the trade balance models between Malaysia and Asian countries.     

The interdisciplinarity of evolutionary approaches to human behavior: A key to survival in the Ivory Archipelago

This paper explores the degree of interdisciplinarity of evolutionary approaches to the study of human behavior, and the implications that any such interdisciplinarity may have for the future of evolutionary psychology (EP) as a field of scholarship. To gauge the extent of interdisciplinarity of EP, the departmental affiliation of first-authors from 1000 journal articles evenly distributed across ten leading peer-reviewed psychology journals was assessed. Findings show that journals that are evolutionary-based have more first-authors from outside of psychology, and also include a wider variety of represented disciplines. These findings are discussed in terms of their influence on the future of EP, as a model for interdisciplinary research. EP's future will be successful if it continues to promote interdisciplinarity as well as recognize the epistemological worth of multiple evolutionary paradigms and frameworks. Evolutionary principles have been successfully applied to a broad range of topics, suggesting there is great utility in evolution serving as a common language for interdisciplinary pursuits within the behavioral and social sciences. As such, academic programs such as Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) programs, whose presence continues to increase across academic institutions worldwide, epitomize the future of successful interdisciplinary scholarly training.     

Panel asymmetric nonlinear unit root test and PPP in Africa

This study revisits purchasing power parity (PPP) theory for 20 African countries using panel asymmetric nonlinear unit root test proposed by Emirmahmutoglu and Omay (2014), through the sequential panel selection method of Chortareas and Kapetanios (2009). While standard panel unit root tests fail to support the PPP, the empirical results from panel asymmetric nonlinear unit root test do support the PPP. However, additional tests reveal that support in all 20 African countries is mostly due to stationarity of the real effective exchange rates of Ghana and Rwanda where the adjustment process towards equilibrium is nonlinear and asymmetric.     

Shannon information in record data

In this article we present results on the Shannon information (SI) contained in upper (lower) record values and associated record times in a sequence of i.i.d continuous variables. We then establish an interesting relationship between the SI content of a random sample of fixed size, and the SI in the data consisting of sequential maxima. We also consider the information contained in the record data from an inverse sampling plan (ISP).     

Export growth and output growth: An application of bounds testing approach

The short-run and the long-run relationship between export growth and economic growth has received a great deal of attention in the literature. Cointegration techniques that have been employed by previous researchers require that the variables to be non-stationary but their linear combination to be stationary. When variables are not integrated of the same order, they are excluded from analysis. This needs not to be the case with the introduction of the bounds testing approach. Indeed, the approach does not require pre-unit-root testing. This paper applies this new method to export and output data from 44 developing countries and provides support for the export-led growth hypothesis in 60% of the countries.     

On the relationship between the value of the mark and German production

This study employs Johansen's cointegration technique to determine the long-run relationship between exchange value of the DM and German production. It is shown that depreciation of the DM has a long-run expansionary impact on German production. This conclusion is based on a new method of selecting the order of VAR and the appropriate cointegrating vector simultaneously.     

Using life cycle approaches to enhance the value of corporate environmental disclosures

As the focus of environmental policy and management shifts from cleaner production at the process level towards greener products as a whole, stakeholders ask for transparency throughout the entire value chain. This article assesses the comprehensiveness and the value of currently reported quantitative environmental disclosures of 97 listed companies from the automotive, banking, pharmaceutical and electronic hardware sectors. Findings indicate that quantitative environmental disclosures have many limitations, including incompleteness and inconsistency regarding corporate activities and sites, and limited internal data coherence. For many sectors, corporate disclosures only cover a very small share of the total environmental burden of products. A stepwise procedure is proposed to verify and improve the quality and completeness of reporting using life cycle approaches. We present simple data quality tests, and we introduce the concept of the environmental influence matrix, which provides a solid basis for the identification and prioritization of key performance indicators and areas of action. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

How Online Product Reviews Affect Retail Sales: A Meta-analysis

A growing body of research has emerged on online product reviews and their ability to elicit performance outcomes desired by retailers; yet, a common understanding of the performance implications of online product reviews has eluded us. Scholars continue to navigate an array of studies assessing different design elements of online product reviews, and various research settings and data sources. We undertake a meta-analysis of 26 empirical studies yielding 443 sales elasticities to examine how these variables relate to retail sales. Building on well-established meta-analytical methods, we address the following questions: How does review valence influence the elasticity of retailer sales? What about review volume? For which product types and usage situations do online product reviews have a greater impact on retailer sales elasticity? Which types of online reviewers and websites exert the greatest influence on retailer sales elasticity? Our study answers these important questions and provides a much needed quantitative synthesis of this burgeoning stream of research.