The Asset Management Industry in Asia: Dynamics of Growth,Structure, and Performance

We examine the industrial organization and institutional development of the asset management industry in Asian developing economies—specifically in China, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Thailand. We focus on the size and growth of the buy‐side of the respective financial markets, asset allocation, the regulatory environment, and the state of internationalization of the fund management industry in its key components—mutual funds, pension funds, and asset management for high net worth individuals. We link the evolution of professional asset management in these environments to the development of the respective capital markets and to the evolution of corporate governance. We find that the fund management industry occupies a very small niche in domestic financial systems that are dominated by banks. At the same time, we find that its growth has been very rapid in the early 2000s and we suggest that this is likely to persist as the demand for professional management of financial wealth in the region develops and as the pension fund sectors of the respective economies are liberalized to allow larger portions of assets to be invested in collective investment schemes.     

Fiscal Transparency,Fiscal Performance and Credit Ratings

Fiscal transparency can provide policymakers with incentives to adopt better policies by enhancing the public debate on the design and sustainability of fiscal policy and establishing accountability for their implementation. Fiscal transparency can also reduce uncertainty about fiscal policy and fiscal outturns by providing more information on the underlying fiscal position and fiscal risks. Both effects suggest that countries should benefit from adopting transparency enhancing policies through better market assessments of their sovereign risk. In this paper, we investigate whether fiscal transparency has an effect on market perceptions of sovereign risk, as measured by sovereign credit ratings, and if so, through which channels. We find that fiscal transparency has a positive and significant effect on ratings – one standard deviation increase in fiscal transparency increases credit ratings by 0.7 and 1 notches (or steps in the credit rating scale) in advanced and developing economies, respectively – but its effect works through different channels in advanced and developing economies. In advanced economies, fiscal transparency is associated with better fiscal outcomes, leading indirectly to higher credit ratings. In developing economies, the direct uncertainty‐reducing effect of fiscal transparency seems to be more important. Indeed, the effect of fiscal transparency on fiscal performance is found to increase with the level of institutional development.     

DIFFERENTIAL RISK‐TAKING IMPLICATIONS OF PERFORMANCE INCENTIVES FROM STOCK AND STOCK OPTION HOLDINGS

We study the risk‐taking implications of managerial pay‐for‐performance incentives (delta) arising from stock and stock options separately in the United States between 1992 and 2017. The current literature assumes that each unit of delta has an equal incentive effect on firm performance. Instead, we show that the risk‐reducing effect of performance incentives is more pronounced for executives whose delta comes mostly from stock holdings relative to option holdings. Accordingly, we propose a new measure that takes into account the magnitude of delta from option holdings relative to delta from stock holdings (source ratio). Our results show that risk taking increases as this ratio increases.     

Analysis of sectoral credit default cycle dependency with wavelet networks: Evidence from Turkey

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between industrial production and sectoral credit defaults (non-performing loans ratio) cycle by wavelet network analysis in Turkey over the period January 2001–November 2007. We use feedforward neural network based wavelet decomposition to analyze the contemporaneous connection between industrial production cycles and sectoral credit default cycles at different time scales between 2 and 64 months. The main findings for Turkey indicates that industrial production cycles effect the sectoral credit default cycles at different time scales and thus indicate that the creditors should consider the multiscale sectoral cycles in order to minimize credit default rates.     

Trust types,distrust, and performance outcomes in small business relationships: the pharmacy–drug warehouse case

This study attempts to investigate the linkage among trust types, distrust, and relationship performance outcomes in the context of long-term supply agreement-type alliances between small business dyads. The results suggest a significant positive relationship among goodwill trust and risk-taking tendency, cooperation, satisfaction, and conflict resolution and a negative relationship between goodwill trust and transaction costs. Competence trust is found to have a positive relationship with cooperation, conflict resolution, and satisfaction and a negative relationship with transaction costs. However, no significant relationship is found between competence trust and risk-taking tendency. Distrust, on the other hand, is found to have a negative relationship with cooperation, satisfaction, and conflict resolution and a significant positive relationship with transaction costs with no effect on risk-taking tendency.     

Environmental impact of customs union agreement with EU on Turkey's trade in manufacturing industry

In this study, we analyse Turkey's manufacturing industry trade by estimating sectoral import and export demand equations for 1980–2000. The study aims to understand whether the trade in the manufacturing industry complies with pollution haven hypothesis, and whether the free trade environment provided by the customs union (CU) agreement altered the trade pattern of the clean and dirty industries. Results of our econometric models have shown that while CU positively affects the import demand, it does not have any significant impact on the export demand of Turkish manufacturing industry. In terms of the environmental impact, distinction between clean and dirty industries turns out to be significant for both import and export demand. In general, our findings suggest that both clean and dirty industries’ import demand increased during the study period. In terms of export demand, clean industries’ export demand declines whereas dirty industries’ export demand increases compared to the total demand.     

Processing fluency: examining its relationship with thinking style and purchase intention

This study aims to examine the relationship between processing fluency and thinking style. In addition to that, the impact of processing fluency on purchase intention will be investigated. Specifically, it is proposed that experiential thinking style induces more fluent processing than rational thinking style. Getting the audience to attend to the ad in an intuitive manner rather than a rule-based manner and presenting them with affective stimuli rather than analytical stimuli increases the fluency experiences. Moreover, it is expected that the processing fluency that is experienced by consumers will influence their purchasing intent. It is suggested that consumer’s level of confidence in their choices mediates the relationship between processing fluency and purchase intent.     

Systems approach in landscape design: a studio work

Landscape architects design the environment, which is an organic part, an outdoor extension of the building, according to the various functions of buildings. One of the most important objectives in design is to create a strong organization which forms a whole by combining different parts. While creating this organization, it is essential to establish relationships, make the designed elements related and obtain a unique design product. This relationship can be established only with the systems approach. It is a difficult process. For this reason, it was aimed in this study to teach Landscape Architecture students how to achieve designs meeting both creative and user needs. Thus, students will learn how to create successful open spaces with the high level of use which is one of the most important problems nowadays. In this respect, this article has two purposes. The first purpose is to create a study diagram by suggesting the systems approach theoretically. Student works will be evaluated according to this study diagram. The second purpose is to investigate the contribution of the course conducted with the systems approach to the design education. In this study, the systems approach was explained to the students of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Karadeniz Technical University and they were made to design the residence and its immediate surroundings within the scope of the 3rd semester. Then, the effect of the systems approach on the creative and applicable designs of the students was determined with the survey study conducted. The results of this study reveal the importance of the systems approach for both design education and urban designers.     

Competing specifications of the gravity equation: a three-way model,bilateral interaction effects,or a dynamic gravity model with time-varying country effects?

We investigate bilateral trade flows across the EU-15 countries from 1962 to 2003 by different specifications of the gravity model. We augment the basic gravity model with population and exchange rate variables, and then include time-varying country fixed effects, to account for Anderson and van Wincoop (Am Econ Rev 93(1):170–192, 2003) multilateral resistance terms. Then, following the previous theoretical derivations of the gravity model in the presence of panel data in a dynamic setting we change the specification of our gravity model. We compare the results of different specifications showing the improvement in each case. We claim the comparative superiority of the dynamic gravity model with time-varying exporter and importer fixed effects due to its higher explanatory power. Finally, we compare out-of-sample forecasting performance of different specifications of the gravity model.     

Re-examining the threshold effects in the inflation–growth nexus with cross-sectionally dependent non-linear panel: Evidence from six industrialized economies

This paper analyzes the empirical relationship between inflation and output growth using a novel panel data estimation technique, Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) model, which takes account of the non-linearities in the data. By using a panel data set for 6 industrialized countries that enable us to control for unobserved heterogeneity at both country and time levels, we find that there exists a statistically significant negative relationship between inflation and growth for the inflation rates above the critical threshold level of 2.52%, which is endogenously determined. Furthermore, we also control cross-section dependency by using the CD test modified to non-linear context and remedy cross-section dependency with Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equations through Generalized Least Squares (SURE-GLS) and newly proposed Common Correlated Effects (CCE) estimation techniques. We find that these methods change the critical threshold value slightly. The estimated threshold values from these estimation methods are 3.18% and 2.42%, respectively.