Quality of life and its predictors among Pakistani head of household in district Abbottabad,Pakistan

Quality & Quantity - This study aimed to measure the quality of life (QOL) and its predictors among male and female heads of household in Pakistan. A population-based cross-sectional study in...     

Impact of formalisation of property rights in informal settlements: Evidence from Dar es Salaam city

This paper aims to study the responsiveness of the informal property market and management systems towards the introduction of land registration for informal settlements in Tanzania. City governments are increasingly recognising the need to strengthen legal rights for the urban poor as a means to bring them more effectively into the urban economy and ensure better provision of water, sanitation and other primary services. The research focuses on Tanzania and in particular two case studies within Dar es Salaam. The findings of the work suggest that the introduction of residential licenses whilst potentially assisting in creating legal certainty has not resulted in the financial sector accepting them as full security against loans. Accessing credit by the poor however has not yet been fully realised resulting in some further hurdles for the financial sector to overcome. Finally, and of some significance is the registration of property in the informal settlements has provided the opportunity of formal property transactions within these settlements.     

Examining the extent of and determinants for sustainability assurance quality: The role of audit committees

This study examines the extent of and determinants for sustainability assurance quality. Data comprise sustainability assurance statements published by the top 100 listed companies in Australia and New Zealand from 2017 to 2019. The findings indicate that Australian companies lead their New Zealand counterparts in sustainability assurance. Although sustainability reporting has risen, assurance rates remain significantly low. Accountants dominate the market, and companies prefer to use their own auditors for sustainability assurance work. Sustainability assurance quality is poor and does not vary significantly among Australian and New Zealand companies. Low-quality sustainability assurance plays a limited role in mitigating potential stakeholder–agency conflicts. The regression analysis indicates that audit committee characteristics such as members' independence, industry/market expertise, and attending meetings enhance sustainability assurance quality, whereas audit committee size has no affect. These findings suggest that audit committee characteristics such as independence, industry expertise, and regular meeting attendance have the potential to reduce stakeholder–agency conflicts by improving the quality of sustainability statement assurance. Our findings build on the sustainability assurance literature by exploring current trends in sustainability assurance practices in Australia and New Zealand where corporate governance codes have been recently revised. Further, these findings are timely given recent changes in standards (International Standard on Assurance Engagements [ISAE] 3000 and Global Reporting Initiative [GRI]). Our study contributes to the audit committee literature and sheds light on the role played by audit committee characteristics on sustainability assurance statement quality. The study findings potentially offer useful insights for practitioners, standard setters, and regulators.     

Inference for the two-parameter bathtub-shaped distribution based on record data

Here we consider the record data from the two-parameter of bathtub-shaped distribution. First, we develop simplified forms for the single moments, variances and covariance of records. These distributional properties are quite useful in obtaining the best linear unbiased estimators of the location and scale parameters which can be included in the model. The estimation of the unknown shape parameters and prediction of the future unobserved records based on some observed ones are discussed. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses are adopted for conducting the estimation and prediction problems. The likelihood method, moment based method, bootstrap methods as well as the Bayesian sampling techniques are applied for the inference problems. The point predictors and credible intervals of future record values based on an informative set of records can be developed. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to compare the so developed methods and one real data set is analyzed for illustrative purposes.     

MAPPING THE EVOLUTION OF ENERGY‐GROWTH NEXUS: SYNERGIES AND TRADE‐OFFS

The study explores the intellectual structure, development and evolution of energy crisis and economic growth research through bibliometric analysis of research articles on energy‐growth nexus from 2000 to 2017 by using Citespace where Gephi is used to analyse the authors collaboration. The analysis incorporates 27,152 references cited by 344 authors, in 1165 articles and from 330 journals. The results of study quantitatively present the most cited articles, authors, countries, institutions and intellectual structure with data visualization in the knowledge domain of energy‐growth nexus. The study categorizes the major research areas in energy‐growth nexus research as carbon dioxide emission, electricity consumption, heterogeneous Panel, real income, renewable energy and financial development. The study discusses emerging trends which provide the future research fronts and intellectual development within the framework of energy‐growth nexus.     

Contracts and Productive Information Gathering

We modify a standard Baron–Myerson model by assuming that, instead of knowing the state of nature, the agent has to incur a cost γ to learn it. Under these conditions, the principal will offer contracts that, depending on the value of γ, try to induce the agent to gather or not to gather information. We study the tradeoffs that are involved.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: D82, D83.     

Overflow effect of credit rating announcements on stock exchange based on event study

This study is aimed to identify the impact of credit rating announcements on the stock returns in stock markets and for this purpose, four different sectors of Pakistan stock exchange were selected and from each of these four sectors, different business organizations were selected, i.e. total 32 business organizations were selected. The credit rating announcement data were collected for these 32 business organizations belonging to four different sectors. Totally 101 credit rating announcements were selected and the time period for which the credit rating warnings were selected include last three years period, i.e. from 2014 to 2016. The collected data were analysed by calculating abnormal returns for each of the selected security and average abnormal returns, and cumulative average abnormal returns were calculated for four different sectors. Event study methodology was applied, and t-test and t-stats value were calculated and results were analysed on the basis of t-statistics. The results of analysis identified that credit rating announcements have a significant impact on stock prices and investors and other market participants are earning abnormal returns during two-day period after the announcements are made. In addition, these abnormal returns were either negative or positive, depending upon the nature of credit ratings announced. If the credit rating announced was upgraded, investors enjoyed positive abnormal returns while in case when credit rating announcements were downgraded, then investors bear negative abnormal returns. Finally, the findings of the study identified the applicability of random walk hypothesis on the Pakistan Stock Exchange and Pakistan Stock Exchange confirms the efficient market hypothesis with its semi-strong form of efficiency.     

Pricing efficiency of Bitcoin Trusts

This article examines the pricing efficiency of Bitcoin Investment Trust. We investigate the deviation between prices and net asset values and find that there is a significant and persistent premium with an average of 44%. Such evidence points to pricing inefficiency of the currently available trust and encourages practitioners to introduce better instruments such as Exchange Traded Funds as alternatives to investors interested in having exposure to bitcoins and the digital currencies market.     

Predictability,Price Bubbles,and Efficiency in the Indonesian Stock-Market

I examine the return predictability of the Indonesian stock-market during 1984–2016, in rolling windows, using an automatic portmanteau test and an automatic variance ratio. I find that the market’s efficiency and predictability vary over time—consistent with the adaptive market hypothesis—with returns being less predictable in recent periods, a sign of improving efficiency. I also find that a simple buy-and-hold investment strategy outperforms several technical trading rules, even after adjusting for risk. Furthermore, I find evidence of explosive behaviour in Indonesian stock prices and detect multiple bubbles, using sequential right-tailed unit-root tests.     

Monitoring a common agent: Implications for financial contracting

Multiple principals want to obtain income from a privately informed agent and design their contracts non-cooperatively. The degree of coordination between principals shapes the contracts and affects the amount of monitoring. Equity-like contracts and excessive monitoring emerge when principals coordinate or verify each other's monitoring efforts. When this is not possible, free riding weakens monitoring incentives, so that flat payments, debt-like contracts, and very low levels of monitoring appear. Free riding may be so strong to induce even less monitoring than if the principals cooperated with each other; that is, non-cooperative monitoring does not necessarily lead to excessive monitoring.