The asymmetry in firms’ mechanisms of cash holdings adjustments: evidence from the G-5 economies

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Using a G-5 country sample (France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US) from 1980 to 2007, I find new evidence of the asymmetry in firms’...     

Does bank competition promote financial inclusion? A cross-country evidence

The idea of financial inclusion has recently been discussed as one of the key strategies to enhance economic development (World Bank 2014). We move this discussion forward by examining if bank competition is a crucial component enforcing financial inclusion, which is arguably a finance supply-side driven process. In this study, we compute the financial inclusion index built on Sarma (2008) approach to better reflect banks’ willingness and capability to provide financial services. Applying System Generalized Method of Moments to the panel of 93 countries, we find that bank competition promotes financial inclusion.     

LIQUIDITY AND ASSET PRICING UNDER THE THREE‐MOMENT CAPM PARADIGM

We examine whether the use of the three‐moment capital asset pricing model can account for liquidity risk. We also make a comparative analysis of a four‐factor model based on Fama–French and Pástor–Stambaugh factors versus a model based solely on stock characteristics. Our findings suggest that neither of the models captures the liquidity premium nor do stock characteristics serve as proxies for liquidity. We also find that sensitivities of stock return to fluctuations in market liquidity do not subsume the effect of characteristic liquidity. Furthermore, our empirical findings are robust to differences in market microstructure or trading protocols between NYSE/AMEX and NASDAQ.     

The Small Business Capital Market Behavior in Athens Stock Exchange

Financing small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially business investments and growth, is a composite and particular complicated affair in the Greek entrepreneurial reality. This paper examines the significance of secondary capital markets, as an alternative source of financing small-medium enterprises’ new entrepreneurial plans. Cointegration technique is applied to test the relationship between the secondary capital market and the dominant sectors in Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). Causality tests are also used to provide evidence on the existence of interdependence between the cointegrated series. The results indicate that there is significant uni-directional causality between primary and secondary capital market in Greece, enhancing us to suggest valuable policy implications.      

PROBLEMS OF AGRICULTURAL EXTERNALITIES: A CONCEPTUAL MODEL WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH

Using a bargaining model the interaction between agriculture and the environment is explored. Application of the model to nitrogen pollution and management agreements directs attention to the research needs for achieving more rational environmental management     

New Labour and Community Protests: the Case of the Govanhill Swimming Pool Campaign, Glasgow

Taking the case study of a community based protest against the closure of a swimming pool in Glasgow, this paper seeks to raise important critical questions about some of the key ideas informing New Labour's urban policy agenda: social capital and active community. It argues that normative notions of active citizenship seriously conflict with bottom-up community protests, highlighting in the process issues of power and inequality. Against claims that New Labour is promoting government through community, here we claim that in the context of this community protest, there was government against community.     

Capital structure around the world: The roles of firm- and country-specific determinants

We analyze the importance of firm-specific and country-specific factors in the leverage choice of firms from 42 countries around the world. Our analysis yields two new results. First, we find that firm-specific determinants of leverage differ across countries, while prior studies implicitly assume equal impact of these determinants. Second, although we concur with the conventional direct impact of country-specific factors on the capital structure of firms, we show that there is an indirect impact because country-specific factors also influence the roles of firm-specific determinants of leverage.     

CREATING VALUE IN THE OIL INDUSTRY

In contrast with current thinking that conglomerates are inefficient, this article begins by presenting arguments in favor of the size and structure of the large integrated oil companies, also known as "the supermajors." Among the advantages are tax efficiency, information flow, political and technological know-how, broad supplier and customer relationships, scale economies, cross-business economies of scope, brand power, and the ability to coordinate strategic initiatives across businesses. These advantages all translate into a lower cost of capital.
One problem, however, is that this lower cost of capital does not seem to be reflected in the target returns on capital currently set by the supermajors. Observing that the financial goal of a corporation is to maximize not its return on capital but rather the net present value of expected future cash flows and earnings, the authors argue that the majors need to make two major changes to current practice. First, their investment hurdle rates should be reduced from their current level of 14–15% to the weighted average cost of capital, which is estimated to run about 8–9%. Second, the actual returns on capital reported in published accounts are largely meaningless; and when evaluating new investments and existing operations alike, the companies must find an annual performance measure that better reflects the economic realities of the business. This paper recommends use of a performance measurement framework based on economic profit that should serve two critical purposes: it will encourage managers to undertake all value-increasing projects (not just those that will maintain or increase reported return on capital), and it will help the companies communicate their strategy and results to the investment community.     

Characterizations of negative multinomial distributions based on conditional distributions

In this paper characterizations of negative multinomial distributions based on conditional distributions have been studied.