Firm-specific human capital in different market conditions: Evidence from the Japanese football league

This paper examined how and the extent to which obtaining skills to meet team specific human capital is important to improve football player’s performance by comparing the top league and the second league. Based on panel data of individual players during the 2012–2016 seasons of the Japan Professional Football League (J League), we found; (1) In the top-league, changing team reduced player’s performance and their performance improved as player’s tenure of the team and also tenure of J League increased. (2) returns from acquiring team specific skills on time of play in the game increase and then decrease as years have passed. (3) benefit from moving team depends on the timing of moving, and so rookie players can benefit from moving when team tenure reach 4 years or more. (4) In the second league, neither team tenure nor experience of the professional football player does not influence player’s performance.     

Labour market segmentation: Evidence from Cyprus

Labour market segmentation (LMS) is thought to generate poverty and inequality and its existence has been often documented by estimated earnings functions identified by such endogenous income-determining factors as occupation, firm size and sector. Past research is open to the criticism that it ignores the extent to which workers are able to gain access to the high wage segments of the labour market. The paper investigates various dimensions of LMS in Cyprus and shows that the market is segmented by sex, an exogenous factor, as well as by the endogenous factors of public/private sectors of employment and firm size. Evidence is presented to show how the Cyprus labour market operates to erect barriers which serve to restrict access of workers to the high wage segments.     

Price variability and price convergence: Evidence from Indonesia

This paper evaluates price variability and price convergence in Indonesia. Using price indices of 35 products in 45 cities from January 2002 to April 2008, this study shows that, during the observed period, prices in Indonesia converged to the ‘relative’ law of one price. The price variability of one product across cities is found to be smaller than the price variability of all products within a city. Transportation costs and the level of development matter to price variability. This study also reveals that the average speed of convergence, which is measured by the half-life, for perishable goods is about 9 months, non-perishable goods 32–36 months, and services 18–19 months, while the median of the half-life of all products is about 16–17 months. The speed of convergence depends on the initial price difference, but not the distance between cities.     

Pricing of foreign exchange risk and market segmentation: Evidence from Pakistan's equity market

This paper undertakes empirical analysis to investigate whether foreign exchange rate risk is priced, and the extent to which the Pakistani equity market is integrated into world equity markets. For the period January 1993–January 2013, we investigate unconditional pricing using the iterated generalized method of moments, employing industry and size portfolios formed from 180 firms traded on the Karachi Stock Exchange. Using the multi beta asset pricing model, we find that exchange risk is priced into the Pakistani equity market over the full sample period. Moreover, we find strong evidence that the Pakistani equity market is segmented from world markets, especially in the post 9/11 period.     

FDI and market entry/exit: Evidence from China

This paper considers the impact of FDI and FDI-related spillovers on the entry and exit rates of domestic firms in mainland China's manufacturing sector. Since we suspect that aggregate results obscure differing effects based on the source of the FDI, we disaggregate FDI into that originating from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan (HMT) area and the rest of the world. The empirical analysis, based on 4-digit industry level panel data over the period 2003–2007, reveals that FDI originating from the rest of the world has made a significant contribution to the entry rate of domestic firms in China and the spillover effect arising from backward linkages is also positive and significant. However, FDI originating from HMT area has not encouraged domestic entry, whilst it has contributed to an increase in the exit rate of domestic firms.     

Grandparental childcare and female labor market behaviors: Evidence from China

Using matched employer-employee survey data from China, this paper examines the relationship between grandparental childcare and female labor market behaviors based on within-firm estimations. Our analysis reveals that grandparental childcare can significantly and effectively improve the labor supply of women with children at the extensive margin although not at the intensive margin. Moreover, grandparental childcare is found to enhance the monthly earnings of working mothers without requiring more intensive work. Grandparental childcare can also assist working mothers in advancing to managerial positions. These results suggest that the discrimination by firms against women with children is reduced and their productivity is improved when grandparental childcare is available. Therefore, grandparental childcare plays a crucial role in promoting gender equality and various measures should be implemented to eliminate factors that hinder the effective utilization of grandparental childcare.     

Price Rigidity and Industrial Concentration: Evidence from the Indonesian Food and Beverages Industry

This paper investigates the relationship between industrial concentration and price rigidity in the Indonesian food and beverages industry. A Cournot model of firm behavior is used in which prices adjust according to a partial adjustment mechanism. The model is applied to panel data of the Indonesian food and beverages industry over the period 1995–2006. The results suggest that industrial concentration has a positive effect on percentage price changes. Furthermore, the speed of price adjustment is higher when the per unit cost of production rises.     

涨跌停机制的绩效:上海股市的经验分析

一直以来,理论界和实务界对证券市场实施涨跌停机制的效果存在争议.本文以改进了的Kim和Rhee(1997)的研究方法为基础,结合上海股市的个股价格资料,从波动率溢出假设、延迟价格发现假设和交易干涉假设三个方面对上海股市涨跌停机制的绩效进行实证考察.研究结果表明,中国股市的涨跌停机制是缺乏效率的.文章的最后提出了放宽价格限制幅度和采取不对称的涨跌停机制的政策建议.     

Job tasks and wages in the Japanese labor market: Evidence from wage functions

Based on the microdata from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure and the original survey, we estimate the Mincerian wage function, incorporating job tasks, to examine the importance of job task wage premiums as well as long-term changes in the Japanese labor market. In the estimation, we found that the association between abstract tasks and wages is positive and that a one standard deviation increase in the abstract task scores was associated with a 21.2% wage premium, while that of routine and manual task wage premiums are negative. We also found that the total explanatory power of three task scores (routine, abstract, and manual tasks) is higher than that of the education dummies or the major occupation group dummies. We also confirmed two testable implications from the Roy model regarding the workers’ self-selection into occupations in the Japanese labor market. These findings are similar to those obtained by Autor and Handel (2013). On the other hand, we found no major changes between 2005 and 2016 in the coefficients of routine, abstract, or manual task scores as well as their explanatory powers in the wage function. We then observed that demand for labor increased in many occupations involving many non-routine or manual tasks, but at the same time, the supply of labor to those occupations also increased. Therefore, we discussed that the change in labor demand and supply may be one of the reasons for the stable relationship between job tasks and wages.     

National and international market integration in the 19th century: Evidence from comovement

This paper analyzes relative wheat price fluctuations to investigate market integration among 72 European and US cities. Applying a Dynamic Factor Model, which has seldom been used in market integration analysis, prices are decomposed into international, national and local components. Thus, national and international market integration are identified by a statistical restriction, and results for each single market are obtained. The first result is that globalization has accelerated faster in the first than in the second half of the 19th century, putting the post-1850 transport revolution into perspective. The USA integrated only later into the European market, discounting the role of the “grain invasion” for trade history. I also show that the European nations that turned protectionist after 1880 reduced the impact of foreign shocks, while free traders fully integrated into the international economy.     

Price discrimination in the exports of a small economy: Empirical evidence

Zusammenfassung Preisdiskriminierung durch Exporteure kleiner L?nder: Ein empirischer Befund. — Theoretische Modelle des internationalen Handels gehen im allgemeinen von der Annahme aus, da\ die Exporteure kleiner L?nder einer voll-kommen elastischen Nachfrage nach ihren Exportgütern gegenüberstehen und da\ sie nicht die Macht haben, Preisdiskriminierung zu betreiben. Die Studie prüft auf der Grundlage israelischer Daten empirisch, ob diese zwei Annahmen berechtigt sind. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, da\ die israelischen Exporteure abw?rts geneigten Nachfrage-kurven gegenüberstehen und da\ sie in der H?lfte der überprüften F?lle Preis-diskriminierung praktizieren. Dieser Befund zweifelt also die Annahme des kleinen Landes und das Gesetz eines einzigen Preises an.

---

Résumé La discrimination par des prix dans les exportations d’une économie petite: L’évidence empirique. — Les modèles théoriques du commerce international généralement supposent que les économies petites sont confrontées avec des courbes de demande parfaitement élastiques pour leurs biens exportés et qu’elles n’ont pas le pouvoir de pratiquer une discrimination par des prix. Cette étude teste, empirique-ment, la validité de ces deux suppositions pour les exportations d’une économie petite. Basés sur les données israéliennes les résultats indiquent que les exportateurs israéliens sont confrontés avec des courbes de demande orientées vers le bas et qu’ils pratiquent une discrimination en moitié des cas testés. Ces résultats mettent en doute la validité de la supposition d’une économie petite et le loi d’un seul prix.

---

Resumen Discriminación de precios en las exportaciones de una economía peque?a: Empírica evidencia. — Modelos teóricos del comercio internacional suponen en general que las economías peque?as confrontan curvas de demanda perfectamente elásticas para sus productos de exportatión y no pueden enforzar una discriminación de precios. El estudio comprueba, empíricamente, la validez de estas dos hipótesis para las exportaciones de una economía peque?a. Basados en estadísticas de Israel, los resultados indican que los exportadores de este país confrontan curvas de demanda con pendiente negativa y practican discrimination de precios en la mitad de los casos estudiados. Estas resultados ponen en entredicho la validez de emplear la hipótesis de una economia peque?a y la ley de un solo precio en estudios analíticos.

     

Bank market power and revenue diversification: Evidence from selected ASEAN countries

This paper examines the association between bank market power and revenue diversification using a sample of 153 commercial banks from five Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). We find a non-linear relationship between bank market power and revenue diversification, where at lower degrees of market power (in loan and deposit markets) banks concentrate on revenue diversification. In contrast, those with greater market power focus more on traditional interest-based products. Our findings also indicate that credit losses experienced earlier, during and after the Asian financial crisis have encouraged ASEAN banks to diversify into non-traditional activities to compensate for their excessive losses. When the markets recovered and loan demand increased, however, traditional interest-based business has become more important. These results remain consistent across all models providing robust results.     

Oil price uncertainty and the cost of debt: Evidence from the Chinese bond market

This paper explores the impact of oil price uncertainty affects the cost of debt in China. By analyzing the bond data from 2008 to 2019 in China, we find that oil price fluctuation boost bond offering spread, denoting that oil price uncertainty may increase the cost of debt. This increase is likely due to higher default risks resulting from the heightened oil price uncertainty. Moreover, non-state-owned firms and those in the energy industry are more susceptible to the effects of oil price volatility. Our findings also reveal an asymmetric effect of oil price uncertainty on the cost of debt, with a stronger impact observed from positive uncertainty compared to negative uncertainty. This study contributes to the current understanding of the ways in which oil price uncertainty impacts the cost of debt in an emerging country.     

Labor market concentration and heterogeneous effects on wages: Evidence from Japan

This study provides empirical evidence of the impact of labor market concentration on wages. We find that (1) wages are suppressed in more concentrated labor markets, (2) labor rigidity is associated with wage responsiveness to labor market concentration, (3) the impact of labor market concentration on wages is smaller for firms with more competitive downstream product markets, and (4) greater job opportunities outside the manufacturing sector weaken the relationship between concentration and wages. In sum, our findings indicate that labor rigidity and the degree of competition in downstream product markets, as well as outside options, affect the relationship between market concentration and wages.     

Stock market uncertainty and uncovered equity parity deviation: Evidence from Asia

Recently, many empirical studies document that a country's stock market performance relative to the US and its local currency units per US dollar tend to move in opposite direction over the short run, also known as the uncovered equity parity (UEP) condition. However, those studies have applied only to advanced economies to date. This study conducted the same tests to a sample of 18 Asian economies. To one's surprise, we found that the UEP condition reverses its sign among Asian currencies. In addition, measures of stock market uncertainty are suggested as a potential driving force behind this UEP reversal for Asian economies. This surprising result suggests that there might be other mechanisms behind the joint dynamics of equity and currency returns than the portfolio rebalancing caused by incomplete foreign exchange risk hedging. The reasoning is that Asian foreign exchange (FX) markets are even more subject to incomplete foreign exchange risk hedging. Thus, one should expect even stronger UEP evidence from Asian currency markets if the portfolio rebalancing mechanism was the only force at play.     

Asymmetric dynamics in stock market correlations: Evidence from Japan and Singapore

This paper uses the asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation model developed by Cappiello et al. (2006) to analyze the correlation between the Japanese and Singaporean stock markets and makes two principal findings. First, it finds that financial integration has advanced because of the Japan–Singapore Economic Partnership Agreement, thereby strengthening the bidirectional relationship between Japan and Singapore. Second, it demonstrates empirically that the weight of Asian stocks in portfolios within the Asian region has increased since the global financial crisis, again strengthening the relationships among Asian region economies.     

Urban population distribution in China: Evidence from internet population

Based on mobile internet user data, we construct an “Internet population” measure and reexamine spatial population distribution in China. The location based service (LBS) data of mobile internet uses is able to capture the accurate location of users' residence and solve the underestimation problem of missing migrants. We have three main findings. First, contrary to previous studies based on traditional population statistics, city size distribution of Internet population fits well into Zipf's law with a R² of 90.7%. Second, the Internet population indicator is superior to traditional population statistics in explaining inelastic household consumption such as water consumption, electricity consumption, and garbage disposal. It suggests that the “Internet population” is a better proxy of actual city population. Third, the traditional population statistics systematically overestimate population in small cities and underestimate population in large cities. It indicates that the public resource distortions will continue to exist or even worsen off in China if the allocation process relies greatly on traditional population statistics. Although no measures are perfect, our new population measure provides important incremental information for future discussion.     

Second language skills and labor market outcomes: Evidence from the handover of Hong Kong

This paper analyzes the effects of second languages skills on labor market outcomes in Hong Kong. Using data from the Hong Kong Population Censuses, we find that both Mandarin and English language skills are linked to improved labor market performance, and the premiums for English are much larger than those for Mandarin. We further show that the sovereignty transfer of Hong Kong from the UK to China in 1997 has strengthened the positive role of Mandarin and English language skills in finding a job in Hong Kong. The political change has also increased the earnings of people with the ability to speak Mandarin. As a comparison, the earnings premium for speaking English has declined in magnitude after the sovereignty transfer. Investigating into the mechanisms, we show that the rising premiums for Mandarin language skills are operated through choices of occupations and industry sectors. Our findings suggest that important political changes can affect the economic returns to language skills in the labor market.     

Wage discrimination in the NBA: Evidence using free agent signings

This article takes a step toward understanding potential causes of wage discrimination in an economy highly dependent on the service industry. Traditionally categorized within the service industry, professional sport leagues such as the National Basketball Association (NBA) provides a unique setting to examine the potential impact of race on salary. We analyze free agency contract signings, which allow us to better capture the determinants of players' wages, from 2011 to 2017 to investigate the prominence of wage discrimination in the NBA. Using weighted linear regression models and the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, we find that Black athletes are paid significantly less than their counterparts. In addition, we also identify the presence of consumer discrimination after controlling the exposure of a player to the audience, which is observed through the interaction term between the share of MSA population which is White and an identifier for whether a player is Black.