Retail investors’ trading and stock market liquidity

The paper investigates the relation between retail investors’ participation in trading and aggregate stock market liquidity. The findings show a positive and significant relation between retail investors’ trading and stock market liquidity. Examination of the determinants of retail investors’ trading reveals that, on average, retail investors with more diversified trading activity tend to trade when liquidity is higher, the frequency of their arrival to the market is not affected by the level of liquidity, and retail investors are willing to trade at a lower liquidity level as sellers than as buyers. Moreover, retail investors’ trading does not create price noise at the aggregate market level. Overall, the evidence suggests that retail investors contribute to market quality.     

Prices Revisited: Their Effects on Industrial Structure

In January 1986, Spain became a member of the European Economic Community (now the European Union). This had two major effects on the Spanish economy: first, the introduction of a new tax, i. e. value-added tax; second, the variation of foreign trade taxes. The new situation produced considerable changes throughout the Spanish economy, but the main effect was on the country's industrial structure. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to verify how Spain's industrial production system was affected by these two facts, in view of price variations induced by the circumstances mentioned. We present the analysis at the regional level.     

我国31个省份贸易强省建设实证分析

运用因子分析法和分类聚合,探讨我国31个省份的贸易指标,实证分析贸易强省建设情况。得到6个指标大类:贸易规模指标、贸易前景指标、贸易贡献指标、贸易分布指标、贸易优势指标及贸易市场指标。其中,贸易规模指标对贸易强省建设的影响率最高。京、沪、粤、浙及苏等省份居于全国贸易层级的前列,其贸易能力高于其他地区。针对贸易能力不高的省份,应根据其实际情况及规划目标,从各指标大类中的各细化指标出发,补齐短板。     

The Eurozone Crisis and Emerging‐Market Expansion: Capital Switching and the Uneven Geographies of Spanish Urbanization

The theory of capitalist urbanization posits that the built form serves as a crucial sink through which overaccumulated capital is ‘switched' from industrial production into long‐term investment in urban infrastructure. Since Harvey's (1978) deployment of the theory, researchers have attempted to empirically substantiate the switching thesis with limited success. Christophers (2011) revisited the debate with new data and methods to support the claim that significant investment had switched into the built environment at the onset of the 2007/08 financial crisis. However, Christophers' study overlooks how crises are also geographically displaced. This article analyses Spanish trade data for the years 1993 to 2013, the years prior and subsequent to the housing‐induced economic crisis (1997 to 2006). Two studies are undertaken. The first replicates Christophers' methodology to assess how and to what extent a sectoral switch into property investment occurred in Spain between 1997 and 2006. The second modifies the methodology to investigate the extent to which overaccumulated capital in Spain has been geographically displaced through investment in the Moroccan building industry since 2006. These approaches situate uneven development (geographical switching) and turnover time (sectoral switching) as the twin dynamics through which capitalist urbanization is spatio‐temporally fixed.     

Learning from Trade through Innovation

This paper explores the idea that firms learn from trade by introducing either new products or processes influenced by their trade links with foreign markets. By exploring microdata for Spain, including data on innovation and trade, we find a robust relationship between imports, exports and innovation. The results suggest that firms learn primarily from import links, which enable them to innovate and to ‘dress up’ for starting to export. This sequencing between trade and innovation, however, is shown to be more pronounced for small firms only and technologically advanced firms.     

Success in failure? Reflections on the changing Spanish audit environment

The 1990s in Spain have witnessed a significant shift in attitudes towards the role of auditing, with promises of more transparent reporting being replaced by talk of audit expectations gaps. This paper explores the changing atmosphere, both through an analysis of one of the most notorious scandals of recent times - involving the Banco Español de Credito (‘Banesto’) - and a more general review of the way the Spanish profession has responded to such downturns in public expectations of auditing. While at first sight, the profession appears to have become more defensive and the audit environment more competitive, the multinational accounting firms do appear to have strengthened their position in the Spanish audit market. Intriguingly, despite public expressions of concern with the quality and capabilities of auditing and the imposition of large fines on audit firms for inadequate audit work, proposed ‘solutions’ for improving audit quality include the establishment of a self-regulated audit regime and reductions in auditor liability. The Spanish experience allows for some timely reflections on the significance of an audit expectations gap and highlights the importance of viewing the audit function from an international perspective.     

The role of venture capitalist to enhance the growth of Spanish and Italian university spin-offs

The establishment of spin-offs to commercialise university knowledge/technology is a potential mechanism to promote economic and innovative development. Nevertheless, University Spin-Offs (USOs) are usually resource-constrained, especially in obtaining funding, limiting their growth. Venture Capital (VC) investors play an important role in the financing and the improvement of their managerial skills, which are critical for firm growth. This paper aims to explore both the effect of VC partners on the USOs’ growth and the cross-national differences in the role played by them. To study both issues, we empirically analysed 516 Spanish and 904 Italian USOs created by 50 Spanish and 57 Italian universities, respectively, and observed them between 2005 and 2013. The results showed different effects in the Spanish and Italian cases. While in Spain the presence of VC partners positively affects the USOs’ growth, in Italy there is not a significant effect. This evidence calls for systematic policies by public administrations and universities to foster USO growth.     

Labour-management partnership in the non-union retail sector

Analysts and policy advocates have argued that a meaningful labour-management partnership can be established in the absence of trade unions. In this paper we have examined employee outcomes of partnership in a medium-sized non-union retail firm, regarded as one of the ‘best practice’ cases of non-union partnership by the Involvement and Participation Association (IPA) of the UK. We have also compared the employee outcomes from our case study firm with those from a representative sample of retail sector workers from unionized and non-union retail firms in the UK. Findings indicate that compared to employees in other retail-sector firms, workers in the ‘best practice’ partnership firm were significantly disadvantaged with respect to their influence over workplace and policy decisions with little evidence of ‘mutual gains’ as claimed by partnership advocates.     

External reporting of accounting and financial information via the Internet in Spain

This paper describes the current (July 1998) level of usage of Internet communication technologies by Spanish quoted companies for communication of financial and other information to interested parties. First, in order to place the communication activity in context, the current extent of Internet access in Spain is described. Second, a study of the websites which have been established by Spanish companies quoted on the Madrid Stock Exchange is reported. Finally, the paper discusses the actual and potential development of the Internet as a means of establishing ‘corporate dialogue’ (Spaul, 1997) with stakeholders.     

Determinants of retail sales in SMSAs

This paper develops a theoretical model to explain consumer behavior in the context of spatially extensive retail markets. Several socio-economic variables influencing total and per capita retail sales are identified and their effects on sales are predicted. The theoretical framework presented in this paper serves to link location theoretic arguments to the retail trade arena and to provide a guideline for the empirical work reported. The empirical work encompasses nine retail trade sectors plus retailing in the aggregate. Good results are obtained for total sales and credible results for per capita sales using data from 229 United States SMSAs.     

A Huff model with firm heterogeneity and selection. Application to the Italian retail sector

ABSTRACT

In this paper, firm heterogeneity (in terms of productivity, i.e., marginal costs) is incorporated into a Huff model of competition in the Italian retail sector. A higher market potential in the trade area is associated with higher average productivity and lower productivity dispersion through selection of the best stores. The analysis, based on a unique data set encompassing 14,212 Italian retailers, finds support for this relationship in Southern Italy, but not in Northern and Central Italy (where opposite results are obtained in some cases), suggesting the selection dynamics are affected by context factors (other than provincial/regional accessibility) related to an upper geographical scale. The results are robust to controlling for local context factors such as financial risk and floor size restrictions. Floor size restrictions are found to enhance selection.     

浅析我国网络零售业的远程物流配送服务——以当当网和卓越网为例

物流配送在电子商务企业开展与运作中的地位越来越突出，特别是在网络零售业中，物流配送是企业与客户联系的桥梁。随着网络零售业市场的拓展，消费者出现分散性和广域性，因此，远程物流配送问题越来越突出，而目前远程物流配送的服务与水平是制约网络零售业进一步发展的瓶颈。本文主要以卓越网和当当网为实例，综合分析了远程物流配送体系结构、配送策略及服务水平，在此基础上提出了我国网络零售业的远程物流配送服务的发展方向。     

Defining and measuring the development of a country over time: a proposal of a new index

This paper introduces the concept of harmonic growth as an extended acceptation of the notion of development, and discusses its measurement via the Harmonic Growth Index (HGI). The growth is seen as harmonic when the behaviour of a benchmark time series, which here is a measure of wealth, such as per capita GDP, is followed by a similar pattern in socio-economic series. Unlike most widely used indicators in the literature, which take into account the measurement of development over a single time, HGI measures the degree to which a social indicator’s time series pattern matches with the GDP’s. The index is a function, ranging in [0, 1], of the coefficients of the uniform B-splines fitted to each time series, according to the functional data framework. A case study on Mediterranean welfare countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain), in the period 1996–2007, shows critical differences in the selected indicators which can be ascribed to their dissimilar specific development models. HGI can be also considered as a general index to measure the similarity between time patterns, or as an alternative to correlation for (non-necessarily linear) time series.     

Nowcasting with payments system data

We consider the potential usefulness of a large set of electronic payments data, comprising the values and numbers of both debit card transactions and cheques that clear through the banking system, for the problem of reducing the current-period forecast (‘nowcast’) loss for (the growth rates of) GDP and retail sales. The payments system variables capture a broad range of spending activity and are available on a very timely basis, making them suitable current indicators. We generate nowcasts of GDP and retail sales growth for a given month on seven different dates, over a period of two and a half months preceding the first official releases, which is the period over which nowcasts would be of interest. We find statistically significant evidence that payments system data can reduce the nowcast error for both GDP and retail sales growth. Both debit transaction and cheque clearance data are of value in reducing nowcast losses for GDP growth, although the latter are of little or no value when debit data are also included. For retail sales, cheque data appear to produce no further nowcast loss reductions, regardless of whether or not debit transactions are included in the nowcasting model.     

Explaining Firms’ Export Behaviour: R&D,Spillovers and the Destination Market*

We examine the importance of a firm's own R&D activity and intra‐sectoral spillovers on the decision to export and the export intensity using firm level panel data for Spain for the period 1990–98. Own R&D activity is found to be an important determinant of export activity. There is little evidence to suggest that Spanish firms benefit from spillovers of the exporting activity of others. However, there is evidence that R&D spillovers exert positive effects on firms’ export ratios. We find a larger marginal impact of R&D spillovers on export intensity of firms exporting to other OECD countries than those exporting to non‐OECD nations.     

浅论我国零售业仓储存货成本控制

随着社会主义市场经济不断发展,零售业在社会经济发展中的作用越来越突出,同时,零售业间的竞争也越来越激烈。而仓储存货成本在零售业成本中占有重要比例。目前,各类仓储存货成本高成为制约我国零售业发展的一个关键因素。本文分析了我国零售业仓储存货成本控制存在的主要问题,并提出加强零售业仓储存货成本控制的对策,以提高零售业的利润率。     

Analysis of the impact of Sino-US trade friction on China’s stock market based on complex networks

This paper analyzes the impact of the Sino-US trade friction incident in 2018 on China's stock market by using the complex network methods. Firstly, we divide the Sino-US trade friction incident in 2018 into four research periods. Based on the GARCH-BEKK model and the Planar Maximum Filter Graph (PMFG) algorithm, the volatility spillover network between China's stock market sectors and the stock price correlation network of China's stock market corresponding to the above four research periods are constructed. Next, from the perspective of sectors in stock market, we use various network centrality indicators to build a systematic importance comprehensive evaluation index of industry sectors in the stock market through the principal component analysis method, to explore the impact of the Sino-US trade friction incident on the risk spillover effects of sectors in China's stock market. From the perspective of the overall stock market, we analyze the impact of Sino-US trade friction incident on the overall stability of the stock market through calculating the network topology indicators and conducting simulation experiments. Finally, the main factors affecting the stability mechanism of China's stock market are studied through the probit model. The results show that: (1) The risk spillover effect of various sectors in China's stock market changes significantly in different periods of Sino-US trade friction, and there are obvious cyclical rotation effects among various sectors (2) When some weighted stocks in the stock market abnormally fluctuate or suffer targeted shocks, the China's stock market's ability to maintain stability is weak, and the Sino-US trade friction will reduce the stability of China's stock market, and the higher the intensity of trade friction incident is, the more obvious the impact of the incident is. (3) The important factors that affect the abnormal fluctuations in China's stock market include four types of indicators: the stock market network structure, the fluctuation of important international stock indexes, the fluctuation of commodity prices in the international market, and the domestic macroeconomic indicators. This study provides a reference for China's financial regulatory authorities to conduct macro-prudential management, control systemic risks, and maintain the stability of financial market.     

World trade forecasts upgraded,but headwinds from Asia

• ? Most leading indicators of world trade point to growth remaining robust in the next few months, but there are some headwinds, especially from Asia. Overall, we expect trade growth to decelerate this year, yet the outlook has improved since August. We see world trade rising by 6.1% in 2017 and by 4.8% this year, up from our previous forecasts of 5.7% and 3.8%, respectively .
• ? The latest trade volume data for the major economies support our forecasts, as does our survey‐based export indicator, which leads trade by around three months. This indicator and the main measure of global freight volumes are consistent with world trade continuing to grow by around 6% y/y in the near term.
• ? World trade growth is likely to be supported by emerging markets (EMs), which made a large contribution to the trade recovery last year. Another factor that may be supportive – especially for EMs – is the slippage in the US dollar last year, as there is some evidence of a negative correlation between dollar strength and world trade.
• ? The recovery of demand in the Eurozone and expected fiscal stimulus in the US add to the positive constellation of factors supporting world trade growth. Business sentiment indicators remain positive and imply upside risks to our forecasts. Yet it is not obvious that they have a strong leading relationship with trade – and the statistical relationship has become weaker since 2007–2009. This reinforces our view that there has been a structural change in the relationship between world trade and world GDP.
• ? The main near‐term downside risks to world trade come from Asia. Freight indicators for Shanghai and Hong Kong have slowed markedly, as have semiconductor billings. Although Chinese activity indicators have also moderated, China's trade volume growth remains surprisingly strong.

     

Forecasting Australia’s economic performance during the Asian crisis

During the Asian economic crisis of 1997–98, published forecasts from a Bayesian vector autoregressive (BVAR) model consistently indicated that the crisis would have little or no effect on Australia’s economic performance, despite the deterioration in the trade balance. The worsening trade deficit led many other forecasters to predict a sharp fall in Australia’s GDP growth rate, as the countries most severely affected by the crisis represent over 60 percent of Australia’s export markets. This paper argues that the more pessimistic forecasts attached too much weight to the links between Australia’s external accounts and GDP growth. In particular, I show that forecasts for the period September 1997 to December 1998, conditional on the actual path of the merchandise trade balance, predict higher inflation and interest rates than unconditional forecasts from a model without the trade balance. There does, however, appear to be useful information in the individual components of the trade deficit. Conditioning on the actual paths of both exports and imports generally produces more accurate forecasts than conditioning on net exports. In particular, conditioning on the trade balance results in the least accurate forecasts for inflation and interest rates of any of the models considered here. On the other hand, conditioning on the individual trade flows produces the most accurate forecasts for inflation, and the second-most accurate for interest rates. Taken together, the results presented here lend support to the argument that Australia’s trade flows represent the outcomes of optimizing decisions, rather than defining constraints on economic growth.     

Keeping track of global trade in real time

This paper builds an innovative composite world trade-cycle index by means of a dynamic factor model for short-term forecasts of world trade growth of both goods and (usually neglected) services. Trade indicators are selected using a multidimensional approach, including Bayesian model averaging techniques, dynamic correlations, and Granger non-causality tests in a linear vector autoregression framework. To overcome real-time forecasting challenges, the dynamic factor model is extended to account for mixed frequencies, to deal with asynchronous data publication, and to include hard and survey data along with leading indicators. Nonlinearities are addressed with a Markov switching model. Pseudo-real-time empirical simulations suggest that: (i) the global trade index is a useful tool for tracking and forecasting world trade in real time; (ii) the model is able to infer global trade cycles very precisely and better than several competing alternatives; and (iii) global trade finance conditions seem to lead the trade cycle, a conclusion that is in line with the theoretical literature.