Aid,trade and migration: How do bilateral flows interact?

This paper takes as its point of departure the European Commission's position, set out in 2005, which laid clear emphasis on aid and trade as tools for controlling immigration. We attempt to subject this position to empirical investigation. We exploit data on bilateral aid, trade and migration flows between developed and developing countries, for the period 2000–10, adopting an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity issue due to potential simultaneity bias. Our results establish that increasing aid and trade with developing countries is likely to fail to contain immigration, at least in the short run. The pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that promoting development in migrant‐sending countries, or cooperating with such countries to control migration outflows, is not sufficient to lessen immigration. Increasing visa restrictions and controls at borders is generally controversial; still, the results imply that policymakers cannot attain their short‐term immigration goals with the so‐called smart solutions of aid and trade.     

Morality or economic interest? The impact of moral motives and economic factors on the purchase of fair trade groceries

In this article, we compare the impact of moral motives and economic factors on the purchase of fair trade groceries. Moral motives are measured by three different constructs, which are derived from different theoretical perspectives: one from the classical theory of attitude, one from the subjectively expected utility theory and one from the norm‐activation model. The empirical results of the analysis show that moral motives as well as economic factors are important determinants for explaining the purchase of fair trade groceries. Furthermore, the study indicates that the impact of moral motives is greater than that of economic factors, and among the moral factors, the personal norm is especially explanatorily powerful.     

Cultural distance or cultural positions? Analysing the effect of culture on the HQ–subsidiary relationship

We develop a model of cultural positions in relationships that should be considered in addition to the more conventional cultural distance. We empirically analyse relationships between headquarters and foreign subsidiaries in multinational corporations and how high or low acceptance of power differences at both sides of the relationship is associated with headquarters influence on subsidiary competence development. ANCOVA analyses of 1529 subsidiaries in six European countries, headquartered in 28 countries, provide new insights. We find that relationships with low cultural distance, differ significantly in terms of headquarters influence depending on whether headquarters and subsidiaries agree on accepting or rejecting power differences. Similarly, relationships with high cultural distance differ depending on whether it is headquarters or the subsidiary that is from a high-power-distance culture: we find that headquarters influence is particularly dependent on great acceptance of power differences by the subsidiary.     

The effect of domestic and foreign trade coordination on technological innovation: complements or substitutes?

Based on the theory of technology spillover in international trade, this paper discusses the technological innovation effect of trade by taking the influence of domestic trade into account. Under the constraint of the production possibility frontier, there is either complementarity or substitutability between domestic and foreign trade. It must be decided whether resources should be concentrated in one of the sectors (trade specialization) or instead allocated equally (trade equalization) between the two sectors. This paper firstly discusses how domestic trade and foreign trade work together to influence technological innovation, and how trade equalization and specialization affect different types of innovation. Using a provincial-level panel dataset from 2007 to 2015 in China, this paper constructs the indicators of domestic and foreign trade linkage and examines the impact of trade on innovation. The findings show that trade equalization mainly promotes incremental innovation, while trade specialization improves radical innovation. Thus, in the area of incremental innovation, attention should be paid to the equalized development of domestic and foreign trade, while in areas pursuing radical innovation, emphasis should be put on the specialization of the trade sector, avoiding equal allocation of resources to the two sectors.     

South Korea’s outward direct investment and its dyadic determinants: Foreign aid,bilateral treaty and economic diplomacy

This study investigates the factors that affect South Korean outward foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries. Most previous studies focus on monadic factors and do not consider how and to what extent bilateral relationships between South Korea and the host countries affect the investment decisions of Korean firms. The current study finds that interstate factors such as South Korea's international investment treaties with and official development assistance to host countries have positive effects on FDI to these countries, while presidential visits have strong and statistically significant effects on FDI only in countries located in non-Asian regions, especially the African continent. The findings suggest that the effects of bilateral relations on South Korea's FDI vary depending on the geographic location of the host country.     

Board of directors and export spillovers: What is the impact on extensive margins of trade?

Increased export experience on the board of nonexporting firms has a causal effect on their propensity to enter foreign markets in later periods. Using a universal set of Swedish employer–employee panel data for the period 2000–14, this paper finds evidence on spillover from exporters to non-exporting SMEs through outside board directors. The identification strategy to account for endogenous selection of external board members relies on external instruments and applications of different instrumental variable approaches, capturing also unobserved heterogeneity. Our findings are robust to controlling for export background among managers and employees, as well as firm size, human capital, total factor productivity, productivity spillovers, firm location and industry classification.     

Exchange-rate sensitivity of commodity trade flows: Does the choice of reporting country affect the empirical estimates?

While the effects of currency fluctuations on trade have long been of interest to economic researchers, the most recent trend in the literature is to estimate commodity trade flows between pairs of countries. This raises an important question: Does it matter which country reports the data? This study investigates 96 industries that are reported both as exports by the United States and as imports by South Korea. Since export data are FOB and import data are CIF, the Korean imports are expectedly larger than the US exports. Correspondingly, our cointegration analysis produces drastically different results between specifications. Nonparametric analysis shows that the Korean imports are more sensitive to real exchange-rate fluctuations than US exports, signifying the importance of cost of insurance and freight, as well as the data's conversion into dollars.     

Impact of trade openness on GDP growth: Does TFP matter?

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study is to empirically explore the impact of trade openness on GDP growth initiating with the idea that trade openness cannot be fully characterized through the different openness measures only, we propose to account for total factor productivity (TFP) development level as an additional dimension of countries’ trade integration. Our empirical application is based on 35 years’ balanced panel of 82 countries spanning 1980–2014. To address the potential endogeneity issue, we use the system GMM estimator developed for dynamic panel data models. The results outline that there exists an interesting non-linear pattern between trade openness and GDP growth when TFP development level is taken as an intervening variable into account: trade may have a negative impact on GDP growth when countries have specialized in low-TFP development level; trade openness clearly boosts GDP growth once countries exhibit a minimum threshold of TFP development level. Therefore, there is some pattern of complementarity between trade openness and TFP development level so that the higher the TFP development level, the higher the impact of the trade openness on GDP growth.     

Better or Worse? Effects of online promotion habits on customer value: An empirical study

Online frequent and uninterrupted price discounts easily cause customers to form general tendencies to purchase promotions, or ‘online promotion habits’. Compared with offline promotion shopping, the distinct features of online promotion shopping make customer behaviours highly changeable and leave the effects of online promotion habits on customer value a puzzle. Using a dataset of real transactions from a leading online apparel retailer in China, this study makes continuous observations of customers’ online promotion habits. Drawing on the behavioural learning theory, we empirically investigate the dynamic effects of online promotion habits on customer value. The results reveal that after customers form online promotion habits, their customer value increases significantly. Furthermore, among customers with online promotion habits, online promotion habits exert an inverted U-shaped effect on customer value. Namely, as online promotion habits strengthen, customer value increases accordingly, yet negative outcomes show if online promotion habits exceed a certain level. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings, which will enable researchers and practitioners to measure and dynamically manage customers’ online promotion habits.     

Dynamics of FII flows and stock market returns in a major developing country: How does economic uncertainty matter?

We apply the wavelet coherency and phase difference methodology to explore the nature of the relationship and the direction of causality between foreign institutional investment (FII) flows and stock market returns across time and frequency domain for the fast-growing Indian economy. Since both variables are affected by economic uncertainty, we have estimated the partial wavelet coherency and the phase difference to discern the impact of economic uncertainty on the dynamic relationship and causality between those variables. Both the FII flows and the stock market return move together during the periods of the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis without any causality in the short run, but the stock market leads the FII inflows in the long run. However, in the bull market the stock market Granger causes the FII inflows both in the short run and in the long run. Nonetheless, economic uncertainty drives the co-movement and also masks the causality effect between those two variables. Thus, the results require policymakers to set out a transparent economic environment to reap the benefits of FII flows. As far as the FII outflows are concerned, profit booking and economic uncertainty drive the relationship and the causality in the short run. Hence, policymakers and portfolio managers should be concerned about FII outflows in the long run, while in the short run, it is a normal trading activity.     

Mad as Hell or Scared Stiff? The Effects of Value Conflict and Emotions on Potential Whistle-Blowers

Existing whistle-blowing models rely on “cold” economic calculations and cost-benefit analyses to explain the judgments and actions of potential whistle-blowers. I argue that “hot” cognitions – value conflict and emotions – should be added to these models. I propose a model of the whistle-blowing decision process that highlights the reciprocal influence of “hot” and “cold” cognitions and advocate research that explores how value conflict and emotions inform reporting decisions. I draw on the cognitive appraisal approach to emotions and on the social-functional value pluralism model to generate propositions.     

Meaning or Sound? The Effects of Brand Name Fluency on Brand Recall and Willingness to Buy

This research argues that both meaning fluency (conceptual fluency) and sound fluency (perceptual fluency) of a brand name affect brand evaluations. Specifically, this research investigates the effects of brand name meaning and sound fluency through an application of information processing fluency theory. The results provide insight into previously unexplained findings in the brand management literature. Two experiments demonstrate that perceptually more fluent brand names lead to higher brand recall, for perceptually less fluent brands names, high conceptual fluency leads to higher brand recall and in cases of low consumer involvement, high perceptual fluency leads to higher willingness to buy.     

Commentary on: “Toward a theory of agency and altruism in family firms”

Agency theory would predict a low incidence of agency costs within family firms because of the fusion of ownership and control. The concept of altruism challenges this oversimplification. However, the interesting findings by Schulze et al. rely upon two assumptions that should be examined in future research.     

Competition and political organization: Together or alone in lobbying for trade policy?

This paper employs a novel data set on lobbying expenditures to measure the degree of within-sector political organization and to explore the determinants of the mode of lobbying and political organization across U.S. industries. The data show that sectors characterized by a higher degree of competition tend to lobby more together (through a sector-wide trade association), while sectors with higher concentration and more differentiated products lobby more individually. The paper proposes a theoretical model to interpret the empirical evidence. In an oligopolistic market, firms can benefit from an increase in their product-specific protection measure, if they can raise prices and profits. They find it less profitable to do so in a competitive market where attempts to raise prices are more likely to reduce profits. In competitive markets firms are therefore more likely to lobby together, thereby simultaneously raising tariffs on all products in the sector.     

Yen or Yuan? The law of one price and economic integration in Asia

Using highly comparable local retail prices of 146 goods and services across 18 Asian countries over 1990–2014, we analyse price dispersion and test convergence to the law of one price (LOP ) for these prices around three price benchmarks—Asia‐average, Japan and China prices—to gain insight about market integration in overall Asia as well relative integration of Asian economies to Japan and China. Cross‐Asia price dispersion around China‐price benchmark, for both tradables and non‐tradables, diminishes significantly over the sample period whereas that around Japan‐price benchmark increases considerably, particularly after the 2008 crisis. There is convergence to the LOP for about half of goods and services in China‐ and Asia‐average price benchmarks. The percentage of convergent prices is significantly smaller in Japan‐price benchmark. Direct estimates of the convergence speed parameter also confirm these observations. Overall, our results show evidence of increasing economic integration in Asia in the last two decades. The process of price convergence appears to be driven by the emergence of China as the centre of economic gravity in the region. There is much room for improvement as economic integration in Asia is still far below that in Europe in the 1990s or USA in the 1980s.     

Good or bad? The influence of FDI on productivity growth. An industry-level analysis

This paper attempts to reconcile the often inconclusive evidence on the role of FDI in the process of economic development by taking into account the heterogeneity both among industries and among countries. Using a comparable database at the industry level for 35 countries in the OECD, Asia and Eastern Europe from 1987 to 2002, we test for the influence of both stage of development and sectoral FDI patterns in the relationship between FDI and productivity growth. In certain industries and for the catching-up countries, a significant and positive relationship emerges when FDI coincides with high investment or export orientation.     

Effect of financial development on international trade in Africa: Does measure of finance matter?

Although improving international trade on the back of financial sector development is one of the preoccupations of countries in Africa, empirical literature on financial development-trade nexus has not been rigorous in examining how finance shapes trade. In this study, we examine the effect of financial development on international trade in Africa relying on data for 46 countries over the period 1980–2015. Results from our system generalized method of moments reveal differential effects of finance on trade. In particular, we notice that, private credit does not promote trade while domestic credit positively affects trade. These effects are robust to measures of trade. Thus, improving the level of private (domestic) credit dampens (amplifies) exports and trade openness. However, we also find a U-shaped relationship between private credit and trade measures suggesting that financial sector development may be detrimental (helpful) to trade for economies with low (high) level of private credit.     

Effects of Advice on Auditor Whistleblowing Propensity: Do Advice Source and Advisor Reassurance Matter?

Journal of Business Ethics - We conduct an experiment to investigate the joint effects of advisor reassurance and advice source in enhancing the impact of advice on auditors’ whistleblowing...     

Twenty-five years of research on institutions,entrepreneurship, and economic growth: what has been learned?

Small Business Economics - This paper analyzes an emergent stream of research shedding light on the institutional factors shaping entrepreneurial activity and its effect on economic growth. This...