Do regional trade agreements increase trade? Empirical evidence from the Asia–Pacific region

This article examines the effects of regional trade agreements. The augmented gravity model of international trade is used to test for trade creation and diversion in the context of trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific region. The results of the estimated model indicate that trade has increased among the members of AFTA and APTA but not among the AANZFTA members. Differences in the levels of development appear to have a significant impact on trade flows, suggesting that there can be no general presumption about the extent of trade creation and trade diversion.     

Do Egocentric information networks influence technical efficiency of farmers? Empirical evidence from Ghana

Journal of Productivity Analysis - We investigate the impact of farmers’ egocentric information network on technical efficiency and its distribution in the network, using observational data...     

Adhere to the rules or be discretionary? Empirical evidence from the euro area

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - This paper constructs a framework for modelling the interaction between monetary and fiscal policies before and after the formation of the euro...     

Do universities knowledge spillovers impact on new firm’s growth? Empirical evidence from UK

The paper explores the effect of scientific institutions on firm’s growth, coupling regional science and entrepreneurship approaches. We focus on the role of universities, largely considered in the literature as the main source of knowledge spillovers. To this purpose, we centre our attention on UK public companies on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), a market dedicated to young and growing companies in both science and non-science based industries. In the paper we investigate the growth determinants of 231 listed firms which have gone public during the period going from 1995 to 2006. To our purposes, in the empirical analysis we use the Gibrat’s Law of Proportionate Effects model. The results supports the hypothesis that, controlling for firm’s idiosyncratic factors and external forces, both universities knowledge input and output are important determinants of the growth of entrepreneurial firms listed on the AIM.

Do major customers encourage innovative sustainable development? Empirical evidence from corporate green innovation in China

This paper examines the impact of customer concentration on green innovation in Chinese listed firms between 2006 and 2018 through the dynamic panel generalized method of moments regressions. It is reported that major customers positively impact corporate green innovation, indicating that firms have more incentives to engage in innovative green practices to maintain stable relationships with major customers. In addition, the positive relationship between customer concentration and green innovation is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises, firms located in the provinces with a high level of marketization, and after China's new Environmental Protection Law implementation. Moreover, we observe that the positive impact of customer concentration on corporate green innovation is more significant among industrial firms and firms operating in heavily polluting industries. Furthermore, industrial competition is an essential channel for major customers to affect corporate green innovation.     

Are small firms really credit constrained? Empirical evidence from Kosova

This article uses firm level data from an SME survey conducted by Riinvest Institute in 2006 in order to examine the determinants of obtaining bank finance conditional upon applying. The results of the survey show that not all the firms receive credit they apply for, suggesting a slight excess of demand over supply of credit. Unlike some other studies in transition economies this article corrects for sample selection bias. Econometric evidence indicates that commercial banks base their decision to loan firms primarily on the basis of collateral. Well performing firms are more likely to ask for credit because of better business prospects in the future, but profitability as a measure of firm performance does not seem to be sufficient signaling for banks in order to allocate credits. Banks seems to prefer more to secure themselves from likely opportunistic behavior of potentially “bad borrowers” with use of collateral. Findings are in line with theoretical and empirical arguments that systematic use of collateral can mitigate the adverse selection by banks in choosing whom to allocate the credit especially in country with turbulent political environment and weak property right system. However, unlike other studies findings suggest that the rhetoric of financial constraints to some extent has been exaggerated in a transition context.     

Does government ideology influence budget composition? Empirical evidence from OECD countries

This paper examines whether government ideology has influenced the allocation of public expenditures in OECD countries. I analyze two datasets that report different expenditure categories and cover the time periods 1970–1997 and 1990–2006, respectively. The results suggest that government ideology has had a rather weak influence on the composition of governments’ budgets. Leftist governments, however, increased spending on “Public Services” in the period 1970–1997 and on “Education” in the period 1990–2006. These findings imply, first, that government ideology hardly influenced budgetary affairs in the last decades, and thus, if ideology plays a role at all, it influences non-budgetary affairs. Second, education has become an important expenditure category for leftist parties to signal their political visions to voters belonging to all societal groups.     

Does weather impact the stock market? Empirical evidence in Taiwan

Psychological evidence suggests close relationships between weather and mood. Individuals feel in a more positive frame of mind on sunny than cloudy days. This study applies GJR–GARCH to examine the relationship among weather, stock returns and risk in Taiwan from 2001 to 2007. The empirical results indicate that precipitation does not significantly influence stock return and risk; likewise, sunshine hours and temperature insignificantly influence stock return, but do significant impact stock risk. These findings demonstrate that weather effect really exist in stock market, and can help investors in making innovative investment and management decisions.     

Are poultry farmers willing to insure their farms? Empirical evidence from Ghana

The inherent risks in poultry business require that farmers insure their farms to relief them when they occur. This paper investigated the willingness of poultry farmers to insure their farms, using probit model. Primary data were collected from 180 farmers in two regions of Ghana. The factors that are more likely to influence poultry farmers' decision to insure their farms are credit access, diversification of income, tying insurance to technology, subsidizing insurance premium, and designing insurance to suit risk. Poultry insurance should be designed to suit risk faced by farmers, subsidized by government, and bundled with credit for uptake.     

Do the Rich Stay Unemployed Longer? An Empirical Study for the UK

This paper investigates the impact of individual asset holdings on the probability of leaving unemployment. According to the theory, higher levels of financial wealth will result in higher reservation wages and longer unemployment durations. I estimate the impact of financial assets on the hazard rate, using data for Great Britain. The empirical findings indicate that individual asset holdings affect significantly the escape rate out of unemployment. In particular, negative (positive) levels of wealth increase (reduce) the hazard of leaving unemployment. The size of the impact is, however, rather small. Increasing by 100% the level of wealth of a representative individual, with net wealth and other individual characteristics equal to the sample mean, increases the duration of the unemployment spell by half a week.     

Advances in forecasting with neural networks? Empirical evidence from the NN3 competition on time series prediction

This paper reports the results of the NN3 competition, which is a replication of the M3 competition with an extension of the competition towards neural network (NN) and computational intelligence (CI) methods, in order to assess what progress has been made in the 10 years since the M3 competition. Two masked subsets of the M3 monthly industry data, containing 111 and 11 empirical time series respectively, were chosen, controlling for multiple data conditions of time series length (short/long), data patterns (seasonal/non-seasonal) and forecasting horizons (short/medium/long). The relative forecasting accuracy was assessed using the metrics from the M3, together with later extensions of scaled measures, and non-parametric statistical tests. The NN3 competition attracted 59 submissions from NN, CI and statistics, making it the largest CI competition on time series data. Its main findings include: (a) only one NN outperformed the damped trend using the sMAPE, but more contenders outperformed the AutomatANN of the M3; (b) ensembles of CI approaches performed very well, better than combinations of statistical methods; (c) a novel, complex statistical method outperformed all statistical and CI benchmarks; and (d) for the most difficult subset of short and seasonal series, a methodology employing echo state neural networks outperformed all others. The NN3 results highlight the ability of NN to handle complex data, including short and seasonal time series, beyond prior expectations, and thus identify multiple avenues for future research.     

Is there convergence amongst shadow economies? International evidence

This paper examines convergence among cross-country shadow economies. Using the Phillips-Sul (2007, 2009) club convergence approach and data for over 150 countries from 1991 to 2017, the results show evidence against absolute convergence for all shadow economies; however, we find evidence of multiple convergence clubs. In particular, we find evidence for seven distinct convergence clubs and six divergent shadow economies. Each club is characterised by an increasingly larger shadow economy with the countries in club 1 having the largest shadow economy and those in club 7 having the smallest shadow economy. Using a two-way fixed effects approach, we also find that the determinants of the shadow economy are somewhat conditional on the convergence club. The existence of multiple equilibria suggests that policy makers in their attempt to combat the shadow economy would benefit by considering the different transitional paths associated with the different convergence clubs.     

Does confidence enhance performance? Causal evidence from the field

We analyze the effect of self‐confidence on performance using data from top‐level professional biathlon competitions. We exploit this dual nature of the sport by using snow conditions affecting performance on the skiing track as exogenous variation in confidence on the shooting range. Using round‐level data on 254 competitions between 2009 and 2013, we show that the less confident athletes are, the worse their performance is on the shooting range. Effects for women are estimated to be generally smaller and less robust. We show that our results are not driven by fatigue or exhaustion specific to the competitive setting we analyze.     

Is the tax administration just a money machine? Empirical evidence on redistributive politics

Personal income tax represents the main source of tax revenue in any developed country. In this paper, we analyse how efficiently this tax is administered in the Spanish case. While we find that the managerial (or net) efficiency of the tax administration was very high for the period 1993–2002 (95.9%), our main aim here is to identify the determinants of this. Interestingly, political factors are found to play a role. Specifically, the fear of losing a parliamentary seat in a region forces the tax authorities to reduce their efficiency in ensuring tax compliance in that region (“swing voter model”). Additionally, in those electoral districts where the central government obtains higher electoral support the efforts to collect taxes diminish (“core voter model”). However, the former political effect tends to disappear when the central government holds a sufficient majority in the central parliament. Thus, we find empirical evidence on redistributive politics in tax administration.     

Do strategic factors affect adoption of profit sharing? Longitudinal evidence from Canada

Despite the growing interest in strategic human resource management and strategic compensation, the firm's strategic context has rarely been examined as a possible predictor of profit sharing adoption, especially in longitudinal research, nor have all three possible strategic alignments (internal, horizontal, and vertical) been included in the same study. Based on three panels of longitudinal data from Canadian establishments drawn from three consecutive time periods, this paper finds strong support for internal (within compensation strategy) alignment, as a high-wage compensation policy is a significant predictor of profit sharing adoption in all three time periods. At the same time, significant support for a diffusion or institutional perspective on profit sharing adoption is also noted. These findings highlight the importance of including both strategic factors (particularly those that may be associated with internal alignment) and institutional factors in studies seeking to understand profit sharing adoption.     

Does the establishment of the Ministry of Environmental Protection matter for addressing China’s pollution problems? Empirical evidence from listed companies

This paper uses an event study methodology to examine the stock price reactions of polluting companies traded on stock exchanges in mainland China to an exogenous environmental event, i.e., the establishment of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2008, which demonstrates the Chinese government’s ambition to enforce environmental protection rules more strictly. We find that, on average, these listed companies experienced a statistically and economically significant abnormal return (AR) of ??3.6% on the event date, indicating an anticipation that these companies would face a harsher regulatory environment as a result of the administrative reform. The market apparently placed great expectations on the administrative reform in regard to addressing China’s environmental pollution problems. In addition, we find that compared to their counterparts in the private sector, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) experienced a smaller price decline during the event window, which suggests that SOEs are more likely to enjoy favourable treatment from regulatory agencies. Our empirical evidence, therefore, shows that the selective enforcement of environmental law is a significant concern that tends to undermine the effects of such reforms.     

Are loyalty shares an effective antidote against short‐termism? Empirical evidence from Italy

Corporate short‐termism is arguably one of the main causes of economic, social, and environmental unsustainability. This paper studies the effectiveness of loyalty shares—shares granting extra dividends or voting rights to shareholders holding them for a specified period of time—in limiting short‐termism. Although there are arguments both supporting (antidote view) and opposing (poison view) loyalty shares' effectiveness, empirical evidence on the theme is scant. By employing earnings management as a proxy for corporate short‐termism and by relying on a hand‐collected database of Italian firms, we find that loyalty shares can serve as an effective antidote against short‐termism. This study contributes to academic literature on corporate governance and accounting and informs the debate among policymakers on loyalty shares' effectiveness.     

Is there an equilibrating relationship between house prices and replacement cost? Empirical evidence from Berlin

It is a feature of competitive markets with forward-looking participants that a good’s benefit and its production cost are equalized in equilibrium and that no resources are wasted during the adjustment process. For housing markets, there is mixed evidence whether they meet this standard of allocative efficiency. Based on a unique data set with rich information on prices and cost, we examine the market for single-family houses in Germany’s capital Berlin. At the aggregate market level, we find that prices and cost tend to equalize in the long run. Short-run adjustment appears to be sufficiently fast and properly anticipated to prevent systematic excess profit opportunities. At the cross sectional level of individual houses, we find support that resources are allocated efficiently between different market segments. Taken together, our results provide sufficient evidence that the market in Berlin is efficient.     

Why do firms cross-list? International evidence from the US market

Using a modified international asset-pricing model we find strong evidence that publicly quoted firms cross-list when exhibiting strong performance in their domestic market and wish to take advantage of this situation. After cross-listing, this advantage disappears. Our sample consists of daily data for 1165 firms from 47 countries that have cross-listed on the US equity markets over the period 1976–2007. Within the context of this model we provide tests of the validity of the main hypotheses of capital market segmentation and investor protection, which provide explanations for equity cross-listing and investigate whether the nature of the market (regulated or unregulated) and the accompanying legal framework (common or civil law) can account for the impact of cross-listing on returns. Supporting the segmentation hypothesis, we report a decrease in local market risk after cross-listing. However, we find that the magnitude of such a decrease is diminishing over time as international markets become more integrated. On the other hand, we do not find any change in the global market risk after cross-listing, except for firms that cross-listed between 2001 and 2007, where their exposure to international market risk decreases. Furthermore, we find no evidence to support the investor protection hypothesis.     

Do fiscal constraints prevent default? Historical evidence from U.S. municipalities

Through the nineteenth century numerous U.S. states developed extensive municipal fiscal constitutions. These generally came in the wake of financial crises and large-scale default of public debts. Although the constraints were imposed in order to minimize the likelihood that such outcomes would occur in the future, little work has been undertaken to analyze whether they were successful in achieving that goal. Therefore, this current study attempts to do so by empirically investigating how procedural safeguards and outright prohibitions on debt accumulation, along with hard budget constraints, and tax limits impacted the likelihood of default. This is done by evaluating municipal defaults that centered on the Panic of 1893. Overall, the results suggest that outright prohibitions on debt accumulation and hard budget constraints actually reduced the likelihood of municipal default across states, while tax limits and procedural safeguards increased that likelihood.