Measuring intellectual capital and its effect on financial performance: Evidence from the capital market in Taiwan

This paper studies intellectual capital in companies in Taiwan, China. Intellectual capital is an invisible, yet important resource for companies. The first aim of this paper is to provide a systematic investigation on how to measure intellectual capital. Results show that the coefficient of value-added intellectual capital is positively related to return on assets and market capitalization in both fix and random effects. Similar results are also obtained with dynamic panel data. Furthermore, innovation variables such as research and development expenditure are more accurate than structural capital in measuring intellectual capital. The author thus suggests that companies need to keep a close track of their intellectual capital and focus on internal information delivery to gain competitive advantage.     

Contextual effects on the objectives that financial institutions pursue through range pruning: Evidence from the UK

The paper set out to explore (a) the extent to which alternative objectives (identified previously through qualitative research) guide financial institutions’ decisions to prune their range and (b) if the above extent varies in relation to a set of company and environmental factors. Data were collected by means of a mail survey to a stratified random sample of 112 UK financial institutions. The findings are summarized under two headings. First, the objective namely to improve financial indicators achieved the highest rating, followed by the objectives namely to keep the range to an up-to-date condition and to concentrate resources on corporate effectiveness. Second, the extent to which the different objectives guide financial institutions’ range pruning decisions is contingent on organizational idiosyncrasies and on conditions of the external environment. The paper discusses practical and research implications and highlights fruitful directions for future inquiry.     

中国上市公司年报重述影响因素的实证研究

文章以2003-2006年5000多家上市公司为样本,较为系统地剖析了中国上市公司年报重述的影响因素.实证结果表明,公司特征、股权结构和外部治理环境是目前影响我国上市公司年报重述的主要因素,而内部治理结构对年报重述的约束和影响力较小.进一步地,文章构建了一个财务报告重述、信息披露与投资者保护的扩展分析框架,对加强财务报告重述监管、引导和规范上市公司信息披露行为提出了相应的政策建议.     

Socially responsible investment: insights from Shari'a departments in Islamic financial institutions

Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) are emerging as prominent players in the financial world and are increasingly known for their conservative socially responsible investment (SRI). Being the Shari'a regulators and monitors of IFIs, the Shari'a departments are expected to implement the Islamic perspective of SRI – drawn from Shari'a principles – in their respective institutions. The purpose of this paper is to develop an SRI framework applicable to IFIs and other Shari'a compliant entities and assess its applicability within Shari'a departments of two Islamic banks. This paper involves cross‐case analysis based on interviews with Shari'a department officials in two settings differentiated by their respective independence. The proposed framework consists of required, expected and desired SRI aspects as applicable to IFIs. The findings reveal that the required aspects are uniformly observed by the two cases. There are, however, variations when it comes to observing the expected and desired ethical SRI aspects that may be driven by the independence of the Shari'a boards. This inconsistency and non‐adherence of expected and desired aspects may lead to reputational risks in the long run.     

Determinants of Performance in Microenterprises: Preliminary Evidence from Argentina

This paper proposes a theoretical multilevel framework that studies the determinants of microenterprises' performance. Using a unique data set of nearly 300 microenterprises located in Argentina, we find that human capital (proxied by educational level and degree of dedication), innovation, and intensity of use of own capital are important determinants of the microenterprise's performance. Moreover, we found that public policies give support primarily to microenterprises arising from unemployment. Additionally, these firms were found to be relatively less successful in terms of their performance, suggesting a pro‐poor bias. Finally, we provide a taxonomy of microenterprises which distinguishes four different microentrepreneurial profiles.     

Determinants of financial worry

Grounded in the transactional stress-coping theory and the Tallis and Eysenck (1994) model of nonpathological worry, the present study sought to advance the conceptual and empirical understanding of financial worry (FW). We positioned objective financial stressors (OFS), subjective financial stressors (SFS), and coping resources as key variables in understanding the determinants of financial worry (FW). The cross-sectional data consisted of responses from a representative sample of 19,385 adults, aged 18 and older, drawn from a large U.S. survey. Hierarchical linear regression results revealed that OFS, SFS, household income, and financial capability (FC) are all key determinants of FW. Furthermore, the results revealed adverse effects of OFS and SFS on FW. These effects were moderated by household income, FC, age, and gender. Implications for future research, employers, practitioners, and policymakers are discussed.     

Migration and institutions: Evidence from internal EU mobility

Despite the formal achievement of the free movement of labour within the EU , the institutional characteristics of the labour markets of the Member States may influence European mobility. The paper seeks empirical evidence of the relationship between labour market institutions and intra‐EU migrations, estimating a gravity model for bilateral migration for the period 2001–11. The results indicate that trade union density negatively correlates with the size of bilateral migrations: destinations with relatively high union density are associated with lower migration inflows. Since these countries tend to have a relatively flat earnings distribution, it is also investigated whether their earnings structure reduces their attractiveness as destinations hindering the access to their labour market. Even if a dependence between the earnings dispersion and migrations is found, trade union density remains the main driver of migration patterns. Clear effects of employment protection on EU mobility are not found.     

Measuring households' financial vulnerabilities from consumer debt: Evidence from Chile

This paper is concerned with measuring the financial vulnerability (FV) of households arising from consumer debt. Our case of application is Chile. Our main finding is that by applying a methodology that allows for households' heterogeneities and that accounts for contextual factors (like motives for asking for debt, exposure to shocks, family structure, holdings of assets and perspectives of future income), we better quantify the risks that financially vulnerable households may entail to the financial system.     

Determinants of price flexibility in oligopolistic markets: Evidence from austrian manufacturing

In this paper, we examine the impact of market structure (concentration) on three different characteristics of industrial pricing behavior: 1) the sensitivity of prices to cost and demand changes, 2) the speed of price adjustment, and 3) the asymmetry of price behavior. We find the relationship between concentration and the sensitivity of prices to cost changes to be the most robust one. Cost changes are less fully transmitted into prices in highly concentrated industries. Overall, differences in the pricing behavior across industries can be “explained” fairly well with industry differences in concentration, capital intensity, inventoriability, and the length of the production period.     

Firm-Level Determinants of Political CSR in Emerging Economies: Evidence from India

Multinational companies (MNCs) frequently adopt corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities that are aimed at providing ‘public goods’ and influencing the government in policymaking. Such political CSR (PCSR) activities have been determined to increase MNCs’ socio-political legitimacy and to be useful in building relationships with the state and other key external stakeholders. Although research on MNCs’ PCSR within the context of emerging economies is gaining momentum, only a limited number of studies have examined the firm-level variables that affect the extent to which MNCs’ subsidiaries in emerging economies pursue PCSR. Using insights from resource dependence theory, institutional theory, and the social capital literature, we argue that MNCs’ subsidiaries that are critically dependent on local resources, have greater ties to managers of related businesses and to policymakers, and that those that are interdependent on the MNCs’ headquarters and other foreign subsidiaries, are more likely to be involved in PCSR. We obtain support for our hypotheses using a sample of 105 subsidiaries of foreign firms that operate in India. Our findings enhance our understanding of the factors that determine MNCs’ political CSR in emerging economies.     

Bank Competition and its Determinants: Evidence from Indian Banking

Abstract

This paper measures the degree of bank competition in India using a sample of 70 commercial banks over the period 1996–2016. To assess the degree of competition, we estimate the market power of each bank in our sample employing three nonstructural measures: the Lerner index, the adjusted Lerner index, and the Boone indicator. Bank-wise and year-wise estimates of the marginal cost required in all these measures are obtained using the semi-parametric method. The paper further attempts to undertake a comprehensive assessment of competition in Indian banking and identifies various bank-specific, macroeconomic, structural, and contestability indicators, which are supposed to explain level and variation of the degree of competition over time. Empirical findings reveal that public-sector banks in India exercise a relatively higher degree of bank competition compared to private and foreign-sector banks. However, aggregate results support that the Indian banking system is competitive in general. Unlike the structure-conduct-performance paradigm, which advocates that a concentrated banking system impairs competitiveness, our findings reveal that concentration measures hardly exert any effect on bank competition. Rather, contestability measures play a significant role in the determination of bank competition.     

Determinants of ex-customer winback in financial services

Financial services play important roles in consumers' lives, and switching providers is a relatively onerous task, but customers often terminate their relationships with a provider. How can a provider best regain lost customers, and what are the determinants of ex-customer winback? Using data from a financial services provider, this research examines 11 factors occurring before, during and after a termination, to study their influence on consumers' propensity to revive a relationship with a previously abandoned service provider. The results indicate that income and variety-seeking preferences are negatively correlated with a customer's likelihood of considering the former brand in the future. Positive associations and evaluations of the former brand are positively correlated with the winback potential. The results can guide managers of financial service providers as to the most significant factors to be analysed in estimating the chances of winning back a lost customer.     

Foreign bank lending: Evidence from the global financial crisis

We exploit highly disaggregated bank-firm data to investigate the dynamics of foreign vs domestic credit supply in Italy around the period of the Lehman collapse, which brought a sudden and unexpected deterioration of economic conditions and a sharp increase in credit risk. Taking advantage of the presence of multiple lending relationships to control for credit demand and risk at the individual-firm level, we show that foreign lenders restricted credit supply (to the same firm) more sharply than their domestic counterparts. A number of exercises testing alternative explanations for this result suggest that such more intense restriction also reflects the (functional) distance between a foreign bank's headquarter and the Italian credit market.     

Preconditions for Product Re-innovation in Taiwan: Evidence from High-Technology Firms

The phenomenon of product re-innovation has often characterized Taiwanese high-technology firms over the last decade. However, the literature reflects surprisingly little effort to understand their preconditions. Based on extant knowledge and 68 field interviews with managers in diverse departments and firms of high-technology industries in Taiwan in mid-2006, the authors provide a foundation for future research by developing research propositions that relate to preconditions for product re-innovation. Managerial and research implications are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.     

Determinants of New Firm Formation in Taiwan

The main objective of this paper is to explore the factors influencing new firm formation in Taiwan. The paper makes use of both cross-sectional and time-series data for the period 1986–2001, using the fixed effect model to try to determine the factors affecting new firm formation. The impacts of industry health, production costs, capital cost, number of employed persons, the unemployment rate, and the economic growth rate are found to be more or less as anticipated. However, only production costs, capital cost, and the unemployment rate are significant with confidence levels of 95% and 90%, respectively. The results also suggest that Taiwan currently is located at the unemployment borderline proposed by Hamilton, and thus a recession-push is already operating, while a prosperity-pull is starting to make itself felt.     

The role of corporate governance in FDI decisions: Evidence from Taiwan

There has been a considerable literature on the determinants of why firms undertake foreign direct investment (FDI), but very little on whether firms with different governance characteristics are more or less likely to venture overseas. For example, are family-controlled firms more predisposed to FDI than firms, with similar attributes, but different forms of ownership? Does the presence of institutional shareholders suggest a greater propensity to invest abroad? Does the composition of the Board of Directors have an impact? Most extant studies of corporate governance focus on the impact of governance factors on firm performance. However, these performance outcomes are a function of the strategic decisions made by the firms, which suggests it might be useful to consider the relationship between corporate governance factors and particular strategic decisions. One example is the decision to undertake foreign direct investment. The two main strands of IB literature on the determinants of FDI have little or nothing to say about how corporate governance factors might affect the FDI decision. Both internalisation theory and the resource-based view see FDI primarily as a means by which firms can appropriate rents in overseas markets from the exploitation of their idiosyncratic resources and capabilities. This paper extends this literature by investigating the effects of governance factors on the decision to undertake FDI. In particular, we want to assess the impact upon the FDI decision of (a) the extent of family control, (b) the presence of domestic and foreign institutional shareholders, and (c) the composition of the Board of Directors. We investigate these effects using a sample of 228 publicly listed firms in Taiwan, and our results clearly indicate that family control and share ownership by domestic financial institutions in Taiwanese firms are associated with the decision to undertake FDI. We also find that corporate governance impacts in different ways with regard to Taiwanese FDI in China in comparison to Taiwanese FDI in the rest of the world.     

Determinants of Benefits in the Retail Payments Market: Evidence from Russian Consumers

Abstract

This study identifies the determinants of consumer benefits values in the retail payments market. Using a mix of quantitative (nation-wide representative survey of 1500 individuals) and qualitative inputs (8 focus groups and 32 in-depth interviews), this study finds robust evidence which supports the importance of internal and external user characteristics for the benefits value explanation. Other factors exhibit partial or no correlation with benefits values. Total welfare is efficiently distributed across the market. Findings imply new factors affecting consumer behavior in the retail payments market and suggest a basis for the reassessment of marketing and regulatory strategies.     

Privatisation: politics,institutions, and financial markets

This paper presents evidence on privatisation processes in 49 countries for the period 1977–1996. The empirical analysis shows that the decision to privatise and the choice of privatisation method appear to be influenced by the governing political majority and public-sector budget constraints, while the success of privatisation in terms of revenues and stakes sold requires suitable legal institutions and developed capital markets.     

Technological change and economies of scale in Canadian financial institutions: A selection from competing hypotheses

This study isolates economies of scale from technological change in Canadian financial institutions. By employing the most general translog cost function and by using a sequential Akaike's information criterion test, we select the most appropriate model from 127 possible hypotheses. The results suggest that there exist increasing returns to scale and that technological change is not Hicks-neutral. In fact, technological change has resulted in greater relative expenditures on physical capital. These results suggest that further integration, centralization, and sharing of technology would be benificial in the Canadian financial industry.