Purchasing power parity in ASEAN-5 countries: revisit with cross-sectional dependence and structural breaks

This paper re-examines the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis for a panel of ASEAN-5 countries. The panel unit root and cointegration tests, which incorporate cross-sectional dependence and multiple structural breaks, are innovatively used for testing the PPP hypothesis. We could not find evidence that supports the existence of a long-run equilibrium between the relative price ratio and the nominal exchange rate for the whole period. Nevertheless, there is evidence of a cointegrating relationship for the post-crisis period. Our finding implies that a flexible exchange rate regime is suitable for the individual ASEAN countries.     

Reducing the distance: financial services education in web-extended learning environments

It is estimated that financial services comprise around 15% of the global economy. From the supply side, one key to meeting this demand is being able to educate and certify the people who provide these services. With the advent of the internet and related technologies, the ability to deliver financial services education synchronously to both online and on-campus attendees has become a viable alternative to pure face-to-face or pure online asynchronous education. Nonetheless, one question remains: can virtual technology deliver comparable quality of financial services educational experience as face-to-face teaching? It is this question our paper addresses using the theory of transactional distance. The theory of transactional distance postulates that for optimal learning, the cognitive gap between instructor(s) and learner(s) needs to be minimized. We explore how transactional distance in financial services education varies by attendance modality (in-class, online and mixed) in a synchronous, web-extended classroom. The implications for managers and researchers are explored.     

Mapping Ethics Education in Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Journal of Business Ethics - The attention being paid to ethics education in accounting has been increasing, especially after the corporate accounting scandals at the turn of the century. This...     

The variable effects of dynamic capability by firm size: the interaction of innovation and marketing capabilities in competitive industries

Although investments in marketing and innovation capabilities theoretically help firms to compete in dynamic markets and enhance performance, company size has a strong influence on whether this is the case. In a test of a proposed conceptual model, this study of 692 small, medium, and large enterprises found that large firms prospered from building dynamic capabilities under conditions of high industry competitiveness, while investments in innovation and marketing individually diminished small firms’ performance. The effect was mixed for medium-size firms. In small enterprises, however, dynamic capability proved to be crucial in order to withstand competition. Therefore, taking into account these firms’ limited resources, managerial efforts should be focused on the integration of marketing and innovation capabilities, because each capability alone does not have a significant positive impact on performance. In medium-sized enterprises, the support of marketing capability is required to raise profitability under conditions of high industry competitiveness; otherwise, innovation would not lead to actual profits. For large enterprises, industry competitiveness was found to be a less serious threat to performance, and instead is a catalyst to the development of capabilities, suggesting that managers of such firms should focus on building long-term strategic advantages.     

THE EFFECT OF TECHNOLOGICAL IMPROVEMENT ON CAPACITY EXPANSION FOR UNCERTAIN EXPONENTIAL DEMAND WITH LEAD TIMES

We formulate a model of capacity expansion that is relevant to a service provider for whom the cost of capacity shortages would be considerable but difficult to quantify exactly. Due to demand uncertainty and a lead time for adding capacity, not all shortages are avoidable. In addition, technological innovations will reduce the cost of adding capacity but may not be completely predictable. Analytical expressions for the infinite horizon expansion cost and shortages are optimized numerically. Sensitivity analyses allow us to determine the impact of technological change on the optimal timing and sizes of capacity expansions to account for economies of scale, the time value of money and penalties for insufficient capacity.     

The Coase Theorem Revisited: Implications for Economic Transition

This paper supports the view expressed by other authors that Ronald Coase’s ideas are often misrepresented in the academic world. It restates some of Coase’s main findings with special emphasis on their relevance to processes taking place in Eastern Europe. The goal of this paper is to revisit Coasean theory, to prove that oftentimes it is misrepresented and misinterpreted and to show its relevance to some societies experiencing high transaction costs. The role of the legal system under high transaction costs is stressed in its importance to transitional economies experiencing staggeringly high transaction costs. This paper tries to shed light on the importance of transaction costs in the newly emerging markets and the respective role courts and the government should play in directing economic resources.

Estimating Trade Misinvoicing from Bilateral Trade Statistics: The Devil is in the Details

Trade misinvoicing, an important channel of illicit financial flows, is frequently estimated by the partner-country trade data comparison method. However, this method relies on a critical but incorrect assumption that the trade statistics in partner countries exhibit no misinvoicing. This study proves that the assumption of no misinvoicing in partner countries cannot be supported, raising serious doubts about the reliability of the method and a possibility that inappropriate policy decisions may be made based on the erroneous estimates of trade misinvoicing. We introduce an alternative method to estimate trade misinvoicing which does not rely on the trade statistics of partner countries.     

A stakeholder analysis of employee disclosures in annual reports

Little empirical research has identified what drives companies to voluntarily report employee‐related information. Ullmann's three‐dimensional stakeholder theory model is applied as a framework to analyse associations with corporate employee‐related disclosures. Measures are developed to estimate stakeholder power, strategic posture and economic performance associated with employee‐related disclosures. Results indicate that employee‐related disclosures increase with more employee share ownership, employee concentration, the quality of corporate governance, employee recognition in corporate mission statements, adverse publicity about employees and economic performance measured by profit per employee.