Industrial Real Estate Investment: Does the Contrarian Strategy Work?

The superiority of the contrarian investment strategy, though well attested to in the finance literature, has received scant attention, if any, in the real estate literature. This study uses empirical industrial real estate investment return data from 1985Q1 to 2005Q3 for the US, and some Asia Pacific cities in order to ascertain the relative superiority of “value” and “growth” industrial real estate investments. The results show that “value” industrial property investment outperformed “growth” industrial property investment in all the holding periods under consideration. Furthermore the industrial property investments exhibit return reversal. This implies that the superiority of the contrarian strategy is sustainable. The results of stochastic dominance tests validate the relative superiority of “value” over “growth” industrial property investment. This implies that fund managers who traditionally have been favoring prime (i.e. growth) industrial property investment may have to reconsider their investment strategy if they want to maximize their return.     

Development of human resource management in Vietnam: A semantic analysis

The present study offers a logical understanding of the development of human resource management (HRM) in Vietnam over the past 30 years. While previous studies have examined the adoption of HR practices, there remains a need to understand the current state of HRM development in Vietnam. Using a semantic analysis approach, we systematically analyzed the themes and concepts from 100 journal articles related to HRM in Vietnam, selected from academic databases between 1984 and 2013. The main study findings show that the development of HRM is associated with the key stages of economic development in Vietnam.     

Investor sentiment as conditioning information in asset pricing

This paper assesses whether incorporating investor sentiment as conditioning information in asset-pricing models helps capture the impacts of the size, value, liquidity and momentum effects on risk-adjusted returns of individual stocks. We use survey sentiment measures and a composite index as proxies for investor sentiment. In our conditional framework, the size effect becomes less important in the conditional CAPM and is no longer significant in all the other models examined. Furthermore, the conditional models often capture the value, liquidity and momentum effects.     

Time-consistent policies

In many cases the optimal open-loop policy to influence agents who solve dynamic problems is time inconsistent. We show how to construct a time-consistent open-loop policy rule. We also consider an additional restriction under which the time-consistent open-loop policy is stationary. We use examples to illustrate the properties of these tax rules.     

在全球化的脉络下探讨Nussbaum的世界主义和世界公民意识

全球化隐含着一个危机,就是经济强权、政治霸权、文化霸权可能会带来一个不公义的世界。当代著名法律学和伦理学家努斯鲍姆鼓吹世界主义,世界主义就是将对国家民族的忠诚,转移到对全人类。本文之目的是探讨:是否强调世界主义高于民族主义,就可以减轻因着全球化而产生的传统与现代、本土与外来的张力,此外亦探讨文化相对主义和普世价值之矛盾。     

Impacts of positive and negative corporate social responsibility activities on company performance in the hospitality industry

In spite of growing concern for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in various industries including the hospitality industry, the relationship between CSR activities and financial performance is a rarely examined subject in the hospitality context. Especially, research measuring the separate impacts of positive and negative CSR activities on companies’ financial performances remains, as yet, unconsidered. Thus, this study examines different impacts of positive and negative CSR activities on financial performance of hotel, casino, restaurant and airline companies, theoretically based on positivity and negativity effects. Findings suggest mixed results across different industries and will contribute to companies’ appropriate strategic decision-making for CSR activities by providing more precise information regarding the impacts of each directional CSR activity on financial performance.     

Spatial Dependence and Divergence across Chinese Cities

This paper analyzes the evolution of urban output per capita across Chinese cities in post‐reform era. Our results suggest no evidence of output convergence across cities from 1984 to 2003. We find that cities with comparable output per capita are likely to be located in the same region; furthermore, cities tend to mirror the mobility of their counterparts located in the same province, but not the same region. The divergence in urban output per capita across the nation will continue if the current economic growth pattern persists in the future.     

The dynamics of textile firm responses to the restriction of endocrine disrupting surfactants: a Vietnam case study

Abstract

Since textile industry has been claimed to endanger the environment and human health, the insight of textile firm behavior regarding chemical use and discharge is vital for designing environmental risk management strategies. This study aimed to explore the dynamics of responses to the restriction of nonylphenol (NP) and its ethoxylates (NPEOs) among the Vietnamese textile manufacturers from the perspectives of attitude and the perceptions of adaptabilities, risks, benefits, and barriers. The chemicals are used as surfactants and are known to be responsible for endocrine disrupting effects. In-depth interviews were conducted with technical specialists from four textile firms and one chemical supplier. Regulatory and market situations with regards to the chemicals were also assessed. The findings revealed varied responses to chemical elimination where perceived technical risk, financial risk, benefits, and barriers played different roles in driving a certain action. The attitude towards chemical restriction was shaped by the trade-off between perceptions of financial risk and benefits and was moderated by market strategy. Efforts, such as enhanced washing or reductions in the dose of NP/NPEOs, imply the potency of continuous discharge of these chemicals into the environment, suggesting critical investigations on NP/NPEOs removal to prioritize actions for balancing between economic growth and environmental protection. Poor access to new policies and technological and chemical innovations was the most important barrier among private firms, highlighting the roles of non-governmental textile and garment industrial/trade associations in enhancing their members’ informative capacity. The study reflects the significance of incorporation of firm behavior research into environmental risk management practice.     

Volume,volatility and information linkages in the stock and option markets

This paper examines the relationship between option trading activity and stock market volatility. Although the option market is uniquely suited for trading on volatility information, there is little analysis on how trading activity in this market is linked to stock price volatility. The bulk of the discussion tends to focus on whether trading activity in the stock market is informative about stock volatility. To analyze the information in option trading activity for stock market volatility, a sample of 15 stocks with the highest option trading volume is selected. For each stock, it is noted that the trading activities in the put and call option markets have significant explanatory power for stock market volatility. In addition, the results indicate that the call option trading activity has a stronger impact on stock volatility compared with that of the put options. Our results demonstrate that information and sentiment in the option market is useful for the estimation of stock market volatility. Also, the significance of the effects of option trading activity on stock price volatility is observed to be comparable to that of stock market trading activity. Furthermore, the persistence and asymmetric effects in the volatility of some stocks tend to disappear once option trading activity is taken into account.     

Foreign currency borrowing surrounding the global financial crisis: Evidence from Korea

We present a complete profile of firms’ foreign currency borrowing surrounding the 2007 global financial crisis. Employing extensive data from Korean firms during 2002–2012, we find that foreign currency borrowing is significantly related to firm attributes of export revenues, firm size, tangible assets and asset growth, as well as to macro-level factors. These results offer two important implications. First, macroeconomic factors alone cannot fully explain firms’ foreign currency borrowing. Second and more importantly, these firm attributes are indicative of a lower default probability and larger collateral value, which would not only facilitate borrowers’ access to foreign currency debt markets but also offer lenders a better protective cushion from possible loan defaults in the face of exchange rate changes and information asymmetry on borrowers’ credits. Period wise, asset-related firm attributes have more pronounced effects in the post- than pre-crisis period. We further show that banking regulations following the crisis effectively limit the access to foreign currency borrowing by Korean firms, most significantly by those belonging to large business groups.