The Demand for Atlantic Salmon in Canada: Reply

In their comment on our paper, Bing-Hwan Lin and Nancy Williams have raised some interesting issues, but some of them are peripheral to the objective of our original study. The central objective of our original paper is to estimate income and price elasticities of demand for Atlantic salmon in Canada and then to use the parameter values to evaluate the market potential of farmed Atlantic salmon which are now being produced in Atlantic Canada. Accordingly, a demand equation has been estimated using annual data for the period 1955–1981. The inverted form has given a good fit and the results are reported in the paper.     

Technology Gap and Managerial Efficiency: A Comparison between Islamic and Conventional Banks in MENA

Journal of Productivity Analysis - In this paper, we compare the technology gap and managerial efficiency between Islamic banks and conventional banks in 15 MENA countries. Using unbalanced panel...     

Did the regulatory changes of 1999 and 2001 affect income smoothing behavior of US banks?

This study examines the impact of the regulatory changes introduced by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) in 1999 and by the Securities and Exchange Commission and FFIEC in 2001 on the income smoothing approaches and mechanisms employed by the United States (US) banking industry. We find that the relationship between previous quarter charge-offs and current quarter recoveries that was prevalent in the 1990’s to be insignificant for homogeneous loans but for heterogeneous loans the relationship became significant in the years following the regulatory changes. Recoveries are positively and significantly associated with the surprise net interest margin or return on assets which implies recoveries are primarily determined by the economic realities of the charged-off loans. The regulatory changes have strengthened the relationship between current quarter recoveries from heterogeneous loans and current quarter charge-offs but for homogeneous loans this relationship weakened insignificantly. The new regulations reduced the surprise gross loan charge-offs suggesting that the enforcement improved the accuracy of the provision as a predictor of next quarter’s gross loan charge-offs.

     

Factors influencing individual in adopting eWallet

This research examines individuals’ feasibility of adopting digital wallet also known as ‘eWallet.’ It aims at assessing the technological readiness among customers especially youth by measuring the acceptance level of digital wallet adoption in a massive implementation of the digital economy. Adoption of eWallet can potentially enhance the efficiency of financial institutions and the provision of new services for the convenience of the customers. The nature of this study was developed in the context of South East Asia focusing on Brunei Darussalam. The study using a framework for assessment based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model revealed that the main construct of the model to be predictors of behavioral intention, was attitude towards using technology and anxiety. These results might be as a result of the millennial generation being in constant interaction with various types of technology, paired with the rising Internet connectivity leading to the minimal impact of the digital wallet adoption.

     

Measuring consumer understanding and perception of eco‐labelling: Item selection and scale validation

The use of “eco‐labels” by businesses, both as communication and positioning strategies, is increasing. For these eco‐labels to be effective, however, it requires consumers to understand and value what eco‐labels are communicating. Research suggests that there are many factors impeding consumers’ understanding of eco‐labels . Most of these studies have focused on single dimensions of a complex phenomenon and in doing so they have ignored the multifaceted aspects of the construct, suggesting that a more integrated representation is warranted. The work herein undertakes four studies to empirically test and validate a multidimensional measure that can be used to assess how consumers psychometrically understand and perceive eco‐labelling. The four‐study process involves qualitative interviews to extend the issues identified within the literature, followed by two studies using principal component analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling analysis, each using separate samples, to test the reliability and validity of the proposed eight‐dimensional 27‐item ECOLSCALE. Another study is then undertaken to assess the nomological validity of the scale regarding to consumers’ environmental orientation. The ECOLSCALE developed in this work can be used to assist marketers, policy makers and researchers to evaluate the impact of eco‐labelling schemes on consumers’ understanding of eco‐labels, thereby enabling consumers to make more environmentally informed decisions.     

Data mining in road crash analysis: the context of developing countries

The recent advancements in the field of data mining have made vast progress in extracting new information and hidden patterns from large datasets which are often overlooked by the traditional statistical approaches. These methods focus on searching for new and interesting hypothesis which were previously unobserved. Road safety researchers working with the crash data from developed world have seen encouraging success in obtaining new insight into crash mechanism through data mining. An attempt was made in this study to apply these advance methods and evaluate their performance in manifesting crash causes for Bangladesh. The study applies hierarchical clustering to identify hazardous clusters, random forest to find important variables explaining each of these clusters, and classification and regression trees to unveil their respective crash mechanisms for the road crash data of Bangladesh. The results identified several new interesting relationships and acknowledged issues related to quality of data.     

Government ownership and the capital structure of firms: Analysis of an institutional context from China

Emerging economies provide interesting scenarios for examining how institutional context influences the financing behavior of firms. In this study, we examine the capital structure of Chinese listed firms following the Split-Share Structure Reform of 2005. This reform allowed a reduction of government ownership by making government shares tradable. We find that the impact of government ownership on leverage is dependent on whether the government is the largest shareholder in a firm and whether the government ownership is through a parent state-owned enterprise. In addition, we document that the largest non-government shareholder positively influences leverage. Overall, our results reveal that the largest controlling shareholder, either government or non-government, has a significant impact on the capital structure of Chinese firms.     

A Research Note on Bargain Purchase Gains on Acquisition

This research note explores the incidence, amounts, disclosure and potential sources of bargain purchase gains reported by an Australian sample of firms during 2013–15. It finds that 7.58% of the sample acquirers reported bargain purchase gains during this period. The median gain as a percentage of consideration transferred was 18.90%. In contravention of IFRS 3 Business Combinations, not all acquirers with material bargain purchase gains disclosed in notes why the gain arose. Finally, the note reports preliminary evidence suggesting uncertainty about the sources of the gain.