Does financial cooperation agreement improve the cointegration among ASEAN+3 money markets?

This paper aims to empirically examine the degree of cointegration among ASEAN+3 money markets in order to determine and adopt remedial actions pursuant to vulnerabilities in the region’s money markets that indicate an inability to prevent possible financial crises. In order to validate vulnerabilities, this paper investigates the degree to which money markets are integrated. Inter-bank lending rates are divided based on agreement periods as well as on income levels of regional economies. The VAR-based Cointegration test and the VECM have been applied in the investigation process. The findings are: (1) weak integration during the pre-agreement period; (2) substantial progress toward the post-agreement period; (3) both high- and low-income markets integrate in a cooperative way; and (4) the agreement produces an impact that is incomplete in so far as integrating the region’s money markets. The finding of this study offers implications for the regional makers.     

Understanding Conflicting Interests of a Government and a Tobacco Manufacturer: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Rice is the staple food of nearly half of the population of the world, most of whom live in developing countries. Ensuring a domestic supply of rice from outside sources is difficult for developing countries as less than 5% of the total world’s production is available for international trade. Hence, in order to ensure domestic food security, e.g., food availability and access, governments provide subsidies in agriculture. In many occasions, public money used for the subsidy goes toward promoting undesirable crops like tobacco. Although the strategic interaction between governments and manufacturers is critical, it has not been studied in the literature. This study fills this gap by considering a game between a government (of a developing country) and a tobacco manufacturer in which the government decides on a mix of subsidies and the tobacco manufacturer decides on declaring a purchasing price of tobacco. We provide a numerical study to show that controlling the output harvest price is more effective in reaching the desired end result for both the government and the tobacco manufacturer. A subsidy in fertilizer results in the measurable increase in the government spending but does not have significant effect in reaching the production target. The fertilizer subsidy should be provided only when the output price is too high to be affordable for the population.     

A critical appraisal of the social entrepreneurship paradigm in an international setting: a proposed conceptual framework

The concept of entrepreneurship embedded in the backdrop of business has been increasingly applied to the context of addressing social problems and sustainability challenges. Known as ‘social entrepreneurship’ the topic has garnered the heightened attention of researchers in recent years. As a nascent stream of research social entrepreneurship is still in the early stages of development. Recent evidence suggests a growing body of scholarly research in this field; however, its conceptualisation remains obscure as it is predominantly dictated by definitional arguments. Consequently, the literature is still anecdotal in trying to unveil different dimensions of social entrepreneurship and its potential benefits that might help to battle sustainability challenges. To bridge the existing gap in social entrepreneurship research this study adopts an inductive content analysis approach. Accordingly, a sizeable number of prior studies were extracted from five major databases from 1991 to date. Findings from the prior studies were synthesised in a systematic manner to draw valid conclusions. Based on the findings drawn from prior literature the study also proposes a conceptual framework and prompts further empirical research. The implications of the study are two-fold: academic and practical. The academic implication is primarily to contribute to the relatively uncultivated area of social entrepreneurship literature. The practical implications of the study are potentially instrumental for social entrepreneurs and policy-makers who are involved in social wealth creation. Moreover, the practical implication of the study is deemed to be very significant given the rising impetus of sustainability issues, where it is believed that entrepreneurs can play a vital role in this regard.     

Financial reforms and persistently high bank interest spreads in Bangladesh: Pitfalls in institutional development?

This paper analyzes interest rate spreads and margins in Bangladesh for the period 1990–2008 by applying the Arellano–Bover/Blundell–Bond dynamic panel regression model to a panel of 43 banks. The model has been applied to tackle short-panel bias and endogeneity problems in banking analysis. A high degree of persistency in spreads and margins is observed, which points to inefficiencies of bank management. More specifically, high administrative costs, high non-performing loan ratio, market power, small share of deposits and some macroeconomic factors are found to be the key determinants of persistently high interest rate spreads and margins in Bangladesh. The findings of this study suggest that reforms commenced in the 1990s could not generate adequate competition and efficiency in the financial sector, particularly to drive down the spread in line with the predictions of interest rate literature. This situation in other words indicates pitfalls in institutional development.     

Chief Financial Officers’ Short‐ and Long‐term Incentive‐based Compensation and Earnings Management

This study examines the association between chief financial officers’ (CFOs) short‐ and long‐term compensation and discretionary current and non‐current accruals. The CFO's cash bonus is used as a measure of short‐term incentives and shares plus options is used as a measure of long‐term incentives. The results show a significant and positive association between CFOs’ short‐term compensation and the absolute value of discretionary current accruals. The results also show a significant and positive association between CFOs’ long‐term compensation and the absolute value of discretionary non‐current accruals. STUDY provides evidence that the earnings management behaviour of CFOs is associated with type of CFO compensation.     

Does the financial cooperation agreement increase the interdependency among ASEAN+3 equity markets? A Markov switching approach

International Economics and Economic Policy - This paper aims to investigate the degree of interdependence among ASEAN+3 equity markets by employing Markov Switching approach and Johansen...     

Evaluation of Target Area Concentration (TAC) Programme in Malaysia’s Integrated Cattle and Oil Palm Farming

Malaysia’s beef production falls under three types of production methods: traditional system, intensive system of cattle feedlots, and integrated farming system. The objective of this study is to investigate and evaluate the effectiveness of the target area concentration (TAC) programme conducted by the Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) that focuses on the integrated farming system between cattle and oil palm plantation. This study intends to identify the programme’s achievement through context, input, process, and product (CIPP) analysis. The analysis reveals that the real needs of the programme context are being met by TAC; the provision meets the needs of inputs but there are some constraints; the implementation of the TAC programme is running well and receives good cooperation from farmers, but there are some constraints; and there is a positive impact of the programme in terms of production, income, employment, changes in knowledge, skill, attitude, and practice. Overall, the TAC programme has thus far achieved its objectives, but it needs some improvements.     

Did the commodity price spike increase rural poverty? Evidence from a long‐run panel in Bangladesh

We assess the effects of the dramatic rise in agricultural commodity prices during 2007–2008 on income dynamics and poverty among rural households in Bangladesh. A unique panel data set allows us to put the effects of recent events in the context of long‐run trends in income and poverty. We use data from a nationally representative longitudinal survey of rural households in Bangladesh collected in four waves in 1988, 2000, 2004, and 2008. Nargis and Hossain (Nargis, N., Hossain, M., 2006. Income dynamics and pathways out of rural poverty in Bangladesh, 1988–2004. Agric. Econ. 35, 425–435) analysed income dynamics and poverty incidence for the first three waves, finding a declining trend in both the incidence and severity of poverty, aided in particular by human capital development and off‐farm employment opportunities. We update and extend the analysis to include data collected in 2008, at the height of a spike in agricultural prices. We find that the price of a balanced food basket increased by more than 50% during 2000–2008, while household income rose only 15%. As a result the incidence and severity of rural poverty in Bangladesh sunk to pre‐2000 levels during 2004–2008. Thus, the price spikes in 2007–2008 helped push an additional 13 million people into poverty in rural Bangladesh. Moreover, we find that the determinants of poverty have not been time‐invariant. In particular, agricultural production, which had previously been associated with a higher incidence of poverty, served as a hedge against higher food prices during 2004–2008.     

Using GIS to visualise and evaluate student travel behaviour

Using GIS to evaluate travel behaviour is an important technique to increase our understanding of the relationship between accessibility and transport demand. In this paper, the activity space concept was used to identify the nature of participation in activities (or lack of it) amongst a group of students using a 2 day travel-activity diary. Three different indicators such as the number of unique locations visited, average daily distance travelled, and average daily activity duration were used to measure the size of activity spaces. These indicators reflect levels of accessibility, personal mobility, and the extent of participation, respectively. Multiple regression analyses were used to assess the impacts of students socio-economic status and the spatial characteristics of home location. Although no differences were found in the levels of accessibility and the extent of participation measures, home location with respect to a demand responsive transport (DRT) service was found to be the most important determinant of their mobility patterns. Despite being able to travel longer distances, students who live outside of the DRT service area were found to be temporally excluded from some opportunities. Student activity spaces were also visualised within a GIS environment and a spatial analysis was conducted to underpin the evaluation of the performance of the DRT. This approach was also used to identify the activity spaces of individuals that are geographically excluded from the service. Evaluation of these results indicated that although the service currently covers areas of high demand, 90% of the activity spaces remained un-served by the DRT service. Using this data six new routes were designed to meet the coverage goal of public transport based on a measure of network impedance based on inverse activity density. Following assessment of public transport service coverage, the study was extended using a spatial multi criteria evaluation (SMCE) technique to assess the effect of service provision on patronage.     

Are costs really sticky? Evidence from publicly listed companies in the UAE

This article measures the degree of adjustment between operating revenues and costs for publicly listed companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Traditional cost models assume that variable costs change proportionally in response to an upward or downward fluctuation in demand. However, in recent years, such an assumption has been questioned by a variety of papers from the economics and accounting fields. Typically, cost stickiness is defined as costs decreasing by less than 1% when sales decrease by 1%, while reacting closer to the proportion of change when sales increase. This study, unlike the vast majority of the literature, did not find cost stickiness in the UAE after using panel data regression analysis. The main explanation is that UAE has mostly expatriate labour force that does not have the typical benefits of employment protection legislation (EPL) available in other national jurisdictions. EPL is a main reason that costs adjustments during decreasing sales is curbed due to the associated costs of firing employees.