Payday lending,crime, and bankruptcy: Is there a connection?

The payday lending industry has been the subject of controversy over the years. This is largely due to the high fee structure of payday loans and the view of some that the industry targets economically vulnerable groups. For these reasons, some states prohibit payday lending, while others impose regulatory restrictions on their operations. Despite the prohibitions and restrictions, the industry nonetheless serves a significant segment of the U.S. population. Our purpose is to determine whether in addition to providing loans to individuals, access to payday lenders is associated with less property crime and fewer bankruptcies. Using a unique data set obtained directly from all state regulatory authorities, we find evidence, contrary to some earlier studies, that the presence of payday lenders may help reduce property crime as well as personal bankruptcies.     

Yield curve risks in currency carry forwards

We provide empirical evidence that cross-country yield curve gaps (parallel gap, twist gap, and butterfly gap) are predictive to the expected currency carry premiums using currency forward contracts. We find that the expected currency gains are more notable as these yield curve risk factors at time t indicate short-term bond prices of investment currencies to go up (positive parallel movement, negative twist, and positive butterfly). We also find carry gains are more sensitively affected by cross-country monetary shocks than currency-country inflation pressures and business cycles. Our findings support that cross-country yield curve risk premiums still exist even after considering transaction costs.     

The effects of executive compensation and outside monitoring on firms’ pre-repurchase disclosure behavior and post-repurchase performance

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We show that corporate governance mechanisms play an important role in controlling managers’ opportunistic behavior. Low executive equity...     

Do Institutional Investors Enhance Accounting Earnings Attributes in the Korean Market?

This study examines whether the effectiveness of institutional monitoring depends on the economic conditions of emerging capital markets. We use trading volume data by investor type to compute a proxy for total institutional ownership. We then analyze the impact of the proxy variable on accounting earnings attributes and examine whether the association between the two depends on an expectation of market growth. We find that the effect of institutional monitoring decreases when market growth is expected to be low, implying that market growth may be a critical determinant of institutional investors’ long-term monitoring effectiveness in emerging capital markets.     

Impacts of tangible and intangible elements of Aid for Trade on the globalisation of developing countries

The Aid for Trade initiative was launched by the WTO in 2005 to help developing countries build their supply-side capacity and trade-related infrastructure to improve their capacity in the global market. This study investigates the impacts of both the tangible and intangible elements of this initiative on the economic, social and political globalisation of recipient countries. Intangible elements of Aid for Trade (aid for trade policy and regulation) may be considered as the software of Aid for Trade, while tangible elements (aid for economic infrastructure and building productive capacity) are the hardware. Countries that receive Aid for Trade can use both types of elements to succeed in globalisation. This research hypothesises that the tangible elements of Aid for Trade have a singular effect on the overall level of globalisation since they are expected to only increase the level of economic globalisation. Moreover, we expect that the intangible elements of Aid for Trade will have multiple effects on the overall level of globalisation as they have an impact on not only economic aspects but also social and political aspects of it. Using the dataset of Aid for Trade from 2002 to 2015, we find that the intangible elements of Aid for Trade have increased the recipients' level of overall globalisation.     

How do green attributes elicit pro-environmental behaviors in guests? The case of green hotels in Vietnam

This study aims to identify green-hotel attributes and determinants that contribute to guests’ intention generation for visiting a green hotel and practicing pro-environmental actions during their hotel stay. The study’s results find five dimensions (Customer benefit, Energy efficiency, Water efficiency, Recycling policy and Green characteristic) that underlie 24 green-hotel attributes. Out of the five dimensions, Customer benefit, Energy efficiency, and Green characteristic are found to positively affect pro-environmental value and attitude that in turn enhance intention to practice environmentally friendly actions and visit a green hotel, while pro-environmental value does not trigger pro-environmental attitude. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Does managerial reluctance of dividend cuts signal future earnings?

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - In this study, we develop alternative dividend stickiness measures as a proxy for managerial reluctance to cut dividends and investigate the...     

The Phillips curve behavior over different horizons

This article examines the historical behavior of the Phillips curve over frequency bands corresponding to the short run, the business cycle and long run horizons. Data transformed using band-pass filtering methods and the Hodrick-Prescott filter suggest that a negative correlation between inflation and unemployment and a positive correlation between inflation and output growth exist within the business cycle horizon of 3 to 8 years. During the post-war period, the relationships change signs at low frequencies, indicating a positive sloped Phillips curve over long horizons. Additionally, the Phillips curve is found structurally unstable not only across frequencies, but also over time.     

Military positions and post-service occupational mobility of Union Army veterans, 1861–1880

Although the Civil War has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, little is known about how different wartime experiences of soldiers influenced their civilian lives after the war. This paper examines how military rank and duty of Union Army soldiers while in service affected their post-service occupational mobility. Higher ranks and non-infantry duties appear to have provided more opportunities for developing skills, especially those required for white-collar jobs. Among the recruits who were unskilled workers at the time of enlistment, commissioned and non-commissioned officers were much more likely to move up to a white-collar job by 1880. Similarly, unskilled recruits assigned to white-collar military duties were more likely to enter a white-collar occupation by 1880. The higher occupational mobility of higher-ranking soldiers is likely to have resulted from disparate human capital accumulations offered by their military positions rather than from their superior abilities.