The impact of exchange rates on stock market returns: new evidence from seven free-floating currencies

This paper provides evidence of a significant exchange rate effect on stock index returns using data from seven selected countries practicing free-floating exchange rate regimes. This research uses parity and asset pricing theories, thus placing it within the monetary-cum-economics framework for international asset pricing. In this study, we apply a system of seemingly unrelated regression to control for unobserved heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The findings constitute evidence of a statistically significant exchange rate impact on stock index returns across selected countries. These findings can be considered as falling under the arbitrage pricing approach of the international capital asset pricing model of Solnik who also used the parity-theoretical framework on exchange rate determination.     

Modeling capital structure decisions in a transition market: empirical analysis of firms in Egypt

It has been realized that none of the three basic theories of capital structure presents a complete answer to the actual determinants of corporate financing decisions. This study attempts to model the practice of capital structure decisions according to the basic premises of each theory of capital structure: trade-off theory, pecking-order theory and free cash flow theory. The methodology addresses modeling long-term and short-term debt financing decisions based on ten different statistical criteria using data from Egypt stock market. The empirical evidence indicates that four models of corporate financing are influenced by the trade-off theory relatively. The contributions of this paper are as follows. First, this study offers a more refined and comprehensive methodology for modeling firms’ capital structure decisions. Second, the results of this study compare to those of previous studies of other developing countries and thus add an element of external validity. Mohamed A. Ismail is currently working as a consultant for the Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), the Egyptian Cabinet-Egypt. He would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the IDSC.     

IMF Bank-Restructuring Efficiency Outcomes: Evidence from East Asia

We report new findings on bank efficiency in East Asian countries for the pre- and post-IMF restructuring periods. We find that bank efficiency has improved, but only to the pre-IMF intervention level, and that restructured banks are not more efficient than their unrestructured counterparts. Different restructuring measures have different effects. Bank closures are economically justified, but mergers show short-term efficiency losses. Recapitalization and reprivatization of badly performing banks lead to efficiency improvement, but also increase government ownership. Ease of entry that has allowed for more foreign bank participation results in slightly improved performance of badly performing banks.

Normativity in Environmental Reporting: A Comparison of Three Regimes

Normativity is assessed as we evaluate and compare the environmental reporting practices of a sample of French and Canadian companies through the lens of institutional legitimacy. More specifically, we examine how French and Canadian firms changed their reporting practices in reaction to the promulgation of laws and regulations in their respective countries, i.e., the NER and Grenelle II Acts in France, and National Instrument 51-102 and CSA Staff Notice NR 51-333, issued by the Canadian Securities Administrators. The firms’ voluntary disclosures according to GRI guidelines are also investigated. Substantive legitimacy theory is used to explore the level of substantive disclosures provided by Canadian and French firms. The findings reveal that the French parliamentary regime is more successful than the Canadian stock exchange regulation in triggering environmental reporting, and that the GRI combined with local regimes prompts environmental disclosures. Notwithstanding the improvements in environmental reporting under all three regimes, a very low level of substantive disclosure is noted in both countries.     

The Coastal Community Perception on the Socio-Economic Impacts of Agro-Tourism Activities in Coastal Villages in Malaysia

This paper is concerned with the socio-economic impacts of agro-tourism activities in coastal villages listed as Desa Wawasan Nelayan (DWN) in Malaysia. The paper discussed the impacts of the two major components of socio-economics dynamics, namely social and economic activities. This account highlights a number of discussions with specific reference to DWN in Malaysia. It identifies the similarities and differences with regard to socio-economic impact, and it is expected that these points will be of practical use for other agro-tourism areas around the globe, and help to increase interest in agro-tourism activities.     

A unified approach to ruin probabilities with delays for spectrally negative Lévy processes

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we unify two popular approaches for the definition of actuarial ruin with implementation delays, also known as Parisian ruin. Our new definition of ruin includes both deterministic delays and exponentially distributed delays: ruin is declared the first time an excursion in the red zone lasts longer than an implementation delay with a deterministic and a stochastic component. For this Parisian ruin with mixed delays, we identify the joint distribution of the time of ruin and the deficit at ruin, therefore providing generalizations of many results previously obtained, such as in Baurdoux et al. (2016) and Loeffen et al. (in press) for the case of an exponential delay and that of a deterministic delay, respectively.     

Sustainability Ratings and the Disciplinary Power of the Ideology of Numbers

The main purpose of this paper is to better understand how sustainability rating agencies, through discourse, promote an “ideology of numbers” that ultimately aims to establish a regime of normalization governing social and environmental performance. Drawing on Thompson’s (Ideology and modern culture: Critical social theory in the era of mass communication, 1990) modes of operation of ideology, we examine the extent to which, and how, the ideology of numbers is reflected on websites and public documents published by a range of sustainability rating agencies. Our analysis indicates that the ideology of numbers promotes a relatively narrow vision of corporate social and environmental responsibility. That is, it establishes some areas of visibility while leaving in the shadow certain aspects of the ways in which companies fulfill, or fail to meet, their social and environmental responsibilities. The ideology of numbers also exerts power by identifying those companies that are deemed to be worthy of inclusion, or not, in a supposedly socially responsible corporate elite.     

Palestine's International Visitors Barriers: Case Studies of Bethlehem and Ramallah

This study investigated the demographic characteristics, the travel experiences and the intentions to revisit of international tourists to the cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah, which are located in Palestine. The study conducted a survey to collect data from 293 international visitors, 8 years after the second Palestinian uprising called ‘intifada’ began. The results revealed that the majority of the foreign tourists were Europeans who traveled for religious and spiritual purposes. Moreover, most of the tourists were willing to revisit Palestine. This study resulted in a comprehensive understanding of tourism characteristics under the current political circumstances of Palestine, leading to significant implications for tourism policy‐makers. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.