Is quality management a prime requisite for globalization? Some facts from the sports industry

Countries have progressed during the decades through internationalization of their products. Pakistan is also trying hard to internationalize its products and has succeeded as far as the textile and sport ware industries are concerned. Pakistani Sports industry, though always relying on high quality products, lacked a formal quality management program till 1990’s. It was during this decade that most sports industries adopted a formal quality management program in the shape of ISO-9000. This paper encompasses different aspects of quality management and establishes its role in internationalization. Research findings presented in this paper are carried out in two phases. In phase-I, the detailed analysis of 6 sports industries is done, whereas in phase-II, a survey of one hundred industries was conducted and the role of quality management was established based on obtained results. It was found that 85% companies adopted ISO-9000 as a formal quality management program. The quality impact on internationalization was probed and it was found that the following quality management programs increased the sale, exports, profitability and the well being of the owner and the workers.     

A context-specific perspective of equal employment opportunity in Islamic societies

The purpose of the paper is to offer a context-specific perspective of gender equality and its implications for equal employment opportunity in Islamic societies. The paper discusses various discourses on the Islamic perspective of gender and how they might impact female employment in the formal employment sector. The study highlights some major differences among Muslim countries with respect to gender ideology and the corresponding prospects for equal employment opportunity. Furthermore, the paper argues that any attempts to reform the socio-political institutions and labor policies in Islamic societies must be informed by their particular formal and informal institutional features.

Simultaneous monetary policy announcements and international stock markets response: An intraday analysis

This paper investigates the return and volatility response of major European and US equity indices to monetary policy surprises by utilizing extensive intraday data on 5-min price quotes along with a comprehensive dataset on monetary policy decisions and macroeconomic news announcements. The results indicate that the monetary policy decisions generally exert immediate and significant influence on stock index returns and volatilities in both European and the US markets. The findings also show that press conferences held by the European Central Bank (ECB) that follow monetary policy decisions on the same day have a clear impact on European index return volatilities. This implies that they convey additional important information to market participants. Overall, our analysis suggests that the use of high frequency data is critical to separate the effect of monetary policy actions from those of macroeconomic news announcements on stock index returns and volatilities.     

The Exploitation of Inside Information at the Wall Street Journal: A Test of Strong Form Efficiency

The study examines if tradings on stocks based on the inside information about the “Heard on the Street” column of the Wall Street Journal could generate abnormal returns. We found significant abnormal returns on days t =?1 and t= 0 (publication date) for the stocks related to insider trading. For a comparable control group of noninsider traded stocks, the abnormal returns were not significant on day t=?1 but were significant on day t= 0. The abnormal returns for the insider trade group on days t=?1 and t= 0 were greater than the returns for the control group. The results indicate that the inside information was the cause for the differences.     

Efficiency of Microfinance Institutions: A Data Envelopment Analysis

This study examines the cost efficiency of 39 microfinance institutions across Africa, Asia and the Latin America using non-parametric data envelopment analysis. Our findings show non-governmental microfinance institutions particularly; under production approach, are the most efficient and this result is consistent with their fulfillment of dual objectives: alleviating poverty and simultaneously achieving financial sustainability. However, bank-microfinance institutions also outperform in the measure of efficiency under intermediation approach. This result reflects that banks are the financial intermediaries and have access to local capital market. It may be possible that bank-microfinance institutions may outperform the non-governmental microfinance institutions in the long run.     

Monetary policy implications of short-term capital flows in Turkey

The advent of global financial crisis in 2008, unleashed volatile short term capital flows to the emerging markets. This has forced many central banks in the developing world to adopt innovative policy measures to address concerns related to financial instability caused by the volatile nature of capital flows. In 2010 Turkish Central Bank included financial stability in addition to price stability as one of primary goals of its monetary policy. Several macro-prudential measures had been taken and ‘corridor system’ of setting the short-term policy rates had been introduced. In this paper, we have estimated an extended Taylor rule, using error correction model, to examine the impact of global financial factors in impacting the setting up of the policy rate in the pre and post 2010 periods in Turkey. It has been found that in the post-2010 period, global financial factors and monetary policy stance of the core economy, USA, have become major factor(s) in shaping up the monetary policy. Particularly our results of variance decomposition show that global financial indicators such as, VIX and EMBI have taken prominence in the setting of the short-term policy rate. This has not only made the domestic monetary more dependent on external factors but has also made pro-cyclical in nature.     

Measuring economic impact in Korea,Japan, India,China, and ASEAN considering agricultural sectors: a dynamic CGE approach based on GAMS

Review of World Economics - Tariff removal has always a positive impact on increasing trade between countries. Trade liberalization always leads to an expansion in intraregional and interregional...