Firm-level political risk and implied cost of equity capital

I find a strong positive association between firms' implied cost of equity capital and firm-level political risk. This effect is above and beyond the firm-level cost of equity implications of economywide political risk. Firm-level political risk contributes to elevating stock illiquidity, increases dispersion of analyst forecasts and dampens analyst coverage and these attributes, in turn, have positive cost of equity capital implications. Overall, the findings of this study suggest firm-level political risk has a non-trivial effect on increasing equity market illiquidity, increasing dispersion of earnings forecasts and decreasing analyst coverage thus increasing financing costs.     

Predicting the antecedents of consumers' intention toward purchase of mutual funds: A hybrid PLS-SEM-neural network approach

The current study intends to identify the behavioural antecedents of investors' attitude and investment intention toward mutual funds using a robust SEM-ANN approach. It focuses on novel factors in the purview of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing digitalization and social media usage. The research outcome indicates that attitude (ATB), awareness (AW) and investment decision involvement (IDI) have a significant positive relation with investment intention (BI). In contrast, perceived barrier (PBR) negatively relates to investment intention. Herd behaviour (HB) and social media influence (SMI) do not influence investment intention toward mutual funds. Moreover, all the tested predictors share direct relation with the attitude toward mutual fund investment, barring perceived risk (PR), which has an inverse relationship. As per the outcome of ANN sensitivity analysis, attitude is the most crucial determinant of investment intention. It is followed by awareness (AW), perceived barriers (PBR) and investment decision involvement (IDI). Among the significant determinants of attitude, self-efficacy (SE) is the most important determinant, followed by perceived usefulness (PU), perceived emergency (PEMER), subjective norms (SN) and perceived risk (PR).     

Democracy and Economic Growth in an Interdependent World

We model dynamic interdependence in cross‐country economic growth processes by allowing it to vary according to democratic distance among economies. Stochastic distributional dynamics and temporal effects of democracy on economic growth are studied, and spatial variation in economic growth is explored. Among important results, democratic poverty trap is found to exist indicating the possibility of persistence of (un)stable democratic equilibria at different levels of democracy. Our cross‐sectional regression evinces that democracy has exerted significant growth‐enhancing effect and that the democratic distribution has steadily shifted locus from low‐level to high‐level equilibrium. Our spatial analysis of democracy‐economic growth nexus provide evidence of significant dynamic spatial autocorrelation and complementarity among countries' growth processes. Finally, it is demonstrated that the relevance of geographical proximity in facilitating interdependence in economic growth is overshadowed by relational proximity.     

Corporation Diversification and Firm Performance: Evidence from Vietnamese Listed Firms

We examine the effect of corporate diversification on the performance of firms listed on the Vietnamese stock exchanges, using 2744 firm year observations over the period from 2007 to 2012. We find that corporate diversification has a negative impact on firm performance. Our results are robust to various econometric estimation techniques including fixed effect, instrumental fixed effect, Heckman selection model and system generalised method of moments. In the Vietnamese context, the lack of an efficient corporate governance system may encourage firms to follow corporate diversification strategies, thus impairing their performance.     

Can psychological capital reduce stress and job insecurity? An experimental examination with indian evidence

Increasingly, work stress and job insecurity have become pervasive issues in today’s dynamic workplace. Extant literature suggests that individual psychological resources play a significant role in job insecurity and stress. A review of the literature on psychological capital (PsyCap) suggests that there is a dearth of experimental investigation on the effect of PsyCap interventions (PCI) on stress and job insecurity. The primary purpose of this study is to experimentally examine whether an increase in PsyCap through PCI results in a significant decrease in stress and job insecurity. This experimental investigation was conducted on a sample of 234 adults employed in the telecom sector. This study used a two-group (treatment group and placebo control group) pre-test and post-test design. Subjects were randomly assigned either to the treatment group (N?=?124) or the placebo control group (N?=?110). Findings suggest that those subjects who were given PCI (treatment group) developed their PsyCap and there was a significant reduction in stress and job insecurity. On the contrary, participants of the placebo control group did not report any significant change in stress and job insecurity. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

     

Financial development and top income shares in OECD countries

We examine the causal impact of financial development (FD) on top income shares for a panel of 14 OECD countries—five Anglo‐Saxon countries, eight continental European countries, and Japan—over a 110‐year period. In our main General Method of Moments estimates, we find that a 1‐percentage‐point change in FD increases the top 1% income share by 0.2%. In distribution terms, a 1‐SD incr=ease in FD increases the top 1% income share by around 0.4 of an SD. The effects are robust to various measures of top income shares and FD and alternative estimation techniques, including nonparametric estimation. FD is typically viewed in positive terms in that it makes it easier to access credit and facilitates economic growth. Our results are important because they contribute to understanding of the potential negative effects of FD.     

Frequent acquirers and management compensation

We find positive contemporaneous, short-, and long-run effects of an increase in the acquisition rate on management compensation. A positive bidirectional causality exists between acquisition frequency and management compensation. A higher firm value is likely to associate with higher acquisition frequency. Acquisition rate has a positive impact on the market share. Acquirers with lower market share are more likely to become frequent acquirers. A causal order follows from lower market share to higher acquisition frequency to higher firm value to higher management compensation. The impact of acquisition frequency on management compensation is higher for value-enhancing acquirers relative to value-destroying acquirers.     

Does trade size restriction affect trading behavior? Evidence from Indian single stock futures market

Algorithmic traders use their advantage of speed to execute a large number of small-sized trades in a very short time. In the presence of a minimum trading unit (MTU) restriction, they are forced to trade at the smallest possible sizes, often restricted by the MTU. Using a novel data set of single stock futures market obtained from the National Stock Exchange of India, we show that the MTU restriction acts as a binding constraint for traders while optimizing trade sizes. Contrary to expectation, we find weak evidence that liquidity is positively impacted by the contract size revision.     

Quantitative restrictions and Indian imports

Many governments in LDCs tend 3o rely heavily on import control for achieving adjustments in the balance of payments. The empirical analysis of imports of these countries has failed to address the issue of quantitative restrictions satisfactorily. In this paper, a set of disaggregated import demand equations are specified which attempt to capture the government's decision regarding quota restrictions. The model postulates that the overall level of imports is determined by expected foreign exchange availability while the composition of imports (once the level has been decided) is based on political and economic priorities and on relative prices.     

The R&D-Marketing Interface in High-Technology Firms

It has become part of the traditional wisdom that good relationships between the R&D and marketing departments are essential for effective new product development. But in so many firms it still just doesn't happen. How come? In this article, three pragmatic researchers, Professors Gupta, Raj, and Wilemon, take another look at what causes the significant barriers that exist at the interface of two of the key product innovation functions. What they discover is disagreement between marketing and R&D people about what they should do together. They also find that R&D people are the more reluctant cooperators. They draw some interesting opinions from the parties as to why the barriers exist.