Asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility on India's cross‐border trade: Evidence from global financial crisis and multiple threshold nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model

This paper examines the asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility on India's cross‐border trade with its major trading partners: Japan, Germany, the United States, and China. We extend previous studies in two ways. First, we examine whether global financial crisis changes the asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility on India's cross‐border trade. Next, we divide exchange rate volatility into quintiles and examine the effect of each quintile on cross‐border trade by using the multiple threshold nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (MTNARDL) model. Our findings from standard nonlinear ARDL (NARDL) indicate that the asymmetric relationship between exchange rate volatility and cross‐border trade changes as a result of global financial crisis. In addition, findings from MTNARDL indicate that in short‐run, exchange rate volatility symmetrically affects India's cross‐border trade with all sample countries whereas in long‐run it asymmetrically affects cross‐border trade. Overall, these findings are very important for policy implications and open a new dimension to exchange rate volatility and trade flows.     

The nexus between sectoral FDI and institutional quality: empirical evidence from Pakistan

This study investigates short- and long-run bidirectional causality between institutional quality and sectoral-level FDI in Pakistan by using the ARDL technique. The results confirm that long-run bidirectional causality exists between institutional quality and aggregate FDI. The in-depth sectoral-level FDI analysis substantiates the presence of long-run bidirectional causality between institutional quality and FDI in services and manufacturing sectors, while no long-run causality is observed between institutional quality and FDI inflows in primary sector. Furthermore, the results in the study reveal short-run bidirectional causality only between institutional quality and manufacturing FDI and report insignificant short-run causal link between institutional quality and FDI in primary and services sectors. The overall findings of the study suggest that in the long-run institutional quality attract FDI and FDI inflows, particularly to manufacturing and services sectors, significantly enhance the quality of institutions in Pakistan.     

Hospitality crisis management practices: The case of Indian luxury hotels

This study examines hospitality crisis management practices within the context of the Indian hospitality industry. The study is a replication of a study previously conducted in Israel. The study employs a questionnaire that evaluates the importance and usage of four themes of practices: marketing, hotel maintenance, human resources and governmental assistance. The findings illustrate which practices managers consider important and which practices managers actually use during a crisis. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and management of crises.     

Tax Policy and Entrepreneurship: New Time Series Evidence

Have tax policies affected entrepreneurial activity in the U.S.? We extend the time series literature on this topic by using more recent data and modern econometric techniques to examine the importance of federal income, payroll, capital gains, corporate income, and estate taxes on self-employment rates. Regression results show that most of these taxes have significant but small effects on self-employment activity. A battery of cointegration and causality tests confirms the general finding that taxes can have significant influences on entrepreneurship, but they are likely to be ineffective tools for generating meaningful changes in entrepreneurial activity.     

Evaluating the impact of Tax-for-Fee reform (Fei Gai Shui) on water resources and agriculture production in the Zhanghe Irrigation System, China

This article questions the effectiveness and viability of rural Tax-for-Fee reform (Fei Gai Shui) on water resources and agriculture production, taking the Zhanghe Irrigation System of China as a case study example. The Fei Gai Shui reform has been heralded as a possible solution for reducing the excessive fiscal burden on peasants. While the reform may achieve in relieving peasant burdens significantly, the initial impact of Fei Gai Shui on water resources and agricultural production indicate least satisfactory trends. The policy shows significant impact on rice yield and area. It might also have profound impact on cropping pattern but it has yet to be seen. Dependence on local water resources such as ponds show significant increase after Fei Gai Shui as it discouraged farmers to rely on regional water sources. Although the lower regional water use under Fei Gai Shui reduced the water charges paid by farmers, the savings were mostly offset by increasing pumping costs in accessing water from local ponds. Without any adjustments, the Fei Gai Shui is likely to cause serious predicament in agricultural sector. It is visioned that local water resources such as water ponds will continue to play an important role in sustaining agricultural production.     

Durable Goods,Time Preference and The Dynamics of the Current Account

A small open economy model with an endogenous time preference is used to study the current account dynamics when consumption exhibits durability. There is a unique level of instantaneous utility and stock of durables that must be maintained in the steady state. A terms of trade deterioration requires a net asset accumulation and a fall in consumption expenditures along the adjustment path. Nevertheless, the fall in consumption expenditures leads to a fall in the stock of durables, which has to be corrected somewhere along the adjustment path, and which may lead to a non-monotonic adjustment of the current account (J-curve).

A monetary model of balance of payments: The case of Venezuela

The monetary approach to the balance of payments has gained considerable appeal in the literature and is viewed as being concerned with the long run since it does not analyze the adjustment process of the balance of payments. The model developed in this paper is concerned essentially with the short-run implications of this approach and the model is applied to the case of Venezuela. The results were very encouraging for the monetary approach as the model was able to explain a great part of the fluctuations in the balance of payments of Venezuela during the period of study.     

The impact of the magnitude of service failure and complaint handling on satisfaction and brand credibility in the banking industry

The present research aims to investigate the effects of service failure and complaint handling on customer satisfaction with complaint handling which consequently impacts overall satisfaction and brand credibility. To examine the objectives of the present research, the authors deployed a sample of 384 respondents in Persian banks within Iran. Structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the data. The findings suggest that the magnitude of service failure negatively effects customer satisfaction with complaint handling. Complaint handling positively affects customer satisfaction with complaint handling. In addition, the results suggest that customer satisfaction with complaint handling positively influences brand credibility and overall satisfaction. Finally, overall satisfaction positively impacts brand credibility. The results revealed that if the complaint handling occurs instantly at the right time, it would have been a positive influence on customer satisfaction and ultimately develop brand credibility. Therefore, banks can adopt customer relationship management systems and processes which enable quick responses to customer complaints. Bank managers could find the results of the present study useful and beneficial in developing complaint handling efforts and expanding appropriate service recovery and brand credibility strategies.     

The Determinants of Sukuk Market Development

The objective of this article is to empirically investigate the structural, financial, developmental, institutional, and macroeconomic determinants of Sukuk market development for a sample of 13 countries over the period 2001–2013. We employ the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) procedure to tackle the problems of endogeneity of lagged dependent variable, heteroscedasticity, and serial correlation in the residuals. Our results suggest that a combination of structural, financial, and institutional factors seem to exert a significant effect on Sukuk markets. Indeed, larger economic size, higher proportion of Muslims in the population, better investment profile (IP), and lower corruption are associated with larger Sukuk markets, while higher interest rate spread is negatively related to Sukuk market development.