Bridging bargaining theory with the regulation of a natural monopoly

Review of Economic Design - In this paper, we integrate the bargaining theory with the problem of regulating a natural monopoly under symmetric information or asymmetric information with complete...     

Bank systemic risk: An analysis of the sovereign rating ceiling policy and rating downgrades

We investigate the impact that the sovereign ceiling policy has on financial stability. In the event of a sovereign rating downgrade, we find that the rating agencies' sovereign ceiling policy leads to a disproportionate downgrade of the most creditworthy financial institutions in the economy and results in increased systemic risk. This asymmetric variation in bank ratings also impairs equity growth that further exacerbates bank insolvency. Our results are robust to several matching techniques, such as propensity score matching and entropy balancing, falsification tests, subsample analyses, alternative empirical proxies and model specifications.     

Assessment of blockchain applications in travel and tourism industry

Quality & Quantity - Blockchain technology (BCT) is a network-based system, which is developed to create secure, smart and transparent distributed ledgers. Recently, BCT has been gaining more...     

Compliance Costs of Corporate Income Taxation in Singapore

This study is the second in a series of studies investigating tax compliance costs incurred by public-listed companies. We found evidence of a size effect which is a predominant finding of similar studies. The size effect was more pronounced when absolute measures of costs were used than when a relative measure, cost/sales turnover, was used. Additional evidence was found of limited success relating to the IRAS's moves to simplify the tax system. Specifically, only large companies with sales turnover exceeding $500m benefited and considerably reduced their overall compliance costs. Most of the decrease was a result of the computational component of compliance costs. This resulted in the gap in absolute costs narrowing between Group 3 and any of the other categories of companies. There was also greater reliance on external professionals, the smaller the company. Views elicited indicate that more could be done to increase accessibility to IRAS publications for Group 1 and Group 2 companies.     

Green supply chain management – food for thought?

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the impact of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices on the performance of UK food retail small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A quantitative approach using a non-probability sampling of 84 participants was employed. Based on the literature review, five hypotheses were developed and tested using the partial least square-structural equation modeling (SEM-Smart PLS 2.03) approach. The reviewed literature revealed that key internal drivers (ID) and external pressures (EP) stimulate organizations to initiate GSCM practices in UK food retail SMEs. Though empirical findings strongly supported the statement that ID influence GSCM practices, they did not show a significant relationship between EP and GSCM practices. Literature also suggests that practicing GSCM can help improve the efficiency, brand image (BI) and profitability, and thus improve the overall firm performance which is also empirically proved. This study helps enrich existing theories on SCM and organizational performance. As to practical impact, this study should facilitate SMEs in GSCM practices and thus help green the economy. While the findings of this study have limited generalisability as the data were collected from UK SMEs only and the sample size was comparatively small, this research establishes a foundation for further study in this domain.     

Historical path of traditional and modern idea of ‘conscious universe’

What this study shows is that although the ‘idea of conscious universe’ is given further advance by some discoveries of modern sciences, it was articulated by many ancient and previous thinkers. Philosophically, the idea of ‘Consciousness’ can be traced back to ancient times and can be proven through historical documents in various traditions, cultures and religions. In this study, the ideas are provided from perspectives of West, East and Islam. Simply, the term ‘awareness’ and the concept of ‘ability to be aware of the environment’ imply the notion of ‘Consciousness’ in linguistic and psychology. In a comparative study, we show that philosophical and scientific views in the past and contemporary period highly recommended the existence of ‘Consciousness’ attribute. In fact, all of the mentioned studies are talking about the same ideology based on the qualitative perceptions. However, there are some differences in parts, but the major theme is same.     

The day-of-the-week effect and conditional volatility: Sensitivity of error distributional assumptions

We test for reliable evidence of the day-of-the-week effect on both the mean and volatility for the S&P/TSX Canadian return index. Unlike previous studies, we permit several specifications for the error distribution — GARCH normal, Student's t, generalized error distribution, and double exponential distribution. Unlike other studies, we find that the day-of-the-week effect in both mean and conditional volatility is sensitive to the particular specification of the underlying distributions. We also find that using a regression analysis assuming a Student's t distribution is a better way to investigate this effect. Our evidence demonstrates the apparent fragility of previous empirical studies on calendar anomalies. Thus, our results serve as a warning that with financial data, the error distributional assumptions are critical to correctly identifying empirical regularities in the data.     

Random walk and breaking trend in financial series: An econometric critique of unit root tests

The present note sheds light on several pitfalls associated with unit root tests that are overlooked by a growing volume of literature in financial economics. Specifically, several studies have confused unit root tests with the Random Walk hypothesis. Unit root tests are not designed for such a task since they aim at investigating whether a time series is difference-stationary or trend-stationary and are not, therefore, predictability tests. Secondly, we emphasize some serious shortcomings associated with the widely used unit root test developed by Zivot and Andrews [Zivot, E. & Andrews, D.W.K. (1992). Further evidence on the great crash, the oil-price shock, and the unit-root hypothesis. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 10, 251–270.]. In particular, we stress that results from the Zivot–Andrews test are sensitive to the methods employed to calculate the critical values and to select the maxim lag k. Furthermore, Zivot–Andrews test imposes a one time structural break in a time series; however recent studies showed that not counting for other true structural breaks may bias the results and may cause a spurious rejection of the unit root null hypothesis. Finally, we support our arguments by an empirical example based on the findings of Narayan and Smyth [Narayan, K.P. & Smyth, R. (2004). Is South Korea’s stock market efficient? Applied Economics Letters, 11, 707–710.] with regards to the efficiency of South Korean stock market. We show that contrary to what the authors claim, the KSE (KOSPI) price index is predictable, and hence the South Korean stock market is not informationally efficient.     

Explaining Bank Productivity in Ghana

The objective of this paper is to examine productivity changes among Ghanaian banks. The Malmquist productivity index is employed to estimate total factor productivity changes and its components on a panel of 18 banks from 2003 to 2011. The results indicate that productivity growth was attributable to the catch‐up effect of efficiency changes. We also find productivity growth across three categories of bank size to be driven by efficiency changes. From a panel regression analysis, we identify size, concentration, income diversification and risk as the factors that explain productivity differences among Ghanaian banks. Recommendations for improving bank productivity are derived from the results. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.