Marriage Market,Parents’ Bargaining Powers,and Children's Nutrition and Education*

Test of resource pooling and test of effect of sex ratio in the marriage market on intrahousehold resource allocation are combined to test the unitary household model. The consistency condition between the two tests is derived to test the Nash household bargaining and Pareto‐efficient household models. I examine intrahousehold resource allocation to children's nutrition and education in Indonesia. For children's nutrition, the unitary household model is rejected in favour of the non‐unitary models. The results for investment in education are mixed. The decision‐making process may differ depending on the type of decision being made.     

CHANGING VOLATILITY AND THE PRICING OF OPTIONS ON STOCK INDEX FUTURES

This paper presents empirical results regarding the suitability of the Black model for the pricing of options on stock index futures. Whaley's technique is used to present empirical evidence regarding the pricing biases of the model. Information provided by the implied volatilities suggests that model refinements should address the changing volatility issue.     

Does information risk affect the implied cost of equity capital? An analysis of PIN and adjusted PIN

Using a unique dataset of Korean listed companies for which trade initiators are correctly identifiable, we estimate bias-free PIN (probability of informed trading) that is no longer subject to the trade misspecification problem and test whether it is related to expected returns. Unlike prior studies, we find that bias-free AdjPIN, the adjusted PIN purged of a liquidity component, is positively related to implied cost of equity. Our findings suggest that the errors in PIN variables hamper a proper identification of PIN pricing in prior studies.     

The Landscape of Economic Growth: Do Middle-Income Countries Differ?

We review the growth experience of middle-income countries. Economic factors associated with growth appear to differ between middle-income and other countries. The efficiency of the financial system is importantly related to the growth rate in low- and middle-income countries, but appears to matter less as one moves up the income scale. Demographic variables also matter importantly in low-income countries. In middle-income countries, in contrast, measures of the financial system no longer appear to matter as importantly, as if inefficiencies in banking and financial systems are no longer as binding a constraint as at earlier stages of financial development; nor are demographic variables as important as before. At this point, other variables gain a growing role: these include whether the country experiences a banking or currency crisis, the extent of non-foreign direct investment capital inflows, and government debt as a share of gross domestic product.     

Policy Uncertainty and the Dual Role of Corporate Political Strategies

Firms use active political strategies not only to mitigate uncertainty emanating from legislative activity, but also to enhance their growth opportunities. We find that a firm's systematic risk (beta) can be hedged away by employing various political strategies involving the presence of former politicians on corporate boards of directors, contributions to political campaigns, and corporate lobbying activities. The hedging effect is greater when firms operate in more uncertain industries. In addition, active political strategies are associated with greater firm heterogeneity and make real options more value relevant as potential drivers of competitive advantages in uncertain environments.     

Price Run-up in Housing Markets,Access to Bank Lending and House Prices in Korea

This paper studies the causal relationship between house prices and the access to bank lending in Kangnam, the hottest submarket in Seoul and four ‘cold’ markets which have shown relatively modest price increases. In response to the rapid escalation of house prices in Seoul, primarily in Kangnam in recent years, the Korean government implemented a number of policies to stabilize house prices. In particular, it introduced more strict limits on loan-to-value ratio and debt-to-income ratio as part of the mortgage loan qualification process in order to restrict the availability of bank lending for the housing market. The short-run influence of the bank lending on the apartment prices is clearly present in ‘cold’ markets, while it is not in Kangnam, the ‘hot’ market, even though the long-run influence is stronger in Kangnam than in the other markets. This result holds for the entire sample period (1999–2006) as well as for the subperiods before and after the introduction of lending restrictions in August, 2005. It also holds for Kangnam and Kangbuk for an extended period of 1988 to 2006. Our results suggest that in the short run the lending restriction may cause a disruption in untargeted housing markets while it has little influence on the apartment prices in the targeted market. We also find that banks have adjusted the bank lending in response to changes in the house prices in Kangnam as well as in the other markets.     

Emotional labor's impact in a retail environment

It is essential for organizations to understand and manage salespeople's emotions. By monitoring the effects of emotions on the job, management can promote and enhance its sales force. However, the literature on salespersons' emotions has been largely overlooked. This paper establishes an integrative emotional labor process model to better understand the emotional component of the sales force in a retail context. Specifically, the paper examines the impact of emotional labor and emotional exhaustion in relation to job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Findings suggest that emotional labor predicts both job satisfaction and organizational commitment, while emotional exhaustion only predicts job satisfaction.     

FMEA-based portfolio approach to service productivity improvement

The conceptual approach has contributed significantly to service productivity, but it should be complemented by practical deliverable methods. This paper proposes a systematic framework for improving service productivity by employing the failure mode and effect analysis-based portfolio approach. By structuring and decomposing a service into a set of sub-processes, failure and innovation modes are identified and evaluated using different constituents, such as the severity and occurrence of failure mode, and the impacts and feasibilities of innovation modes. Innovation and failure portfolios are constructed, clarifying the values of opportunities. To illustrate the function of the proposed approach, hospital service is used as an example.     

Acquisition of managerial knowledge from foreign parents: evidence from Korean joint ventures

This paper contributes to the literature on intra- and inter-firm knowledge transfer by examining knowledge acquisition by Korean international joint ventures from their foreign parents. A conceptual model is presented which identifies the factors that have been found to influence knowledge transfer, organised into variables related to the local recipient firm, the foreign sender firm and the relationship between the two. The model is examined by means of a series of multiple regressions using a sample of 128 Korean international joint ventures. We find that: (1) the international joint ventures intent to learn and international experience; (2) the level of trust between parents and their business relatedness; and (3) the active managerial engagement of the foreign parent are the most important factors explaining the level of knowledge acquisition within the international joint ventures.