Blockholder monitoring and the efficiency of pay-performance benchmarking

In this article I examine how the performance sensitivity of CEO compensation is related to the level and turnover of outside block ownership. Separating firm performance into firm-specific (Skill) and exogenous (Luck) components, I find that pay sensitivity to Luck increases with blockholder turnover, whereas pay sensitivity to Skill increases with blockholding size. Furthermore, when blockholder turnover is higher, CEO pay increases more with positive Luck but does not decrease as much with negative Luck; also, excess CEO compensation is larger. Thus, the rent accruing to CEOs via asymmetric pay sensitivity to Luck is partly explained by short investment horizons of large shareholders.     

Asymmetric capital structure adjustments: New evidence from dynamic panel threshold models

We develop a dynamic panel threshold model of capital structure to test the dynamic trade-off theory, allowing for asymmetries in firms' adjustments toward target leverage. Our novel estimation approach is able to consistently estimate heterogeneous speeds of adjustment in different regimes as well as to properly test for the threshold effect. We consider several proxies for adjustment costs that affect the asymmetries in capital structure adjustments and find evidence that firms with large financing imbalance (or a deficit), large investment or low earnings volatility adjust faster than those with the opposite characteristics. Firms not only adjust at different rates but also seem to adjust toward heterogeneous leverage targets. Moreover, we document a consistent pattern that firms undertaking quick adjustment are over-levered with a financing deficit and rely heavily on equity issues to make such adjustment.     

Firm size,age, industrial networking,and growth: a case of the Korean manufacturing industry

This paper investigates the roles of firm size, age, and industrial networking in determining firm growth. Analyses using the 2-year panel data of 7,889 Korean manufacturing firms between 1994 and 2003 confirm that firm size and age have significant negative effects on firm growth and significant positive impacts on firm survival. R&D and export activities are found to facilitate both firm growth and survival. The primary focus of this study is to examine the effects of industrial networking, such as subcontracting and clustering, on firm growth. The results show that subcontracting does not yield any positive effect for firm growth, but encumbers survival, which may be accounted for by the high subcontracting intensity among small firms. Clustering, on the other hand, is found to promote firm growth and survival. There is, however, little evidence that such a positive effect of clustering is derived from network externalities through cooperation and competition among firms in a cluster per se.     

The global recognition strategy of blue chips of the Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) markets

This study examines the mechanisms through which companies domiciled within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) overcome market segmentation barriers which are the legacy of the Soviet Union. In contrast to a conventional cross-listing mechanism, leading CIS firms pursue reverse cross-listing or single-listing strategies, selecting the London Stock Exchange (LSE) as their main or only capital-raising platform. This study documents short-term IPO underperformance for single-LSE and dual-listed firms, suggesting that listing in London is risky, and that firms should consider alternative capital-raising strategies. Recent national regulatory reforms, which are expected to both improve capital market conditions and to encourage firms to list domestically, present CIS firms with such an opportunity. Finally, this study shows that CIS blue chips outperform the UK market in the long-run. This effect is more pronounced for dual-listed firms that also outperform the Russian market.     

Standards and Institutional Capacity: An Examination of Trade in Food and Agricultural Products

The ability of developing countries to cope with emerging standards in food and agricultural products is influenced by their institutional capacity. This paper develops original measures of four dimensions of standards-related, institutional capacity: information, conformity, enforcement, and international standard-setting. These measures are incorporated into a gravity model to investigate whether these capacities offset the negative effects of Aflatoxin B1 standards on food and agricultural product trade. The results indicate that informational capacity and conformity capacity do indeed have such offsetting effects. The evidence with regard to enforcement and international standard-setting is less clear.     

Prospects for East Asian economic regionalism in the 21st century

It is not likely that East Asian states will regress to the mercantilist developmental state that used to engineer compressed economic growth. However, it is evident that the pattern of transformation East Asian states are undergoing, is not analogous to the path of Anglo‐American development Although the government refrains itself from arbitrarily supplying economic resources (especially financial resources in the form of subsidies or policy loans) to promote strategic industries, it does not give up commanding the market to attain a relatively higher economic growth. The relationship between the state and the market is still set up in a hierarchical fashion in favor of the former. The economic system to emerge in East Asia is the state‐governed rather than market‐centered, even if it has absorbed neo‐liberal condiments. The state‐dominant economic system of East Asia is expected to survive for a considerable period. In this regard, the establishment of a financial system to sustain the East Asian economic system has been strongly suggested. Here lies in the reason we discuss the rise of the East Asian economic identity in the post‐financial crisis era.     

Flexible Estimation of Copulas: An Application to the US Housing Crisis

Zimmer (‘The role of copulas in the housing crisis’, Review of Economics and Statistics 2012; 94 : 607–620) provides an interesting case study of the pitfalls of using parametric copulas to understand the US housing crisis in the latter part of 2000s. The original study by Zimmer (2012) employs a finite‐mixture copula to illustrate that the symmetry of the Gaussian copula may not be tenable, especially for US housing price data during the time period from 1975:Q2 to 2009:Q1. We undertake a replication of his study in a wide sense. First, we replicate the study by incorporating revised data and then extending the dataset to include the most recent data. Second, we implement a nonparametric copula estimator recently proposed by Racine (‘Mixed data kernel copulas’, Empirical Economics forthcoming) to the parametrically filtered data used in Zimmer (2012). Our replication finds that the application of the nonparametric copula to the same and extended filtered data provides an alternative flexible specification for copulas. However, the overall cautionary message of the flexible‐form copula espoused in Zimmer (2012) remains. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Past and future of the labor force in emerging Asian economies

In this paper we investigate the determinants of past changes in the labor force of 12 emerging Asian countries, and attempt to make projections of the labor force in those countries for the period 2010–2030. Results from our regression analysis of the labor force indicate that the wage earnings elasticity of labor supply is negative, albeit insignificant, for men and significantly positive for women, and it has a significantly positive association with educational level and a negative one with age. We also find that per capita income shows a negative relationship with the labor force in general for younger age groups and older age groups, and more capital-intensive countries have smaller female labor force. Using extrapolation, the paper predicts that the labor force will increase in all 12 countries during the first two decades of the period 2010–2030, but will eventually decline in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. The paper also makes projections of the unemployment rate and the average working hours in those countries.     

Full versus quasi MLE for ARMA-GARCH models with infinitely divisible innovations

We compare the backtesting performance of ARMA-GARCH models with the most common types of infinitely divisible innovations, fit with both full maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and quasi maximum likelihood estimation (QMLE). The innovation types considered are the Gaussian, Student’s t, α-stable, classical tempered stable (CTS), normal tempered stable (NTS) and generalized hyperbolic (GH) distributions. In calm periods of decreasing volatility, MLE and QMLE produce near identical performance in forecasting value-at-risk (VaR) and conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). In more volatile periods, QMLE can actually produce superior performance for CTS, NTS and α-stable innovations. While the t-ARMA-GARCH model has the fewest number of VaR violations, rejections by the Kupeic and Berkowitz tests suggest excessively large forecasted losses. The α-stable, CTS and NTS innovations compare favourably, with the latter two also allowing for option pricing under a single market model.     

Trade in Used Goods and Durability Choice

This paper studies the issue of durability choice when there are heterogeneous groups of consumers in the market. The possibility of trade between consumers and its effects on durability choice are examined. It is shown that neither a competitive nor a monopolistic market realizes the social optimum globally. Swan's “independence result” does not hold, in general. [020]