Credit Rating and Monetary Policy Transmission to Equity Markets: Evidence from the Emerging Market

This study empirically estimates credit channel of the monetary policy and corporate stock return using daily stock return data including the sample with non-financial firms listed in Korea stock exchange (KOSPI). Empirical results support that changes in the basis rate turn out to increase equity returns in case of the firms with higher credit rating compared to the previous year. The estimation results confirm the conjecture that monetary policy has a significant impact on stock market through the channel of changes in credit rating.     

Open data in Nepal: a webometric network analysis

This study examines the current open data trends in Nepal based on the webometric analysis method by using search engines to trawl through websites and obtain data. The results indicate that various national and international nonprofit organizations, public sector organizations, educational institutions , and a few commercial organizations were the initial actors fostering open data in Nepal. Therefore, these organizations were analyzed in terms of their networking patterns and the extent to which they are exposed internationally in cyberspace by using Webometric Analyst 2.0. Inter-linkage analysis, co-mention analysis, and link impact analyses were conducted to explore the networking behavior in the World Wide Web. The results revealed that international organizations (IOs) were strongly interlinked. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), government organizations (GOs), and IOs were interlinked, but weakly. In terms of the co-mention network analysis, IOs with IOs were more significant than NGOs with NGOs, GOs, or business organizations because IOs had been working actively for many years, their web presence was high, and they worked in other fields, including open data. A link impact analysis was also conducted using its indicators of seed sites linked to external websites in terms of the estimated number of top-level domains and country-code top-level domains.     

Disclosure incentives when competing firms have common ownership

This paper examines whether common ownership – i.e., instances where investors simultaneously own significant stakes in competing firms – affects voluntary disclosure. We argue that common ownership (i) reduces proprietary cost concerns of disclosure, and (ii) incentivizes firms to “internalize” the externality benefits of their disclosure for co-owned peer firms. Accordingly, we find a positive relation between common ownership and disclosure. Evidence from cross-sectional tests and a quasi-natural experiment based on financial institution mergers help mitigate concerns that our results are explained by an omitted variable bias or reverse causality. Finally, we find that common ownership is associated with increased market liquidity.     

The Importance of an Innovative Product Design on Customer Behavior: Development and Validation of a Scale

The importance of innovative product design (IPD) has increased in recent years because customers' decision‐making factors have changed from product price to product design. However, a definition and measurement of IPD have not been developed adequately. Building on the customer perspective, this study defines IPD and develops its standard measurement with three product design attributes: aesthetics, features, and ergonomics. Results of the empirical test indicate strong evidence for the reliability and validity of the measurement. Overall, this study shows that our measurement captures unique customer perceptions on product innovativeness from the product design. Additionally, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Environmental Multi‐dimensionality and Staff Localization in Multinational Enterprises: The Case of Korean Firms

The person–environment fit theory posits that the term “environment” can be defined at different levels. This study delineates two environmental dimensions (strategic and organizational) and empirically examines the potential moderating effects of two strategic factors (intra‐ and inter‐regional diversification) on the relationship between two organizational factors (subsidiary ownership and host‐country experience) and MNE subsidiary staffing composition. The results indicate that strategic and organizational dimensions have impacts on subsidiary staffing composition. This study also finds that the interaction effects between strategic and organizational factors are significant only when there is congruence between demands from different environmental dimensions.     

A division of the capitalist class and the market for money capital

In a one‐commodity economy populated by capitalists equipped with equal endowment but with heterogeneous linear production technology, a division of the capitalist class emerges endogenously. The capitalists with relatively weak technology, yielding the profit rate lower than the interest rate, become a money capitalist (lender), whereas the capitalists with relatively strong technology, yielding the profit rate greater than the interest rate, become an industrial capitalist (borrower). The equilibrium interest rate is derived by the associated demand and supply relation. From this setup of the model follow two essential relationships Marx establishes between the average profit rate and the interest rate: (a) that the profit (rate) sets a maximum limit of interest (rate), and (b) that the two rates are correlated in the long‐run. Lastly, the profit rate of financial sector is less than that of industrial sector due to the basic setup of the model where the industrial sector uses leverage to amplify the underlying capital profit rate, whereas the financial sector lacks intermediation technology, which would have enabled it to borrow profitably.     

Leveraging ideas from user innovation communities: using text‐mining and case‐based reasoning

User innovation communities, where end users voluntarily share their ideas about new products or services, have become an important source of innovation. While efforts have been made to extract and develop ideas from these sources, existing studies have largely focused on company‐led efforts to facilitate user participation, rather than on voluntary user discussions within communities themselves. As a remedy, this research proposes to directly target those voluntary ideas from user innovation communities for product/service innovation. Because quantities of textual information within these communities are rather massive, we propose a modified and integrated approach of text‐mining (TM) and case‐based reasoning (CBR). Specifically, by constructing two casebases on ideas and existing products using TM and checking for overlap between the two using CBR, the approach enables the identification of opportunities for innovation and reference products for adaptation. We demonstrate the approach through a case of mobile apps in Apple App Store, and our findings suggest that the approach can help firms and users/developers broaden the source of ideas and leverage them into new product concepts.     

The price of going green: the role of greenness in green bond markets

In this paper, we empirically investigate how greenness information is priced in the green bond market. Our comparison of liquidity-adjusted yield premiums of green bonds versus synthetic conventional bonds indicates that, on average, there is no robust and significant yield premium or discount on green bonds. However, green bonds certified by an external reviewer enjoy a discount of about 6 bps. Furthermore, green bonds that obtain a Climate Bonds Initiative certificate show a discount of around 15 bps. The findings suggest that a universally accepted greenness measure can benefit the development of the green bond market.     

YouTubers’ networking activities during the 2016 South Korea earthquake

While YouTube has become an important social networking platform for risk and crisis communications, research into its role and use during environmental disasters has not been conducted. The present study investigates how Korean YouTubers reacted during the 2016 Gyeongju earthquakes. Two kinds of data were collected from the most popular YouTube clips on the earthquake (from AfreecaTV and YonHap news): the most frequently used words in the replies to the comments and the networked forums among YouTubers. Findings suggest that YouTube has become a channel for quickly increasing public awareness of crises and for promoting safety strategies. InDegree Centralization is higher in professional videos. Hierarchy measure’s value is one, which means the reply-to network is not two-way. There is sparse close-knittedness in amateur videos. Community clusters emerge in amateur videos over time. The results also reveal that YouTubers on AfreecaTV are more likely to express emotional opinions than their counterparts on YonHap news are.     

Varying Coefficient Regression Models: A Review and New Developments

Varying coefficient regression models are known to be very useful tools for analysing the relation between a response and a group of covariates. Their structure and interpretability are similar to those for the traditional linear regression model, but they are more flexible because of the infinite dimensionality of the corresponding parameter spaces. The aims of this paper are to give an overview on the existing methodological and theoretical developments for varying coefficient models and to discuss their extensions with some new developments. The new developments enable us to use different amount of smoothing for estimating different component functions in the models. They are for a flexible form of varying coefficient models that requires smoothing across different covariates' spaces and are based on the smooth backfitting technique that is admitted as a powerful technique for fitting structural regression models and is also known to free us from the curse of dimensionality.