Bootstrap ARDL on energy-growth relationship for 22 OECD countries

Applying a recent bootstrap autoregressive distributed lag method, this article re-examines the energy-growth relationship for 22 OECD countries over the period 1966–2013. The empirical results suggest degenerate cases for eight countries. Only Japan is truly cointegrated. Some causality patterns are identified.     

Of substitutes and complements: trade credit versus bank loans in Japan, 1980–2012

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - This paper explores the interplay of trade credit and short-term bank loans between 1980 and 2012 in Japan. Many of the issues discussed for the U.S....     

Introducing cable television into Hong Kong : Political and economic implications

This paper seeks to evaluate and predict the impact of the introduction of cable television into Hong Kong, a densely populated and highly dynamic Asian metropolis currently under British administration. The discussion will focus on how the coming of cable communication will impact on the ownership and economic structure of the broadcasting industry, with particular reference to international participation; public policy issues concerning economic structure and programming of the cable system; and the implications for the period of Hong Kong's political transition from the UK to China.     

A multilevel Gini decomposition approach to measuring the geographic concentration of tourism

This research highlights findings from an application of a multilevel Gini decomposition method to measure the degree of spatial concentration of tourism markets in Australia. The overall level of spatial concentration in Australia is decomposed into two levels: inbound country and travel purpose. While travel purpose is an important factor associated with the concentration patterns of tourism, the nature of its impact differs significantly by country of origin. Due to the variation in market share and the market’s underlying dispersal characteristics, an increase in the share of one market may require a more than proportionate increase in the shares of several markets in order to counterbalance the spatial concentration pressures. Findings show that considering only one factor in the decomposition process can hide important offsetting influences of market segments on concentration and dispersion.     

Sustainability and Capital Markets—Are We There Yet?

The High Meadows Institute issued a report in 2016 called ‘Charting the Future of Capital Markets’ that surveyed the mainstream capital market ecosystem by soliciting the views and practices of its key stakeholders around the issue of long‐term value creation. In this follow‐up report, the authors report that much has changed during the past three years. The role of investors in proactively shaping corporate practices is gaining more attention as ESG issues and responsible investment have become mainstream concerns, as new responsible investment regulations and frameworks have been implemented, and as shifting demographics continue to pressure capital market participants and stakeholders to change their practices. At the same time, the report notes significant remaining challenges. The lack of a standard industry definition and framework for ESG data and reporting on ESG continues to be a significant impediment, as does the shortage of qualified ESG analysts and infrastructure to support true ESG integration. Surveys also suggest most corporate boards have yet to recognize the full significance of ESG integration or its value to the firm.     

Development of a process mining system for supporting knowledge discovery in a supply chain network

In today's competitive environment, business organizations are forced to maintain their competitive advantage by their ability to cut costs, increase revenue and uncover hidden issues. In order to enhance the visibility and transparency of value added information in a supply chain network, a process mining system is proposed for discovering a set of fuzzy association rules based on the daily captured logistics operation data, within the network. The proposed methodology provides all levels of employees with the ability to enhance their knowledge and understanding of the current business environment. Once interesting association rules have been extracted, organizations can identify the root-causes of quality problems in a supply chain and improve performance by fine-tuning the configuration of process parameters in specified processes. The application of the proposed methodology in a case company has also been studied. The prototype system has been developed and evaluated after performing a spatial analysis. The results obtained indicate that the system is capable of extracting high-quality and actionable information in the case company.     

Regulatory Capital Charges for Too‐Connected‐to‐Fail Institutions: A Practical Proposal

The recent financial crisis has highlighted once more that interconnectedness in the financial system is a major source of systemic risk. I suggest a practical way to levy regulatory capital charges based on the degree of interconnectedness among financial institutions. Namely, the charges are based on the institution's incremental contribution to systemic risk based on a risk budgeting approach. The imposition of such capital charges could go a long way towards internalizing the negative externalities associated with too‐connected‐to‐fail institutions and providing managerial incentives to strengthen an institution's solvency position, and avoid too much homogeneity and excessive reliance on the same counterparties in the financial industry.     

A network perspective of the stock market

Complex networks are constructed to study correlations between the closing prices for all US stocks that were traded over two periods of time (from July 2005 to August 2007; and from June 2007 to May 2009). The nodes are the stocks, and the connections are determined by cross correlations of the variations of the stock prices, price returns and trading volumes within a chosen period of time. Specifically, a winner-take-all approach is used to determine if two nodes are connected by an edge. So far, no previous work has attempted to construct a full network of US stock prices that gives full information about their interdependence. We report that all networks based on connecting stocks of highly correlated stock prices, price returns and trading volumes, display a scalefree degree distribution. The results from this work clearly suggest that the variation of stock prices are strongly influenced by a relatively small number of stocks. We propose a new approach for selecting stocks for inclusion in a stock index and compare it with existing indexes. From the composition of the highly connected stocks, it can be concluded that the market is heavily dominated by stocks in the financial sector.     

The world price of home bias

Theoretical arguments suggest that as the degree of a country's home bias increases, the global risk sharing between domestic and foreign investors will reduce and thereby increase the country's cost of capital. Consistent with this prediction, we find international differences in the cost of capital to be strongly and positively related to varying degrees of home bias for 38 markets. This finding is robust to different cost of capital proxies, different control variables, alternative home-bias measures, international tradability of stocks, and alternative specifications. Therefore, the overall evidence implies that countries may enjoy a significantly lower cost of capital by reducing the extent of their home bias and hence, increasing global risk sharing.     

Developing a children's rights approach to fundraising with children in primary schools and the ethics of cultivating philanthropic citizenship

Fundraising literature predominantly focuses on adult donors, with limited literature addressing younger donors, particularly children, and virtually no discussion on the normative ethics which inform fundraising with children. Addressing this gap, this article examines the ethical dilemmas posed by the mainstreaming of charity fundraising in primary schools. Regardless of high levels of participation, research with primary school pupils shows that children's engagement in fundraising activities is often passive, with little decision making afforded to children. First, we question the ethics of passively engaging children in the fundraising relationship. Second, we question the role of fundraising more broadly in helping to cultivate children's philanthropic citizenship, suggesting that current fundraising mechanisms in schools are counter-intuitive to fostering long-term philanthropic engagement. We argue that by critically engaging children in the process of giving, children develop a deeper understanding of the cause areas that matter to them, which cultivates a longer-term commitment to philanthropy. This is potentially a different goal than that of many organisations involving schools in fundraising, where the focus is on incentivising transactional fundraising efforts aiming to raise as much money as possible and thus raises particular ethical challenges which must be considered. In this paper we draw on previous research and established frameworks for understanding philanthropic behaviour to explore the ethical challenges of fundraising with children in schools and present a pathway towards a more child-led, children's rights approach to fundraising in primary schools.