Ownership Structure and Firm Performance: Evidence from Vietnamese Listed Firms

We examine the effect of ownership structure on firm performance, for firms listed on Vietnamese stock exchanges, using 2744 firm‐year observations over the period from 2007 to 2012. We find a non‐linear relationship between ownership structure and firm performance. State ownership has a convex relationship with firm performance. This paper finds that firm performance increases beyond 28.67 percent level of state ownership. Foreign ownership has a concave relationship with firm performance. We find that firm performance increases with an increase of foreign ownership up to a level of 43 percent and then decreases. Policy makers should encourage foreign ownership and widely dispersed state ownership in firms, which can help improve firm performance.     

Value-Added Agricultural Enterprises and Local Economic Performance

Proponents of value-added agricultural enterprises (VAAE) argue for favorable government policies and funds to promote these industries as a local development strategy. Though regularly advocated at all levels of government, the beliefs regarding the benefits of VAAE to local economies merit empirical investigation. A county-level analysis of the contiguous U.S. states for a ten-year time period was used to evaluate the contribution of selected VAAE to county economic well-being. The two-stage least squares regression coupled with spatial econometric methods suggests that the support for these selected VAAE as a tool of local economic well-being, measured using income and employment growth and change in poverty rates, is not well founded.     

Vasectomy bonuses and completed family size in India

This paper discusses the consequences in rural India of a certain rational household decision function on the number of children born in the family when birth control opportunities are available. Households are assumed to choose whether or not to practice birth control after each child is born on the basis of maximising expected utility as a function of the consumption per head and the number of members in the family. Uncertainty arises on account of the different evaluation of children of different sexes. The model is then used to predict how completed family size would change if a government agency paid bonuses for smaller families.     

An adjustment procedure for predicting systematic risk

This paper looks at the currently available beta adjustment techniques and suggests a multiple root-linear model to adjust for the regression tendency of betas. Our empirical investigate on indicates that cross-sectional betas are not normally distributed, but their distribution tends to normal after a square-root transformation. The evidence from the Box-Cox regression model and the multivariate normality observed among betas after the transformation, make the functional form of our model correct. Also, we observe that the disturbance term of the multiple root-linear model is well behaved. These findings make the ordinary least squares estimates unbiased and efficient. Finally, the mean square and extreme errors are found to be lower when our adjustment procedure is used vis-à-vis the existing procedures.     

Religious adherence and county economic growth in the US

We estimate a Barro-type conditional convergence model using religious adherence data from the American Religious Data Archive to analyze independent effects of church adherence rates on economic growth in the United States at the county-level. Per capita income growth is modeled as a function of initial per capita income, initial human capital stock, and a set of control and related variables including religious adherence, religious diversity, and regional indicator variables. We also investigate the independent effects of three main denominations, namely Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Mainline Christians, on county economic growth. Our results indicate that the religious adherence in general is significantly greater than zero and not beneficial for US county income growth. We find mixed results for effects of various denominations.     

Localized advantage in a global economy: The case of Bangalore

This article examines how and why firms in Bangalore, a city in southern India, have achieved success in the global software industry. We use Porter's “diamond framework” to analyze information obtained from secondary sources and interviews with engineers, managers, and top executives from software firms and officials involved in Bangalore's development. While we found some aspects of the case conform to Porter's framework, many other elements tend to diverge from the model. Thus, the article contributes to the Porter's diamond model literature by extending its application to assessing the development of successful regions in knowledge‐based industries in developing economies. The discussion in the article would be of value to officials interested in creating such successful regions, as well as international business executives interested in the opportunities afforded by locating in these regions. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Modelling the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System's Energy Consumption Under‐Coverage

The new data source for the Australian Energy Statistics, the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System, does not require businesses using less than 200 terajoules to report their energy consumption. This results in a data gap in the total industry energy consumption. To estimate the gap, this study models business energy consumption using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics' 2008–09 Energy, Water and Environment Survey and data from the 2008 to 2009 business activity statement unit record estimates. The article discusses the modelling approaches and methodological issues associated with the estimation of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System's energy consumption under‐coverage. It provides estimation results and suggestions for future research, based on available data.

     

The Poor and the Social Sectors during a Period of Macroeconomic Adjustment: Empirical Evidence for Jamaica

Considerable uncertainty remains about the human impact of macroeconomicadjustment. Analysis of the impact of adjustment on the poorand on the social sectors is difficult because it involves evaluatinga counterfactual situation in which households are affectedby prices, incomes, and public services with the possibilityof substantial substitutions—all within an economywideframework with complicated concurrent and lagged interactions.In this article, we utilize time-series data for Jamaica toexamine whether macroeconomic adjustment, initiated in the early1980s but intensified in 1984–85, was associated withsignificant deterioration in various indicators of health, nutritional,and welfare outcomes, particularly among the poor. Althoughwe find evidence of substantial cuts in governmental expenditureson social services, there is little confirmation of significantshort-run deterioration in human capital indicators during theadjustment period.