SAFE: An early warning system for systemic banking risk

This paper builds on existing microprudential and macroprudential early warning systems (EWSs) to develop a new, hybrid class of models for systemic risk that incorporates the structural characteristics of the financial system and a feedback amplification mechanism. The models explain financial stress using both public and proprietary supervisory data from systemically important institutions, regressing institutional imbalances using an optimal lag method. The Systemic Assessment of Financial Environment (SAFE) EWS monitors microprudential information from the largest bank holding companies to anticipate the buildup of macroeconomic stresses in the financial markets. To mitigate inherent uncertainty, SAFE develops a set of medium-term forecasting specifications that gives policymakers enough time to take ex-ante policy action and a set of short-term forecasting specifications for verification and adjustment of supervisory actions. This paper highlights the application of these models to stress testing and policy.     

Do REITs Manipulate Their Financial Results Around Seasoned Equity Offerings? Evidence from US Equity REITs

This study addresses two questions: Is there earnings management in the REIT industry around seasoned equity offerings (SEO)? How is earnings management affected by financial and governance factors? Discretionary accruals methods are used to measure earnings management. In addition, the difference between actual and calculated FFO is used to capture the potential FFO manipulation. We examine how these manipulation measures change in the five quarters around SEOs. Moreover, we investigate how a REIT’s earnings management decision is affected by its financial structure, operating style, external auditor and corporate governance. We find clear evidence of FFO manipulation around SEOs, but the extent of earnings management is relatively weaker. We find that REITs issuing SEOs more often are more aggressive in manipulating FFO than earnings. Moreover, there is a notable difference between these two types of financial results manipulation. A mean-reversion trend is found in discretionary accruals, but not for FFO manipulation. Manipulation in financial results is influenced by various factors. A diminished capability to generate cash flow, high leverage, volatile cash flow, frequent SEOs and slack corporate governance are all the features of REITs more likely to manipulate financial results.     

Travel behaviour: a study of older Malaysians

The worldwide demographic shift towards population ageing has made older adults an attractive market segment not only for developed countries but also for developing countries such as Malaysia. This study explores travel behaviour among older adults living in Malaysia. Using non-probability quota sampling, 1356 older adults responded to the personal interviews carried out in Peninsular Malaysia. The main travel motivations were ‘to spend time with friends or family’ and ‘relaxation’, and the most preferred destinations were big cities. The majority of the respondents preferred to travel in tour groups. Their decision to travel was largely influenced by cost and recommendations from their family. During their holiday, common problems faced by them were tiredness, health problems and worries over safety and security. There were significant differences with respect to their travel behaviour, among the different ethnic groups and religions. Based on the results, this paper provides some management implications to marketers and other tourism organisations.     

Online Shoppers' Perceptions and Use of Comparison-Shopping Sites: An Exploratory Study

Comparison-shopping sites currently offer online shoppers various combinations of free services such as price comparisons, merchant ratings, links to e-tailers’ websites, and/or customer reviews in the search results page(s). The utility and market values of shopping comparison sites have attracted Internet giants such as eBay, Google, and Yahoo to the extent of developing or acquiring such sites. Scholarly research on comparison-shopping sites has focused on (1) trust in online recommendation agents, and (2) methods used by electronic agents to produce the recommendations. Our study explored how online shoppers’ attitudes toward comparison-shopping sites impact perceived credibility and usefulness of these sites. We also examined online shoppers’ merchant selection criteria and their likelihood to continue using comparison-shopping sites. One interesting finding from our study was that merchants need to be strong on site ratings and brand awareness to appeal to a wide online market. The finding dispelled the notion that e-tailers presented by shopping comparison sites need to compete, basically, only on price.     

Online Shopper Reviews: Ramifications for Promotion and Website Utility

Today's consumers are empowered with online shopper reviews which are mostly written and posted by buyers, customers, users, or visitors at a website. Shopper reviews will become more popular and ubiquitous in e-tailing in the near future. However, the marketing literature is still limited when it comes to knowledge of how shoppers perceive and use online reviews in their purchase decisions. Hence, this study explored shoppers’ predispositions toward positive or negative reviews and examined the impact of consumers’ attitudes and usage patterns on their perceived helpfulness and credibility of online shopper/peer reviews. One interesting finding from our study of 342 online shoppers was that consumers who would pay greater attention to positive reviews gave reviews more credible and usefulness ratings than their counterparts who would focus on the negative reviews.     

The impact of technical characteristics on export activity: a study of small and medium-sized UK electronics firms

Abstract: A study of eighty-eight small and medium sized electronics firms in the UK was undertaken in an attempt to investigate the impact of technical characteristics on their export involvement. The results show that high exporting firms in the sample were distinguished from the low exporters by certain key technical characteristics. Among these, the presence of in-house R&D capability emerged as the strongest feature. But the results also show that high exporting is associated with more than strong technical capability, and in particular a positive orientation towards export market, especially during the project selection and R&D stages, needs to be present.     

The Wealth Effects of Property Acquisitions: Evidence from Japanese and Singaporean REITs

This article examines the wealth effects of 228 property acquisition announcements made by REITs publicly traded in Singapore and Japan, which are the two largest REIT markets in Asia. Adopting an aggressive growth‐by‐acquisition strategy, the newly listed REITs acquired a number of properties within a short time period. Despite their regular activities, we observe the acquisition announcements are associated with a significantly positive abnormal increase in shareholder wealth averaging 0.38% in a 5‐day window around the event date. Controlling for the method of payment, buyer's acquisition strategy and seller's relationship with the acquiring REIT, the regression results show that the likely sources of economic gains associated with acquisitions are economies of scale and better management by acquiring firms. We also find strong evidence that the market reacts less favorably to acquisitions involving a portfolio of properties as opposed to a single property and weaker evidence that it reacts less favorably to mixed‐use acquisitions. These findings suggest the presence of premiums on transparency and corporate focus.     

Seasoned Equity Issuance by Japan and Singapore REITs

This paper examines the effects of market conditions and asset acquisitions on announcement returns and the probability of equity offerings by REITs in Japan and Singapore. The Asian experience is interesting given the prevalence of yield accretive strategies, but more so, we establish that past acquisitions have a significant effect on the probability of equity offering, over and beyond the effect of debt and market conditions. A contemporaneous acquisition announcement mitigates the negative price effect of the SEO announcement. We also find that equity clustering affects market reaction and SEO issuance.     

Foreclosure Sales: The Effects of Price Expectations, Volatility and Equity Losses

Where borrowers are personally liable for shortfalls when they default on their mortgages, lenders have to exercise a duty of good faith in securing a reasonable value for the foreclosed property. The lender is entitled to recover the outstanding loan as quickly as possible, and is not bound to sell the foreclosed property at the highest price. Such an institutional setting allows us to study lender and borrower behavior, specifically the influence of price expectations, volatility and equity losses on foreclosure transactions using non-foreclosure transactions as a comparison. Our results show that differences in seller response to market expectations and equity losses exist across foreclosure and non-foreclosure transactions. Seller behavior matters. While price expectations, volatility and equity losses are influential factors for individual households, past price movements is the most important. This study also further seeks to distinguish loss aversion from disposition effect. By controlling for properties that suffered losses in equity but did not sell, we are able to examine the disposition effect in house owners. The result shows that there is disposition effect for non-foreclosure properties, where individual homeowners are reluctant to sell if the properties suffer losses.