Growth opportunities and trade credit: evidence from Chinese listed firms

Private firms in China have led the explosive growth of the country’s economy, but with restricted or no access to formal financing. It is puzzling that these firms use relatively less trade credit than their counterparts in developed countries. We argue that firms with more growth opportunities should rely mainly on internal financing owing to high asymmetric information, especially in a financial market environment biased towards state-owned enterprises (SOEs) such as China. To explore growth opportunities, these firms may reduce their level of trade credit in the trade-off they face in deciding where to invest. Using panel data of Chinese non-financial listed firms for the period 2003–2013, we find that the relationship between growth opportunities and trade credit (both accounts receivable and payable) is significantly negative and is more pronounced in private firms than in SOEs. Furthermore, we also find that subsequent to the new receivable pledge policy being introduced, Chinese firms with more growth opportunities have higher accounts receivable, but similar levels of accounts payable.     

How do natural and man-made disasters affect international trade? A country-level and industry-level analysis

This study examines the influence of disasters on international trade with a gravity equation model. Four types of disasters will be introduced: natural disasters, technological disasters, political risks, and financial crises. Existing literature implies that any type of disasters can either positively or negatively associated with international trade. The effects of disasters are different across the socioeconomic status of trade pairs and across industries as well as across different types of disasters. Results from country-level and industry-level show that natural disasters reduce international trade flows by raising trading and security costs and hardening borders. In contrast to previous findings, these results show that terrorism activities and technological disasters increase the international trade particularly between developed countries. The econometric specification controls unobserved characteristics of trade pairs and endogeneity problems. Managerial implications and future research are discussed.     

Do Export Promotion Agencies Increase Exports?

In this paper, we examine the role of export promotion agencies (EPAs) in promoting exports from Japan and Korea. Looking at two home countries enables us to tackle endogeneity issues by controlling for both country‐pair time‐invariant characteristics and importing‐country time‐varying characteristics. Our empirical results indicate that EPA has a positive and significant effect on exports even when we control for endogeneity. However, the size of the effect becomes substantially smaller, implying the importance of addressing endogeneity in accurately measuring the impact of EPA on exports. In addition, we find that EPA's (marginal) effects are larger in exporting to low‐income trade partners than in exporting to high‐income trade partners.     

AGAINST THE COLONIZATION OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT: The Top-dong Right to the City Movement in Jeju,South Korea

The Top-dong Movement was an extensive residents’ resistance mobilization against the Top-dong Public Water Reclamation project in the late 1980s in Jeju, South Korea. Starting as a local female divers’ struggle for subsistence, the Top-dong Movement grew into a collective action to reveal the illegalities of the project, demand that profits should be fairly shared and assert self-determination. State-led development of Jeju in the post-Korean war period functioned to render the island an extractive periphery during South Korea's capitalist modernization. Within that context, the Top-dong reclamation project exemplifies how urban development projects create colonial conditions in local communities by dispossessing them of land and the means of subsistence, commodifying public resources and extracting profits. Jeju islanders reacted by claiming specific rights: female divers’ collective rights to public water and the means of livelihood against dispossession; local residents’ rights to control developmental profits against extraction; and islanders’ rights to participate in decision-making processes against exclusion. Bridging Lefebvre's two concepts—colonization and the right to the city, this article argues that the historically situated, place-based right to the city movement revealed the colonization involved in urban development and performed practices of decolonization.     

National culture and the revenue-expense matching

Prior studies on the link between country-level cultural aspects and firms' arbitrary accounting practices are scant, and they show mixed results. To gain more insight about the impact of national culture on earnings characteristics, we exploit the matching concept between revenues and expenses, which well reflects managerial estimation and discretion in earnings quality. Using a large sample of 57 countries over the period 1989–2012, we find that (1) the economic association between revenues and expenses becomes stronger in firms from collectivistic and high uncertainty-avoidant countries, (2) the impact of these dimensions of national culture on the matching is more salient for firms from countries characterized by a higher level of accrual accounting, a greater proportion of special-items, and limited openness, and (3) the cultural impact on matching is mainly driven by the correlation between revenue and discretionary expense (i.e., selling, general, and administrative expense). These findings are consistent with the view that national culture plays an informal governance role to influence firms' discretionary accounting choices.     

Does venture capital investment enhance corporate innovation? Evidence from Korea

We examine whether venture capital (VC) investment enhances corporate innovation in Korea. Using a matched sample of 802 firms from 1998 to 2012, we find that after the first round of VC investment, VC-backed firms are more innovative than non-VC-backed firms. Our results suggest that the positive influence of VC investment largely comes from the ability of VC firms to reduce information asymmetry between investors and ventures: VC funds managed by independent venture capitalists significantly enhance corporate innovation, whereas those managed by governmental venture capitalists do not. Furthermore, this positive influence becomes more pronounced where there is greater information asymmetry. Finally, we show that funds with profit-based compensation structures are more likely to encourage corporate innovation than those with fee-based compensation structures.     

Impacts of fiscal decentralization on local development in Vietnam: A disaggregated analysis

After the Doi Moi reforms, Vietnam pursued fiscal decentralization to strengthen the autonomy and governance capacity of local governments. While several empirical studies analysed the impact of fiscal decentralization on the economic growth of Vietnamese provinces, very few studies examined its impact on their social development. This study represents an initial effort to fill this gap. The empirical analysis applied the panel corrected standard errors (PCSE) estimation and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to an updated panel data of 63 Vietnamese provinces, spanning the period from 2011 to 2019. The results indicate a positive impact of fiscal decentralization on both economic and social development as well as efficiency of resource utilization for development targets. However, realizing the full potential of fiscal decentralization requires the fulfilment of certain conditions.