Economic Growth and International Trade: The Case of Hong Kong

This paper estimates the major factors of growth of Hong Kong using a fairly new approach, which allows the direct inclusion of the factors of growth in the growth equation to be estimated. The growth factors that are found to be important for Hong Kong are physical capital accumulation, (negative) growth of unskilled workers, education, technology spillover (from foreign countries) through retained import of capital goods and inward direct investment, and learning‐by‐doing through import and domestic manufacturing production. The results strongly suggest that other than primary factor accumulation, education, trade, and foreign direct investment have contributed a lot to the growth of the economy.     

The boundaries of firms as information barriers

When contracts are incomplete, the property‐rights theory of firms suggests that ownership of physical assets provides better outside options, which in turn strengthen the owner's incentives to invest in the enterprise. This approach is less suitable for human capital firms such as management consulting that lack physical assets. This article develops an alternative theory for integration that sheds light on the boundaries of human capital firms. In particular, when a relationship between parties includes large potential externalities, reducing the outside option of each party will be beneficial. Integration provides this reduction by blurring the contribution of individual parties within the firm, and thus lowering their independent market valuation. Unlike some results in the property‐rights literature, the results here are robust to variations in ex post bargaining solution.     

Maternal full-time employment and overweight children: Parametric, semi-parametric, and non-parametric assessment

We use the matched mother-child data from the 2000 wave of the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 (NLSY79) to assess the impact of full-time working mothers on children’s body mass index (BMI) and the likelihood of becoming overweight. Parametric, semi-parametric and non-parametric methods are employed to correct the bias of selection on observables and unobservables. Pros and cons of various methods are discussed and specification tests are conducted. In general, we find that a mother’s full-time employment does have some impact on her children’s BMI and likelihood of becoming overweight across models and inference procedures.     

How the quality of initial coin offering white papers influences fundraising: Using security token offerings white papers as a benchmark

In recent years, many initial coin offerings (ICOs) scams have been reported, attracting attention to this relatively new and unregulated ICO market, which lacks disclosure requirements and therefore suffers from intensifying problems of information asymmetry inherent in crowdfunding. As a prospectus-type document, an ICO white paper serves as a major means of voluntary disclosure practices adopted by ventures seeking external financing. Given the importance of an ICO white paper and the difficulty of assessing its quality, we propose to benchmark it against white paper content for security token offerings (STOs)—a more regulated ICO subset. Using the similarity of ICO white papers with STO white papers to proxy for disclosure quality, we document that the ICO campaigns that have white papers more similar to STO white papers are more likely to raise funding successfully. Our findings provide implications for policymakers, ICO fundraisers, and investors on the importance of white paper quality.     

Trading Activity and Financial Market Integration

We investigate the effect of trading activity in the Asian emerging markets on the market integration across Asian emerging and major developed markets over the sample period of 1997 to 2009. The empirical evidence confirms that higher trading activity in Asian emerging markets can induce these markets and developed markets to become more integrated. Furthermore, we identify the mediation effect of market volatility on Asian emerging markets. This effect demonstrates that trading activity in Asian emerging markets not only directly enhances market integration, but also intensifies market volatility, indirectly increasing market integration.     

2010年上半年中国成品油市场分析及下半年展望

2010年上半年,中国GDP同比增长11．1％,较2009年全年增速加快了2个百分点,支撑成品油供需基本面向好。中国三大类成品油（汽油、煤油、柴油）表观消费量1．17亿吨,同比增长13．8％。其中,柴油消费量7489万吨,同比增长16．3％;汽油消费同比增长8．4％。这既与经济增长和相关刺激消费政策有关,又与主要用油行业的运行特点密切相关;国际原油价格高位运行也为上半年中国成品油市场走高创造了条件。与此同时,上半年原油加工量和成品油产量同步增长,成品油资源过剩状况加剧。下半年,国际油价总体水平将低于上半年;中国经济和工业生产增长面临回调压力,成品油需求增长将明显回落,预计下半年中国成品油表观消费量为1．22亿吨,同比、环比均增长4％。同时大部分新增炼油能力将在下半年释放,供应过剩的局面将继续强化。建议国内石油企业认清市场形势,及早做好应对措施,力争实现成品油资源生产和销售的平稳运行。     

The impact of open innovation on firm performance: The moderating effects of internal R&D and environmental turbulence

Researchers have identified open innovation as two dimensions, external technology acquisition and external technology exploitation. This study explores the direct and interactive effects of these two dimensions on firm performance and further examines the moderation effects of two factors (i.e., internal R&D and environmental turbulence) on the relationship between both types of open innovation and firm performance. Based on Chesbrough's open innovation model, multi-item scales were developed to measure two dimensions of firm-level open innovation. Survey results of 176 Taiwanese high tech manufacturing firms provide support for most hypotheses. The result shows that external technology acquisition positively affects firm performance, whereas external technology exploitation does not. This study also finds that external technology acquisition strengthens the relationship between external technology exploitation and firm performance. Both external technology acquisition and external technology exploitation are positively related to firm performance under high internal R&D investment and a turbulent market environment. However, technological turbulence only positively affects the relationship between external technological acquisition, but not external technology exploitation, and firm performance. The findings contribute to enhanced understanding of how the degree of leveraging open innovation dimensions depends on their complementarity, internal R&D, and environmental turbulence.     

A final price prediction model for english auctions: a neuro-fuzzy approach

Online auction has now been a popular mechanism in setting prices for internet users. However, auction price prediction, involving the modeling of uncertainty regarding the bidding process, is a challenging task primarily due to the variety of factors changing in auction settings. Even if all the factors were accounted for, there still exist uncertainties in human behavior when bidding in auctions. In this paper, three models, regression, neural networks and neuro-fuzzy, are constructed to predict the final prices of English auctions, using real-world online auction data collected from Yahoo-Kimo Auction. The empirical results show that the neuro fuzzy system can catch the complicated relationship among the variables accurately much better than the others, which is of great help for the buyers to avoid overpricing and for the sellers to facilitate the auction. Besides, the knowledge base obtained from neuro fuzzy provides the elaborative relationship among the variables, which can be further tested for theory building.     

Application of fuzzy regression on air cargo volume forecast

This paper presented a Fuzzy Regression Forecasting Model (FRFM) to forecast demand by examining present international air cargo market. Accuracy is one of the most important concerns when dealing with forecasts. However, there is one problem that is often overlooked. That is, an accurate forecast model for one does not necessarily suit the other. This is mainly due to individual’s different perceptions toward their socioeconomic environment as well as their competitiveness when evaluating risk. Therefore people make divergent judgments toward various scenarios. Yet even when faced with the same challenge, distinctive responses are generated due to individual evaluations in their strengths and weaknesses. How to resolve these uncertainties and indefiniteness while accommodating individuality is the main purpose of constructing this FRFM. When forecasting air cargo volumes, uncertainty factors often cause deviation in estimations derived from traditional linear regression analysis. Aiming to enhance forecast accuracy by minimizing deviations, fuzzy regression analysis and linear regression analysis were integrated to reduce the residual resulted from these uncertain factors. The authors applied α-cut and Index of Optimism λ to achieve a more flexible and persuasive future volume forecast.     

Exploring competition efficiency of automobile brands: An extensional data envelopment analysis-metafrontier framework

This study integrates metafrontier with bootstrapping to investigate automobile vehicle efficiency. The results are as follows: (1) general cars exhibited the most favorable performance in terms of price, costs, and mileage. (2) Metafrontier efficiency was the highest for general cars, which may be because this automobile type has the highest prevalence. Sports cars had the most favorable group frontier. (3) General cars had the most favorable performance in terms of miles-per-gallon. The conclusions could enhance consumers' green cognition and serve as a reference in purchase decision-making; they can provide manufacturers with directions regarding future product designs to mitigate technology gaps.