Symbiotic Production and Optimal Export Policy

This paper constructs a two‐country trade model to examine the optimal policies relating to the export of final and intermediate products under Cournot as well as Bertrand competition when firms engage in symbiotic production internationally. The paper shows that given linear demand for the final product, the optimal export policies are to tax the exports of both the final and intermediate goods under symbiotic production, regardless of whether firms engage in Cournot or Bertrand competition in the final good market, which is contrary to the conventional wisdom.     

Crude oil prices and the balance of trade: Asymmetric evidence from selected OPEC member countries

The contribution of this article is to assess whether the effects of crude oil price fluctuations on the trade balance are symmetric or asymmetric in the context of an individual oil-exporting country, specifically four OPEC member countries – Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. To examine this subject thoroughly, we use three different measures of trade balances such as oil trade balance, non-oil trade balance, and total trade balance, and examine whether oil prices are asymmetrically passed on to the trade balances for those OPEC countries in the long- and short-run. After implementation of the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, we find that changes in oil prices indeed have asymmetric effects on the oil trade balance for all four OPEC countries in the long-run, though not in the short-run. In the case of the non-oil and total trade balance, however, the asymmetry of oil price changes is not detected in both the long- and short-run.     

The impact of labour unions on external auditor selection and audit scope: evidence from the Korean market

We examine whether labour unions influence external auditor selection and audit scope. As a major user group of financial information, labour unions likely demand financial information of high quality and thus high-quality audits. As a union’s request for wage increases is likely strong when a firm is performing well, management facing wage negotiations with the labour union has incentives to manipulate earnings downward and may therefore prefer auditors who allow more discretion. Using union data unique to Korea during 2005–2008, we find that firms with a stronger labour union tend to choose higher-quality auditors (i.e. Big N or industry specialist auditors). We also find that unionization is negatively (positively) associated with positive (negative) abnormal audit fees and audit hours, and the effects are more pronounced when the union is stronger and more active. Given that departures from normal audit fees and audit hours in either direction arguably impair audit quality, this finding is consistent with our prediction of unions’ demand for high-quality audits. Overall, our findings suggest that labour unions play an important role in determining audit quality.     

An empirical analysis of the determinants of technology roadmap utilization

For many years now, firms have managed their research and development (R&D) by applying various approaches drawn from the discipline of technology roadmapping (TRM). The underlying rationale of these roadmapping approaches is to align firms' product and technology developments with their business goals. By visually representing firms' technology strategy, roadmaps support intra‐firm communication and facilitate the coordination of strategic decisions and activities within the technology management domain. Most previously published research on TRMs has focused on the design and implementation of roadmapping processes; that is, relatively few empirical or quantitative studies describe the use and evaluation of roadmapping techniques. This paper seeks to address this gap by conducting a survey of 186 different R&D units within stock market‐listed companies in Korea that have implemented TRM. The paper attempts to identify the antecedent factors behind firms' successful use of roadmaps, further identifying correlations between these antecedent factors through an analysis of the R&D units. It also empirically highlights these antecedent factors by empirically analyzing and verifying correlations between roadmap utilization and R&D performance.     

Structure and Perceived Performance in Public Organizations

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine relationships and better-fits between organizational structure and performance in public organizations. This study takes into account multiple dimensions of organizational structure: span of control, organizational personnel size, global organizational red tape and personnel red tape. The relationships between the first two physical dimensions and perceived organizational performance are examined by taking different combinations of measures, such as raw measures, log-transformation measures and squared measures. The results of ordinal logistic regression models find that, except for span of control, the other structural dimensions have a negative influence on perceived organizational performance. While span of control shows a better-fit with perceived performance in a linear and positive direction, personnel size fits better in a log-linear relationship. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in the conclusion.     

Unveiling cultures in emergency response communication networks on social media: following the 2016 Louisiana floods

While culture in emergency management has gained attention from the field of risk communication, few have systemically dealt with the nuances of general culture involved in the formation and differentiation of risk communication. To fill this gap, this research aims to first examine cultural nuances from the 2016 Louisiana flood response by primarily focusing on communications embedded in social media. The results from social network analysis and content analysis highlight that the flood response communication had strong cultural characteristics, highlighting the notion that of the cultures in Louisiana—faith-based, local authority, and nonprofits—were the prominent cultural responders in the flood response communication. In particular, cultural similarity in both intra/inter group response communication was observed, with each communication group comprising actors who shared a common cultural background and spoke similar keywords.     

A multilevel factor model: Identification,asymptotic theory and applications

This paper studies a multilevel factor model with global and country factors. The global factors affect all individuals, whereas the country factors affect only those within each specific country. A sequential procedure to identify the global and country factors separately is proposed. In the initial step, the global factors are estimated by canonical correlation analysis. Using this initial estimator, the principal component estimators (PCEs) of the global and country factors are constructed. It is shown that the PCEs estimate the spaces of the global and country factors consistently and are normally distributed in the limit. Several information criteria that can estimate the number of country factors are proposed. The number of global factors is assumed to be known. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the sequential procedure and information criteria work well in finite samples. The method of this paper is applied to 25 OECD countries to identify an international business cycle. It is reported that the method extracts a global factor reasonably well.     

Unpacking the relationship between empowering leadership and service-oriented citizenship behaviors: a multilevel approach

Drawing on empowerment theory, this study examines the effect of empowering leadership on frontline employees’ service-oriented citizenship behaviors and the process by which this effect occurs. The authors conceptualize empowering leadership at two levels: individual level and group level. Using multi- and cross-level modeling based on multi-source data (frontline employees and their supervisors) from a national automobile dealership at two different time points, this study finds that group-level empowering leadership explains unique variance in service-oriented citizenship behaviors above and beyond what is explained by individual-level empowering leadership. Further, psychological empowerment and customer learning climate partially mediate the empowering leadership–service-oriented citizenship behaviors relationship at the individual and group levels, respectively. Finally, the results indicate that a climate for customer learning accentuates the positive effect of psychological empowerment on service-oriented citizenship behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications for improving frontline employee’s service-oriented citizenship behaviors are discussed along with directions for future research.     

Estimating the equilibrium real exchange rate: the case of Turkey

This article is the first attempt in the literature to investigate the effects of public social security on aggregate consumption in a time-series setting for a developing country, Turkey that has one of the most generous social security systems in the organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) region. In order to quantify the social security variable, this article uses the social security wealth (SSW) series calculated for Turkey in a separate study. This study indicates that SSW is the largest part of the household wealth in Turkey, and therefore should not be ignored in the aggregate consumption studies. The results show that its effect on consumption is positive and robust.