Exchange rate volatility and bilateral exports of Malaysia to Singapore,China, Japan,the USA and Korea

This study examines the impact of exchange rate volatility on bilateral exports of Malaysia to Singapore, China, Japan, the USA and Korea. Exchange rate volatility is estimated by an autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model. The Johansen cointegration method and the dynamic ordinary least squares estimator are used in the estimations. There is some evidence of exchange rate volatility to have significant impact on real total exports in the long run, but more evidence of exchange rate volatility is found to have significant impact on sub-categories of real total exports in the short run. The impact of exchange rate volatility differs across bilateral exports. The impact of exchange rate volatility on exports can be negative or positive. Generally, exchange rate volatility is not harmful to bilateral exports of Malaysia.     

Financial investor sentiment and the boom/bust in oil prices during 2003–2008

From both theoretical and policy perspectives, it is important to understand if financial speculation contributes to the boom/bust in oil prices during 2003–2008. In this paper, we disentangle the effects of financial speculation from those of economic fundamentals by focusing on exogenous changes of financial speculation in oil markets identified by changes in financial investor sentiment. Furthermore, we focus on a quasi-experiment setting, and investigate both sentiment-driven overvaluation of oil prices and subsequent mispricing correction. Our findings suggest that financial speculation might have contributed to the 2003–2008 boom/bust in oil prices.     

Model misspecification effects for biased samples

The model misspecification effects on the maximum likelihood estimator are studied when a biased sample is treated as a random one as well as when a random sample is treated as a biased one. The relation between the existence of a consistent estimator under model misspecification and the completeness of the distribution is also considered. The cases of the weight invariant distribution and the scale parameter distribution are examined and finally an example is presented to illustrate the results.     

Want to make me emotional? The influence of emotional advertisements on women’s consumption behavior

A wide difference of opinion exists about the content and composition of emotions. Advertising may influence an audience and their buying decisions about products and services. The objective of this study is to better conceptualize how women emotionally respond to emotional advertisements (EAs). The variant views are integrated into an ACE model, composed of subordinate levels of emotions (E), celebrity endorsements (C), and appeal drivers (A). This empirical study examines women’s emotional response using data from 240 Chinese women respondents. The study participants were invited to develop ACE mix based advertisements and fill out questionnaires. PLS-SEM analysis, a novel approach in ACE advertisement development and its applicability to consumer behavior, was used. The results show that showbiz celebrities expressing the emotion of happiness with music and color make the most effective ACE mix to influence the consumption behavior of women. The results are significantly mediated by attention levels and are widely applicable in the burgeoning advertising industry. The study also calls for further research with different ACE mixes in different contexts and on different audiences. It also opens doors for policy making and an appropriate understanding of women’s consumption behavior in the Chinese context.     

Understanding Firms’ Approaches to Voluntary Certification: Evidence from Multiple Case Studies in FSC Certification

Voluntary certifications, such as Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) in the forestry sector, are used to manage sustainable and socially responsible practices in firms. Even though the certifications are based on standards, it has been reported that adopting firms are nothing but a homogeneous cohort of adopters and in fact differ in their approaches to the certification. In this paper, we conceptualize firms’ approach to certification and link the approaches to various aspects of certification. Using an inductive approach and deriving our data from multiple case studies from forestry FSC certification, we argue that firms’ approach to certification is explained by their development of absorptive capacity, alignment of their organizational routines and their engagement in negotiations with FSC. We also argue that these approaches affect firm’s benefits from certification, their level of adherence to the requirements of the certification and their likelihood to withdraw from the certification. We discuss our findings in view of the literature on absorptive capacity, institutional literature and the literature on collective action and also discuss the implications of the study to voluntary certification literature in general.     

Evaluating Political Risk Forecasting Models: What Works?

Definitions of “political risk” abound, including with “assessments” or “analysis,” but even though ratings are widely used by investors, few understand either the theory behind particular instruments or what the ratings say about their potential investment. The assessment of political risk works backward from losses to foreign investors (not domestic) that could have been insured or protected, to a determination of how high the risk is, what the cost of the likely loss might be, the type of insurance coverage that might be necessary, and then to what an investor should be willing to pay to protect against that risk. A wide range of potential losses and potential causes of those losses is covered by the many political risk assessment firms and indices that are available to potential investors. BERI, the PRS Group, ICRG, the Eurasia Group, PERC (Hong Kong), and many others provide an array of ratings that investors can employ in making their choices. Few of these focus on the critical element of forecasting. Insurance doesn't relate to circumstances of the moment but rather those of the future. What will they be? Just a few of the risk assessments (PRS, BERI, ICRG) deal explicitly with the future, as good as that might be. Few also deal with the matter of risks to particular industries, companies, regions of a country, or external circumstances (what are the country's neighbors up to?). This article offers some suggestions on improving the political risk assessment business. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A MCGP decision aid for homebuyers to make the best choice

This study adopts a new approach, the multi-choice goal programming (MCGP), to evaluate houses in order to help homebuyers to find better house based on the residential preferences. According to the function of MCGP, homebuyers can set multiple housing goals with multiple aspiration levels. This increases the flexibility to find a suitable house. Compared with other classical methods such as checklist and analytic hierarchy process, MCGP is more efficient, especially while considering a lot of housing criteria and house alternatives. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of MCGP decision aid for housing selection, a real case study is then provided. Furthermore, ten volunteers are invited to participate in the empirical experiment. The results also validate the effectiveness and efficiency of MCGP decision aid.     

Institutions and the route to reform of the European Union’s budget revenue, 1970–2017

Using process tracing, this paper charts the history of the changes in the EU’s revenue since 1970, including package deals and the unforeseen consequences of change, comparing the positions of the Council to those of the European Commission and European Parliament. Those revenue decisions allowed European integration to proceed though without a fully autonomous budget as Member States became more careful to calculate their net benefits or costs in relation to the budget. In December 2013, the European Union’s institutions established a High Level Group to recommend changes to the revenue base of the EU’s budget. This reported in January 2017, proposing to resolve the effect of sub-optimal revenue and budget decisions made by the European Union over many years, to reduce direct national contributions, to minimise the risk of unforeseen consequences, and to combine revenue flows with steering effects to discourage certain forms of economic behaviour in line with the wider policy agenda of the European Union.