Behaviour of intra-daily stock return on an Asian emerging market - Hong Kong

This study examines the intra-daily return behaviour of one of the most open Asian emerging markets - Hong Kong. It is found that there is a general increase in the positive skewness and kurtosis of all the intra-daily returns after the 1987 October crash and the distributions of all the returns have become non-normal after the crash. There seems to be more day-of-the-week and time-of-the-day variations in the post-crash period than in the pre-crash period. There also exists some day-end effect in both of the periods and such a day-end effect seems to be related to the day of the week.     

Consumption and exchange rate uncertainty: Evidence from selected Asian countries

We set out to assess the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on real consumption in selected Asian countries. Consumption influences business cycles, which in turn shape short-run monetary policy decisions. Hence, understanding factors driving consumption is appealing to policymakers. To date, few studies have analysed the effects of uncertainty on consumption. The available ones generally focus on the long-run effects, in spite of the fact that the short-run persistence and adjustments to equilibrium are equally relevant. Our study takes these limitations seriously by distinguishing the short- and long-run effects of exchange rate uncertainty on consumption. Using a flexible dynamic panel data technique that allows long-run effects to be homogeneous and the short-run effects to be heterogeneous, we find that uncertainty impedes consumption in the long run. In the short run, however, the effects are immaterial. This evidence remains robust to the measure of uncertainty, asymmetric uncertainty, inflation and the global financial crisis of 2008. By decomposing uncertainty into its temporary and permanent components, we find that the latter have a stronger effect on consumption in the long run than the former. Although both components demand policy attention, the evidence suggests that policymakers should be more concerned with permanent uncertainty.     

The risks connected with accidents on highways and railways

Quality & Quantity - Safety in an integral sense is a comprehensive tool by which the humans ensure the level of their security and the sustainable development of them and of other basic public...     

Intraday information efficiency on the Chinese equity market

Bid-ask spread is a direct measure of information asymmetry. As such, it can be used to evaluate information efficiency. In this paper, we show that both the quoted and effective spreads on the Shanghai Stock Exchange are extremely high at the open, decrease over the trading day, and experience a small rebound at the close. The spread decreases with share volume, daily trades, and market capitalization, but increases with average trade size. We further examine the beta using the unbiasedness regression from Biais et al. [Biais, B., Hillion, P., Spatt, C. (1999). Price discovery and learning during the pre-opening period in the Paris Bourse. Journal of Political Economy, 107, 1218–1248] and find that intraday prices are efficient and unbiased for more liquid stocks. This suggests that liquidity prompts information-motivated trading, which, in turn, improves information dissemination. Moreover, our findings indicate that small and medium trades are more likely to facilitate the formation of efficient prices at the open and close of the market, while large trades play a more important role during the other trading periods.     

Economic design of an chart for short-run production

The aim of this paper is to present an economical design of an X chart for a short-run production. The process mean starts equal to μ₀ (in-control, State I) and in a random time it shifts to μ₁>μ₀ (out-of-control, State II). The monitoring procedure consists of inspecting a single item at every m produced ones. If the measurement of the quality characteristic does not meet the control limits, the process is stopped, adjusted, and additional (r-1) items are inspected retrospectively. The probabilistic model was developed considering only shifts in the process mean. A direct search technique is applied to find the optimum parameters which minimizes the expected cost function. Numerical examples illustrate the proposed procedure.     

Estimating fixed-effect panel stochastic frontier models by model transformation

Traditional panel stochastic frontier models do not distinguish between unobserved individual heterogeneity and inefficiency. They thus force all time-invariant individual heterogeneity into the estimated inefficiency. Greene (2005) proposes a true fixed-effect stochastic frontier model which, in theory, may be biased by the incidental parameters problem. The problem usually cannot be dealt with by model transformations owing to the nonlinearity of the stochastic frontier model. In this paper, we propose a class of panel stochastic frontier models which create an exception. We show that first-difference and within-transformation can be analytically performed on this model to remove the fixed individual effects, and thus the estimator is immune to the incidental parameters problem. Consistency of the estimator is obtained by either N→∞$N\to \infty$ or T→∞$T\to \infty$, which is an attractive property for empirical researchers.     

Family Business Succession in Hong Kong: The Case of Yung Kee

This case study examines the succession of Chinese family business in Hong Kong, drawing upon theories of the firm. More specifically, it utilizes capabilities theories, property rights economics and Neo-Confucianism to understand management disputes and infighting among the members in a Chinese family business in Hong Kong. This paper will argue that the founder of a Chinese business firm in Hong Kong is able to lead his or her offspring to create a dynamic enterprise via charismatic leadership and family rules embedded in traditional Chinese values. However, these two strategic assets disappear following the passing away of the founder as well as the emergence of new social values. When the founder passes on the enterprise to his or her offspring using more or less the equal inheritance system, the traditional Chinese value is unable to enforce the leader’s will to consolidate the strengths of the second generation family members to maintain the founder’s business. Furthermore, when the business is owned by all family members, property rights of the firm become unclear. Without effective enforcement of traditional Chinese values and with collective ownership rights, some family members will have the incentive to capture the economic rent that is shared by all members. In other words, some family members behave opportunistically or even cheat in order to capture economic gains in the public domain. High monitoring and enforcement costs in the form of court battle and endless disputes will occur. Rent dissipation occurs in the form of deterioration of the quality of the family business. This case study is based on Yung Kee, an internationally well-known roast goose restaurant in Hong Kong as an illustration.     

Impact of operational innovations on customer loyalty in the healthcare sector

This study investigates the effects of operational innovations, such as application of advanced information technology (IT) systems and supported knowledge and skills (SKSs), on care quality and customer loyalty in the healthcare industry. A research model is proposed based on previous studies and examined the relationships among the constructs using the structural equation modeling approach. Research data were collected through a survey of patients and employees of participating hospitals in Korea, with a patient and an employee as one set. The results of the study indicate that operational innovations result in improved customer closeness, which is associated with IT systems usage and SKSs for delivery of quality care, which have a positive impact on patient satisfaction and customer loyalty. Thus, hospital managers should encourage employees to generate new ideas for work efficiency, care quality, customer loyalty, and organizational performance.     

How Much More (or Less) Is a Brand Worth When Made in a Low Labor-Cost Country? It Depends Upon Who and Where You Ask

ABSTRACT

This multinational adaptive conjoint study measures how much more, or less, consumers might be willing to pay for different brand/manufacturing country combinations. Chinese, South Korean, and US respondents were asked about their preferences for laptop computers carrying different combinations of price, country of manufacture (CM), and country of brand (CB) cues. For all three respondent groups, price was the most salient attribute, followed by country of manufacturing, and then CB. Nonetheless, respondents from different countries differed in their preferences for price/country of manufacturing/brand combinations. The findings suggest that brands having both positive CB and CM images can charge premium prices in their home countries and abroad. Brands with weaker CB and CM images may enjoy home court advantages domestically; however, they may have to price their products lower when competing in countries with stronger CM and CB reputations.