To Help or Not to Help? The Good Samaritan Effect and the Love of Money on Helping Behavior

This research tests a model of employee helping behavior (a component of Organizational Citizenship Behavior, OCB) that involves a direct path (Intrinsic Motives → Helping Behavior, the Good Samaritan Effect) and an indirect path (the Love of Money → Extrinsic Motives → Helping Behavior). Results for the full sample supported the Good Samaritan Effect. Further, the love of money was positively related to extrinsic motives that were negatively related with helping behavior. We tested the model across four cultures (the USA., Taiwan, Poland, and Egypt). The Good Samaritan Effect was significant for all four countries. For the indirect path, the first part was significant for all countries, except Egypt, whereas the second part was significant for Poland only. For Poland, the indirect path was significant and positive. The love of money may cause one to help in one culture (Poland) but not to help in others. Results were discussed in the light of ethical decision making.

Dynamics of Islamic Financing in Malaysia: Causality and Innovation Accounting

This article addresses the underresearched issues of marketing challenges and business strategies/models for emerging markets. It suggests that firms need to fundamentally rethink their business models and marketing policies for emerging markets. Although strategies focusing on product affordability and availability are necessary, identification of niche market segments and making clear choices about which segments to pursue, with what value propositions will promote great success. Moreover, strategic flexibility, local sourcing, engagement of nontraditional partners, and local entrepreneurship will be important factors for successful pursuit of the emerging markets.     

Korean unification prospects: an assessment through the BDN-model

The debate on the possible unification of South Korea and North Korea has often been assessed from the economic perspective, which is insufficient since unification entails not only the integration of two economies but political, social and technological integration of two territories. Using the box negotiation diagram model, this paper expands the scope of the study on South Korea and North Korea unification through a multidisciplinary approach encompassing the political, economic, social and technological perspectives. Given the huge imbalanced points of unification drawn from our analysis, we observed more divergence than convergence hence, hinging the possibility of unification of serious negotiation.     

Financial inclusion as a pathway to welfare enhancement and income equality: Micro-level evidence from Nigeria

While the importance of financial inclusion as a means of poverty and income inequality reduction has long been recognised, the paths to welfare enhancement and income equality through financial inclusion remain partially acknowledged. Using micro-level data on 1 750 rural Nigerian households, this study examines the finance-welfare nexus by constructing a multi-variable financial inclusion index. The results first show that financial inclusion exerts a strong positive influence on household welfare. However, the decomposition analysis shows that middle- and high-income households gain more from financial inclusion in comparison to the targeted low-income households. Second, informal livelihood strategies, such as environmental resource extraction, crops, and livestock production, revealed reduced welfare disparities across income distributions. Therefore, for financial inclusion to alleviate welfare inequality and ensure income convergence, rural financial markets must be redesigned to allow wider access to credit, specifically for low-income and vulnerable households.     

An analysis of decentralized collection and processing of end-of-life products

In this study, we analyze decentralized collection and processing operations for end-of-life products in durable goods industries. We consider a durable end-of-life product from which a particular part can be dismantled and remanufactured, and the remainder of the product can be further processed for part and/or material recovery. Both the quantity of end-of-life products available and the demand for remanufactured parts are price-sensitive. We develop models to determine the optimal acquisition price of the end-of-life products and the selling price of the remanufactured parts in centralized as well as remanufacturer- and collector-driven decentralized channels. We discuss how the decentralized channels can be coordinated to attain the end-of-life product collection rate that can be achieved in the centralized channel. In the presence of environmental regulations that require an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of durable goods to collect and process its end-of-life products, we identify when and why the OEM would prefer a remanufacturer- or a collector-driven channel, i.e., outsource the processing or the collection activity, respectively. From a practical perspective, we show that the OEM should prefer a collector-driven channel to increase the collection rate, when end-of-life products are homogenous. However, we also show that the OEM would prefer a remanufacturer-driven channel under certain conditions. We also examine how the OEM can increase the quantity of used products collected, when the collection rate in the preferred channel setting falls short of the collection rate mandated by the environmental regulation. When end-of-life products are heterogeneous, we observe that the collection rate for all quality groups can be positive in a remanufacturer-driven channel, whereas the collection rate for some quality groups may be zero. This indicates that the OEM must pay more attention to its outsourcing decision in this case, if the environmental regulation in effect specifies target collection rates for individual quality groups.     

Portfolio choice with small temporary and transient price impact

We study portfolio selection in a model with both temporary and transient price impact introduced by Garleanu and Pedersen. In the large‐liquidity limit where both frictions are small, we derive explicit formulas for the asymptotically optimal trading rate and the corresponding minimal leading‐order performance loss. We find that the losses are governed by the volatility of the frictionless target strategy, like in models with only temporary price impact. In contrast, the corresponding optimal portfolio not only tracks the frictionless optimizer, but also exploits the displacement of the market price from its unaffected level.     

Local investor attention and post-earnings announcement drift

We show that local investor attention, as a proxy for the arrival rate of informed trading, has an impact on post-earnings announcement drift. Measured by monthly abnormal Google search volume before the earnings announcement, high (low) local investor attention is associated with weak (strong) delayed market reaction to the earnings announcement and strong (weak) abnormal trading volume in the pre-earnings announcement period. The evidence documented in this paper supports both “rational structural uncertainty” and attention allocation theories that argue that information distribution among investors plays an important role in explaining market anomalies.     

Trading patterns in the European carbon market: The role of trading intensity and OTC transactions

This paper examines the effect of trading intensity and OTC transactions on expected market conditions in the early development period of the European Carbon futures market. Past duration and trading intensity are used as information related order flow variables in modelling time between transactions in two new specifications of Autocorrelation Conditional Duration (ACD) models. This allows for specific investigation of non-linear asymmetric effects on expected duration and the impact of OTC transactions. Evidence is presented of two main types of trading episodes of increased and decreased trading intensity. Both have a significant impact on price volatility, which increases further if an OTC transaction intrudes. OTC transactions also play a dual role. They slow down trading activity in the short term (over the next five transactions) but increase it substantially in the long term (over ten transactions). Both the liquidity and information price impact components increase following an OTC trade, but the information impact is greater. Price volatility calms down faster than liquidity effects following an OTC trade, and this is more pronounced in ECX and in Phase II. The combined evidence points towards increased market depth, efficiency and maturity of the trading environment.     

Entrepreneurship education and the creation of an enterprise culture: provisional results from an experiment in Egypt

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report (2008) for Egypt identified education and training as one of the main constraining factors to entrepreneurship development and the creation of an entrepreneurial culture in the country. Of the 31 countries participating in the National Experts’ Survey, Egypt was ranked in last place in terms of the contribution of the education system and the number one recommendation was that it needs to be reformed. Hence, the study examines the Entrepreneurial Tendencies of students of business administration at the British University in Egypt using the Durham University General Enterprising Tendency Test. It reveals that the entrepreneurial propensity of the Egyptian students is somewhat higher than that of their counterparts in the UK, despite the prevailing traditional “knowledge acquisition” pedagogy. When exposed to a more entrepreneurial style of teaching and learning, the students’ GET scores increased by about 8 per cent over a 12 week period, suggesting that if a change in the educational paradigm could be effected, it should be possible to effect a change in the way students think and behave, thereby helping bring about an entrepreneurial culture. The study examines the brain dominance of the students and makes proposals for future research.