Price discovery in Taiwan's foreign exchange market

This paper investigates the dynamics of price adjustments and the price discovery roles of two markets on Taiwan's foreign exchange, TFI and CFE. Results from the multivariate threshold model indicate prices are integrated nonlinearly. The roles of price discovery are asymmetric, depending on the size and sign of the price discrepancies between the two markets. In the lower regime of discrepancies, each market employs information from its counterpart and reacts to each other with different adjustment speeds. When the discrepancy is in the upper regime, CFE's role of price discovery is characterized by its exogenous behavior within the error-correction process.     

Money,barter, and consumption interdependence

By introducing a degree of consumption interdependence into a search model, we show that people may switch from using money to bartering during hyperinflation, but barter activities, however, could still be popular even though the inflation rate is low.     

Optimal access regulation with downstream competition

We analyze the setting of access prices for a bottleneck facility where the facility owner also competes in the deregulated downstream market. We consider a continuum of market structures from Cournot to Bertrand. These market structures are fully characterized by a single parameter representing the intensity of competition. We first show how the efficient component pricing rule should be modified as the downstream competitive intensity changes. We then analyse the optimal access price where a regulator trades off production efficiency and pro-competitive effects to maximize total surplus.     

Relationships between process quality,outcome quality,satisfaction, and behavioural intentions for online travel agencies – evidence from Taiwan

Instead of using the SERVQUAL-type scale, this study conceptualizes e-service quality by two dimensions – process quality and outcome quality – and explores the relationships between process quality, outcome quality, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions in the context of online travel agencies. Using an empirical survey consisting of 240 Taiwanese respondents who have purchased online travel agents' products, the results reveal that process quality and outcome quality have significantly direct and positive effects on satisfaction. In addition, there exists a significant influence of satisfaction on behavioural intentions. While supporting the quality–satisfaction–behavioural intentions relationship overall, this study specifically provides more insights into the construction and effects of e-service quality.     

Socioeconomic Advance in the Republic of China (Taiwan)

A bstract . The significance of economic development in the Republic of China on Taiwan cannot be adequately recognized without a concomitant assessment of the social changes that have taken place over the last 30 years. The concept of social indicators as measures of such changes is explored and their applicability to the island determined. Levels of the quality of life from different periods are studied and their advances analyzed. Taiwan's levels are compared with those of developed countries and of the People's Republic of China (Mainland China). Taiwan's show evidence of remarkable progress. The impacts of energy developments and of the recession's deterioration of foreign trade have threatened the rate as well as the absolute level of this progress.     

Radionuclide esophageal transit test: Detection of esophageal dysmotility and reflux in noncardiac chest pain

Thirty-one patients with substernal chest pain but with normal coronary angiographic findings and 25 normal volunteers were included in our study. Esophageal motility—including esophageal mean transit time (MTT), residual fraction (RF), and retrograde index (RI) of the two groups—were evaluated by the radionuclide esophageal transit test. The results showed that among patients with noncardiac chest pain (NCP), 48% have a longer MTT, 39% have a higher RF, and 58% have a higher RI than normal volunteers. We found that esophageal disorders are a common source of noncardiac chest pain, and that radionuclide esophageal transit test is a simple noninvasive screening method to detect esophageal dysmotility or gastroesophageal reflux in such cases.     

Sinking Funds and the Agency Costs of Corporate Debt

This paper examines whether a firm's sinking fund decision is affected by agency costs. The paper argues that sinking funds can be an effective device to resolve the problems of information asymmetry, risk incentives, and suboptimal investments. Empirical tests are provided. Results show that firms with certain characteristics related to agency problems tend to adopt a sinking fund provision in the bond indenture.     

Copula-based tests for cross-sectional independence in panel models

This paper proposes the copula-based tests for testing cross-sectional independence of panel models.     

The choice between civil service and entrepreneurship in the presence of credit rationing

This article examines the role of opportunities to be civil servants in determining both an individual’s ability to borrow to be an entrepreneur and his career choices that are related to the endowment of wealth. It is assumed that the civil servants are hired to produce the public goods or services that benefit all the entrepreneurs hiring workers to produce private goods. In considering the case where the position of a civil servant is randomly up for grabs without rent-seeking, it is known that the effect of a rise in the number of civil servants to be hired on an individual’s ability to borrow is mainly based on the improved efficiency and a rise in the wage due to an increase in the demand for workers. When the position of a civil servant is secured through rent-seeking, it is found that an improvement in the financial environment will lower the cost of rent-seeking if the welfare of the civil servant is not too high.