Does the financial cooperation agreement increase the interdependency among ASEAN+3 equity markets? A Markov switching approach

International Economics and Economic Policy - This paper aims to investigate the degree of interdependence among ASEAN+3 equity markets by employing Markov Switching approach and Johansen...     

Effects of good governance,sustainable development and aid on quality of life: Evidence from sub‐saharan Africa

The paper empirically investigates the effects of governance (GGov), official development assistance (ODA), sustainability [adjusted net savings (ANS)], and macroeconomic variables on the quality of life [human development index (HDI)] for selected sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries using the most recent data from 2000 to 2017. The study employed different panel techniques. The findings provide insightful and interesting empirical results that resonate with the magnitude of a significant of the role of GGov on ANS and HDI. Our study shows that GGov is important to improve HDI. Additionally, ANS has important implications on the well‐being of human existence in SSA. In addition to these, this study found that macroeconomic variables such as trade openness and economic growth, wealth, and opportunity creation factors like urbanization and electrification rate are essential. Furthermore, empirical results revealed that ODA has a negative and significant association with HDI, which is in line with some of the existing literature. Our findings have several implications for organizations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and African Development Bank. This study serves as a policy instrument and guides in coordinating SSA on promoting HDI.     

Evaluation of Target Area Concentration (TAC) Programme in Malaysia’s Integrated Cattle and Oil Palm Farming

Malaysia’s beef production falls under three types of production methods: traditional system, intensive system of cattle feedlots, and integrated farming system. The objective of this study is to investigate and evaluate the effectiveness of the target area concentration (TAC) programme conducted by the Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) that focuses on the integrated farming system between cattle and oil palm plantation. This study intends to identify the programme’s achievement through context, input, process, and product (CIPP) analysis. The analysis reveals that the real needs of the programme context are being met by TAC; the provision meets the needs of inputs but there are some constraints; the implementation of the TAC programme is running well and receives good cooperation from farmers, but there are some constraints; and there is a positive impact of the programme in terms of production, income, employment, changes in knowledge, skill, attitude, and practice. Overall, the TAC programme has thus far achieved its objectives, but it needs some improvements.     

Using GIS to visualise and evaluate student travel behaviour

Using GIS to evaluate travel behaviour is an important technique to increase our understanding of the relationship between accessibility and transport demand. In this paper, the activity space concept was used to identify the nature of participation in activities (or lack of it) amongst a group of students using a 2 day travel-activity diary. Three different indicators such as the number of unique locations visited, average daily distance travelled, and average daily activity duration were used to measure the size of activity spaces. These indicators reflect levels of accessibility, personal mobility, and the extent of participation, respectively. Multiple regression analyses were used to assess the impacts of students socio-economic status and the spatial characteristics of home location. Although no differences were found in the levels of accessibility and the extent of participation measures, home location with respect to a demand responsive transport (DRT) service was found to be the most important determinant of their mobility patterns. Despite being able to travel longer distances, students who live outside of the DRT service area were found to be temporally excluded from some opportunities. Student activity spaces were also visualised within a GIS environment and a spatial analysis was conducted to underpin the evaluation of the performance of the DRT. This approach was also used to identify the activity spaces of individuals that are geographically excluded from the service. Evaluation of these results indicated that although the service currently covers areas of high demand, 90% of the activity spaces remained un-served by the DRT service. Using this data six new routes were designed to meet the coverage goal of public transport based on a measure of network impedance based on inverse activity density. Following assessment of public transport service coverage, the study was extended using a spatial multi criteria evaluation (SMCE) technique to assess the effect of service provision on patronage.     

Monetary policy shocks and the dynamics of agricultural commodity prices: evidence from structural and factor‐augmented VAR analyses

Fluctuation in commodity prices is a significant and timely issue to be studied. This study is to examine the impact of monetary policy and other macroeconomic shocks on the dynamics of agricultural commodity prices. The major contributions of this study are twofold. First, unlike other studies that use indexes, this study analyzes the commodities individually, affording the inclusion of commodity‐specific fundamentals such as the level of inventory—an important determinant of commodity price—in a structural VAR framework. Second, it exploits a rich data set of agricultural commodity prices which includes commodities that are usually overlooked in the literature, and extracts a common factor using the dynamic factor model to understand the extent of comovement of the prices and to gauge the extent to which macroeconomic shocks drive the “comovement” in a factor‐augmented VAR (FAVAR) framework. The findings show that monetary policy, global economic conditions, and the U.S. dollar exchange rates play an important role in the dynamics of agricultural commodity prices.     

THE GROWTH OPTIMAL CAPITAL STRUCTURE: MANAGER VERSUS SHAREHOLDER OBJECTIVES

Utilizing a geometric mean wealth maximization approach, this paper shows potential differences between the capital structure preferred by stockholders and the one preferred by managers. In general, managers may prefer more conservative, equity-oriented financing, while stockholders desire greater financial leverage. The problem arises because of differences in the degree of portfolio diversification achieved by managers and stockholders. Stockholders tend to have reasonably well-diversified portfolios, causing them to be concerned with systematic risk. Managers' portfolios are apt to be more concentrated and directly tied to the financial success of an employer, causing managers to be concerned with total risk. Thus, for a given capital structure, each party views the firm as having a different level of risk. Several executive compensation plans are considered that might more closely align the interests of managers and stockholders.     

Vertical Integration,Foreign Multinationals and Stigler's Hypotheses: An Empirical Test Using Malaysian Data*

In this paper the hypotheses on motives for vertical integration as proposed by Stigler are empirically tested using a panel dataset from Malaysian manufacturing under both fixed‐effects and random‐effects specifications. Because the degree of multinational participation is expected to influence the results of the regression estimates, empirical tests are conducted with and without controlling for the effect of foreign firms’ participation. Depending on model specifications, evidence is found in favor of Stigler's hypotheses where vertical integration is positively related to demand growth and industry concentration. This result is generally consistent with those found in other vertical integration studies. Significantly, the coefficient estimates of the growth variable are not significant and biased downwards if there is no control on the effect of foreign multinationals in the estimation process.     

What drives sustainable student travel? Mode choice determinants in the Greater Toronto Area

Examination of mode choice behavior is an important step in accurately predicting future travel demand. Despite having somewhat unique travel needs and challenges, there is a lack of knowledge in understanding the mode use behavior of university student population. The existing studies on university populations relied on a relatively smaller sample in investigating the behavior. Therefore, using world's largest university student's travel database, this study examines the factors affecting the mode choice behavior of a diverse university student population with student samples from four universities and their seven campuses located across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Canada. Additionally, stratifying this diverse population using their attitudinal responses towards numerous travel modes, this study also estimates three additional mode choice models to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of how students in different markets, with different latent attitudes towards transportation, vary in terms of sustainable mode choice. A cluster analysis based on fourteen attitudinal responses, was conducted to stratify the sample whereas the popular multinomial logit approach was used to estimate the mode choice models. This study finds transit pass and bike ownership as important determinants that govern sustainable mode choice among the students in the region. The findings of this study could facilitate the sustainability offices at the four universities in making an informed policy decision in shifting the mode use behavior of students towards sustainable modes.     

Investigation of Directional and Functional Relationships of Australian Dollar Exchange Rate,Steam Coal Export,and Steam Coal Price

The interesting finding in this article is that the Australian coal exporter's loss, which occurs due to a strong Australian dollar, is less than the profit from increasingly higher prices of Australian steam coal. For this reason, Australian steam coal exporters choose to export more when the price is high. The empirical results of this analysis confirm that for each one cent increase in Australian dollar value against the U.S. dollar, the Australian steam coal price increases by 0.8182 U.S. dollars and for each additional one million tons export of Australian steam coal, the Australian steam coal price increases by 1.752 U.S. dollars.     

Designing corporate brand experience in an online context: A qualitative insight

This study explores the dimensions and components of corporate brand experience in an Internet setting. Corporate brand experience (CBE), which is a source of a company's added value, could be an effective way to position a corporate brand in relation to the overall corporate marketing strategy. However, the concept of CBE has attracted very little attention from previous research, thereby our understanding of what the concept is and how to operationalize it is limited. Previous brand experience research is mainly focused on the conceptual understanding of brand experience itself, and/or the product brand level (rather than at corporation level). Understanding CBE is important because corporate brand equity (e.g. corporate image, brand loyalty) is dependent not only on how one is satisfied with the product (mostly addressed by functional/performance values of product), but also through the values of the corporation (corporate brand values). This study thus contributes theoretically to the corporate and online branding literature by proposing underlying new dimensions and components of CBE in an online environment. A series of focus group discussions (FGDs) with 32 online banking respondents informs the study. We identify five main themes and 26 sub-themes of corporate brand experience — corporate visual identity, functionality, emotional, lifestyle and corporate/self-identity. Financial service providers can address these dimensionalities during the process of brand positioning and when designing their corporate marketing in an online setting.