Managerial ownership and firm performance: Evidence from China's privatizations

We examine the relationship between managerial ownership and firm performance for a sample of Chinese State-owned enterprises (SOEs) privatized over the period 1992-2000. The results indicate that managerial ownership has a positive effect on firm performance. Although return on assets (ROA) and return on sales (ROS) decline post-privatization, firms with high managerial ownership and, specially, high CEO ownership, exhibit a smaller performance decline. The difference is highly significant, with or without controlling for residual state ownership and changes in the firm's operating environment. We also find that the influence on firm performance becomes less significant at higher levels of CEO ownership. In contrast, performance continues to increase with managerial ownership. This finding suggests that, beyond a certain point, the distribution of shares would be more effective if extended to the whole management team instead of being limited to the chief executive.     

A credit scoring model for Vietnam's retail banking market

As banking markets in developing countries are maturing, banks face competition not only from other domestic banks but also from sophisticated foreign banks. Given the substantial growth of consumer credit and increased regulatory attention to risk management, the development of a well-functioning credit assessment framework is essential. As part of such a framework, we propose a credit scoring model for Vietnamese retail loans. First, we show how to identify those borrower characteristics that should be part of a credit scoring model. Second, we illustrate how such a model can be calibrated to achieve the strategic objectives of the bank. Finally, we assess the use of credit scoring models in the context of transactional versus relationship lending.     

Knowledge embeddedness and the transfer mechanisms in multinational corporations

This paper reports a qualitative study conducted at four Japanese subsidiaries in China and Vietnam about their process of international knowledge transfer. Building on the literatures concerning the diverse types and characteristics of knowledge in multinational corporations (MNCs), we explore the broad mechanisms adopted and locally generated by the host country subsidiaries for transferring the foreign knowledge and putting the locally embedded knowledge into practical use at the local settings. The findings indicated (1) the limitations of applying a standardized and universal set of knowledge transfer mechanisms without considering local idiosyncrasies and (2) the contributions of local agents and institutions throughout the process of local knowledge adaptation and development.     

Firm size,profitability, and savings in Canada

This paper explores the relationship between firm size, profitability, and corporate savings behavior in Canada. It shows that the long-run propensities to save out of profits are much the same for firms of all sizes, although foreign-owned firms generally retain more of their profits compared to domestic firms. Profitability has also been found to be largely independent of variations in firm size, although large foreign-owned firms generally earn higher profits than large domestic firms. The study also finds no evidence for the superiority of the “dividend effect” over the “retained effect”. It is suggested that the relatively high debt ratio experienced by small domestic firms might be better explained by the demand than the supply side of the markets for new equity.     

The Plausibility of Agriculture-Led Development

Within the context of a simple dynamic general equilibrium framework, the model proposed in this paper formally characterizes the path in which a successful transformation in agriculture as a result of an improvement in agricultural technology can conceivably help some developing countries raise rural income, which in turn boosts effective demand for domestically produced, labor-intensive manufactured goods. Consequently, the price of nontraded manufactures goes up, leading to higher production in this sector, and subsequently higher wages. In the longer run, higher wage levels would result in larger aggregate savings, which in turn finances the economy's industrialization.     

Corporate Governance and Corporate Financing and Investment during the 2007‐2008 Financial Crisis

We examine the impact of the 2007‐2008 financial crisis on nonfinancial firms’ financing and investment activities and the role of corporate governance in alleviating the adverse consequences of the external capital supply shock. Employing a difference‐in‐differences research design, we find that better governance mitigates the disruption caused by the bank credit supply shock to firms’ financing and investment activities. A variety of robustness tests suggest that our findings are unlikely to be driven by an endogeneity problem. We obtain similar results when we extend the sample period to include the delayed spillover from the banking sector to other capital market sectors.     

Export diversification and real exchange rate in emerging Latin America and Asia: A South–North vs. South-South decomposition

The present paper examines the directional causality between export diversification and real exchange rate in the middle-income countries of Asia and Latin America over the period from 1995 to 2013. Additionally, we investigate asymmetries in the causality issue by examining the direction across trading partners.

Our empirical results show that there is a two-way causality between the two variables when we look at the sample as a whole. A causal link running from the real exchange rate to export diversification is consistent with the standard literature but it is not systematic at all. The reverse causation is very appealing and challenges the standard argument on exchange rate determination. When the causality issue is investigated by treating export markets differently, our findings at the aggregate level are confirmed in exports destined for the advanced countries. The analysis for ‘South-South’ trade only shows a unidirectional link from the real exchange rate to changes in export diversification. The same tests performed at the individual countries level reveal a heterogeneous causality across trading partners.