The Role of Total Factor Productivity Growth in Middle-Income Countries

We examine the importance of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in middle-income countries (MICs) based on cross-country panel data for the period of 1975–2014. We find that TFP growth contributed significantly to a country’s upward transition from middle-income to high-income country group. The TFP growth model reveals that the catch-up effect, human capital, smaller population, weak currency, and research and development growth are significant sources of TFP growth. We do not find a systematic difference in the TFP growth models for MICs. In analyzing the role of factors influencing TFP growth at different income stages, strengthening innovative activities and building innovative capacities are important in overcoming the challenges that MICs face when transitioning to the high-income group. Governments of upper MICs need to initiate reform to motivate innovation by optimizing national R&D systems, and redesigning the educational system to target promoting innovation.     

Debt financing in private and public firms

Using administrative confidential data on the universe of Canadian corporate firms, we compare debt financing choices of private and public firms. Private firms have higher leverage ratios, which are entirely driven by private firms’ stronger reliance on short-term debt. Further, private firms rely more of leverage during economic expansions, while public firms rely on equity financing. Specifically, private firms manage to increase their long-term debt during expansions, while short-term debt is used during downturns. Our findings have implications for a better understanding of the role of asymmetric information in private firms’ capital structure decisions.     

Perceptions of determinants of job selection in the hospitality and tourism industry: The case of Korean university students

ABSTRACT

This study explores the key factors influencing potential employees in the hospitality and tourism industry and examines whether causal relationships between behavioral attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control influence students' job selection. The study suggests that the career decision-making process is related to job selection. A total of 307 responses were analyzed. The results explain individual students' attitudes toward a behavior and perceived behavioral control in the context of their job selection. Attitudes toward a behavior and job selection had significant effects on career decisions. On the other hand, opinions of significant others had no significant effect. Perceived behaviors required to decide on jobs had a significant effect on job selection intentions. Students with internship experience were likely to form positive attitudes toward the hospitality and tourism industry, suggesting internships to be a useful source of a stronger relationship between the industry and job aptitudes of students in hospitality and tourism programs. The results have important implications.     

Impacts of household loan regulation on financial stability: evidence from Korea

The paper examines whether banking regulations and monetary policy contributed to controlling the fragility of household debt in Korea. The results show that housing loan regulations such as debt to income regulation contributed to a lower household debt delinquency ratio. Lowering the target interest rate provided additional stabilisation of the delinquency ratio. It is recommended that the government adopt an appropriate mix of regulation and monetary policy to control household financial fragility. The financial supervisory services need to be involved in managing debt to income regulation and minimising financial instability and financial market distortions. Further, the monetary authority has to adopt a more effective position in controlling the real lending interest rate and the delinquency ratio of household loans. Such a policy mix will improve effectiveness in controlling financial fragility, especially at a time of financial crisis.     

Marrying personality and job resources and their effect on engagement via critical psychological states

This study examined the process by which individuals become engaged with their jobs by integrating seminal engagement theory. More specifically, we suggest that an individual factor (i.e. autotelic personality) and two contextual factors (i.e. feedback environment, job autonomy) interact to predict work engagement through three critical psychological states – namely availability, meaningfulness, and safety. This moderated mediation framework was tested using a cross section of the US population (n = 284); data were collected at two points in time with 3 months in between. Availability and meaningfulness mediated the relationship between autotelic personality and work engagement. Autotelic personality’s indirect effect on work engagement through meaningfulness and safety was conditional such that the nature of feedback environment’s effect depended on job autonomy level. Theory and practice implications are discussed.     

The great divergence on the Korean peninsula (1910–2020)

Before the 1960s, North Korea's GDP per capita was 30%–50% higher than South Korea's due to industrialisation during the 1930s. However, the governments of the two Koreas pursued different goals in the 1960s, which resulted in a reversal. The South Korean government made economic growth its ultimate goal. They did this by self-implementing, adjusting and instituting an export-oriented development strategy. On the other hand, the North Korean government tried to maximise its ability to survive by sacrificing gains from economies of scale. These differences brought about remarkable differences in economic performance. The gap between the two economies has continued to grow since the income level reversal in the 1970s.     

Content analysis of fake consumer reviews by survey-based text categorization

As the influence of online consumer reviews grows, deceptive reviews are a worsening problem, betraying consumers' trust in reviews by pretending to be authentic and informative. This research identifies factors that can separate deceptive reviews from genuine ones. First, we create a novel means of detection by contrasting authentic versus fake word patterns specific to a given domain (e.g., hotel services). We use a survey on a crowdsourcing platform to obtain both genuine and deceptive reviews of hotels. We learned the word patterns from each category to discriminate genuine reviews from fake ones for positively and negatively evaluated reviews, respectively. We show that our All Terms procedure outperforms current benchmark methods in computational linguistics and marketing. Our extended analysis reveals the factors that determine fake reviews (e.g., a lack of details, present- and future-time orientation, and emotional exaggeration) and the factors influencing people's willingness to write fake reviews (including social media trust, product quality consciousness, deal proneness, hedonic and utilitarian consumption, prosocial behavior, and individualism). We also use our procedure to analyze more than 250,000 real-world hotel reviews to detect fake reviews and identify the hotel and review characteristics influencing review fakery in the industry (e.g., star rating, franchise hotel, hotel size, room price, review timing, and review rating).     

Key Managerial Accounting Skills for Lodging Industry Managers: The Third Phase of a Repeated Cross-Sectional Study

This study is the third phase of a repeated cross-sectional study that explores the current rankings of important accounting skills to lodging managers and the changes in the importance of accounting skills to lodging managers over time. In this study, as with two prior studies, financial executives were asked to rate the importance of a list of managerial accounting skills used by hotel general managers. The top three managerial accounting skills were the operating budget, the income statement, and analysis of variances. This study can provide a better sense of the perception of importance of accounting skills utilized by lodging managers. It will be useful for hospitality educators in designing the curriculum for managerial accounting courses to meet the expectations of the current hospitality industry.     

Floor-level premiums in private housing: the case of condominiums in Singapore

Using a sample consists of 3367 actual condominium sales transacted in resale market from May 2012 to April 2015 from the Singapore Urban and Redevelopment Authority, a hedonic pricing model is used to investigate for the presence of floor-level premiums in the private housing market, condominium, in District 23 of Singapore. Unit size, types of land tenure and the distance to the nearest mass rapid transit (MRT) station are also used as other independent variables. The estimated coefficient of each of these independent variables is statistically significant. Each of these independent variables also has positive estimated coefficient, suggesting that they have positive effects on condominium resale prices. Main findings are (a) there is a presence of floor-level premium; (b) the condominiums with a distance more than 400 m to the MRT station get higher resale prices; and (c) there is an increasing effect of floor level on condominium price.