Understanding India's Regional Initiatives with East and Southeast Asia

In recent years, India has concluded several bilateral and regional agreements with countries in East and Southeast Asia. This paper discusses four motivating factors underlying these initiatives: (i) the recognition by other Asian countries of India's growing importance as an investment and export market, as a supplier of manpower, and as a counterbalance to China's growing regional dominance; (ii) India's recognition of Asia's growing importance in the world economy; (iii) India's desire to prevent its marginalisation and to create a sphere of political and economic influence within East and Southeast Asia; and (iv) geo-political considerations such as securing energy interests, and addressing transport and connectivity concerns and long-term political and sub-regional stability objectives. India's approach to these integration efforts has been largely defensive and its future integration initiatives are likely to be more geo-political and strategic in nature.     

Trade configurations in Asia: Assessing de facto and de jure regionalism

Given the backdrop of significant uncertainties largely propelled by the ongoing trade spat between the United States and China, to what degree can the Asian region move forward in terms of de facto trade integration? Drawing on the new economic geography literature, this paper offers new insights into the literature on trade regionalism in Asia by empirically illustrating how Asian economies can tap into the regional market potential. Specifically, the paper examines the scope for further de facto integration among the Asian countries engaged in the negotiation for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement by estimating foreign market potential (FMP) indices. To preview the main findings, the empirical analysis demonstrates that the share of intra-regional trade in total RCEP trade flows and, consequently, the ratio between within- and outside-RCEP trades are significantly lower than what they could potentially be. The paper makes a case that the enhancement of de jure integration among these economies through the RCEP must be accompanied by efforts to improve de facto integration.     

Workplace Vigor as a Distinct Positive Organizational Behavior Construct: Evaluating the Construct Validity of the Shirom-Melamed Vigor Measure (SMVM)

This research evaluated the distinctiveness of workplace vigor as a unique positive organizational behavior construct, using Luthans’ (2002) five criteria for establishing a construct as unique: theoretical grounding; validly measured; unique to organizational behavior; state-like; and has a significant, positive impact on satisfaction and performance. Data were obtained from 693 employees from 56 quick service restaurants. The sample was split to perform cross-validation on the analyses. The three factor structure of vigor was confirmed, showing convergent and divergent validity with other constructs. Findings suggested that vigor was an important and distinct positive organizational behavior construct. This suggests that a deeper comprehension of vigor may help to advance our understanding of positive organizational behaviors. This is one of the first studies to utilize Luthans’ criteria for positive organizational behavior as a method for evaluating a psychological construct, thus contributing to both theoretical and empirical methods for evaluating positive organizational behavior constructs.     

Impacts of publicly funded health insurance for adults on children's academic achievement

Publicly funded adult health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has had positive effects on low-income adults. We examine whether the ACA's Medicaid expansions influenced child development and family functioning in low-income households. We use a difference-in-differences framework that exploits cross-state policy variation and focus on children in low-income families from a nationally representative, longitudinal sample followed from kindergarten to fifth grade. The ACA Medicaid expansions improved children's reading test scores by ~2% (0.04 SD). Potential mechanisms for these effects within families are more time spent reading at home, less parental help with homework, and eating dinner together. We find no effects for children's math test scores or socioemotional skill development.     

Regulatory Protection and Opportunistic Bankruptcy*

We document controlling shareholder (insider) opportunism in an insolvency regime that uses an accounting rule to determine bankruptcy eligibility. Our study sheds light on managerial incentives induced by weak investor protection laws. Using unique data on bankrupt firms from an emerging market, consistent with our prediction, we show insiders intentionally manage earnings downward to understate firm net worth so as to be able to file for bankruptcy. Downward pre-bankruptcy earnings management is associated with more payments to insiders and weaker performance, post-filing. A battery of tests suggests our results cannot be fully explained as an artifact of financial distress. Rather, they are consistent with insiders exploiting weak investor protection to extract private benefits at the expense of lenders and outside shareholders. Our study serves as a cautionary tale for all insolvency regimes that use a balance sheet test in an environment with weak creditor protection.