International Equity Index and Currency Futures: Commodity Currencies or Emerging Versus Developed Markets?

Equity index futures in both emerging and developing markets that are net commodity exporters are strongly linked to their respective currency futures markets. Unconditional correlations among equity and currency futures are the highest for these net basic materials producers in both emerging and developed markets. Granger causality tests also indicate that stock market returns are more strongly related to currency futures returns for commodity-exporting countries. Additionally, conditional correlations among currency and equity futures returns are the strongest for commodity-producing countries in both emerging and developed economies. Volatility spillover analysis provides consistent results. The overall results indicate that the status of a country as a net importer or exporter of raw materials is more important to the relationship between equity and currency futures than whether it is an emerging or developed economy.     

Sovereign rating changes—Do they provide new information for stock markets?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of sovereign rating changes on international financial markets using a comprehensive database of 42 countries, covering the major regions in the world over the period 1995–2003. In general, we find that rating agencies provide stock and foreign exchange markets with new tradable information. Specifically, rating upgrades (downgrades) significantly increased (decreased) USD denominated stock market returns and decreased (increased) volatility. Whereas the mean response is contributed evenly by the local currency stock returns and exchange rate changes that make up the USD returns, only the foreign exchange volatility was behind the USD denominated return volatility. In addition, we find significant asymmetric effects of rating announcements. The market responses – both return and volatility – are more pronounced in the cases of downgrades, foreign currency debt, emerging market debt, and during crisis periods. This study has important policy implications for international investors’ asset allocation plans and for regulatory bodies such as the Basel Committee who increasingly rely upon Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch's ratings for their regulatory regimes.     

Stranded Costs,Takings, and the Law and Economics of Implicit Contracts

Economic Analysis can help resolve the stranded cost controversy that has arisen in debates over electricity market deregulation. "Stranded costs" are costs electric utilities will not recover as power markets move from protected monopolies to an open, competitive environment. We describe the stranded cost problem, its magnitude and the prominent arguments for and against recovery. An economic analysis of implicit contracts can clarify whether there should be a legal duty to compensate utility shareholders for unrecovered costs. However, efficient approaches to electricity deregulation should rely on more than analysis of contracts. The politics of deregulation, as reflected in optimal compensation for regulatory "takings" of property, also affects the desirability of stranded cost recovery.     

Well‐being‐oriented human resource management practices and employee performance in the Chinese banking sector: The role of social climate and resilience

Drawing upon positive psychology and a social relational perspective, this article examines the relationship between well‐being‐oriented human resource management (HRM) practices and employee performance. Our multilevel model examines relationships among collectively experienced well‐being‐oriented HRM practices, social climate (characterized by trust, cooperation, and shared codes and language that exist among individuals within the organization), employee resilience, and employee (in‐role) performance. Based on the two‐wave data obtained from 561 employees and their managers within 62 bank branches in 16 Chinese banks, our multilevel analyses provide support for our four hypotheses. First, we found a positive relationship between well‐being‐oriented HRM practices and social climate. Second, social climate mediated the relationship between well‐being‐oriented HRM practices and employee resilience. Third, we found a positive relationship between resilience and employee performance. Finally, employee resilience mediated the relationship between social climate and employee performance. This study is one of the first to unpack the social mechanisms through which well‐being‐oriented HRM practices increase development of resilience and subsequent employee performance at the workplace, namely through influencing group feelings of social climate.     

An Empirical Assessment of the Contract Based Exception to the Employment-At-Will Rule

While extensive, the existing literature on the employment-at-will doctrine and its various exceptions has been remarkably uniform. By relying on a discussion of selected court opinions on specific aspects of the doctrine, scholars have focused primarily on normative issues such as what the courts should do when deciding job security disputes, or what plaintiffs/employees and defendants/employers should argue when litigating employment disputes. Our approach and focus are different. Instead of relying on a discussion of selected cases, we rely on a more comprehensive sample of cases. Instead of focusing on normative issues, our goal is to provide a more complete picture of the state of the at-will doctrine as reflected in those cases. Our data should be of interest to legal scholars interested in understanding the characteristics and outcomes of litigated employment-at-will cases. Our data should also be relevant to the current debate among management scholars regarding conflicts that might arise due to aggressive recruitment practices which highlight long term employment opportunities and the realities associated with at-will employment.     

Examining the ‘black box’ of human resource management in MNEs in China: exploring country of origin effects

We examine the impact of HPWS on the attitudes and retention of Chinese employees in multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in China. More specifically, we examine the extent to which the degree of HPWS and the impact of these practices differ according to the country of origin of the MNE. We surveyed a sample of 410 Chinese employees currently working in Western and Asian MNEs. The findings indicate significant ‘country of origin’ effects, where employees of Western and Asian MNEs perceive different levels of HPWS are in operation in their respective organisations. Employee trust, job satisfaction and affective commitment are all important factors in the retention of Chinese employees of MNEs, with high levels of commitment being the most significant factor. However, the relative impact of these factors on employee retention differs by country of origin of the MNE.     

Health,height, and the household at the turn of the twentieth century

This article examines the health and height of men born in England and Wales in the 1890s who enlisted in the army at the time of the First World War, using a sample of recruits from the army service records. These are linked to their childhood circumstances as observed in the 1901 census. Econometric results indicate that height on enlistment was positively related to socio‐economic class, and negatively to the number of children in the household in 1901 and the proportion of household members who were earners, as well as to the degree of crowding. Adding the characteristics of the locality has little effect on the household‐level effects. However local conditions were important; in particular the industrial character of the district, local housing conditions, and the female illiteracy rate. These are interpreted as representing the negative effect on height of the local disease environment. The results suggest that changing conditions at both household and locality levels contributed to the increase in height and health in the following decades.     

Sabotage versus Discouragement: Which Dominates Post Promotion Tournament Behavior?

We explore the behavior of losers of promotion tournaments after the tournament is concluded. We do so with an experiment in which we vary the design of the promotion tournament to determine how tournament design affects post tournament effort. Our design allows us to discriminate between two possible reasons tournaments might lead to decreased work effort among the tournament losers: strategic sabotage and a worker becoming discouraged by the tournament outcome. We examine behavior after the tournament and find evidence suggesting that bad tournament design can lead to workers being discouraged. This discouragement effect is strong for low ability workers but not for high ability workers. Conversely, we do find evidence that some high ability workers engage in strategic sabotage but the incidence does not vary with the design of the promotion tournament and the incidence of it is low.     

Supranationalist Alliances and Tourism: Insights from ASEAN and SAARC

This paper examines the influences of international free-trade alliances/regional trading blocs on tourism development. While relatively few of these coalitions mention tourism specifically, most of them deal with issues that are directly pertinent to tourism, such as environmental conservation, flows of people, regional promotion, infrastructure and transportation and trade in goods and services. This paper scans these issues in the tourism context as they pertain specifically to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). While the paper argues primarily that such alliances have potential for positive outcomes, their negative effects are also considered and many of the roadblocks to achieving successful multilateral regional blocs are highlighted.