Financial Analysis of Palestinian Industry Including Small Scale Firms

The study aims to explore the financial aspects of the Palestinian industry, and to investigate productivity and efficiency of small scale industry compared with large scale firms. In order to help policy makers in industrial planning in the new emerged Palestinian state. A special instrument has been used to collect the financial and quantitative data for the related manufacturing firms from a random sample of 215 Palestinian firms. The one way analysis of variance test was used to examine whether the mean scores differ significantly among scale sizes of the Palestinian industry concerning the selected performance measures. In addition, the Scheffe test was used as a post hoc comparison way to identify which scale size firms' performance differs than the other two scale sizes.The research revealed that small scale firms in Palestinian industry have higher labor productivity values than large scale firms, while large scale firms accomplished higher net profit margin compared to small scale industry. Creating an additional job in large scale Palestinian industry needs less cost than creating a job in small scale industry, and large scale firms have better opportunity in getting external financing than small firms.     

Financial Integration in the 1920s: A Cointegration Approach

Financial Integration in the 1920s: A Cointegration Approach. - This paper applies the concept of cointegration to analyze the foreign exchange market during the 1920s. The data set consists of daily spot and forward exchange rates for the U. S. dollar, French franc, Belgian franc, Italian lira and German mark, each quoted with respect to the British pound. The authors find that the future spot and forward exchange rates for the U.S., France, Belgium, and Italy are cointegrated. Using a multivariate test for cointegration, they find no evidence of cointegration across markets. There is weak evidence of cointegration among the two neighboring economies of France and Belgium.     

Comparative accuracy of forecasts of inflation: a Canadian study

An inaccurate forecast of inflation is costlier to economic agents when the inflation rate is high and volatile. In this situation, the use of more sophisticated and information-oriented forecasting models become economically efficient. We test this hypothesis by analysing the forecasting accuracy of vector auto-regressive (VAR), auto-regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and static expectation models. We use Canadian data and divide the post-sample forecasting period into four sub-periods, based on high/low and volatile/stable inflation. Prediction errors are compared for both short-term and long-term forecasts. Finally, the paper proposes a portfolio approach for obtaining a more accurate forecast of inflation.     

Economic Liberalization and Productivity Growth: Further Evidence From Bangladesh

The impact of economic liberalization reforms on the productive performances of manufacturing firms remains a contentious issue in the literature. This paper attempts to contribute to the debate by empirically estimating productivity growth of Bangladesh food manufacturing using firm level data before and after reform. Empirical results show that the share of output growth was accounted for by input growth in most sectors of this industry. In some sectors, the estimated rate of total factor productivity (TFP) growth is negligible or even negative. Decomposition of the TFP growth shows that technological progress plays a significant role in TFP growth across firms within the sub-sectors of this industry. Empirical results also show that the relative contribution of capacity realization to TFP growth is not substantial in inhibiting the industry's high and sustained growth. These dismal performances indicate that the industries responded a little to the implementation of economic reforms.     

The perceived credibility of quality labels: a scale validation with refinement

In this paper, we present quality labels as signals that reduce problems that arise under asymmetric information. We propose to closely scrutinize the concept of signal credibility, which is a key determinant of signalling effectiveness. In order to assess the perceived credibility of a quality label, we offer a revisited version of a scale originally proposed by Larceneux. The data used in this paper involve three different labels and were collected using self‐report surveys administered to 602 respondents. Based on findings from a variety of reliability and validity tests, the scale demonstrates good psychometric properties. Both theoretical and managerial implications are discussed, along with limitations and future research directions.     

Impact of employees’ perceived threat of market competition on unethical marketing and selling practices: Moral disengagement and ethical leadership

This study draws on the social cognitive theory to examine the effect of perceived market competition on employees’ unethical marketing and selling practices. The boundary conditions associated with this relationship were examined, and we posit that perceived market competition is related to unethical marketing and selling practices through the mediating mechanism of moral disengagement. We further propose that ethical leadership moderates the relationship between the perceived threat of market competition, moral disengagement, and tendency toward unethical marketing and selling practices. We tested our hypotheses with a sample of 387 employees working in the banking sector in Pakistan. Our results suggest that moral disengagement had a full mediation effect between the perceived threat of market competition and tendency of employees toward unethical marketing and selling practices. Moreover, ethical leadership moderated the relationship between moral disengagement and the tendency of employees toward unethical marketing practices. The research findings indicate that when field employees encounter threat perceptions due to market competition, they have a propensity toward engaging in unethical marketing and selling practices when they can activate moral disengagement. This study also found that ethical leadership negatively moderates the relationship of moral disengagement with employees’ tendency toward unethical marketing and selling practices.