The Effect of Board Diversity on Earnings Quality: An Empirical Study of Listed Firms in Vietnam

Previous studies have established that firms’ effectiveness can differ based on the differences among directors within a board, and between boards. However, studies have yet to establish the effectiveness of the diverse attributes of the board on firms’ quality of earnings in an emerging market setting such as Vietnam. This study investigates the effect of board diversity on earnings quality in a sample of Vietnamese listed firms. The two dimensions of board diversity measures in this study cover a wide range of structural and demographic attributes of board of directors, using a diversity‐of‐boards index (dissimilarities among firm boards, i.e., board structure) and a diversity‐in‐boards index (dissimilarities among directors within a board, i.e., demographic attributes of board members). Earnings quality is an aggregate measure compiled from four accounting‐based measures of earnings quality: accruals quality, earnings persistence, earnings predictability and earnings smoothness. We find a significant, positive linear relationship between diversity of boards and earnings quality, while the relationship between diversity in boards and earnings quality is non‐linear, with a U‐shaped curve.     

Gender differences in formal credit approaches: rural households in Vietnam

In Vietnam, women have poorer access to formal credit than men. This article determines the extent to which borrowing constraints restrict women’s access to formal credit and identifies the socioeconomic characteristics that determine formal credit discrimination. The study used secondary data from the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) published in 2013–14, and analysis was undertaken by econometric approaches such as logistic and multiple linear regression models and propensity score matching methods. The results show that among those participants who successfully obtained credit, approximately 85 per cent of women obtained less credit than men; and the amount of credit that women obtained was also less (on average, approximately 1.8 per cent less). Gender, number of years of schooling, marital status, participation in agricultural activities, off‐farm employment, and ownership of agricultural land for a male‐headed household positively influenced discrimination in obtaining credit and the amount of credit obtained. Moreover, the propensity score matching results found that the average increase in the credit obtained by males was 220,000 Vietnamese Dong (VND) and this is mainly due to discrimination in favour of men. The results suggest that policy action is needed to avoid discrimination in credit disbursement on the basis of gender.     

Government expenditure,external and domestic public debt,and economic growth

This paper analyzes the relationship between government expenditure, tax on returns to assets, public debt, and growth in an endogenous growth model. Public debt is composed of two components, domestic debt and external debt. We show conditions for existence, uniqueness, and multiplicity of the steady states. More precisely, existence of steady state requires a sufficiently high productivity and a sufficiently low tax on returns to assets. We also provide the effects of an increase in the tax rate on returns to assets on the steady state. In particular, the relation between public spending and the tax rate has a bell shape. Domestic debt unambiguously increases with tax whereas external debt displays an inverted U‐shaped curve. A high tax rate leads to a reallocation of public debt in favor of domestic debt (to the detriment of external debt). The effect of taxation on consumption (and production) also displays a nonlinear pattern when the output elasticity of capital is lower than unity (the effect is monotonously increasing if this elasticity is unity). We also derive the conditions under which a tax increase can boost or reduce the balanced growth rate.     

Slack-based directional distance function in the presence of bad outputs: theory and application to Vietnamese banking

In this paper we extend the slack-based directional distance function introduced by Färe and Grosskopf (Eur J Oper Res 200(1):320–322, 2010) to measure efficiency in the presence of bad outputs and illustrate it through an application on data of Vietnamese commercial banks. We also compare results from the slack-based directional distance function relative to the directional distance function, the enhanced hyperbolic efficiency measure (Färe et al. in Rev Econ Stat 71(1):90–98, 1989) and the Farrell-type technical efficiency and confirm that it has greater discriminative power.     

Segmenting Visitors to Battlefield Sites: International Visitors to The Former Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam

Paradoxically, part of the appeal of Vietnam as an emerging destination lies in the commodification of images, artifacts, and battlefield sites of the Vietnam War. While studied from the supply-side, little research has been undertaken yet in terms of the patterns of demand for battlefield tourism. Based on a survey of 481 visitors to the former Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), this article uses factor analysis and cluster analysis to segment then profile battlefield visitors based on their motivations. Three groups of visitors to the DMZ were identified: the Battlefield Tourism Enthusiast, the Opportunist, and Passive Tourists. Significant differences were found between the three segments with regard to various sociodemographics and trip characteristics. However, results from the study also emphasize that analyses of demand based on site visits should be contextualized in terms of visits to the country as a whole and that care must be taken in distinguishing specialist visitors from generalists.     

Combination of Theory of Planned Behavior and Motivation: An Exploratory Study of Potential Beach-based Resorts in Vietnam

The decision-making process of travel destination choice is very complex. Understanding why people travel and what factors influence tourists' travel intentions has been paid much attention by tourism scholars. This study attempted to examine the predictive power of theory of planned behavior (TPB) with the addition of past behavior and travel motivation in predicting behavioral intention of choosing a beach-based resort in Vietnam. Data were collected in three cities in both northern and southern Vietnam from the end of January to post-middle of March 2010 with the participation of 327 international tourists. In general, the results aligned with previous studies which supported the applicability of the TPB model. Attitude and subjective norm but not perceived behavioral control was found to have made a made a significant contribution to the prediction of intention. The findings also indicated both extension factors had considerable impact on behavioral intention of choosing a beach-based resort in Vietnam. Implications and suggestions for future studies were also provided in the last part of the study.     

Financial structure in the age of globalization

Using a large panel data set covering 160 countries over the period 1990 to 2010, this article aims to address the question of how financial structure (bank-based versus market-based system) changes when economies are liberalized and opened to international capital markets. Specifically, in this study, globalization is characterized not only by trade and financial integration but also by other important aspects, such as social globalization, political globalization and cultural globalization. The empirical results support the impacts of globalization on financial structure, which are, however, diverse and strongly depend on the way to measure globalization and financial structure. Our finding also reveals a significant change in financial structure after the globalization process, except the case of low-income countries, in which financial structure seems to be not correlated with either globalization process or other macroeconomic variables.     

The effects of multilateral trading systems on risk and return in equity markets

The event study methodology of Brown and Warner (1985) is adopted and augmented to evaluate the effect of the launch of multilateral trading systems on risk and return in equity markets. The methodology is supplemented with various techniques, such as the nonparametric ranking test and kernel regression, to find out if announcements about the introduction of Chi-X Australia generated abnormal returns (ARs). Asset pricing models are fitted with interaction variables, while GARCH, threshold ARCH (TARCH), exponential GARCH (EGARCH) and power-ARCH (PARCH) are used to determine changes in systematic risk. We find evidence in favour of Fisher’s separation theorem and detect a new market anomaly, which we call the ‘Fisher market anomaly’. Our results show that Chi-X system testings affect ARs. Consistent with the adaptive expectations theory, we confirm that the first announcement about the launch of Chi-X affected systematic risk the most. In addition, we identify industry and firm effects in risk analysis.     

How does FDI affect domestic firms’ wages? theory and evidence from Vietnam

This paper explores the role of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) as a determinant of domestic firms’ wages, namely wage spillovers. We first construct a theoretical model to demonstrate that the presence of FDI firms affects domestic firms’ expected average wages via productivity spillovers and a cut-off capability. We then estimate FDI-induced wage spillovers by employing IV-GMM estimator with a five-year panel dataset of a growing service industry in Vietnam. Despite FDI firms on average pay 2.25 times that of domestic firms, they put a downward pressure on domestic firms’ wages. A one percent increase in FDI presence causes domestic firms to cut average wages by 2.03 percent. The estimations also find that firm-specific features are attributable to significant differences in their wages as well as FDI-linked wage spillovers.     

Cattle as a consistently resilient agricultural commodity

This study compares a range of agricultural commodities over periods of varying economic circumstances. These commodities are examined over three categories, including returns, risk, and contribution to portfolio optimisation. Consistency in these categories is determined over four equal three-year stages which comprise pre-GFC (Global Financial Crisis), GFC, post-GFC and post-post GFC. To demonstrate resilience in the most extreme circumstances, the study uses Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR), which measures extreme risk in the tail of a distribution, as the risk measure and risk-return optimiser. The study thus provides a unique and comprehensive extreme-risk based focus which identifies and ranks the consistency of performance of agricultural commodities over a range of criteria and conditions. Cattle commodities consistently demonstrate the strongest overall performance in the categories examined.