Market Orientation and Firm Performance: An Empirical Analysis of Ghanaian Microenterprises

ABSTRACT

While previous researchers have explored the relationship between market orientation and firm performance in larger organizations, such studies in microenterprises are scarce. This empirical study uses a structural equation model to examine the role of market orientation on firm performance of microenterprises operating in Ghana. To measure market orientation, we used a well-known scale (MARKOR), and the data (N = 347) for this study were collected from Ghanaian microenterprises using personal interviews. Study results indicated that the MARKOR scale provided a good measure of market orientation in Ghanaian microenterprises. The conceptualized model provided a good fit to the relationship between market orientation and the performance of Ghanaian microenterprises, indicating that market orientation as measured by MARKOR had a statistically significant positive impact on performance. However, the explanatory power of the model was relatively low, indicating the potential impact of other factors that were not incorporated in the model. Study implications are discussed.     

《资产负债会计学》的对象及焦点问题探讨

在经济市场化、全球化的竞争环境变化下，本结合我国《企业会计制度》的颁布，实施，阐述了企业经济活动的整个过程都与市场有着密切地联系，分析了《资产负债会计学》的对象，指出了《资产负债会计学》有待进一步研究的内容。     

利率市场化条件下对商业银行加强利率风险防范的思考

本文重点探讨在利率市场化的条件下，商业银行如何构筑严密的风险管理机制，高效地进行利率风险控制，以适应国际经济、金融一体化的发展要求，成为商业银行需要认真研究的重要课题。     

蜂窝移动电话定位技术

本文介绍了蜂窝移动电话的定位方案，讨论了各种方案的优缺点，分析了基于网络定位方案的TDOA的计算方法和定位原理。     

Native-Born Filipina/o Americans and Labor Market Discrimination

Filipina/o Americans face significant discrimination in the US labor market. Although Filipina/o Americans face both wage discrimination and occupational discrimination, the amount varies according to combinations of factors like gender, region of residence, and level of education.     

Trade Liberalization,Nature of Mergers and Employment

This paper investigates the roles of comparative advantage and market size in the international location of manufacturing production. Building on the conventional Helpman and Krugman (1985) general equilibrium framework, our analysis extends the present literature by incorporating both effects in the same model, while allowing trade costs to vary almost continuously from autarky to free trade. The main result of our exercise is that market size effects offset comparative advantage if countries have similar factor proportions. A large country with a slight comparative disadvantage in manufacturing production may thus be a net exporter of manufactures. A small country with the same comparative disadvantage would be a net importer of manufactures. When countries are very dissimilar in their relative factor endowments, land-abundant countries specialize in the production of food, irrespective of market size, if manufactures are a labour-intensive sector. Labour-rich countries of any size are manufacture cores. However, land-abundant countries with large markets can sustain a domestic manufacturing industry until trade costs are very low, and in some cases only specialize in agriculture at free trade.     

Market procyclicality and systemic risk

We develop a model that captures, at the same time, the temporal dynamics of single-firm credit risk and the contagion across banks via a network of obligations and common assets. In particular, we enrich the continuous-time modelling approach of default by accounting explicitly for the procyclical loop between asset prices and leverage. Contagion can spread well before any default occurs, through the value of the obligations held by counterparties. Moreover, the extent of procyclicality effects depends explicitly on the structure of both the interbank network and the asset bank network. We analyse the model in a simplified scenario of a densely connected core of banks and we carry out a systematic investigation of how procyclicality emerges from the multiplicative interplay of market illiquidity and tightness of capital requirements.     

试论我国社会保障制度改革和建设的必要性

随着科技进步的速度加快、产业结构的调整和升级、资本有机构成的提高、贫富差距的扩大,必然会增加社会不稳定因素,这就要求加快社会保障制度改革的步伐,建立适合社会主义市场经济要求的社会保障制度,以解决社会公平问题,保证市场经济健康发展、人民生活稳步提高.     

Low-latency trading

We define low-latency activity as strategies that respond to market events in the millisecond environment, the hallmark of proprietary trading by high-frequency traders though it could include other algorithmic activity as well. We propose a new measure of low-latency activity to investigate the impact of high-frequency trading on the market environment. Our measure is highly correlated with NASDAQ-constructed estimates of high-frequency trading, but it can be computed from widely-available message data. We use this measure to study how low-latency activity affects market quality both during normal market conditions and during a period of declining prices and heightened economic uncertainty. Our analysis suggests that increased low-latency activity improves traditional market quality measures—decreasing spreads, increasing displayed depth in the limit order book, and lowering short-term volatility. Our findings suggest that given the current market structure for U.S. equities, increased low-latency activity need not work to the detriment of long-term investors.