On the asymmetric effects of exchange-rate volatility on trade flows: Evidence from US–UK Commodity Trade

We consider the response of each of the 67 industries that trade between the United States and United Kingdom to the volatility of the real dollar–pound exchange rate. When we follow previous research and estimate a linear ARDL model for each industry, we find short-run effects of volatility in 22 US exporting industries to the United Kingdom that last into the long run only in nine industries. As for the UK exports to the United States, we find short-run effects in 18 industries that last into the long run in 15 industries. However, when we estimate a nonlinear model for each industry, we find short-run effects of volatility on 41 US exporting industries and on 43 UK exporting industries, all in an asymmetric manner. Short-run asymmetric effects lasted into long-run asymmetric effects in 24 US exporting industries to the United Kingdom and in 33 UK exporting industries to the United States. While total trade shares of industries from the linear models were negligible, those of the industries from the nonlinear models were significant in size, in the tune of one-third of the trade.     

Revisiting the fit–performance thesis half a century later: a historical financial analysis of Chandler's own matched and mismatched firms

This study revisits Chandler's seminal work Strategy and Structure (1962) empirically. This work helped fashion the notion of strategic fit as well as the need for new organisational forms. Chandler's fit–performance thesis proposes that firms which match structure to their strategy will become economically more efficient than mismatched firms. The very same firms Chandler studied are analysed financially as their structure evolves through successive phases of being matched to their strategy, mismatched, and then finally matched again. Over 70 longitudinal tests are performed, yielding mostly statistically significant results. These tests surprisingly suggest that mismatched firms generally outperform firms that match structure to strategy. Such results matter in light of new conceptual approaches being introduced on the subject of ‘fit’; novel plausible explanations are provided for this apparent theoretical paradox.     

‘Public–private partnerships’: The Portuguese General Company of Pernambuco and Paraíba (1759)

This paper proposes that we can learn from past experience how specific contexts can explain specific public–private interfaces and the corporate governance rules ascribed to them, and so inform debate about modern ventures of this type. To this end, the paper explores the ‘public–private partnership’ of the Portuguese Companhia Geral de Comércio de Pernambuco e Paraíba (CGPP – General Company of Pernambuco and Paraíba) founded in 1759 by the Pombal government. Based on archival sources, and considering the social, economic and political context, the study helps to enhance understanding of how the Portuguese enlightened despotic regime developed and connected the empire through a corporatist interface with a private company.     

Lessons Learned from Public–Private Partnerships in Indonesia’s Water Sector

This paper surveys officials involved in public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the water sector in order to examine the differing motives of Indonesian actors in adopting PPPs. It also analyses the challenges of vertical coordination across different levels of government in PPP programs. We find that four motives for adopting PPPs are perceived differently by central government respondents and subnational government respondents. However, no significant differences are found between the two groups’ perceptions of the importance of vertical coordination problems. These results highlight the need for local capacity-building programs and improved coordination mechanisms to enhance PPP adoption and implementation in the water sector.     

Some evidence on the cohort earnings differentials of men in Japan

This study analyses the cohort earnings differentials of full-time working men in Japan using large micro data on individuals. Log earnings differentials between two cohorts of the same age calculated from 2012 and 2017 surveys reveal a substantial earnings decline for university graduates around age 43 and senior high school graduates around age 38 in 2017. These cohorts experienced a severe deterioration of job opportunities after the bubble burst. The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition shows that the composition effect dominates the wage structure effect. In particular, a shortened length of tenure and a decline in the share of those working in a large firm are the main causes of the earnings gap for senior high school graduates and for university graduates, respectively. While an increase in the proportion of those working in the service sector and a reduced share of regular workers are also important determinants for the earnings differentials for high school graduates, deteriorated opportunities for promotion to supervisory positions play an important role for university graduates. Extending this analysis to a longer time period and estimating the cohort earnings differential equation clarify that the observed stability of cohort earnings differentials for university graduates emerge not only from the importance of firm size differentials in determining their earning differentials, but also from the high stability of firm size differentials between cohorts for university graduates.     

Efficiency of online football betting markets

This paper evaluates the efficiency of online betting markets for European (association) football leagues. The existing literature shows mixed empirical evidence regarding the degree to which betting markets are efficient. We propose a forecast-based approach for formally testing the efficiency of online betting markets. By considering the odds proposed by 41 bookmakers on 11 European major leagues over the last 11 years, we find evidence of differing degrees of efficiency among markets. We show that, if the best odds are selected across bookmakers, eight markets are efficient while three show inefficiencies that imply profit opportunities for bettors. In particular, our approach allows the estimation of the odds thresholds that could be used to set profitable betting strategies both ex post and ex ante.     

On academic publishing,the myth of the East–West nexus,and tourism scholars in a regime era – a commentary on “The global permutations of the Western publication regime” by Erik Cohen,Scott A. Cohen,and Victor T. King

The article, “The global permutations of the Western publication regime” (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2016.1272556), inspires this short commentary. I respond directly to two points made in the original article about academic publishing and divisions between the “East” and “West” and make an additional point about the role of tourism scholars in these debates. My reason for writing this commentary is twofold: to take seriously the publishing regime’s influence in academia around the world and to challenge a universalizing critique of its features.     

Learning multi-market microstructure from order book data

In this paper, we investigate market behaviors at high-frequency using neural networks trained with order book data. Experiments are done intensively with 110 asset pairs covering 97% of spot-futures pairs in the Korea Exchange. An efficient training scheme that improves the performance and training stability is suggested, and using the proposed scheme, the lead–lag relationship between spot and futures markets are measured by comparing the performance gains of each market data set for predicting the other. In addition, the gradients of the trained model are analyzed to understand some important market features that neural networks learn through training, revealing characteristics of the market microstructure. Our results show that highly complex neural network models can successfully learn market features such as order imbalance, spread-volatility correlation, and mean reversion.     

Dependence concentration and fairness perceptions in asymmetric supplier–buyer relationships

The purpose of this research is to investigate how a supplier manages its relationships with multiple buyers in a market structure of imbalanced power to achieve market success. Drawing on resource dependence theory and social exchange theory, we argue that dependence concentration (the degree of revenue concentration of a supplier’s multiple buyers) and fairness perceptions (distributive and procedural fairness) work together to impact a supplier’s market performance. The authors develop a structural model and empirically test how dependence concentration and fairness perceptions impact supplier performance with survey responses from 92 suppliers in the food supply industry. The findings show that a balanced set of dependence relationships governed by fair business policies and procedures leads to strong and effective relationships; and effective relationships with multiple buyers, rather than with any specific buyer, impact sales and profit growth in a market structure of imbalanced power.     

The migration of gymnastics coaches from the Former Soviet Union to New Zealand: an actor–network theory perspective

This article uses actor–network theory (ANT) to examine factors that influenced highly skilled gymnastics coaches from the gymnastics stronghold of the Former Soviet Union to migrate to the geographically and culturally distant nation of New Zealand. Our research diverges from the emphasis on the professional sports labour market that has dominated sports migration research and extends upon the network-orientated approaches that have recently been utilised in sport. The article is informed by the stories of 10 migrant gymnastics coaches obtained through qualitative interviews. We demonstrate how the ANT approach helps reveal how multiple micro- and macro-factors assembled together to motivate and facilitate the coaches’ migration. While economic factors can be identified, we draw attention to a unique facet that has received little previous attention in the sports migration literature: the non-human. We show how the coaches’ migration was facilitated by non-humans such as a disease, Skype, leotards and work visas and that these non-humans played a role in enabling or disrupting migration.