Corporate Cash Holding in Asia

In this paper, we analyze the determinants of corporate saving in the form of changes in cash holdings for 11 Asian economies using firm‐level data from the Oriana Database for the 2002–2011 period. We find some evidence that cash flow has a positive impact on the change in cash holdings (i.e. that the cash flow sensitivity of cash is positive) and that the positive impact of cash flow on the change in cash holdings is larger and more significant in the case of smaller and presumably more constrained firms than in the case of larger and presumably less constrained firms in both developed and developing economies. Both of these findings corroborate the importance of financial constraints in Asian firms. In addition, we find that the cash flow sensitivity of cash declined after the global financial crisis and that Tobin's q has a positive impact on the change in cash holdings, especially in the case of larger and presumably unconstrained firms.     

酒店行业协会的运行机制及其变迁——以广州地区酒店行业协会为例

行业协会在酒店业发展进程中发挥越来越大的作用,但在国内现行条件下,行业协会发展面临多重困难。文章以广州地区酒店行业协会为案例,采用实地调查和深度访谈的方法,讨论行业协会的运行机制及其变迁。研究认为,第一,"政会不分"是目前行业协会管理的主要问题,政府应创新行业协会管理机制,加快"政会分开"的进程,推进部分行业职能向协会转移;第二,酒店行业协会应大胆创新,依据地区、行业发展环境动态调整组织架构,丰富协会职能发挥,以此达到激活协会运行机制的目标。基于此,酒店行业协会可以更好地为会员酒店服务,提升行业专业化管理水平。     

高房价理性回归的金融通道

近年来,随着我国经济的快速增长和城市化进程的不断深入,我国出现了房价过快上涨的势头。高房价背后有着各种成因,抵押贷款证券化在解决高房价问题上具有合理性和可行性,保持审慎、稳健的监管,通过合理的金融市场建设和金融资源分配,房地产市场能够回归理性,房价回归正常合理的水平。     

当代中国收入分化的现状及主要原因

中国在现代化进程中面临着一些现代性问题的困扰,其中,贫富分化成为社会矛盾的焦点之一。改革开放以来,中国居民生活水平得到整体提升,但也出现了结构上的分化。造成贫富差距的原因是复杂多重的。其中,城乡二元体制造成了城乡资源分配不公和收入差距,垄断行业的存在则使得资源在少部分群体中集聚,加深了贫富之间的鸿沟。此外,中国的社会保障制度没能充分发挥其调节作用,使得部分底层群体无法解决温饱问题,造成"极贫"群体的出现。值得关注的是,单位体制下的既得利益者,在住房制度改革后又获得福利性住房,住房不公平由此产生财产不公平。国家对于不断拉大的收入差距主要采取宏观政策加以调控,改革财税制度和完善社会保障同时进行,但这并不能因此改变由城乡二元体制和垄断等所带来的必然结果,因而只能起到局部调节收入差距的效果,不能实现真正的社会公正。     

Grading Innovation in an International Marketing Course: Promoting Student Collaboration and Individual Accountability

In this article, the author proposes an innovative, exam-based homework grading method to facilitate both collaboration among students and individual accountability while learning a complex theory and applying it to solve a problem. Results from this novel approach to grading a comparative advantage theory homework assignment, using an objective exam performance measure to adjust original homework grades, show that students increase their comprehension of the frequently misunderstood theory. This novel grading method can be applied in a variety of contexts to promote student collaboration in preparation of academic work while providing incentives to encourage individual accountability and engagement.     

Internal Migration of Blacks in South Africa: An Application of the Roy Model

This study investigates the internal migration of black males in South Africa over the period after the formal end of Apartheid using the 1996 census data. The two issues of our primary interests are the following: (i) whether migration patterns of black individuals are consistent with the income‐maximising hypothesis as related to the destination choice; and (ii) whether the redistribution of human capital is detected in internal migration. The results from conditional logit regressions on choices among individuals in 318 districts show that individuals prefer districts with higher expected wages, conditional on other regional characteristics. In addition, there exist differing preferences on the share of population with post‐secondary education by individuals with commensurate educational attainments. Black individuals with post‐secondary education tend to migrate into areas with a higher share of population with post‐secondary education and vice versa, which confirms the divergence of human capital levels across districts.     

How do stakeholder interactions influence national food security policy in the Caribbean? The case of Saint Lucia

Increasingly, multi-stakeholder processes have been recognized as being necessary to the development of public policies seeking to promote systemic innovation in response to complex and multidimensional challenges, such as household food security, rural development, and environmental change. Saint Lucia, a small island developing state located in the Caribbean, has been grappling with a wide range of agriculture, food and nutrition security challenges with varying degrees of policy success. Recognizing the significance of the challenge, this paper explores the nature of the stakeholder interactions surrounding the development of Saint Lucia’s 2009–2015 National Agricultural Policy and considers some of the implications for food and agriculture-related policy outcomes. Results reveal a general lack of supportive conditions for effective multi-stakeholder processes, including low stakeholder participation levels, conflicting roles of different forms of social capital in the interactions between stakeholders, and missing “boundary” organizations capable of facilitating a transition towards more flexible and adaptive institutions, enhanced knowledge exchange and learning, and greater trust among stakeholders in the policy network. Future avenues for research and development are subsequently identified.     

Global financial crisis and dependence risk analysis of sector portfolios: a vine copula approach

We use regular vine (r-vine), canonical vine (c-vine) and drawable vine (d-vine) copulas to examine the dependence risk characteristics of three 20-stock portfolios from the retail, manufacturing and gold-mining equity sectors of the Australian market in periods before, during and after the 2008–2009 global financial crisis (GFC). Our results indicate that the retail portfolio is less risky than the manufacturing counterpart in the crisis period, while the gold-mining portfolio is less risky than both the retail and manufacturing sector portfolios. Both the retail and gold stocks display a higher propensity to yield positively skewed returns in the crisis periods, contrary to the manufacturing stocks. The r-vine is found to best capture the multivariate dependence structure of the stocks in the retail and gold-mining portfolios, while the d-vine does it for the manufacturing stock portfolio. These findings could be used to develop dependence risk- and investment risk-adjusted strategies for investment, rebalancing and hedging which more adequately account for the downside risk in various market conditions.     

Remittance,Institutions and Investment Volatility Interactions: An Intercontinental Analysis

Generating massive investment for growth and development has been one of the main policy goals of most economies around the globe. Countries, most especially developing ones, are highly susceptible to investment volatility owing largely to the fragile nature of their economies as well as weaknesses in terms of dysfunctional institutions. Therefore, sound economic management suggests the need to better understand possible sources for mitigating the adverse effects of investment volatility. Remittances have been identified as important capital flows which do a good job of dousing macroeconomic volatilities. It is on this basis that the study sought to uncover the causal relationship between remittances and investment volatility via the intermediating role of institutions. Using a panel of 70 countries and the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator, three insightful outcomes come to the fore. First, remittances played countercyclical roles across the estimated regressions. Second, institutional quality had no significant role in mitigating investment volatility and lastly, the interactive terms of both remittances and institutions significantly mitigated the negative impacts of investment volatility with the exception of the political component of the institutional architecture. Policy suggestions are drawn based on our results.     

Taming wicked civic challenges with an innovative crowd

Civic challenges such as urban mobility and energy problems offer new corporate innovation opportunities. However, such challenges are wicked and difficult to tame. They require novel solutions that account for and integrate contradictory perspectives within the local innovation ecosystem of firms, governments, and citizens. This article presents a successful civic innovation crowdsourcing project case study, in which multinational firm Bombardier encouraged a global civic crowd to co-create visionary solutions to the challenge of future mobility in crowded cities around the world. Bombardier recruited a global crowd of 900 individuals and facilitated the citizen development of more than 215 solutions of unique firm value. We explore the process and outcome of this crowdsourcing project and derive actionable design principles for a three-phased civic innovation crowdsourcing process including: (1) crowd construction, (2) crowd knowledge acquisition, and (3) crowd knowledge assimilation. This process enables the crowd to integrate members’ diverse and contradictory knowledge proactively at both the team and individual levels. Additionally, the crowd is able to balance extension of existing local solutions and exploration of path-breaking technologies and solution concepts.