Impact of Internet use on economic well‐being of rural households: Evidence from China

The expansion of the Internet in developing countries has important implications for the economic development of rural areas. Although many studies have investigated various benefits of Internet use, little attention has been paid to find the relationship between Internet use and the economic well‐being of rural households. This paper, therefore, investigates the effects of Internet use on household income and expenditure, using a sample of rural households from China. Both endogenous treatment regression (ETR) and unconditional quantile regression (UQR) techniques are used to identify the homogenous and heterogeneous effects of Internet use, respectively. The ETR results show that Internet use increases household income and expenditure significantly. However, the UQR results reveal that Internet use has a larger impact at the upper distributions of household income and expenditure.     

Impact of Islamic banking development and major macroeconomic variables on economic growth for Islamic countries: Evidence from panel smooth transition models

This study examines the nonlinear relationship between Islamic banking development, major macroeconomic variables and economic growth in Islamic countries. Using the panel smooth transition model, the results show a positive nonlinear relationship between Islamic banking development and economic growth. Moreover, the relationship between the macroeconomic variables and economic growth is asymmetric and regime-dependent. Further, by using the dynamic panel quantile model, we show that for many cases the Islamic banking variables lead economic growth across the quantiles. More specifically, foreign direct investment, oil production and inflation have a positive impact on economic growth during the normal financial development state, while government consumption, one-lag economic growth, terms of trade and financial development have a negative impact on economic growth for this state. The human capital index, education and the rule of law have an insignificant impact, regardless of the prevailing regime. The results for the separated oil-importing and oil-exporting economies are generally consistent with the combined sample regarding the Islamic banking development variables. As for the macro variables, they have a positive and significant (insignificant) effect on EG for the oil-importing (oil-exporting) economies for almost all models.     

The heterogeneous dependence between global crude oil and Chinese commodity futures markets: evidence from quantile regression

This paper explores the dependence between global crude oil and Chinese commodity futures markets across different quantiles of the return distributions. Based on weekly data from 11 June 2004 to 7 July 2017, we address this issue by applying a quantile regression method. This technique provides a more detailed investigation of the dependence. Moreover, considering the structural breaks caused by market turmoil or financial crises, we divide the full period of every commodity sector market into sub-periods based on these break dates to further explore the dependence changes. The empirical results indicate that the dependence between global crude oil and Chinese commodity futures markets is different across quantiles in different commodity sectors. The dependence is significantly positive, except in markets with high expected returns. Additionally, the effects caused by structural breaks are distinctly heterogeneous across quantiles. The effect of the same break on the degree of dependence exhibits an increasing tendency as the quantile level increases, which suggests that markets with high expected returns are more susceptible to crises. Finally, we apply a prediction analysis to further verify the heterogeneity of the commodity sectors, which may be the cause of the heterogeneous dependence.     

Investor attention,ETF returns,and country-specific factors

Using the data of 47 single-country exchange-traded funds (ETFs) traded in the U.S. from 36 countries during 2004–2017, this research examines the impact of investor attention proxied by Google Search Volume Index and home country-specific factors on different quantile of their returns. Evidence first shows that compared with U.S. investor attention, home country investor attention largely correlates with low to medium ETF returns, supporting the attention-induced price pressure hypothesis. Second, home country-specific factors significantly affect ETF returns at different conditional quantiles. We also find that investors prefer investing in a country with strong similarity to that of the U.S., supporting the cross-country information asymmetry hypothesis. Third, an intervening effect of home country-specific factors exists on the relationship between U.S. investor attention and ETF returns. These findings should help government authorities find appropriate strategies to attract foreign investment and upgrade the value of their capital market as well as provide a reference on efficiency for equity investors.     

Comparative Efficiency of Family and Corporate Farms: Does Family Labour Matter?

We examine the comparative efficiency of family relative to corporate farms, using FADN data for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Spain. We estimate a non‐parametric non‐separable farm production function, and derive efficiency scores for both family and corporate farms. We decompose efficiency into two distinct sources – organisational differences and management capabilities. We find evidence for organisational efficiency gains from family farming, relative to corporate farming, and these appear to increase with family involvement. However, with regard to management capabilities, family farms do not compare so favourably. Furthermore, family involvement does not seem to have any systematic effect on the efficiency derived from management capabilities. Our findings suggest that further investigation of the way family farms employ and build management capabilities is needed to substantiate any ‘superiority’ claims.     

Asymmetric effects of corporate sustainability strategy on value creation among global automotive firms: A dynamic panel quantile regression approach

This study explores the asymmetric effects of corporate sustainability strategy on firm value at different conditioning quantiles by performing a dynamic panel quantile regression analysis on global automotive firms from 2011 to 2017. Further, this study measures the distinct effects of positive and negative corporate sustainability strategies on firm value, which has remained unconsidered as yet. The findings suggest that low-value and midvalue firms respond more strongly to positive and negative corporate sustainability strategies than high-value firms. This implies that for low-value and midvalue corporations that are in a growth phase, an investment in positive corporate sustainability strategies is essential to increase firm value by enhancing public perception of their efforts. Therefore, positive corporate sustainability strategy contributes substantially to future growth. Conversely, positive corporate sustainability strategy may not be a priority in increasing firm value for high-value corporations, because these strategies do not enhance the public's discernment of their efforts in ethics management and hence do not contribute to a future increase in value. Meanwhile, engagement in negative corporate sustainability strategy worsens firm value in all quantiles, although the effect is somewhat weaker for high-value firms. Nevertheless, however high valued and well established a firm is, it is not immune to crisis.     

Economic policy uncertainty and sovereign credit rating decisions: Panel quantile evidence for the Eurozone

We employ a panel quantile framework that quantifies the relative importance of quantitative and qualitative factors across the conditional distribution of sovereign credit ratings in the Eurozone area. We find that regulatory quality and competitiveness have a stronger impact for low rated countries whereas GDP per capita is a major driver of high rated countries. A reduction in the current account deficit leads to a rating or outlook upgrade for low rated countries. Economic policy uncertainty impacts negatively on credit ratings across the conditional distribution; however, the impact is stronger for the lower rated countries. In other words, the creditworthiness of low rated countries takes a much bigger ‘hit’ than that of high rated countries when European policy uncertainty is on the rise.     

Determinants of performance for agritourism farms: an alternative approach

Previous studies on determinants of agritourism farm performance are inconclusive. Moreover, the key success factors of high and low performance may differ. Differing from previous studies, this study applies quantile regression to identify the determinants of agritourism farm performance in different categories based on Taiwanese agritourism farms census data. The results indicate that large farms perform well for those in the high-performance categories. The quantity and quality of human resources are key success factors for mid- and high-performance farms. Additionally, agritourism business model generally plays a critical role in determining performance.     

Lottery pricing and price elasticity dispersion in the UK and Canada

We estimate effective price elasticities for different quantiles of the demand distribution of the UK National Lottery and the Canadian Lotto 649. We show that price elasticities vary significantly from draw to draw and have a tendency to increase with lottery participation and jackpot size. Our findings indicate that setting lottery rules on the basis of mean effective price elasticities should be faced with caution because expected profits are negatively related to the evident variation of elasticities among lottery draws. We also simulate alternative active rollover distributions and show that limiting the rollover accumulation by withholding portions and ploughing them back in future nonrollover draws is potentially profitable.     

数字普惠金融与中国农村家庭财富差距

促进农民增收致富和推动乡村振兴是二十大关注的重要问题。本文使用中国家庭金融调查数据和数字普惠金融指数,用分位回归方法分析了数字普惠金融对中国农村家庭财富差距的影响。结果发现：数字普惠金融可以显著提高农村家庭财富,有助于缩小家庭财富差距。随着家庭财富由低到高,数字普惠金融对于农村不同财富家庭总资产的正向影响由大到小。由于不同财富家庭的负债结构差异较大,随着财富由低到高,数字普惠金融对家庭净资产的影响则由小到大。夏普里值分解结果表明,数字普惠金融对农村家庭财富差距的贡献度近三分之一。异质性分析表明,数字普惠金融发展对于低收入家庭和低教育水平家庭财富的正向作用更强,进一步证明了上述结论。机制分析表明,数字普惠金融能显著促进农村家庭特别是低财富家庭的创业行为,而创业对于最低财富组家庭资产的正向刺激作用最强;受流动性约束可能性越大的低财富家庭,越能从数字普惠金融的发展中获益。因而进一步证实数字普惠金融可以缩小农村家庭财富差距。本文的研究说明,发展数字普惠金融对于探索农民致富路径和推进乡村振兴有积极作用。