A Multiple and Partial Wavelet Analysis of the Oil Price,Inflation, Exchange Rate,and Economic Growth Nexus in Saudi Arabia

This article provides a fresh insight into the dynamic nexus between oil prices, the Saudi/US dollar exchange rate, inflation, and output growth rate in Saudi Arabia’ economy, using novel Morlet’ wavelet methods. Specifically, it implements various tools of methodology: the continuous wavelet power spectrum, the cross-wavelet power spectrum, the wavelet coherency, the multiple and the partial wavelet coherence to the annual sample period 1969–2014. Our results unveil that the relationships among the variables evolve through time and frequency. From the time-domain view, we show strong but non-homogenous linkages between the four variables. From the frequency-domain view, we uncover significant wavelet coherences and strong lead-lag relationships. From an economic view, the wavelet analysis shows that Saudi economy is still exposed to several global risk factors, which are mainly related to the oil market volatility, and the pegging of the local currency to the US dollar. Such risk factors strongly and negatively affect the real economic growth, exert more pressure on inflation, and substantially limit the freedom to pursue an independent monetary policy.     

Culture and personal values: How they influence perceived service quality

This research analyzes the effects of culture and personal values on perceived service quality. Data on bank service quality are collected from 509 Canadian and 216 French users. The results confirm that power distance and uncertainty avoidance influence perceived service quality. Personal values such as self-fulfillment, self-respect, sense of accomplishment, and security also influence perceived service quality. The study findings show that the effects of personal values (micro-level variables) and culture (macro-level variable) on perceived service quality are distinct.     

Determinants of dining satisfaction and post-dining behavioral intentions

The purpose of this research is to empirically investigate the determinants and consequences of dining satisfaction with restaurant services. A total of 338 undergraduate business students participated in this research. Results reveal that there exist three sources of customers’ satisfaction with restaurant services: positive emotions, perceived service quality and negative emotions. Positive emotions have more impact on customers’ satisfaction than negative emotions. In addition, emotions mediate the impact of perceived service quality on dining satisfaction. Finally, satisfaction has a significant impact on recommendation, customer loyalty and willingness to pay more.     

Assessing the impacts of oil price fluctuations on stock returns in emerging markets

This paper investigates the effects of oil price shocks on stock market returns in emerging countries. It differs from previous works in three main aspects: i) we distinguish three groups of countries, the largest net-oil importing countries, the moderately oil-dependent countries, and the largest net-oil exporting countries; ii) The potential influence of bullish and bearish market conditions on the causal relationship between oil and stock returns is controlled for in our analysis; iii) The empirical investigation is based on an analysis of long-term correlation and a conditional multifactor pricing model. Using data from twenty-five emerging countries, our results suggest that oil price risk is significantly priced in emerging markets, and that the oil impact is asymmetric with respect to market phases.     

PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZATION UNDER TRACKING ERROR AND WEIGHTS CONSTRAINTS

The performance of active portfolio managers who must comply with a weights constraint is often assessed against a benchmark. The weights constraint is common as the funds are committed by their own prospectus to a minimum (or maximum) portfolio concentration. We characterize the optimal asset allocation and analyze the implications of the weights constraint on the manager's performance and on the relevance of the information ratio. We obtain that because of the weights constraint, at the optimum, the information ratio often decreases when the manager is free to deviate more from the benchmark.     

Consumer trust toward retail websites: Comparison between pure click and click-and-brick retailers

This paper examines the effects of security/privacy and social presence of retailers on consumer's e-trust in two different contexts: pure click and click and brick retailers. It explores how e-trust affects consumer attitudes toward websites and WOM. A conceptual model is tested using Structural Equation Modeling, on a random sample of 989 French customers. Results suggest that perceived website social presence and perceived security/privacy exert strong and positive impacts on website credibility and benevolence, which in turn directly influence website attitudes and indirectly influence word-of-mouth. One major difference between pure click and click-and-brick retailers is that the role of social presence in developing online benevolence is more important in the case of pure click retailers. The study concludes with managerial implications that may be useful in retail marketing.     

On the detection of extreme movements and persistent behaviour in Mediterranean stock markets: a wavelet-based approach

We combine the global Hurst exponent and Morlet wavelet multi-resolution analysis (MRA) to investigate the dynamic behaviour of six selected stock markets in the Mediterranean region. Specifically, we employ the resonance coefficients and their power spectra to identify potential extreme movements and long-term dependence in stock returns. Using weekly data for the period 2005 to 2010, our results reveal that the wavelet MRA is able to reconstruct the effects of major extreme shocks on stock returns of studied markets, such as the Asian financial crisis, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Moreover, the wavelet-based global Hurst exponent indicates the presence of long-term dependencies in stock returns of all the considered markets, except for France where the anti-persistent behaviour is detected. Overall, our findings are useful to assess the stock market efficiency and provide new insights into stock market dynamics over different time scales.     

Values,socially conscious behaviour and consumption emotions as predictors of Canadians’ intent to buy fair trade products

Over the last two decades, a growing concern about ethical behaviour has been observed among consumers. Ethically minded consumers are more inclined towards the consumption of ethical goods, such as green products and fair trade (hereafter, ‘FT’) products, organic products and local products. Establishing the motives that predict FT consumption behaviour provides ground for understanding how consumers make purchase decisions. This research postulates that the intention of buying FT products is influenced by socially conscious behaviour, consumers’ values and emotions. The study, conducted among 268 Canadian consumers, shows that the high intention of buying FT products is linked to high levels of pride, enthusiasm, satisfaction, happiness and joy related to FT product consumption. The FT consumption experience provides consumers with hedonic gratification. It shows that the higher the levels of self‐centred, equality and social justice values are, the higher the intention of buying FT products. An increase in socially conscious behaviour generates an increase in intention of purchasing FT products. The research contributes to a preliminary analysis of the role of emotions in this field and calls for the development of cognitive‐affective models of purchase and consumption behaviour. Understanding the dimensions of hedonic values and the significance of pleasure experience is essential to the development of the theory and practices of FT consumption.     

Strength of co-movement between sector CDS indexes and relationship with major economic and financial variables over time and during investment horizons

The main purpose of this article is to analyse the co-movement in both time and frequency between financial sector CDS indexes and between these indexes and their main economic and financial control variables for the period 2004–2014. Empirically, we implement the wavelet-squared coherence methodology to analyse the co-movement through time, frequency and power. Our results unveil that the co-movement between the three financial sectors’ CDSs changes through time and investment horizons, stressing the importance of hedging portfolios in real time. Also, we uncover that the changes in co-movement to relatively higher frequencies coincide with the inception of the recent global financial crisis. This result is collaborated with the co-movement between each CDS index and other global risk factors, including crude oil prices, interest rates and equity market volatility. Finally, we compare the wavelet coherence results with those of the DCC-FIAPARCH model and find that the two different approaches provide quite similar conditional correlations over time. Our results are important for investors, debtors, creditors and other decision-makers which are interested in CDS spread co-movements at different frequencies or investment horizons. It would be useful for all market participants to resort to an appropriate frequency domain to have better understanding of the sector CDS interrelationship behaviour in this domain.