Examining futures price changes and volatility on the trading day after a limit‐lock day

This paper examines the effect that price limits have on futures prices by testing what happens to price changes and volatility on the trading day following a limit‐lock day. The results show evidence that prices continue to rise on average the day after an up‐limit day. In addition, limits appear to influence price volatility for some but not all of the futures contracts. However, since the findings vary across the different commodity futures contracts, it is likely that limits do not directly impact price volatility. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 20:445–466, 2000     

Big Six auditors and audit quality: The Korean evidence

This study investigates the association between discretionary accruals and Big Six and non-Big Six auditors, and the direction of auditor change. We hypothesize that there is no significant difference in discretionary accruals between Big Six and non-Big Six clients when there is low incentive for auditors to provide high-quality audits, as in Korea.Upon examination of the discretionary accruals of firms listed on the Korean Stock Exchange from 1994 to 1998, we find there is no significant difference between the discretionary accruals of firms with Big Six and non-Big Six auditors. This holds true for firms that switch from non-Big Six to Big Six auditors and vice versa. These resources imply that there may be no difference in audit quality between Big Six and non-Big Six auditors in Korea. This is consistent with other studies in Korea, while inconsistent with the findings of previous studies on audit quality in other countries.     

Latin America After the Argentine Crisis: Diminishing Financial Market Integration

Original Papers

Latin America After the Argentine Crisis: Diminishing Financial Market Integration     

The effect of mandatory auditor assignment and non-audit service on audit fees: Evidence from Korea

In Korea, regulators could assign auditors to firms. We investigate the relationship among audit fees, mandatory auditor assignment, and the joint provision of non-audit and auditor services in Korea. We find that assigned auditors charge significantly higher audit fees than freely selected auditors. We also find that the joint provision of non-audit and audit services does intensify the relation between auditor assignment and audit fees. Combined with the results of other studies that have shown that firms audited by assigned auditors report smaller amounts of discretionary accruals than firms audited by freely selected auditors, our results suggest the possibility that mandatory auditor assignment may improve auditor independence.     

Does the Presence of Female Executives Curb Earnings Management? Evidence from Korea

We investigate the role of female executives in curbing earnings management behaviour in Korea, a country known for its strong male‐dominant culture. In a sample of Korean firms from 2002 to 2010, we find that female presence in top management is negatively associated with discretionary accruals, suggesting that gender diversity in senior management deters opportunistic financial reporting even in a highly male‐dominant corporate environment. Further, this association is primarily observed in firms with stronger (weaker) female (male) dominance. This finding is consistent with the idea that female executives can exert more influence on corporate decisions in a more female‐friendly environment. These findings have implications for academics and practitioners seeking to understand the impact of the role of top executive gender diversity in corporate accounting practices.     

Open data in Nepal: a webometric network analysis

This study examines the current open data trends in Nepal based on the webometric analysis method by using search engines to trawl through websites and obtain data. The results indicate that various national and international nonprofit organizations, public sector organizations, educational institutions , and a few commercial organizations were the initial actors fostering open data in Nepal. Therefore, these organizations were analyzed in terms of their networking patterns and the extent to which they are exposed internationally in cyberspace by using Webometric Analyst 2.0. Inter-linkage analysis, co-mention analysis, and link impact analyses were conducted to explore the networking behavior in the World Wide Web. The results revealed that international organizations (IOs) were strongly interlinked. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), government organizations (GOs), and IOs were interlinked, but weakly. In terms of the co-mention network analysis, IOs with IOs were more significant than NGOs with NGOs, GOs, or business organizations because IOs had been working actively for many years, their web presence was high, and they worked in other fields, including open data. A link impact analysis was also conducted using its indicators of seed sites linked to external websites in terms of the estimated number of top-level domains and country-code top-level domains.     

Personalized goal-based investing via multi-stage stochastic goal programming

In this paper, we propose a goal-based investment model that is suitable for personalized wealth management. The model only requires a few intuitive inputs such as size of wealth, investment amount, and consumption goals from individual investors. In particular, a priority level can be assigned to each consumption goal and the model provides a holistic solution based on a sequential approach starting with the highest priority. This allows strict prioritization by maximizing the probability of achieving higher priority goals that are not affected by goals with lower priorities. Furthermore, the proposed model is formulated as a linear program that efficiently finds the optimal financial plan. With its simplicity, flexibility, and computational efficiency, the proposed goal-based investment model provides a new framework for automated investment management services.     

International trade of GMO-related agricultural products

This paper examines the international trade of a variety of genetically modified (GM) food products over a 27-year period (1984–2011) with data from the United Nations using the tools of social network analysis. The results indicate that each of the different crops have a distinctive pattern of trade that has changed over time due to a number of different factors. Also, trade in agricultural commodities became more diversified over time, dominated less by the United States and other nations central in the trade networks and trade in the individual GM crops was stable over time. Countries maintained their trading partners for specific crops, despite the adoption of the genetically modified varieties. The economic implications of these results are discussed for specific countries.     

Public trust and corruption perception: disaster relief

Public trust in government and nongovernment organizations is essential to the public’s willingness to donate and to support those organizations. We measure public trust in disaster aid using people’s perception of these organizations’ effectiveness in delivering aid relief to the victims of two recent major earthquakes in China. Based on the survey data collected in 2013 from about 2100 residents in Hong Kong, we document the vulnerability of these residents’ trust perceptions in aid delivery. We find that the sharp decline in trust perception is highly negatively correlated with their perception of corruption of local governments in China.