Effect of CSR and Ethical Practices on Sustainable Competitive Performance: A Case of Emerging Markets from Stakeholder Theory Perspective

Journal of Business Ethics - An extensive work has been done on corporate social responsibly practices (CSRPs) that mainly emphasized the larger firms within developed nations. Nonetheless, still...     

Managing Price Risk in the Pakistan Wheat Market

The government intervenes in the wheat market in Pakistan toensure food security for consumers and to provide adequate andstable incomes for producers. The cost of this interventionis high, and its impact on the performance of agriculture hasbeen significantly negative. The World Bank is urging policychanges such as removing agricultural trade restrictions, pricesupports, and subsidies. However, policymakers often resistsuch reforms, fearing that they will expose the domestic marketto fluctuating international commodity prices. This article assesses the risk management needs of the sectorand evaluates whether using financial instruments—suchas commodity hedging using futures, options, or swaps—wouldimprove risk management. Simulations based on monthly data for1994 show that market-based methods of risk management couldreduce the impact of international price volatility on the domesticmarket without incurring high government cost or distortingprice signals.     

Consumer socialization,social structural factors and decision‐making styles: a case study of adolescents in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the process of consumer socialization will determine adolescents’ decision‐making styles. Eight decision‐making styles were conceptualized as outcomes of the socialization process, which is acquired via interaction with socialization agents, namely parents, peers, printed media, television commercials and in‐school education. The study also proposed five social structural variables (social class, gender, ethnicity, residence and religion) as being associated with the socialization agents and decision‐making styles. The study sample consisted of 934 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 19 years. The data were collected using a self‐administered questionnaire and analysed with the SPSS computer program. As a result of regression analyses, significant relationships were found between social structural factors and socialization processes, suggesting that the influence of socialization agents on adolescents may vary according to certain demographic characteristics. Significant relationships were also found between social structural factors and socialization processes. Peers appeared to be the most important agents of consumer socialization, contributing to a variety of desirable as well as undesirable consumer decision styles. Printed media and television commercials were also found to be significant sources of the acquisition of both desirable and undesirable decision‐making styles. Parents and in‐school education, however, were insignificant in the acquisition of any decision‐making styles among adolescents. Information obtained from this study could be useful to government agencies and consumer educators. The most revealing finding of this study is that parents did not contribute to the formulation of decision‐making orientation for adolescents. This points to the need for consumer educators to take steps in designing programmes that will involve parents as primary socialization agents at home; this may be facilitated via printed materials. Apart from this, the information can also be helpful in enabling marketers to be more effective in targeting various adolescent markets by formulating marketing strategies according to demographic factors, socialization process and decision‐making styles.     

A Global Ex-vessel Fish Price Database: Construction and Applications

Synopsis We describe the first effort at creating a global ex-vessel fish price database, which is required for understanding the economic behavior of participants in the world’s fisheries. We demonstrate potential applications of the database by linking it to a spatially defined catch database, which makes it possible to attach landed values to species in both time and space. This is the first database available publicly where interested members of the public, researchers and managers can easily find and access ex-vessel prices of the world’s major commercial fish species. Preliminary results indicate that the average real price of a number of species have declined between 1950 and 2002. The estimated landed value of fish globally, in year 2000 dollars, was about US$24 billion in 1950. It increased steadily to about US$90 billion in the early 1970s, reached a peak of US$100 billion at the end of the 1980s, and declined to about US$80 billion in 2000. The top 15 fishing countries cumulatively account for 79% of total real landed value, with Japan leading, even though the value of its landings has been declining.      

The Information Content of Dividend Initiations and Firm Size: An Analysis Using Bid-Ask Spreads

The bid-ask spread of stock prices is examined for a sample of dividend initiating firms. The average percentage and dollar bid-ask spreads increase significantly on the day preceding the Wall Street Journal Index announcement date, possibly reflecting, on average, the market maker's anticipatory uncertainty. The day -1 increase in spread is inversely associated with firm size, an information environment proxy, after considering the simultaneous effects of dividend yield, returns variance, dollar trading volume and share price. The average percentage spread declines significantly on day 0 from its day -1 level and remains lower, on average, over a 365 day post-announcement period than 90 day pre-announcement levels. Similar results are obtained for dollar spread averages. The post-announcement percentage spread decline suggests a resolution of uncertainty, and is positively associated with the dividend yield. Dividend initiation announcements appear to reduce informational asymmetry.     

Political patronage and analysts’ forecast precision

We test whether the channel by which the government plays the role of political patron to selected firms influences analysts’ forecast precision in Malaysia. Correcting for analysts’ self-selection bias, we find a negative relation between analysts’ forecast errors and the social dimension of political patronage, as proxied by government-controlled institutional ownership. The reverse is found for the economic dimension of political patronage, as proxied by the percentage shareholding of government-linked corporations. We find no evidence that the personal dimension of political patronage influences analysts’ forecast precision.     

Risk-Taking Behavior and Capital Adequacy in a Mixed Banking System: New Evidence from Malaysia Using Dynamic OLS and Two-Step Dynamic System GMM Estimators

This study is the first attempt to investigate the relationship between the level of risky assets and capital level in a mixed Malaysian banking system covering 83 months starting December 2006. The results of dynamic ordinary least squares indicate positive relationship between capital ratio (CAR) and risk-weighted asset ratio (RWA) in the long run. Furthermore, the causality analysis based on panel vector error correction model (VECM) and two-step dynamic system generalized method of moments indicates unidirectional causality from CAR to RWA. Our results further suggest that higher capital growth and capital buffer provide an extra cushion for the Malaysian banks to pursue relatively riskier financial activities, and the nature of risk-taking behavior of Islamic banks follows that of the conventional banks.     

When idealists evade taxes: the influence of personal moral philosophy on attitudes to tax evasion – a Lebanese study

This paper explores attitudes regarding tax evasion and the relationship between personal moral philosophy and such attitudes in a weak tax environment. The results confirm the multidimensionality of tax evasion attitudes. Idealism was negatively related to self‐interest tax evasion attitudes while relativism was positively related to such attitudes. Idealism was also positively related to tax evasion attitudes stemming from concerns about the justice of the tax system. Idealists in a weak tax environment seemingly go through a cognitive reframing process where they recognize that the tax system is unfair, and accordingly tax evasion is a way to serve a different moral absolute, that is of equity, rather than another different moral absolute, which is fulfilling obligations to governments. The results are also explained in light of the suggested low moral intensity of tax evasion among respondents. Policy implications are presented.