The cross‐cultural study of LMX and individual employee voice: The moderating role of conflict avoidance

This article examines the role of national culture, measured by conflict avoidance, on the relationship between leader–member exchange (LMX) and individual employee voice. Using data collected from automotive industry employees in the United States and Korea, the findings show that conflict avoidance is negatively related to employee voice and also moderates the relationship between LMX and employee voice in the Korean sample. In particular, the relationship between LMX and voice becomes less positive when conflict avoidance is high. On the other hand, conflict avoidance does not have a direct effect on employee voice as well as an interactive effect with LMX on employee voice in the U.S. sample. This study, therefore, highlights the importance of the national culture in the comparative study of employee voice.     

Mandatory disclosure,greenhouse gas emissions and the cost of equity capital: UK evidence of a U-shaped relationship

This paper examines the effects of disclosing greenhouse gas (GHG) information mandatorily on the cost of equity capital (COC) using a longitudinal unbalanced panel database of the United Kingdom's FTSE 350 firms for the period 2011–2016. We use a nonlinear panel quantile regression (PQR) model to examine the relationship between GHG disclosure (GHGD) and COC in the United Kingdom. This technique was supplemented by conducting a two-step generalised method of moment (GMM) estimation to address any concerns related to the potential existence of endogeneity problems. Our findings suggest that high-level GHGD appeared to be negatively associated with COC up to a certain level, which is known as the turning point; then, any increase in GHGD is likely to increase the COC. This means that the nonlinear association between GHGD and COC is evidenced in our study and takes a U shape. Likewise, our findings are associative of a moderating effect of the 2013 carbon disclosure regulation (CDR) on the GHGD–COC nexus. We argue that mandatory GHGD and GHG risk are linked so that those companies that are associated with higher GHG risk have a tendency to be better disclosers. Consequently, we urge regulators to design GHGD regulations in a way that mirrors corporate environmental risk and leads to a lower COC in order to align the interests of corporations with those of the society at large.     

State‐Dependent Forward Guidance and the Problem of Inconsistent Announcements

Forward guidance can be provided as an unconditional promise, i.e. commitment to a specific low policy rate. Alternatively, the promise may include an escape clause, i.e. a condition defining the state of the economy under which the central bank would not keep such a low rate and, instead, it would revert to setting policy under discretion. The escape clause can be expressed as a threshold in terms of a specific variable. The present paper shows that, when such a threshold is expressed in terms of an endogenous variable (e.g. output, inflation), there are cases where it becomes impossible for the central bank to act in a way that is consistent with its promise. Consistency imposes limits on the policy rate that can be set since reverting immediately to the optimal discretionary rate can be incompatible with exceeding the threshold.     

Time series copulas for heteroskedastic data

We propose parametric copulas that capture serial dependence in stationary heteroskedastic time series. We suggest copulas for first‐order Markov series, and then extend them to higher orders and multivariate series. We derive the copula of a volatility proxy, based on which we propose new measures of volatility dependence, including co‐movement and spillover in multivariate series. In general, these depend upon the marginal distributions of the series. Using exchange rate returns, we show that the resulting copula models can capture their marginal distributions more accurately than univariate and multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models, and produce more accurate value‐at‐risk forecasts.     

EMPIRICAL PERFORMANCE OF GARCH MODELS WITH HEAVY‐TAILED INNOVATIONS

We introduce a new type of heavy‐tailed distribution, the normal reciprocal inverse Gaussian distribution (NRIG), to the GARCH and Glosten‐Jagannathan‐Runkle (1993) GARCH models, and compare its empirical performance with two other popular types of heavy‐tailed distribution, the Student's t distribution and the normal inverse Gaussian distribution (NIG), using a variety of asset return series. Our results illustrate that there is no overwhelmingly dominant distribution in fitting the data under the GARCH framework, although the NRIG distribution performs slightly better than the other two types of distribution. For market indexes series, it is important to introduce both GJR‐terms and the NRIG distribution to improve the models’ performance, but it is ambiguous for individual stock prices series. Our results also show the GJR‐GARCH NRIG model has practical advantages in quantitative risk management. Finally, the convergence of numerical solutions in maximum‐likelihood estimation of GARCH and GJR‐GARCH models with the three types of heavy‐tailed distribution is investigated.     

Effects of pro-growth policies on employment: evidence of regional disparities

The main objective of our research is to study the direct impact of pro-growth economic policies on employment creation globally and regionally, as evidence has countered policy-makers’ expectation that output growth leads automatically to job creation. We innovate by using the ratio of employment to the population above 25 years as dependent variable instead of the customary employment elasticity. We apply generalized methods of moments’ econometrics on dynamic panel data models and find that growth stimulates employment creation on average across 76 countries. The policies promoting private sector credit, investments, openness, services, education spending, tertiary enrollment, and a fixed exchange rate are the ones that create employment. Larger government size undermines job creation, while policies promoting FDI and industrial development fail to stimulate employment. However, we establish that the effect of pro-growth policies on employment varies significantly across regions, with evidence of weaker links between economic policies and employment in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.     

The practice of collective bargaining in the private sector in Quebec (Canada): the changing ‘rules of the game’

Drawing on 45 semi‐structured interviews with union negotiators active in the Quebec private sector, this article shows that local bargaining practices, despite their plurality, have tended to change following major trends. It also reveals, more fundamentally, a redefinition of the ‘rules of the game’. The transformation and stability of these social rules, which are much more focused on the needs of employers, have tended to weaken collective bargaining as a tool for industrial democracy.     

The Effect of Media Coverage on the Pricing of Seasoned Equity Offerings

This paper examines the role of media coverage and investor attention on the outcomes of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). I use an archive of Thomson Reuters news articles to proxy for firm visibility and investor attention. I find that the volumes of news articles prior to the offerings are positively associated with the offer price discounts of SEOs. Furthermore, the volumes of news articles are negatively associated with the cumulative abnormal returns three days around the SEOs. I conclude that the costs of equity increase with media coverage prior to SEOs. Overall, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that media coverage affects investors' information processing in SEOs. Copyright © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Foreign direct investment subsidy in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms

This study analyzes the macroeconomic impacts of subsidies to attract multinational corporations when firms are determining whether to enter or how to serve foreign markets. We show that a small FDI subsidy scheme induces consumption gains and delivers short‐term welfare improvement for the FDI host country if firms differ in productivity. However, the subsidy generates a new problem and results in the wealth reallocation effect, leading to welfare deterioration for the host country in the long run. Moreover, we find that a subsidy program induces a welfare improvement for the host country if it is offered to all domestic producers instead of foreign producers only in the host country.     

Periodic strategies in optimal execution with multiplicative price impact

We study the optimal execution problem with multiplicative price impact in algorithmic trading, when an agent holds an initial position of shares of a financial asset. The interselling decision times are modeled by the arrival times of a Poisson process. The criterion to be optimized consists in maximizing the expected net present value of the gains of the agent, and it is proved that an optimal strategy has a barrier form, depending only on the number of shares left and the level of the asset price.