Influence of livelihoods on climate change adaptation for smallholder farmers in the Mekong Delta Vietnam

Farmers in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta face a wide range of climate-related and hydrological factors which threaten rice production. Smallholder farmers must adapt to climate change to sustain rice production as their central and most important livelihood activity. A sample was stratified across agro-ecological areas in the Delta affected by flooding, alluvial soils, acid sulphate soils, and saline water intrusion and by derived farmer typologies. A rural livelihoods approach was used in focus group discussions and in-depth interviews to identify and enumerate enabling and constraining adaptation factors. Smallholders experienced diverse natural hazards such as floods, abnormal rains, high temperatures, water scarcity, and salinity intrusion specific to the agro-ecological areas. Adaptation was constrained by labour shortages, water quality, topography, access to combine harvesters, transportation infrastructure, dryers and household savings. Adaptation was enabled by farming techniques and experience, cooperative groups, water quantity, access to information, and ability to purchase agro-chemicals through credit. Small farmers (< 1?ha) were more constrained than large farmers (> 1?ha) who had an expanded livelihood asset base. A range of policy implications are discussed, but adaptation is not just about technological fixes but requires overall improvements in a range of human, social and financial components.     

Bank risk in uncertain times: Do credit rationing and revenue diversification matter?

We show that bank risk rises, particularly for larger banks and those with greater interest-sensitive liabilities, during times of economic policy uncertainty through two economic channels: “credit rationing” and “revenue diversification.” The credit rationing channel shows that economic policy uncertainty increases aggregate loan spreads, exacerbating both adverse selection and moral hazard problems leading to higher bank risk. The revenue diversification channel suggests that as economic policy uncertainty reduces bank profits from traditional interest-based products, banks diversify into other non-traditional activities, thereby increasing their instability. Overall, our findings highlight the impact of economic policy uncertainty on exacerbating bank risk.     

Stock Market Liquidity and Firm Value: An Empirical Examination of the Australian Market

We document a positive relation between stock liquidity and firm value. We examine the mechanism through which stock market liquidity enhances firm value by dividing firm value, as measured by Tobin's Q, into three components, namely, operating income to price, leverage, and operating income to assets. Using the switch to broker anonymity as an exogenous shock to market liquidity, we show that the increase in liquidity around the shock leads to an increase in firm value. Our results suggest that higher firm value for more liquid stocks seems to stem from enhanced stock prices rather than from better operating performance.     

A test of the Samuelson Hypothesis using realized range

This study examines the Samuelson Hypothesis, which postulates that futures price volatility increases as the futures contract approaches its expiration. Investigating intraday data and drawing on the recently developed concept of realized range, this study provides empirical evidence regarding the Samuelson Hypothesis for 14 agricultural, metal, energy, and financial futures markets in six futures exchanges. While utilizing a nonparametric test, a simple linear regression model and a system of seemingly unrelated regressions, the study finds strong support for the Samuelson Hypothesis in agricultural futures. In contrast, no support for the Samuelson Hypothesis is observed in any of the metal and financial futures. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 28:680–696, 2008     

An FsQCA Investigation of eWOM and Social Influence on Product Adoption Intention

Abstract

Following the causal complexity theory, fsQCA has emerged as an advanced methodology in examining hypotheses and creating new theories in social science. However, fsQCA falls short dealing with structural associations and with latent variables when multi-faceted scales are combined into a single indicator by mean. To extend the application of fsQCA, the study demonstrates an approach to investigate a multi-layered problem of eWOM, social influence, and product adoption intention. The findings from fsQCA successfully confirmed the results from the statistical approach that eWOM and social influence have structural associations with customer adoption intentions of new high-tech products.     

Firm performance and ownership structure: Dynamic network data envelopment analysis approach

This paper applies dynamic network slacks-based data envelopment analysis to measure financial performance based on the interrelationship among investment, financing, and dividend decisions. The empirical results show that financial performance is determined simultaneously by the efficiency of decisions, and sample firms have good performance in investment stage, but need to improve their financing and dividend policies. The proposal financial performance measure explains the multicriteria of decision-making rather than the single financial ratios. Besides, the research contributes a novel on the significant relationship between firm's ownership structure in the form of managers, government and foreign shareholders, and the firm's financial performance.     

Information Asymmetry,Trade Size,and the Dynamic Volume‐Return Relation: Evidence from the Australian Securities Exchange

This paper investigates the influence of information asymmetry on the cross‐sectional variation of volume‐return relation. We find that the dynamic volume‐return relation within medium‐size trades has the most significant response to the degree of information asymmetry. We also show that the effect of information asymmetry on the volume‐return dynamics migrates to small‐size trades in recent years, especially in larger stocks. These results are consistent with the notion that informed traders prefer medium‐size trades and this preference has shifted to small‐size trades. Our findings highlight the importance of incorporating informed traders’ trade‐size decision in the examination of the dynamic volume‐return relation.     

The Samuelson hypothesis in futures markets: An analysis using intraday data

This paper considers the Samuelson hypothesis, which argues that the futures price volatility increases as the futures contract approaches its expiration. Utilizing intraday data from 20 futures markets in six futures exchanges, we find strong support for the Samuelson hypothesis in agricultural futures. However, the Samuelson hypothesis does not hold for other futures contracts. We also provide supporting evidence that the ‘negative covariance’ hypothesis is the key factor for the empirical support of the Samuelson hypothesis. In addition, our findings remain largely unaltered even after we control for seasonality and liquidity effects.     

Analytical Approach to Value Options with State Variables of a Levy System

In this paper we present an analytical method in pricing Europeancontingent assets, whose state variables follow a multi-dimensionalLévy process. We give an explicit formula for the hypotheticalEuropean "two-price" call option price by means of the conditionacharacteristic transform. The work not only unifies and extendsthe option pricing literature, which focuses on the use of thecharacteristic function, but also provides the way to formalizeandunify the valuation of the option price, the valuation of thediscount bond price, the valuation of the scaled-forward price,and the valuation of the pricing measure in incomplete markets.JEL Classification codes: G13