COVID-19 and business renewal: Lessons and insights from the global airline industry

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the fortunes of multiple companies around the globe. Accordingly, questions are increasingly being asked about how organizations can revitalize during and after a crisis. Yet, we have limited understanding of how organizations renew themselves during crises over time. We explore this question through the lens and examination of two South-Asian airlines: Pakistan International Airlines and Sri Lankan Airlines. The cases offer important insights into the reasons behind underperformance of state-controlled enterprises and renewal activities. We shed light on strategic renewal (SR) in the wake of increasing liberalization and deregulations in the global airline industry. To this end, we propose a four-stage approach towards renewing such underperforming organizations to respond effectively to black swan events and external shocks.     

Stock price reactions to earnings announcements: evidence from Chinese markets

We examine the stock price reactions to changes in earnings per share (EPS) in the Chinese stock markets. We find that domestic A-share investors do not correctly anticipate the changes in earnings and fail to adjust new earnngs information quickly, but international B-share investors can predict earnings changes better than A-share investors. As a result, abnormal returns (ARs) can be obtained by trading on the earnings information, but for A shares only. An explanation is that most A-share holders are individuals with short-term investment horizon while most B-share holders are large institutions that trade on more detailed and accurate financial information not immediately available to A-share holders.     

Sterilization of short-term capital inflows—through lower interest rates?

Reductions in international interest rates are a major cause of capital flows to emerging economies. Increases in domestic interest rates are a frequent policy response to the resulting price increases. This is often unsuccessful. The paper suggests a theoretical explanation based on distinctive features of emerging financial markets, including imperfect asset substitutability and imperfect capital mobility for some sectors of the economy. It concludes that the appropriate policy response to capital inflows may be lower interest rates.     

新兴市场国家的汇率波动与出口:一个经验分析

现有的中外文献已经对发达国家间的汇率波动与贸易之间的关系做了很多相关分析，但就汇率波动与贸易之间的关系没有取得一致性的结论。本文利用协整分析和误差修正模型，针对新兴市场国家的汇率波动与出口的关系进行了经验分析，结论是：汇率波动会在一定程度上抑制新兴市场国家的出口，但对某些新兴市场国家出口的影响并不明显，其影响程度随一国经济发展水平、经济规模和开放度的差异而有所区别。     

Inter-enterprise arrears in economies in transition

In the context of economies in transition, the paper argues that an excessive liquidity squeeze could throw the economy into a persistent state of low economic activity. In such bad equilibrium, enterprise transactions become largely demonetized, with a chain of arrears, a form of involuntary credit, spreading over the entire system. The empirical analysis of the Romanian experience seems to support the view advanced in the paper.     

基于DEMATEL方法的新兴技术产业化融资影响因素实证研究

新兴技术是提高国家产业竞争力的重要载体，但是资金问题一直是制约我国新兴技术产业化的瓶颈之一。构建新兴技术产业化融资影响因素理论模型，运用DEMATEL方法，实证检验不同因素对新兴技术产业化融资的影响程度。研究表明：融资扶持政策、资金渠道可选择性、共享信息有效性等因素对新兴技术产业化融资具有显著直接影响；资金供求匹配性、融资产品创新、信息共享方式等因素易受到其它微观因素影响，对产业化融资具有显著间接影响；担保费用、配套服务综合性及配套服务专业性等因素对产业化融资同时具有显著的直接与间接影响。据此，提出新兴技术产业化融资对策建议。     

Jointness in production and farmers' willingness to supply non-marketed ecosystem services

This paper highlights how farmers' willingness to supply non-marketed ecosystem services (ES) is influenced by whether or not the non-marketed ES are produced jointly with agricultural products. When marketed products and non-marketed ES share some production inputs the production relationships between the two may be complementary, competitive or substitutive. Using a cost minimization framework, it is shown how complementary relationships lead to costless voluntary provision of non-marketed ES (typically the case for ES that are supportive of provisioning ES for marketed farm products). It is also shown how competitive production relationships lead to provision of non-marketed ES at lower cost than when non-marketed ES are direct substitutes for farm products or are produced outside of agriculture. The paper closes by showing how the minimum willingness to accept (WTA) payment for ES that are complementary/competitive is less than or equal to the minimum WTA for the same ES produced in substitute or independent production relationships.     

Incentive Regulation of Prices When Costs are Sunk

We present a model featuring irreversible investment, economies of scale, uncertain future demand and capital prices, and a regulator who sets the firm’s output price according to the cost structure of a hypothetical replacement firm. We show that a replacement firm has a fundamental cost advantage over the regulated firm: it can better exploit the economies of scale because it has not had to confront the historical uncertainties faced by the regulated firm. We show that setting prices so low that a replacement firm is just willing to participate is insufficient to allow the regulated firm to expect to break even whenever it has to invest. Thus, unless the regulator is willing to incur costly monitoring to ensure the firm invests, revenue must be allowed in excess of that required for a replacement firm to participate. This contrasts with much of the existing literature, which argues that the market value of a regulated firm should equal the cost of replacing its existing assets. We also obtain a closed-form solution for the regulated firm’s output price when this price is set at discrete intervals. In contrast to rate of return regulation, we find that resetting the regulated price more frequently can increase the risk faced by the firm’s owners, and that this is reflected in a higher output price and a higher weighted-average cost of capital.     

Racing in two dimensions

In this paper we study an industry in which there is an ongoing sequence of R&D races between two firms. Firms are engaged in product innovation. Products are horizontally and vertically differentiated. There are two key characteristics/dimensions to products, and the level at which these are embodied in products can be increased by R&D. At each time firms can spend R&D on improving their product in one or both dimensions. We allow the possibility of economies scope — so R&D undertaken in one dimension can spillover to the other. The question we are interested in is whether a firm that is ahead in a single dimension but behind in another will focus all its R&D effort in the area in which it is ahead (product specialisation), or whether it will try to do R&D in both dimensions in the hope that it might get ahead in both and end up with a superproduct that dominates in both characteristics. The outcome of this R&D competition determines a Markov transition probability matrix determining the evolution of the industry. We show that when the R&D technology is characterized by constant returns then the only steady-state outcome is one in which the economy stays forever in a position in which one firm produces a super-product and the other gives up doing R&D altogether. This outcome is unaffected by the degree of economies of scope. When the R&D technology is characterised by decreasing returns, then the industry will visit all states and so will exhibit both product specialisation and superproduct dominance at various times. Now the extent of economies of scope matters and we show that the greater the extent of economies of scope, the less likely is the industry to exhibit product dominance, and the more likely it is to exhibit product specialisation.     

社会壁垒的合理性及对我国的积极影响

最近几年,社会壁垒已经成为欧盟国家及其他发达国家的重要贸易手段.我国国内对其负面影响的研究与宣传的较多,但对其合理性研究不够.本文就社会壁垒的产生、发展及其合理性进行了分析,并指出其对我国政府与企业的积极影响.