Organization,technology and management innovations through acquisition in China’s pork value chains: The case of the Smithfield acquisition by Shuanghui

This paper reviews the changes in Shuanghui’s operations after the Smithfield acquisition as well as transformations in China’s pork industries. As income grows and diets change, there has been an increasing demand for high-quality pork and more processed pork products. However, China’s swine and pork industries are still at an early stage of development as evidenced by the low market concentration, intensive use of labour, a proliferation of intermediaries, and low levels of technology. Bounded by the established consumer preferences for freshness and the status quo in the midstream and upstream segments, Shuanghui is in a slow process of upgrading its domestic operations with Smithfield’s leading brands, import of chilled and frozen pork, advanced technologies, and the vertically integrated business model after this acquisition. In particular, it remains unclear whether Shuanghui can follow Smithfield’s experience to establish stable and safe hog supplies by multiplying self-owned hog farms, maintain and expand its current contracts with large-scale commercial hog farms, or rely more on global sourcing of pork primarily from the U.S.     

环境政策工具对生态创新的影响: 研究回顾及实践意义

各种环境政策工具用来推进生态创新的开发、传播与应用，但不同政策工具对生态创新的作用效果还有待进一步挖掘。系统梳理了环境政策工具对生态创新影响的相关研究，探究不同政策工具的作用及其本质，以理解在推动生态创新开发、传播与应用情景下环境政策工具的作用及其实践意义。     

Co-movement in Stock Prices in Emerging Economies: The Case of the Caricom Region

The Grand Anse Declaration of 1989 recognised the need for financial integration within the emerging economies that comprise the CARICOM region, as a way of furthering the wider process of economic integration and, indeed, economic development in that region. Using co-movement as a measure of financial integration, this paper investigates the co-movement in stock prices among the Barbados, the Jamaica and the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchanges, the three major exchanges within the CARICOM region. It also examines how integrated these exchanges are with the New York Stock Exchange. The GARCH-Copula methodology and, to a lesser extent, estimated correlation coefficients, are used to attain this objective. There appears to be co-movement in stock prices and returns within the CARICOM stock markets and significant dependence structures between the returns of the three CARICOM stock markets. However, there is considerably less evidence of integration between the CARICOM markets and the New York Stock Exchange.     

Are USDA reports still news to changing crop markets?

This study investigates whether major USDA reports still provide important news to changing crop markets. The news component of each report, or market “surprise,” is measured as a difference between the USDA estimate and its private expectation in corn, soybeans, and wheat markets. Changes in the relevance of USDA information are assessed by examining changes in the magnitude of market surprises and shifts in the futures price reaction to these surprises, which isolates the impact of each report. The stable size of market surprises over time suggests that competition from alternative data sources has not reduced the news component of USDA crop reports. Increasing price reaction to most reports, including those facing competition from alternative information sources, suggests that value of public information may be enhanced in uncertain markets affected by structural changes.     

Capital market integration in ASEAN: A non-stationary panel data analysis

Motivated by the establishment of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) at the end of 2015, we examine saving-investment relationship in various subgroups of ASEAN to assess their capital market integration. The results from second generation panel unit-root and cointegration tests that account for cross-sectional dependence as well as estimates of long-run saving-retention rate provide some evidence of market integration in ASEAN. The analysis of short-run dynamics suggests that capital mobility in ASEAN during 1980–2014 appears similar to that in OECD countries during 1970–1999. More importantly, across different panel estimators and subgroups of membership, there is considerable heterogeneity among the member countries. The saving-investment association is very weak, thereby implying very high capital mobility, in more developed members such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei; the association is very strong, implying very low capital mobility, for much less developed members such as Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. The results call for renewed effort to develop capital markets in less developed nations and integrate them with the rest of the membership in ASEAN. In this paper, we also address several major shortcomings of the original Feldstein-Horioka framework.     

Market impact: a systematic study of the high frequency options market

This paper deals with a fundamental subject that has seldom been addressed in recent years, that of market impact in the options market. Our analysis is based on a proprietary database of metaorders—large orders that are split into smaller pieces before being sent to the market—on one of the main Asian markets. In line with our previous work on the equity market [Said, E., Bel Hadj Ayed, A., Husson, A. and Abergel, F., Market impact: A systematic study of limit orders. Mark. Microstruct. Liq., 2018, 3(3&4), 1850008.], we propose an algorithmic approach to identify metaorders, based on some implied volatility parameters, the at the money forward volatility and at the money forward skew. In both cases, we obtain results similar to the now well-understood equity market: Square-Root Law, Fair Pricing Condition and Market Impact Dynamics.     

Covariance breakdowns and connectedness of crude oil futures markets with non-synchronous data

ABSTRACT

This article identifies the breakdowns in the covariance of three benchmark crude oil futures markets (WTI, Brent and Dubai) and investigates the changes of market connectedness across the breakdown periods. As the crude oil futures are traded in different regions, this article eliminates the non-synchronous trading data by employing the Vector Moving Average structure and the Bayesian data augmentation approach, which keeps the integrity of original data without changing its properties. The results show that there are significant breaks in the covariance structure of crude oil futures markets. The breakdown periods are consistent with the periods when the market volatilities are at high level and the returns are volatile. The changes of market connectedness are independent of the covariance states, which supports the globalization hypothesis for the crude oil market. The results also suggest that there is more information flow out of the WTI than to the WTI during the sample period, particularly during the breakdown periods in 2008–2009.     

China and international market integration: Evidence from the law of one price in the Middle East and Africa

We model market integration in the Middle East and Africa by analyzing price dispersion and testing the law of one price (LOP) on highly-comparable actual local retail prices of 135 goods and services across 23 countries in the region over the period of 1990–2016. Second-generation panel estimators are applied to four price benchmarks: Regional average, South Africa, China, and US prices. Cross-regional price dispersion diminishes considerably over time up to 2008, particularly for non-tradeables around China price. The test of LOP indicates the percentage of convergent prices is highest in China price benchmark, followed by US, South Africa, and regional average benchmarks. Direct estimation of the convergence speed confirms this order. Overall, the results show evidence of increasing market integration in Middle East and Africa but it appears to be driven by global forces and, especially, the rise of China as a new economic power. The results show that some emerging market economies, such as China, can step up and promote integration while traditional economic powerhouses, such as the USA and UK, disengage from international economic relations.     

Hedging and temporal permit issuances in cap-and-trade programs: The Market Stability Reserve under risk aversion

Cap-and-trade programs such as the European Union's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) expose firms to considerable risks, to which the firms can respond with hedging. We develop an intertemporal stochastic equilibrium model to analyze the implications of hedging by risk-averse firms. We show that the resulting time-varying risk premium depends on the size of the permit bank. Applying the model to the EU ETS, we find that hedging can lead to a U-shaped price path, because prices initially fall due to negative risk premiums and then rise as the hedging demand declines. The Market Stability Reserve (MSR) reduces the permit bank and thus, increases the hedging value of the permits. This offers an explanation for the recent price hike, but also implies that prices may decline in the future due to more negative risk premiums. In addition, we find higher permit cancellations through the MSR than previous analyses, which do not account for hedging.     

Cross‐Functional Integration: Concept Clarification and Scale Development

The centrality of cross‐functional integration (CFI) to supply chain theory and practice has long been recognized. Yet researchers continue to struggle with consistently defining or measuring the CFI construct, thus limiting the utility of CFI research. This research develops (1) a comprehensive definition of CFI that synthesizes previous supply chain research and (2) a valid set of scale items that measure the conceptual domain outlined by this definition. The goal is to build a common foundation for extending knowledge on CFI's antecedents and consequences, and ultimately to improve scholars’ ability to guide a broader practitioner community still struggling to achieve integration in their organizations.