Noise traders,firm-specific uncertainty and technical trading effectiveness

This is the first study to document evidence of technical trading effectiveness at firm level in the Chinese A-share market by investigating the relationship between excess profits of technical trading rules and firm-specific characteristics. Our results reveal that firms with higher excess profits from technical trading have more noise traders and higher institutional ownership and that those firms tend to be growth firms with lower liquidity and higher firm-specific uncertainty. Further analysis shows that the profitability of technical trading rules is unsustainable and the excess profits of the highest technical trading profit quintile portfolio disappear in the following year.     

The heterogeneous relationship between board social ties and corporate environmental responsibility in an emerging economy

Firms in emerging economies are faced with multiple, incompatible institutional forces in their environmental activities. Which of these forces will be dominant and instantiated within an organization is partly determined by the social relationships that a firm maintains with external actors. This paper investigates the relationship between board social ties and the level of environmental responsibility undertaken by firms in China, an emerging economy, by categorizing board social ties into three types in terms of the three isomorphic forces in the institutional field (coercive, normative and mimetic). Drawing on institutional and agency theories, using a sample of listed firms in environmentally sensitive industries, and a generalized least squares regression method, the results provide empirical evidence that ties that are linked to coercive and normative forces (i.e., political organizations and universities) are related to a higher level of environmental responsibility; however, those that are linked to mimetic forces (i.e., industrial peers) have a negative association with environmental responsibility, which is mitigated by CEO power. These findings suggest that the heterogeneous effects of board social ties on environmental responsibilities experienced by firms in a context of environmentalism are at an early stage.     

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.     

Farm size and productivity growth in the United States Corn Belt

In recent decades, agricultural production in the U.S. has continued to shift to large-scale operations, raising concerns about the economic viability of small and midsized farms. To understand whether economies of size provided an incentive for the consolidation of production, the study estimates the total factor productivity (TFP) of five size classes of grain-producing farms in the U.S. Heartland (Corn Belt) region. Using quinquennial Agricultural Census data from 1982 to 2012 the study also compares TFP growth rates across farm sizes to gain insight into whether observed productivity differences are likely to persist. The finding of a strong positive relationship between farm size and TFP suggests that consolidation of production has contributed to recent aggregate productivity growth in the crop sector. The study estimates the extent to which sectoral productivity growth can be attributed to structural change versus other factors including technological change. The study also explores some tradeoffs associated with policies that raise the productivity of small versus large farms.     

Exploring the male Chinese tourists’ motivation for commercial sex when travelling overseas: Scale construction and validation

Sex and tourism has long been understudied. Little is known about tourists' motivations for consuming commercial sex while travelling, and even less, if indeed anything, is known about that of Chinese outbound tourists in particular. Based on twenty interviews and two surveys with a sample of 534 male Chinese tourists who had engaged in commercial sex when travelling overseas in the previous 12 months, this study aimed first to explore why male Chinese tourists travelled overseas and purchased commercial sex, and second to construct a comprehensive scale for measuring male tourists’ motivations for overseas commercial sex. With acceptable reliability and validity, the measurement scale yielded in this study consisted of eight motivation dimensions labelled as socialisation, relaxation and escape, travel-related novelty, sexual desire fulfillment/excitement seeking, sex-related learning, sexual mastery, social prestige, and business/pragmatic purpose. Both the theoretical and methodological implications related to the developed scale are also discussed.     

FDI facilitated by agglomeration economies: evidence from manufacturing and services joint ventures in China

The open door policy of China’s economic reform since the 1980s has attracted heavy foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into China and especially to Guangdong (particularly the Pearl River Delta region, PRD) and induced significant economic growth during the past two decades. While there exist various classical theories of FDI in attempting to identify the determinants of FDI inflow and to explain the behavior of FDI flows, limited attention has been given from the perspective of agglomeration effects generated by a core-periphery (CP) relation.This paper intends to study the impacts of agglomerations on FDI inflows in the context of Krugman’s CP relation (1991) by investigating (1) the formation of a CP relation via gravity model analysis; (2) whether different types of industry FDI flows will respond differently in the CP-system, given agglomeration effects; and (3) whether FDI origin and firm scale matter in affecting FDI flows.A database consisting of a population frame of 37,742 firm-level manufacturing and services joint ventures investing in Guangdong in 1998 was used. Empirical results show that the agglomerations of the CP relation have affected FDI flow patterns. While both manufacturing and services FDI and sources of investment responded differently to the impacts, smaller firms were found more responsive to the CP-agglomeration settings regardless of FDI by industry type and by source. The significance and implications of the CP-system to further facilitate FDI in the region are discussed.     

The curse of natural resources in the transition economies*

The curse of natural resources is a well‐documented phenomenon for developing countries. Economies that are richly endowed with natural resources tend to grow slowly. Among the transition economies of the former ‘Eastern Bloc’, a similar pattern can be observed. This paper shows that a large part of the variation in growth rates among the transition economies can be attributed to the curse of natural resources. After controlling for numerous other factors, there is still a strong negative correlation between natural resource abundance and economic growth. Among the transition economies the prime reasons for the curse of natural resources were corruption and a neglect of basic education. In order to overcome the curse of natural resources and move to a sustainable path of development, the resource abundant transition countries should fight corruption and ensure that their resource revenues are invested in human capital or the preservation of natural capital.     

中国商业银行市场结构分析——基于Panzar-Rosse模型

运用Panzar--Rosse模型这一国际上前沿的市场结构判定方法，分析中国商业银行的市场结构，发现其目前正处于垄断竞争状态，垄断性较强。在此基础上本文提出了降低市场准入门槛、改善市场竞争环境的政策措施。     

Squatting as a transition problem in South Africa

This paper applies principles of transition to land tenure and squatting in South Africa. Political transition in South Africa reassigned political property rights, which produced contestable, and rent‐seeking incentives for squatting as a means to privatize land and redistribute wealth. Government failure to establish and protect private property rights in a squatter camp resulted in common‐pool problems that resisted private and public resolution with consequent rent dissipation and social loss. In response to this retreat from duty, informal agents emerged to claim their own share of the prize. Without enforceable rules of capture, the growth of squatter camps in South Africa will continue. JEL classification: D7, H8, K1, K4, R1, R4.     

How Issue Size, Risk, and Complexity are Influencing External Financing Costs: German IPOs Analyzed from an Economies of Scale Perspective

This paper is focused on the cost of raising capital in Germany. A cross-sectional analysis of flotation cost data for 117 IPOs over the years 1993–1998 is presented. We find average flotation costs to be 7.77 percent of gross proceeds, while underwriting fees average 5.01 percent. Our results extend the literature in two important directions. First, contrary to the conventional economies of scale view we find marginal spreads to be rather constant in gross proceeds and to be higher for more risky and more complex offerings. Fixed costs amount to 5 to 9 percent of underwriting fees. Second, by applying a principal component analysis we find issue size, an issuer risk factor, and an offering method complexity factor to have an economicaly meaningful impact on underwriting fees.