Business Commons^™

Does The Legal System Affect The Cost Of External Financing? Evidence From Ipo Underpricing Of Foreign Firms Listed In U.S. Stock Markets, Shaokang Wang, Jing Jiang

WCBT Faculty Publications

To study the effect of the legal system on the cost of external financing, we examine the degree of underpricing of the IPOs by foreign companies listed in U.S. We find that firms from highly corrupted countries have larger IPO underpricing. The quality of the home-country public law enforcement reduces the degree of IPO underpricing. In particular, the criminal sanction for violations of securities laws is the most significant factor in reducing underpricing. The evidence shows that even when a non-U.S. firm meets sophisticated U.S. regulations and goes public in a U.S. exchange, the degree of underpricing is still influenced …

Sovereign Default Risk In The Euro-Periphery And The Euro-Candidate Countries, Hubert Gabrisch, Lucjan T. Orlowski, Toralf Pusch

WCBT Working Papers

This study examines the key drivers of sovereign default risk in five euro area periphery countries and three euro-candidates that are currently pursuing independent monetary policies. We argue that the recent proliferation of sovereign risk premiums stems from both domestic and international sources. We focus on contagion effects of external financial crisis on sovereign risk premiums in these countries, arguing that the countries with weak fundamentals and fragile financial institutions are particularly vulnerable to such effects. The domestic fiscal vulnerabilities include: economic recession, less efficient government spending and a rising public debt. External ‘push’ factors entail increasing liquidity- and counter-party …

Workers' Migration And Remittances In Bangladesh, Khawaja Mamun, Hiranya K. Nath

WCBT Faculty Publications

Bangladesh has sent more than 6.7 million workers to over 140 countries during a period of more than three decades since the mid-1970s. Most of these workers temporarily migrated to work in Middle East and Southeast Asia. This mass movement of temporary migrant workers has, to some extent, eased unemployment pressures on the over-burdened labor market in this highly populated country. More importantly, the remittance transfers received from these migrant workers have reached a phenomenal level of over 10 billion US dollars in 2009, approximately 12 percent of GDP in Bangladesh. This paper analyzes the trends and various other aspects …

Proliferation Of Tail Risks And Policy Responses In The Eu Financial Markets, Lucjan Orlowski

WCBT Faculty Publications

This study draws attention to the proliferation of tail risks in financial markets prior to and during the course of the recent global financial crisis. It examines the level of tail risks in selected equity, interbank lending and foreign exchange markets in selected EU Member States in relation to the United States. The extent of tail risks is assessed by applying general error distribution (GED) parameterization in GARCH volatility tests of the examined variables. The empirical tests prove that tail risks were pronounced across all of the examined European financial markets throughout the crisis. They were also significant prior to …

The Impact Of Terrorism On Business, Michael D. Larobina, Richard L. Pate

WCBT Faculty Publications

Terrorism has in one form or another been a part of society throughout history. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, the world community has been more focused on terrorism than ever before in most recent modern history. Terrorism has impacted multiple levels of society across the world community. One of those levels is the business environment. A specific aim of terrorism is to disrupt and destroy ongoing businesses. Therefore, the ability of governments to disrupt and destroy terrorism is essential to the continued growth and expansion of the world economy. Terrorism will directly impact a country's ability …

Assessing Competition Policy Performance Metrics: Concerns About Cross-Country Generalisability, Lesley Denardis, A. E. Rodriguez

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

Recent interest in competition policy performance has typically relied on subjective performance metrics that have undergone little direct scrutiny by users. We examine the quality of the popular World Economic Forum's antitrust performance metric and assess whether it is immune from perception-bias. A bias-free metric is required to ensure cross-country consistency in its intended performance assessment.

We note various instances where the WEF's competition policy performance survey was completed but where there existed neither competition legislation nor an associated enforcement agency at the time. This seeming inconsistency is neither amenable to traditional econometric heterogeneity treatment nor instrumentable; importantly, it is …

Institutional Issues Impeding Progress Of The Free Trade Area Of The Americas Agreement (Ftaa), Sivakumar Venkataramany, Balbir B. Bhasin

WCBT Faculty Publications

For any bilateral or multilateral trade agreement to be effective, it is imperative that all participants derive maximum benefit. This paper examines the institutional issues facing the partners of the Free Trade of the Area of the Americas (FTAA), analyzes some of the current areas of conflict and suggests action to reduce tensions and promote harmony, cooperation and accommodation which is a necessity when multiple countries attempt to foster such an agreement.

American Index Put Options Early Exercise Premium Estimation, Ako Doffou

WCBT Faculty Publications

"This paper examines empirically the value of early exercise by testing the ability of two American put valuation models to predict the early exercise premium for the S&P 100 American put options. An accuracy test and a quality test are performed on (1) the MacMillan (1986) & Barone-Adesi and Whaley (1987) model, and (2) the Carr, Jarrow and Myneni(1992) model. The test results show that early exercise premium is significant regardless of moneyness. Moreover, consistent with the theory, the value of early exercise is significantly negatively related to moneyness and interest rates and significantly positively related to time to maturity …

Reflections On A Seminal Force In International Accounting, Karen Cascini

WCBT Faculty Publications

Accounting is a manifestation of several important environmental factors within a country, including economic, educational and political, and, as such, is evolutionary in accordance with those changing social structures. In today‟s ever expanding global economy, the understanding of international aspects of accounting is critical to understanding world events and the way in which they affect our lives. As new nations and new economic powers emerge, continually updated information, including accounting information, is an essential resource for linking an internal accounting system with worldwide systems. Because of the major impact that international accounting has had on countries‟ internal accounting systems, it …

Periodically Collapsing Bubbles In The Asian Emerging Stock Markets, Ako Doffou

WCBT Faculty Publications

This paper investigates empirically the existence of periodically collapsing bubbles in the Asian emerging stock markets using the Enders-Siklos (2001) momentum threshold autoregressive model. As explained in Bohl (2003), this non-linear time series technique can be used to analyze bubble driven run-ups in stock prices followed by a crash in a non- cointegration framework with asymmetric adjustment. This technique offers a more potent insight in the stock prices behavior than can possibly be obtained using conventional non-cointegration tests. The empirical findings for ten Asian emerging stock markets from 1993 to 2005 refute the bubble hypothesis.

The Relationship Between Import Prices And Inflation In The United States, Thomas D. Corrigan

WCBT Faculty Publications

Inflation has been a non-issue in the United States in recent years despite strong economic growth, on balance, and falling unemployment. Some analysts believe that "new economy" dynamics are responsible for this favorable outcome and further claim that the traditional Phillips curve tradeoff between growth and inflation is no longer a valid assumption underlying economic policy decisions. Others believe that the Phillips curve is indeed alive and well but that favorable "supply shocks" have masked the still relevant tradeoff between growth and price stability. One potential "supply shock" candidate is a declining trend in the cost of imports into the …

Monetary Convergence And Risk Premiums In The Eu Accession Countries, Lucjan Orlowski

WCBT Faculty Publications

This study examines the impact of various monetary policy regimes on the ability to lower inflation and exchange rate risk premiums in the EU accession countries as they undergo monetary convergence to the eurozone. It proposes a monetary policy framework of flexible targeting of relative inflation risk premium that is believed to be credible and useful for managing these two categories of risk. A model of inflation and exchange rate risk premiums within the context of inflation targeting is developed. Recent trends in these risk premiums in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland are tested by employing the threshold ARCH …

Monetary-Policy Targeting In The Central European Transition Economies, Lucjan T. Orlowski

WCBT Faculty Publications

This chapter examines the monetary-policy-targeting systems, in the second half of the 1990s (until 1998), of three Central European EU-accession candidates—the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland--and advocates the potential benefits of applying a direct-inflation-targeting (DIT) system in them. For the purpose of the analysis presented here, DIT is defined as "a monetary policy framework that is based on the assumption of long-term price stability as the official policy goal and on the designation of the official inflation forecast as intermediate policy target" (Orlowski, 2000). Section 1 is a brief overview of monetary-targeting practices in the Czech Republic Hungary, and Poland. …