Heterogeneous effect of ethnic networks on international trade of Thailand: The role of family ties and ethnic diversity

Ethnic networks have been found to have a pro-trade effect in previous research. However, the heterogeneous effect of different ethnicities is under-studied. Drawing on the literature on social structure, this paper attempts to untangle the heterogeneous effect of ethnic networks on international trade using trade data of Thailand. We found that ethnic networks have a positive impact overall on trade, confirming the results of previous studies. However, the magnitude of the positive effect varies across different ethnicities along two dimensions. First, the strength of family ties in the culture of origin accelerates the pro-trade effect of its ethnic networks, suggesting ethnicities with stronger family ties have a cultural preference for trading within their own ethnic community. In comparison, ethnic diversity weakens the positive effect of ethnic networks on trade, suggesting an informational value of diverse ethnic structure in promoting trade between different ethnicities. Our study contributes new evidence of the enduring influence of social and cultural attributes on economic activities

New insights on the importance of agency costs for corporate debt maturity decisions

This study provides new insights on the relationship between corporate debt maturity and agency costs by investigating empirically the impact of managerial ownership and the divergence between control and cash-flow rights on debt maturity. A significant negative effect of managerial ownership on debt maturity is observed. Moreover, the results reveal that the wedge between control and cash-flow rights also exerts a negative influence. The analysis further suggests that the negative effect of managerial ownership decreases in widely-held firms and increases with the discrepancy between control and cash-flow rights

trans-Bis[2-(piperazin-1-yl)­ethan­amine]­bis­(saccharinato)cobalt(II)

In the centrosymmetric title complex, [Co(C7H4NO3S)2(C6H15N3)2], the CoII ion is coordinated by two saccharinate (sac) anions and two neutral 2-piperazin-1-ylethanamine (ppzea) ligands, showing a distorted octa­hedral coordination. Sac is O-bonded via the carbonyl group, while ppzea acts as an N,N′-bidentate chelating ligand. The mol­ecules are connected by N—H⋯N and N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, forming a linear chain running parallel to the crystallographic a axis. The compound is isostructural with the reported Ni, Zn, and Cd analogues

International evidence on the non-linear impact of leverage on corporate cash holdings

This paper investigates cash holding behaviour of firms from France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US using data for 4069 companies over the period 1996–2000. Our focus is particularly on the relation between cash holdings and leverage. We argue that the impact of leverage on cash balances of firms is likely to be non-monotonic. To the extent that leverage of firms acts as a proxy for their ability to issue debt one would expect a negative (substitution effect) relation between leverage and cash holdings. However, as leverage increases firms are likely to accumulate larger cash reserves to minimise the risk of financial distress and costly bankruptcy. Thus, one would expect a positive (precautionary effect) relationship between cash holdings and leverage at high levels of leverage. Our findings provide strong and robust support for a significant non-linear relation between cash holdings and leverage. Additionally, our results show that the impact of leverage on cash holdings partly depends on country-specific characteristics such as the degree of creditor protection, shareholder protection, and ownership concentration

Initial Public Offerings in China:Underpricing, Statistics and Developing Literature

We review more than two decades of literature on initial public offerings (IPOs) in China, discussing the research hypotheses that have been studied as well as the main findings. We summarize past and current developments in the literature and highlight the research problems which have not yet been adequately resolved. We provide updated information on the popularity of IPOs and allocation mechanisms over the last 25 years as well as on the underpricing that is associated with the usage of each IPO allocation mechanism. We also suggest new avenues for future research, based on the identified gaps in the extant literature

Dividend policy of Indonesian listed firms: The role of families and the state

We investigate factors influencing the dividend policy of the listed Indonesian firms by focusing on agency costs and ownership structure. Our study finds that firms with higher conflicts of interest among managers and shareholders pay lower dividends. In the context of the conflicts of interest among major and minor shareholders, we find that such conflicts would exert little impact on dividend payments. Further, we find that the family-controlled firms prefer to pay less dividends whereas the corporations with higher state ownership are associated with larger dividend payments. Our findings are in line with the argument that the Indonesian state consider corporate dividends as one of the main sources of revenues other than corporate taxes in their government budget. This issue may have adverse effects on the growth of cash-constrained small and medium-sized enterprises

R&D investments and credit lines

Using data for 939 publicly listed firms from 17 European countries over the period from 2004 to 2013, we investigate the effect of used credit lines on R&D investments, controlling for other determinants of R&D investments, i.e., cash flows, cash holdings, sales growth, equity financing, and Tobin’s Q. Our estimation results, based on the system-GMM method, show that used credit lines have a positive and significant impact on R&D investments. In addition, we find that this impact is more pronounced for small and young firms than for large and mature firms. These results show that firms use credit lines as part of their liquidity management tools for supporting their R&D investments. Finally, we provide evidence that European firms in bank-based countries increased their use of credit lines for financing their R&D investments during the financial crisis of 2007-2009, while the link between R&D investments and used credit lines became weaker during the European sovereign debt crisis of 2010-2013

Host country institutions and firm-level R&D influences: an analysis of European Union FDI in China

The paper investigates the effects of institutions and their interaction with firms’ research & development (R&D) levels on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in China based on a sample of 680 European Union (EU) firms over the period of 1998–2008. Employing panel data estimation approaches and further augmented with the cross-validation technique, our results indicate that EU FDI in China is influenced by the host country’s institutions, rendering support to the institutional theory. Our analysis indicates that the rule of law, institutional reforms and the interaction between institutional reforms and R&D have significant effects on FDI inflows in China. Further analysis suggests that the coefficient for the interaction between the rule of law and R&D is positive and significant after World Trade Organisation (WTO) entry implying that the effects of reforms following the WTO entry much outweigh the impact of rule of law in EU firms’ decisions to invest in China. We also find evidence that EU firms tend to adjust their FDI levels in China in an attempt to reach the desired investment level