Generation Y’s Behavioural Usage of Small Businesses’ Retail Websites in Canada

This research delves into the factors that influence Generation Y’s usage of Canadian small businesses’ retail websites in order to suggest how they can be attracted to use them more. Based on the Use of Technology Two (UTAUT2) theory, questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews revealed linkages between Behavioural Intention, Habit, Facilitating Conditions and Use Behaviour with demographic variables moderating some relationships. Improving the website designs and social media marketing can entice Generation Y consumers

A Multi-Factor Analysis of AREIT Returns

Since 1990, the Australian Real Estate Investment Trust (AREIT) sector has experienced substantial growth and popularity. While the AREIT sector had benefit from the increased flow of funds from institutional investors during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the recent impact of the 2008 global financial crisis has been a negative one. In this paper, we examine the sensitivities of annualised AREIT returns against a set of seven firm-specific variables and four market-wide risk variables. Balanced and unbalanced panel regressions are conducted on three sub-periods during 1990 - 2008 corresponding to the major phases in evolution of the AREIT sector. Our regression results find that size has a negative impact on returns, and this effect has been diminishing over time. Overall market risk was also found to be significant and positive only since 2003, suggesting that recently AREITs behave more like stocks and less like defensive assets. The relationship with exchange rate risk has been positive in recent years, due to more AREITs choosing to diversify internationally, particularly in the U.S. property markets. Our findings on the relationship between market-to-book ratios and AREIT returns depart from standard finance literature. In comparison to REITs in other countries, AREITs have shifted their preferences away from property-type diversification and into more specialised investment strategies. We also find contrasting evidence on the impact of international diversification, and that domestic AREITs provide better returns than internationally diversified counterparts. The relationship between returns and short term interest rates was found to be positive and significant prior to 2002, and the relationship with long-term interest rates was found to be negative and significant since 2003, suggesting that AREITs exhibit less bond-like characteristics in the past five years.AREITs, AREIT returns, Property-type diversification, International diversification, Panel regressions

Evaluating economic relationships of stapled and traditional Australian REITs

The number of Australian Real Estate Investment Trusts (AREITs) trading as stapled securities has grown significantly in the past ten years. Though this type of trust structure improves the income growth to investors, stapled AREITs are riskier relative to traditional AREITs that act primarily as holding companies of property assets. Academic literature on REIT characteristics has found that these assets have become less integrated with bonds and more with stocks. An increasingly mature AREIT market implies that prices of these assets have become more integrated with values of the underlying direct property investments. This study employs quarterly prices over 30 years from 1980 to 2010, and the sample includes 71 AREITs used to construct separate value-weighted indices for stapled and traditional trusts. Using cointegration analysis, this paper aims to examine the relationships of traditional and stapled AREITs with expected and unexpected growth in real estate prices, stocks, bonds, as well as expected and unexpected inflation. Because inflation is driven by changes to real economic activity, and appraisal based direct property indices are prone to a smoothing bias, we also use a set of macroeconomic factors to represent demand for real estate and assess if these have meaningful relationships with traditional and stapled AREITs. These are industrial production and eight employment indices from the construction, entertainment related services, finance and insurance services, public administration and safety, manufacturing, rental and property services, utilities and, wholesale and retail trade sectors. Estimations were conducted with sample periods including and excluding the GFC. Our results show that there is no long-run relationship between AREITs and expected capital growth of retail properties and unexpected capital growth of industrial properties. Stapled AREITs do not exhibit any relationship with unexpected capital growth of office properties. These results only apply when the sample period excludes the GFC. The significance of the error correction term when direct property was assumed as the dependent variable provides support that AREIT prices are significant in explaining expected and unexpected capital growth of direct properties. We also find that in the long-run, AREITs are good hedges against expected inflation, but only stapled AREITs can hedge against unexpected inflation. Estimates of the vector error correction model also indicate that traditional AREITs exhibit short-run adjustments to both stock and bond market factors, whereas stapled AREITs only adjust to stocks. When assessed against a set of macroeconomic variables representing primary demand factors for real estate, we find that traditional AREITs display a significant relationship with industrial production and employment in the construction sector. In the set of secondary demand factors for real estate, we find a persistent long-run relationship for traditional AREITs in periods including and excluding the GFC. Overall, our findings suggest that stapled AREITs do not display a long-run relationship with macroeconomic factors that drive real estate prices, providing further support that stapled AREITs are more like stocks and are poor substitutes for direct property investments

Social Media Sentiment Contagion

We propose an empirical setting to discover sentiment contagion in social media. We find that, after controlling for concurrent events, sentiment contagion exists in social media. We conduct additional analyses to explore how the source and valence of exposure contents and individual heterogeneity affect the degree of sentiment contagion. We find robust evidence of sentiment contagion not only in contents under the same thread but also under different threads of the same forum. Additional analysis provides evidence of negativity bias. In terms of individual heterogeneity, we find that more experienced social media users are less sensitive to sentiments in social media. Last, we find that social media users are more likely to become inactive in the long run after being exposed to more negative contents. Managerial and practical implications are discussed

A clustering approach for optimizing beam angles in IMRT planning

In this paper we introduce a p-median problem based clustering heuristic for selecting efficient beam angles for intensity-modulated radiation therapy. The essence of the method described here is the clustering of beam angles according to probability that an angle will be observed in the final solution and similarities among different angles and the selection of a representative angle from each of the p resulting cluster cells. We conduct experiments using several combinations of modeling parameters to find the conditions where the heuristic best performs. We found a combination of such parameters that outperformed all other parameters on three of the four tested instances

Solving the p-Median Problem with Insights from Discrete Vector Quantization

The goals of this paper are twofold. First, we formally equate the p-median problem from facility location to the optimal design of a vector quantizer. Second, we use the equivalence to show that the Maranzana Algorithm can be interpreted as a projected Lloyd Algorithm, a fact that improves complexity. Numerical results verify significant improvements in run-time

Fast and Robust Techniques for the Euclidean p-Median Problem with Uniform Weights

We discuss new solution techniques for the p-median problem, with the goal being to improve the solution time and quality of current techniques. In particular, we hybridize the discrete Lloyd algorithm and the vertex substitution heuristic. We also compare three starting point techniques and present a new solution method that provides consistently good results when appropriately initialized

AUSFTA and its implications for the Australian stock market

This paper investigates whether current and future domestic and United States macroeconomic variables can explain long and short run stock returns in Australia. This is undertaken with a view to examining the potential implications of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA). America is included in the analysis as a “foreign influence”. In the recent past it has been Australia’s second largest trading partner after Japan. The long run relationship tested in this study is based on the present value model of stock prices, which is tested using a range of cointegration and causality tests. These include the Johansen ML test, Long Run Structural Modelling, a Vector Error Correction Model and Variance Decomposition. A present value model based on domestic and external economic variables is estimated for the Australian market. American economic activity does not currently have a significant influence on Australian stock markets in the long run and is less influential than domestic economic activity. However, we would expect this to become more significant in the future, as a result of the dismantling of trade barriers in financial services and investments which will be associated with the implementation of AUSFTA

AREIT returns from 1990-2008: A multi-factor approach

Australian Real Estate Investment Trusts (AREITs) have experienced substantial growth and popularity since 1993. Amongst the major themes surrounding this sector during this time, were the increased attention from institutional investors, the trend towards and away from property-type diversification, significant merger and acquisition activities which led to increased trust size, the debate between internally versus externally managed trust structures, increased gearing levels, and the focus towards diversification into international property assets. While the AREIT sector had benefit from the increased flow of funds from institutional investors during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the recent impact of the 2008 global financial crisis has been a negative one, as increased credit margins meant that AREITs found it harder to access capital. Our paper aims to study the sensitivities of annualised AREIT returns from 1990 – 2008 towards a set of seven firm-specific variables and five market-wide risk variables. In particular, we examine the time-varying and cross-sectional differences between the impact of firm size, the degree of leverage, market-to-book ratios, property-type diversification, international diversification, the proportion of institutional investment, and management structure. Our set of market time-varying market risk indicators include, overall Australian market conditions proxied using the S&P/ASX200 Index, yields on 90-day bank Treasury Notes to represent the short-term interest rate, yields on10-year Treasury Bonds to represent the long-term interest rate, and changes to the USD/AUD exchange rate to represent exchange rate risk components. We apply panel regressions for fixed and group effects onto balanced and unbalanced panels, categorised according to three sub-periods to study the major phases of the evolution of the AREIT sector. Our regression results find that the size effect has had a negative impact of returns, but this effect has been diminishing over time. Overall market risk was found to be significant and positive only since 2003, suggesting that more recently, AREITs behave more like stocks and less like defensive assets. Additionally, the relationship with exchange rate risks has been positive in recent years, due to more AREITs choosing to diversify internationally, particularly in the U.S. property markets. Our findings on the relationship between market-to-book ratios and AREIT returns depart from standard finance literature. It appears that the market places a premium on AREITs with higher market-to-book ratios. Compared to REITs in other countries, earlier preference for AREITs diversified across property types have appears to shift towards greater specialisation. We also find contrasting evidence on the impact of international diversification, and that domestic AREITs provided better returns than internationally diversified counterparts. This may be largely due to the fact that the AREITs classified as internationally diversified, primarily held assets in the U.S. rather than from a range of countries. We suggest that perhaps the difficulties in accessing economies of scale in the management of such off-shore properties have precluded these AREITs from holding a more geographically diversified property portfolio. The sensitivities of AREIT returns towards short-term and long-term interest rates also warrant further investigation. Our results are similar to another recent Australian study, but inconsistent with much of the existing literature. The relationship between returns and short term interest rates was found to be positive and significant before 2002, and the relationship with long-term interest rates was found to be negative and significant since 2003, indicating that AREITs exhibit less bond-like characteristics in the past five years

Teaching public policy in East Asia: aspirations, potentials and challenges

10.1080/13876988.2012.724965Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis145376-39