An investigation of cash holdings debt maturity and corporate performance considering managerial overconfidence evidence from listed Vietnamese firms

One of the most important objectives of any firm is maximizing firm value. In order to achieve that goal, many different aspects come into play. One of those aspects is financial decisions. Financial decisions are mostly determined by managers, therefore, it can be stated that managers are people who play the main role in determining the success of firms. Stemming from this statement, this study attempts to investigate the impact of managerial overconfidence on some financial management aspects, including cash holdings, debt maturity and firm performance. Furthermore, the thesis also expands the research to examine the impact of managerial overconfidence on the deviation between the actual level of cash holdings and the optimal level of cash holdings, and the deviation between the actual level of debt maturity and the optimal level of debt maturity. By mainly focusing on data from 123 face-to-face interviews with top-line managers of Vietnamese non-financial listed firms, the thesis uses data on voice pitch to measure managerial overconfidence and test the effect of managerial overconfidence on the research topics. Besides using voice pitch, to strengthen the empirical results, the study also uses some other measurements of managerial overconfidence, including psychometric testing, bias in earnings forecast, manager’s gender, the visibility of CEOs’ photographs in firms’ annual reports and, a comprehensive index from multiple measurements of the research. The findings indicate that, firstly, firms with overconfident managers tend to hold less cash but the actual level of cash holdings is not far from the optimal level of cash holdings. Secondly, overconfident managers prefer using long-term debt over short-term debt, and they tend to make a higher deviation between the actual level of debt maturity and the target level of debt maturity. Finally, managerial overconfidence is found to be associated with a better result of firm performance

Stock Returns Predictability and Market Timing Trading : Evidence from Malaysian Stock Market

This study aims to re-examine the predictability of Malaysian stock returns and investigates whether the predictability can be exploited to earn abnormal returns using market timing strategy with consideration of transaction costs. Using quarterly and monthly data covering the period from January 1987 to December 2010, the regression results shows that KLCI excess returns are statistically related to change in lending interest rate, exchange rate, money supply and industrial production index. Recursive predictions derived from the optimal regression models are only capable of correctly predicting the positive signs of actual excess returns, whereas the forecasting accuracy of actual negative returns is very low, especially under quarterly trading basis. The results also indicate that the market timing strategy constructed on the basis of the recursive predictions only dominate the naïve buy-and-hold strategy in monthly trading frequencies. Particularly, under 0% and 0.8% transaction costs scenarios, the strategy provides higher returns and less riskiness as compared to the benchmark. However, under 1.4% transaction costs scenario, the market timing strategy does not deliver higher average returns than buy-and-hold strategy

Revisiting the EKC hypothesis in South Asia: The role of Export Quality Improvement

Global climate change adversities have particularly sparked the urgency in mitigating carbon dioxide emissions across the world. Against this backdrop, the paper attempts to investigate the validity of the carbon dioxide emission-induced Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis controlling for the impacts of export quality on the economic growth-carbon dioxide emission nexus in the context of selected South Asian economies: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Using annual data from 1972 to 2014, the results from the panel data econometric analyses provide statistical validity to the EKC hypothesis while the country-specific results depict heterogeneity of the findings in this regard. The EKC hypothesis is validated only for Bangladesh and India while in the context of Pakistan the economic growth-carbon dioxide emission nexus portrays a U-shaped association. In contrast, economic growth is found to monotonically decrease carbon dioxide emissions in Sri Lanka and Nepal. Besides, the results from both the panel and time-series analyses suggest that improvement in export quality lead to lower levels of carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, the statistical significance of the interaction term between economic growth and export quality implies that the overall impacts of economic growth on carbon dioxide emissions are conditional on the quality of the exports. Thus, enhancing the quality of the export products is pertinent with respect to ensuring environmental sustainability across South Asia

On the central symmetry of the circumstellar envelope of RS Cnc

We present a phenomenological study of CO(1-0) and CO(2-1) emission from the circumstellar envelope (CSE) of the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) star RS\,Cnc. It reveals departures from central symmetry that turn out to be efficient tools for the exploration of some of the CSE properties. We use a wind model including a bipolar flow with a typical wind velocity of $\sim$8 km\,s$^{-1}$ decreasing to $\sim$2 km\,s$^{-1}$ near the equator to describe Doppler velocity spectral maps obtained by merging data collected at the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer and Pico Veleta single dish radio telescope. Parameters describing the wind morphology and kinematics are obtained, together with the radial dependence of the gas temperature in the domain of the circumstellar envelope probed by the CO observations. Significant north-south central asymmetries are revealed by the analysis, which we quantify using a simple phenomenological description. The origin of such asymmetries is unclear.Comment: accepted for publication in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA

The Stories of Snake Grooms in Vietnamese Folktales

In Vietnam, many stories tell about the marriage of the snake and the human where the snakes appeared as grooms. These stories developed in various patterns, but most of them end with a happy ending where the snake and the human woman have a happy life. These marriages represent the Vietnamese dreams of an ideal marriage and their view of animals and nature. Snakes symbolize perfect marriage partners, and the marriage with snakes represents a dream of getting closer to nature so that the Vietnamese can live a better life. These stories also reflect the Vietnamese idea that bad people learn a lesson for themselves, contrary to the fact that good people can always have a good ending.中谷伸生教授古稀記念

Non-destructive Characteristics of Ultrasonic Waves in 1018 Low Carbon Steel

In this paper, the dependences of the velocities and the absorption coefficients of ultrasonic waves transmitted in 1018 low carbon steel on temperature ranging from 0$^{\circ}$C to 50$^{\circ}$C were investigated. It was shown that the velocities of the ultrasonic longitudinal wave and ultrasonic shear wave were decreased when the temperature increased. The transportation of the ultrasonic longitudinal wave and ultrasonic shear wave depends on temperature and its coefficient in a temperature range of (0 - 50 $^{\circ}$C) was estimated about 0.8 m/s.$^{\circ}$C and 0.44~m/s.$^{\circ}$C, respectively. These obtained results are in good agreement with the theoretical prediction. Furthermore, the absorption coefficients of the ultrasonic longitudinal wave were also studied

Observation of High Doppler Velocity Wings in the Nascent Wind of R Doradus

We study the morpho-kinematics in the nascent wind of AGB star R Doradus in the light of high Doppler velocity wings observed in the spectral lines of several species. We probe distances from the star between ∼10 and ∼100 au using ALMA observations of the emission of five different molecular lines. High Doppler velocity enhancements of the line emission are observed in the vicinity of the line of sight crossing the star, reminiscent of those recently interpreted as gas streams in the nascent wind of a similar AGB star, EP Aqr. They are present in both blue-shifted and red- shifted hemispheres but are not exactly back-to-back. They are accelerated at a typical rate of 0.7 km s$^{−1}$ au$^{−1}$ up to some 20 km s$^{−1}$. Important differences are observed between the emissions of different molecules. We exclude an effect of improper continuum subtraction. However, in contrast to EP Aqr, the line of sight plays no particular role in the R Dor morpho-kinematics, shedding doubt on the validity of a gas stream interpretation. We discuss possible interpretations in terms of stellar pulsations or of rotation of the gas in the environment of the star. We conclude that, in the state of current knowledge, no fully convincing picture of the physics governing the production of such high velocities, typically twice as large as the terminal velocity, can be reliably drawn. New high resolution analyses of observations of the nascent wind of oxygen-rich AGB stars are needed to clarify the issue

The VATLY Radio Telescope

A small radio telescope (SRT) has been installed on the roof of the Hanoi astrophysics laboratory VATLY. It is equipped with a 2.6 m diameter mobile parabolic dish remotely controlled in elevation and azimuth and with super-heterodyne detection around the 21 cm hydrogen line. First results of observations of the Sun and of the centre of the Milky Way are presented. They demonstrate the high quality of the telescope performance and are used to evaluate lobe size, signal to noise ratios, anthropogenic interferences and measurement accuracies. Particular attention is given to the measurement of the pointing accuracy. The rich measurement programme that is now at hand is briefly sketched