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This paper investigates how firms shifted their dividend policies and leverage policies in response to the economic shock caused by the 2008 financial crisis. The sample countries are United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, China, and Korea. The empirical relationship of firms’ dividend policies with their capital structures and earnings was likely to undergo a major change around the 2008 financial crisis, as firms adjusted their capital structures and dividend policies in response to the extreme credit crunch caused by the financial crisis. The extent and the speed that firms deleverage themselves and reduce their dividends were likely to be influenced by countries’ cultural and social norms. This paper finds a significant reduction in dividends across sample countries except Great Britain and France after the 2008 crisis. This finding supports the free cash flow theory that dividends are paid to dissipate free cash flow to address agency conflicts between managers and shareholders. This paper finds a higher correlation between dividends and leverages before the 2008 crisis, and that it strengthened after the crisis except Great Britain and Korea. This finding is consistent more with the pecking order theory than with the trade-off theory of leverage.

This paper analyzes the total factor productivity developments in the Middle East banking, by drawing on the experience of Jordanian banks at the start of the new millennium. In order to control for the effects of different specifications of banking technology on the results, this study estimates the productivity and efficiency growth scores under two alternative approaches, production and intermediation models. On average, under the former model, we found 79% technical efficiency and 3.2% productivity growth, while under the later model we found 92% technical efficiency and 3.3% productivity growth for the sector. One implication is that the Jordanian banks can obtain considerable resource savings if they can catch up with the best practice banks. Among the organizational forms operating in this emerging market, we found that commercial banks generally outperform both investment and Islamic banks in terms of efficiency and total factor productivity growth.

By drawing on Ukrainian experience, this paper analyzes the anatomy of bank efficiency in a transitional economy. Acknowledging the vast disparities in the business technology of different size banks, in this comprehensive study, we innovatively estimate group-specific (distinct) frontiers for small, medium, and large size banks. The results from separate frontiers reveal that Ukrainian banks record 38% technical inefficiency, 26% pure technical inefficiency, and 17% scale inefficiency on average. Apparently, banks in transition waste about the two fifths of their factor inputs during the production of financial services. The cardinal source of sub-performance in transitional banks seems to be managerial inefficiencies. We also found that banks operating in areas with more political influence and more developed infrastructure outperform the banks operating in politically and economically weaker regions. The results also indicate that larger banks, enjoying public trust in a risky business climate, dominate smaller banks in all forms of efficiency. However, such bias for size causes large banks to suffer from decreasing returns to scale and small banks from idle capacity. Consequently, the policies promoting consolidation between small and large banks may alleviate the excess (idle) capacity for large (small) banks in a transitional economy.

Nowadays, one of the leading factors used in the evaluation of a country’s economic development is energy consumption. Because of economic growth, demand for energy is also increasing. In this study, the emerging European countries’ (the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Turkey) and the CIS countries’ (Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan)  electricity consumption has been forecasted for five years period (2015-2019). In the study, GM(1,1) Rolling Model, which is developed in the framework of Grey System Theory is used as a mathematical model for real-time forecasting. The results of the study show that there will not be a significant change in electricity demand in this two area during the 2015-2109 period. 

A nascent literature in finance and accounting on tail risk in individual stock returns concludes that bad news hoarding by corporate managers engenders sudden, extreme crashes in a firm’s stock price when the bad news is eventually made public. This literature finds that firm-specific crash risk is higher among firms with more severe asymmetric information and agency problems. A hitherto disjointed literature spanning the fields of international business, finance, and accounting suggests that geographic dispersion in a firm’s operations, and especially dispersion across different countries, gives rise to organizational complexities and greater costs of monitoring that can exacerbate asymmetric information and agency problems. Motivated by the confluence of arguments and findings from these two strands of literature, this paper examines whether stock price crash risk is higher among multinational firms than domestic firms. Using a large sample of U.S. headquartered firms during 1987-2011, we find robust evidence that multinational firms are significantly more likely to crash than domestic firms. Moreover, we show that the difference in crash risk between multinational and domestic firms is most acute among firms with weaker corporate governance mechanisms, including weaker shareholder rights, less independent boards, and less stable institutional ownership. Our analysis indicates that stronger monitoring from each of these three governance mechanisms significantly attenuates the positive relation between crash risk and multinationality. Our findings are robust to the use of alternative measures of crash risk and to controlling for known determinants of crash risk identified in prior studies. Our study offers new insights that should hold value for scholars and market participants interested in understanding the implications of heighted agency problems that multinational firms are likely to encounter and scholars and market participants interested in developing models that more accurately predict tail risk in the equity returns of individual firms.

Nowadays, one of the leading factors used in the evaluation of a country’s economic development is energy consumption. Because of economic growth, demand for energy is also increasing. In this study, the emerging European countries’ (the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Turkey) and the CIS countries’ (Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan)  electricity consumption has been forecasted for five years period (2015-2019). In the study, GM(1,1) Rolling Model, which is developed in the framework of Grey System Theory is used as a mathematical model for real-time forecasting. The results of the study show that there will not be a significant change in electricity demand in this two area during the 2015-2109 period. 

This paper investigates how firms shifted their dividend policies and leverage policies in response to the economic shock caused by the 2008 financial crisis. The sample countries are United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, China, and Korea. The empirical relationship of firms’ dividend policies with their capital structures and earnings was likely to undergo a major change around the 2008 financial crisis, as firms adjusted their capital structures and dividend policies in response to the extreme credit crunch caused by the financial crisis. The extent and the speed that firms deleverage themselves and reduce their dividends were likely to be influenced by countries’ cultural and social norms. This paper finds a significant reduction in dividends across sample countries except Great Britain and France after the 2008 crisis. This finding supports the free cash flow theory that dividends are paid to dissipate free cash flow to address agency conflicts between managers and shareholders. This paper finds a higher correlation between dividends and leverages before the 2008 crisis, and that it strengthened after the crisis except Great Britain and Korea. This finding is consistent more with the pecking order theory than with the trade-off theory of leverage.

A nascent literature in finance and accounting on tail risk in individual stock returns concludes that bad news hoarding by corporate managers engenders sudden, extreme crashes in a firm’s stock price when the bad news is eventually made public. This literature finds that firm-specific crash risk is higher among firms with more severe asymmetric information and agency problems. A hitherto disjointed literature spanning the fields of international business, finance, and accounting suggests that geographic dispersion in a firm’s operations, and especially dispersion across different countries, gives rise to organizational complexities and greater costs of monitoring that can exacerbate asymmetric information and agency problems. Motivated by the confluence of arguments and findings from these two strands of literature, this paper examines whether stock price crash risk is higher among multinational firms than domestic firms. Using a large sample of U.S. headquartered firms during 1987-2011, we find robust evidence that multinational firms are significantly more likely to crash than domestic firms. Moreover, we show that the difference in crash risk between multinational and domestic firms is most acute among firms with weaker corporate governance mechanisms, including weaker shareholder rights, less independent boards, and less stable institutional ownership. Our analysis indicates that stronger monitoring from each of these three governance mechanisms significantly attenuates the positive relation between crash risk and multinationality. Our findings are robust to the use of alternative measures of crash risk and to controlling for known determinants of crash risk identified in prior studies. Our study offers new insights that should hold value for scholars and market participants interested in understanding the implications of heighted agency problems that multinational firms are likely to encounter and scholars and market participants interested in developing models that more accurately predict tail risk in the equity returns of individual firms.

Over the past fifty years, economic growth in emerging markets has been supported by investments in capital and technology from the developed world. The benefit of this development for the emerging markets, as measured by growth in income, employment, and wealth, is immediately apparent. There have also been significant advantages for the developed world through opportunities for higher risk adjusted returns from investments in emerging markets. This study explores the benefits of the diversification of global government bond portfolio, and provides complete performance evaluations of DMs with or without South Africa emerging market (SAEM) bonds. The study examines the benefits of inclusion of SAEM bonds in DMs, the degrees of financial integration among the research markets, the relative bond returns of dynamic factor models with time-varying coefficients and the robust tests of bond portfolio performance between DMs with SAEM and bond index. The results of this study provide important implications for global investors by identifying diversification gains in SAEM.

By drawing on Ukrainian experience, this paper analyzes the anatomy of bank efficiency in a transitional economy. Acknowledging the vast disparities in the business technology of different size banks, in this comprehensive study, we innovatively estimate group-specific (distinct) frontiers for small, medium, and large size banks. The results from separate frontiers reveal that Ukrainian banks record 38% technical inefficiency, 26% pure technical inefficiency, and 17% scale inefficiency on average. Apparently, banks in transition waste about the two fifths of their factor inputs during the production of financial services. The cardinal source of sub-performance in transitional banks seems to be managerial inefficiencies. We also found that banks operating in areas with more political influence and more developed infrastructure outperform the banks operating in politically and economically weaker regions. The results also indicate that larger banks, enjoying public trust in a risky business climate, dominate smaller banks in all forms of efficiency. However, such bias for size causes large banks to suffer from decreasing returns to scale and small banks from idle capacity. Consequently, the policies promoting consolidation between small and large banks may alleviate the excess (idle) capacity for large (small) banks in a transitional economy.