effect of net trade cycle, firm size, and networking capital on profitability with cash holdings as intervening variables in cement companies in Indonesia

This study aims to examine a model that hypothesizes that the net trade cycle, company size, and net working capital of cement companies in Indonesia impact achieving a return on assets as a proxy for profitability through the company's cash holdings. The sample consists of 45 cement producers in Indonesia that have produced commercially before 2011 and regularly publish company annual reports. The results of the path analysis confirm that the net trade cycle, firm size, and networking capital do not affect the return on assets as a proxy for profitability. Likewise, statistically, it still shows the same results after being mediated with cash holdings. Moreover, found the effect of cash holdings on ROA. These findings can provide a starting point for further research to find a more appropriate formula to increase profitability, especially for companies in the cement sector in Indonesia, where utilization rates tend to be low, and market conditions are becoming very competitive.

La théorie autrichienne des cycles: une théorie de la récurrence des erreurs collectives d’anticipation

This paper offers an account of the recent development of Austrian Trade Cycle Theory. It focus on the theoretical contributions and argues that the Austrian’s explanation of Trade Cycle is a theory of collective errors of expectations and of their recurrences. Austrian economists agree to explain the errors of individuals by the nationalization of money because it leads to an excess of money supply. Nevertheless, they disagree about the cause of this excess. Two explanations have been suggested. The first one measures the excess in relation with the demand of money. The second one evaluates the excess in relation with monetary saving. They agree, on the contrary, on the reasons of the recurrence of expectation errors and their uniformity. The theory of property rights explains the recurrence of expectation errors by the socialization of risk. The expectation theory explains the collective errors by the centralisation of expectations (big player hypothesis) on the central bank decisions. Therefore, the centralization of expectations explains the instability of market process. Keywords: cycle, expectations, property rights, central banking, free banking and error Classification JEL: E32, E58, Resume: Cet article présente les développements récents de la théorie autrichienne des cycles. Il se concentre sur les apports théoriques et soutient que désormais la théorie autrichienne des cycles est une théorie plurielle de la récurrence des erreurs collectives d’anticipation. Les économistes autrichiens s’accordent pour penser que la nationalisation de la monnaie est à l’origine de l’excès d’offre de monnaie qui crée une distorsion de la structure des taux d’intérêt des prêts et induit la phase de récession. Ils s’entendent aussi sur les raisons de la récurrence des erreurs d’anticipation et sur leur uniformité. La théorie des droits de propriété explique la récurrence des erreurs d’anticipation par la socialisation des risques. La théorie des anticipations explique les erreurs collectives par la centralisation des anticipations autour des décisions de la banque centrale et rend compte ainsi de l’instabilité des systèmes économiques. Les économistes autrichiens se divisent, en revanche, sur les raisons de cet excès d’offre de monnaie. Il y a ceux qui soutiennent que cet excès d’offre se mesure par rapport à l’épargne monétaire et s’explique par la pratique des réserves fractionnaires (école de la libre circulation). Il y a ceux, au contraire, qui estiment que cet excès doit être mesuré par rapport à la demande de monnaie et expliqué par l’absence de concurrence entre les monnaies (école de la banque libre). Mots clés: cycles, anticipations, droits de propriété, banque centrale, banque libre et erreur

The Influence of Supply Chain Management and Net Trade Cycle on Financial Performance

common supply chain management practices (supplier partnership, customer relationship, information sharing, and lean system), net trade cycle, and financial performance. It consists of nine hypotheses concerning the relationships of the aforementioned factors that have been verified throughout reviewed literature and examined via employing the structural equation modelling technique. This research used data taken from floated questionnaires at three manufacturing companies in the Kingdom of Bahrain. An inclusive review of the literature to retrieve the four most common supply chain management practices has been undertaken and has identified limitations in the research techniques applied. This research has discovered the significant influences of the supplier partnership, the information sharing, and the lean system of the three most common supply chain management practices and the net trade cycle on the financial performance. Although this is the first research that combines the critical relationships among those four most common supply chain management practices, the net trade cycle, and the financial performance in one model, it is important to note that this study was unsuccessful in demonstrating whether there is a significant influence between customer relationship of the most common supply chain management practices and the net trade cycle on the financial performance. Researchers can employ the outcomes of this research to discover several related hypotheses in more details and increase the accuracy of forthcoming empirical relationships among those factors. This research offers particular suggestions for such further research. The outcomes of this research can be utilized by managers to highlight the execution of those four most common supply chain management practices and the net trade cycle in their respective ventures. Moreover, almost all of those relationships are found to have significant influences on the financial performance. Furthermore, the outcomes can be recommended to production managers who may well assign resources to enhance these practices to achieve the greatest outcomes.

Inventory management and performance of Brazilian firms

Objective: The inventory management faces a trade-off which affects firms in the relationship between whether maintaining high inventories and decreasing the probability of stock-outs or keeping inventory levels lower and applying the excess cash to other investments. Thus, this paper investigates the relationship between inventory management and performance. Method: The sample is comprised of non-financial Brazilian firms listed in the BM&FBovespa from 2010 to 2016, and due to inventory is not to be a relevant factor in the revenues of all the firms of the initial sample, it was applied a procedure to refine the sample through a simple linear regression to only comprise firms with a significant relationship between inventory and sales. To test the assumptions declared by the study, we used a quantitative approach based in a regression analysis. Results: The results indicate that the model which considers value added measurement of performance shows that there is no relationship between inventory and performance. However, a robustness check was done using the ROA to measure the performance and, in this scenario, there was a statistically inverted U-shaped relation between the profitability, the net trade cycle and its square. This means that a non-linear relationship between the variables were found, which follows the idea of an optimal level of inventory and performance. Contributions: To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that investigates an inflection point between inventory management and performance in Brazilian firms. The findings have relevant practical guidelines to the Brazilian firms and researchers in the analysis of the performance related to the net trade cycle, which it can be suggested that the Brazilian shareholders are not concerned about internal factors, as the inventory management, but if the firm is being managed profitable.