Essays on Financial Markets

<p><b>This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 is the preliminaries. Chapter 2 to chapter 4 are the three main chapters of this thesis, which covers the U.S. market, international market, and the Chinese market, respectively. Chapter 5 is the discussion.</b></p> <p>Chapter 1 is the preliminaries. It introduces the setting and motivations for the three topics covered in this thesis.</p> <p>Chapter 2 investigates how equity exchange-traded fund (ETF) ownership affects the cost of debt. I find that, by facilitating short-selling activities to execute disciplinary effects, equity ETF ownership decreases a firm's cost of debt. This negative association between equity ETF ownership and the cost of debt is more pronounced for firms with weaker information environments and lower bond ratings. The disciplinary effect works through a more active short-selling market provided by equity ETF ownership. However, I fail to establish the corporate governance channel, which is consistent with Schmidt and Fahlenbrach (2017) and Heath, Macciocchi, Michaely, and Ringgenberg (2021).. Those results are also robust to endogeneity.</p> <p>Chapter 3 studies the predictive power of the trend strategy in the international stock market. Using data from 49 markets, I find that a trend signal exploiting the short-,intermediate-, and long-term price information can predict stock returns cross-sectionally in the international market. The significance of the trend strategy is associated with market-level characteristics such as macroeconomic conditions, culture, and the information environment. The trend premium is more pronounced in markets with a more advanced macroeconomic status, a higher level of information uncertainty and individualism, and better accessibility to foreign investors. Nevertheless, the trend strategy only outperforms the momentum strategy in a relatively short horizon.</p> <p>Chapter 4 investigates whether margin-trading in the Chinese stock market reflects information or sentiment. At the aggregate level, I find no evidence of information-driven or sentiment-driven margin-trading behavior. At the individual stock level, both information-driven and sentiment-driven margin-trading exists, which are relevant to firm characteristics. I also find the likelihood of sentiment-driven margin-trading significantly declined after the regulator enforced tighter rules for margin-trading in 2015.</p> <p>Chapter 5 summarizes the main findings of the three topics, discusses the implications of the findings, and points out the future direction for research.</p>

Are born global firms really a “new breed” of exporters? Empirical evidence from an emerging market

This study investigates and compares born global (BG) firms and non-BG firms in Malaysia. We employed the multigroup analysis technique with structural equation models to test six hypotheses to determine the differences and similarities between two proposed models of BG and non-BG firms across a wide range of industries. The study reveals differences between the antecedents of marketing capabilities for BGs versus non-BGs, indicating that the performance enabling mechanisms differ between the groups. More precisely, the ability of BG firms to convert digital and entrepreneurial orientations into marketing capabilities is found to be a distinguishing characteristic of these firms. Moreover, non-BGs utilize government support to build marketing capabilities and obtain superior performance in the international market. This result suggests that governmental export promotion initiatives in Malaysia should be adjusted to increase relevance for BGs. The findings indicate that marketing capabilities play an essential role in the international market performance of both BGs and non-BGs. An important implication is that managerial focus and actions need to be adjusted depending on the type of firm. The two types of firms are not equal; if they are managed similarly, misjudgment will arise.

North Macedonian crisis spurs move to renewable energy

Significance Electricity companies wanted a near-38% rise amid soaring international market prices, but the ERC wanted to avoid a price shock. In November, the government declared an ‘energy crisis’ at the ERC’s request, thanks to reduced domestic electricity supply and the global market situation, and extended it in December for six months. Impacts Investment in infrastructure and technologies should contribute to economic growth and create jobs. Care will have to be taken that closing established mines and power plants do not depress economies locally and raise unemployment. Rising domestic utility prices will inflict political damage on a fragile government. Phasing out coal will improve air quality and population health and well-being, with knock-ons for healthcare priorities and spending.

Risk Management in Company Providing Services on the International Market

Effective and integrated risk management requires integrating the risk management process into the enterprise management process. Each enterprise takes risks to achieve the planned results. The market economy creates both opportunities to achieve the planned profits and the risk of losses as a result of unfavorable changes in the company's environment and errors within the organization. At the time of making a decision, it is never certain how the conditions for the implementation of the planned project will develop in the future. Accounting, which is the most important element of the system, plays an important role in the risk management process information business unit. Nowadays, all business decisions are burdened with risk, which is why organizations more and more often decide to implement a risk management system.

Competitiveness drivers for soybean exportation and the fundamental role of the supply chain

Brazil is the world’s second-largest producer of soybeans and the largest exporter. Despite the growing importance in the international market in the last harvests, activities related to this product threaten this position. Due to its economic importance for the country, this study aims to identify the competitiveness drivers of soybean destined for the international market and to measure their impacts on the export process. Therefore, the used methodology considers the systemic character of different factors that affect the supply chain positively or negatively. As a result, the logistics infrastructure dimension was the only competitiveness driver classified as unfavorable among the analyzed factors. The advances in agribusiness are being subsequently followed by some sectors of the economy such as science and technology. On the other hand, the logistics sector has not been showing the same development, causing some weaknesses to persist, either due to the lack of infrastructure of transport production, or the inability to properly store the national harvest. The current challenge for the State is to ensure the maintenance of the quality of the infrastructure already installed and to promote an environment capable of attracting private capital and a new investment cycle.

Detection of basmati rice using microsatellite markers

Basmati rice is a fine and aromatic rice grown mainly in certain areas of Punjab province in Pakistan. It has high demand in the international market and a source of earning foreign exchange via export. Adulteration of non-basmati rice grains is a major challenge to secure its export standards. Hence, the development of a simple and cost-effective method is necessary to screen the basmati and non-basmati rice samples. In this study, we have validated the efficiency of different molecular markers by screening seven unknown rice samples. Our results demonstrated that three markers namely RM1, RM19 and RM225 proved to be efficient microsatellite molecular markers that could be used to screen basmati and non-basmati rice samples. Further, these results are validated based on expression pattern of Badh2 gene among the basmati and non-basmati rice. Thus, this study provides a contribution towards development of a simple and cost-effective method for rapid screening of basmati rice.

Zobo Tea Package Design Prototype Allied with Product Onomastics

The purpose of this design is to create a Zobo tea package design prototype allied with African indigenous onomastics. African indigenous products are effective in terms of functionality; however, industrialized products gained more attention because of aesthetics, safety, hygiene, and other advanced technology put into consideration during production. This seems to boost the inferiority of indigenous products. Hence, the present study focuses on indigenous Zobo tea in terms of creating a conceptual package design prototype enhanced with product onomastics. Twenty-two names are derived for indigenous Zobo tea by making use of linguistics techniques. These names are used as label for designing a conceptual package prototype for indigenous Zobo tea. A Delphi technique is adopted for the evaluation of this creative process. The findings show that homonym as an onomastics will enhance the branding and development of indigenous Zobo tea even in the international market. This will remodel the inferiority of the aesthetics of Zobo indigenous products. Hence, research on the choice of an appropriate name for a particular product should be a contemporary research area to improve the present situation of our indigenous product branding and graphic design. It is believed that the outcome of this research could provide guidelines for effective naming in product package design for indigenous product development; as creative designers must not only understand the vocabulary of graphic design but be aware of extraneous constraints that could affect their designs.

Scale-Up Marketing and Export of MSME Products Based on Digital Business at MEK-PDM Gresik

The low quality of Human Resources which ultimately leads to the ineffectiveness of management, organization and technology has made the development of MSMEs in Indonesia unable to touch rapidly. Plus the large transaction costs from the impact of an unfavorable business climate are also a problem for the case of MSMEs fostered by MEK-PDM Gresik, making it difficult to compete in the international market. In fact, the products produced by MSMEs are no less competitive with those produced by foreign products. In fact, to be able to penetrate the global market, MSMEs must at least be able to adapt to the concept of global marketing which is not yet owned by MSME stakeholders. Therefore, in this service, MSME actors will be taught how to market their products globally. Fronted by Dr. Indro Kirono as a performer who previously had a long history in the export world, the service event went more than imagined. Many MSME products were independently assisted by the presenters to be introduced a little in the global market. Gresik UMKM products will also be assisted by the introduction of Gresik Muhammadiyah University. So that Muhammadiyah University of Gresik can become a place for Gresik SMEs to be fostered.