Does Trust Associate with Political Regime?

Since trust correlates with economic development and in turn economic development associates with political regime, we conjecture that there may be a relationship between trust and political regime. Without looking for any casual inference, we investigate if trust aggregated on the country level correlates with the country's political regime. Specifically, we are interested whether trust correlates positively with the level of democracy in cross-sectional observations. We analyse data on trust from 76 countries using the Global Preference Survey and investigate the correlations with five separate democracy indices (Polity2, Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy, Freedom House, MaxRange and Unified Democracy Score). We do not find any significant association, with or without taking into account other factors (e.g., regional location, economic development, geographic conditions, culture) as well. Trust does not correlate with cornerstones of democracy either, measured by five components of the EIU index. A robustness check using an alternative measure of trust from the World Values Survey reaches the same results. The present study supersedes the working paper version (Khayouti et al., 2020).

Wage Dispersion and Team Performance: The Moderation Role of Club Size

Previous research on professional football offer conflicting results regarding the impact of wage dispersion on team performance. However, the existing intra-league heterogeneity among clubs is overlooked and could be the reason for the diverging outcomes. The aim of this paper is to reanalyze this relationship having the clubs’ size as moderator. Payroll – which captures the financial strength – is used as proxy of club size. Ordinary Least Squares regressions with season and league fixed effects are employed. Dispersion is measured by three indexes for robustness check. The outputs confirm the quadratic relationship between wage dispersion and performance, but adding that identical levels of dispersion have different impact on football clubs according to their financial strength.

A Transmission of Beta Herding during Subprime Crisis in Taiwan’s Market: DCC-MIDAS Approach

The aim of this study is to investigate the herding of beta transmission between return and volatility. We have used the dynamic conditional correlation model with the mixed-data sampling (DCC-MIDAS) model for the analysis. The evidence demonstrates that herding is a key transmitter in Taiwan’s stock market. The significant estimation of DCC-MIDAS explains that the herding phenomenon is highly dynamic and time-varying in herding behavior. By means of time-varying beta of herding based on our rolling forecasting method and robustness check of the Markov-switching regression approach using four types of portfolios, the evidence indicates that there are conditional correlations between betas and herding. In addition, it also reveals that herding forms in Taiwan’s markets during the subprime crisis period.

Country-level firearm availability and terrorism: A new approach to examining the gun-crime relationship

Objectives: This study examines the association between a country's gun availability and firearm-related terrorism. Methods: Employing data from 140 countries, we assess the possible relationship between a country's rate of suicide by firearm and their count of terrorist attacks involving a firearm through a series of structural equation models. Results: Collectively, we find that there is a positive relationship between gun availability and firearm-related terrorism in 2016 and 2017. However, this result fails our robustness check and is sensitive to the inclusion of the U.S. Conclusion: With important caveats, we believe the U.S. to be unique in terms of both gun availability and terrorism.

Disclosure, Shariah governance and financial performance in Islamic banks

PurposeThis study aims at investigating the impact of the disclosure and the Shariah governance on the financial performance in MENASA (Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia) Islamic banks.Design/methodology/approachWe use the Generalized Least Squares (GLS) regression models to check the interdependence relationship between the disclosure, the Shariah governance and the financial performance of 47 Islamic banks (IBs) from ten countries operating in MENASA region. The sample period is from 2012 to 2019. In these regressions models, Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) are the dependent variables. The disclosure and the Shariah governance indicators are the independent factors. To measure the Shariah governance, we use the three sub-indices, which are the Board of Directors (BOD), the Audit Committee (AC) and the Shariah Supervisory Board (SSB). Size, Leverage and Age of the bank are used as control variables. We also used The Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and the three-stage least squares (3SLS) estimations for robustness check.FindingsResult shows a negative relationship between the disclosure and the two performance measures in IBs. Furthermore, as far as the governance indicators are concerned, we found that the BOD and AC, as well as the BOD and SSB, have a positive and significant impact on the ROA and ROE, respectively. This reveals that good governance had a significant association with higher performance in MENASA IBs.Originality/valueThe paper considers both IBs that adopt mandatory as well as voluntary AAOIFI standards and the GLS method to investigate the impact of the AAOIFI disclosure and the Shariah governance on ROA and ROE. Also, it uses the GMM and the 3SLS estimations for robustness check. It is relevant for researchers, policymakers and stakeholders concerned with IBs' performance.

Justice and Inclusion Mutually Cause Each Other

Justice should increase inclusion because just treatment conveys acceptance and enables social exchanges that build cohesion. Inclusion should increase justice because people can use inclusion as a convenient fairness cue. Prior research touches on these causal associations but relies on a thin conception of inclusion and neglects within-person effects. We analyze whether justice causes inclusion at the within-person level. Five waves of data were gathered from 235 college students in 38 entrepreneurial teams. Teams were similar in size, work experience, deadlines, and goals. General cross-lagged panel models indicated that justice and inclusion had a reciprocal influence on each other. A robustness check with random-intercept cross-lagged models supported the results. In the long run, reversion to the mean occurred after an effect decayed, suggesting that virtuous or vicious cycles are unlikely. The results imply that maintaining overall justice at the peer-to-peer level may lead to inclusion.

Do Siblings Reduce Children’s Dietary Quality in China?

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we examine the effect of the number of siblings on dietary quality with a sample of 2–12-year-old children in China. We use instrumental variables to address the potential endogeneity of the number of siblings. We show that the effect of the number of siblings on children’s dietary quality is significantly negative. Child dietary diversity score will decrease by 0.274 with one more siblings. In terms of children’s nutrition, the intake of fat and protein also significantly decrease. A robustness check using the fixed effects models also validates our findings that child quantity–quality trade-off is apparent in Chinese families.

How robust is rational choice?

Neoclassic economic choice theory assumes that decision-makers make choices as if they were rational agents. This assumption has been critically challenged over the last decades, yet systematic aggregation of evidence beyond single experiments is still surprisingly sparse. Here, we asked how robust choice-consistency, as a proxy for rationality, is to endogenous and exogeneous factors. To this end, we conducted a systematic quantitative literature research, reviewing 5327 articles, identifying 44 as relevant that contained hypothesis tests on possible influence factors of choice-consistency. To assess the evidential value of any effect of such influence factors on choice- consistency, we conducted a robust p-curve analysis. Our results indicate that choice-consistency is affected by endogenous or exogeneous factors. This result holds for multiple testing procedures and a robustness check. However, due to the breadth of the contemporary research agenda, the lack of replications and the unavailability of original data in the field of choice-consistency, it is currently not possible to draw meaningful conclusions regarding specific influence factors. Despite this lack of specificity, our results implicate that people’s decisions might be a noisier and more biased indicator of their underlying preferences than previously thought. Hence, we provide systematic evidence for the wide-spread belief that rationality cannot be assumed unconditionally.

STUDI KOMPARATIF KINERJA SAHAM SYARIAH DAN KONVESIONAL DI INDONESIA DENGAN PENDEKATAN STOCHASTIC DOMINANCE

ABSTRAKPenelitian komparatif kinerja saham syariah dan saham konvensional ini dilakukan untuk menguji perbedaan kinerja saham syariah dan saham konvensional di Indonesia dalam periode keseluruhan, periode non krisis dan periode krisis. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode stochastic dominance (SD) model Davidson Duclos (2000). Uji parametrik dengan parameter Rasio Sharpe, Indeks Treynor dan Alpha Jensen dilakukan sebagai uji pembanding. Robustness check dilakukan dengan membentuk portofolio dengan firm size, rasio book to market (B/M) dan Beta yang berbeda. Sampel penelitian menggunakan saham murni syariah dan saham murni konvensional Indonesia. Screening saham syariah menggunakan Daftar Efek Syariah (DES). Periode penelitian dilakukan selama 10 tahun.Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa kinerja saham syariah mendominasi (outperform) kinerja saham konvensional pada periode keseluruhan dan periode non krisis. Pada periode krisis ekonomi global kinerja saham syariah menurun sehingga kinerja saham syariah sama dengan kinerja saham konvensional. Hasil penelitian ini bermanfaat bagi investor secara umum dan investor syariah secara khusus. Investor syariah dapat berinvestasi pada saham yang sesuai dengan prinsip syariah dan mendapatan return yang kompetitif. Adapun investor secara umum dapat melakukan diversifikasi portofolionya dengan lebih baik dan dapat meningkatkan expected wealth dan expected utilities-nyaKata Kunci: Saham Syariah, Saham Konvensional, Stochastic Dominance