Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the firm efficiency or technical efficiency (TE), pure technical efficiency (PTE) and scale efficiency (SE) in the selected developed and developing Asia-Pacific countries.

The sample consists of a sum of 700 firms in selected developed and developing Asia-Pacific countries over the period from 2009 to 2015. The non-parametric data envelopment analysis under the production approach is used to investigate firm efficiency.

On average, this paper discovers that the firms in selected Asia-Pacific countries are moderately efficient. Scale inefficiency (SIE) is found to be the dominant source of firms’ technical inefficiency. The analysis of return to scale shows that the large firms tend to operate at decreasing return to scale level, while the small firms tend to operate at increasing return to scale level.

The findings from this paper provide significant insights to the policy makers and firm managers in promoting the efficient firms of Asia-Pacific countries.

The present paper conducts a critical analysis on return to scale in the firms sector of Asia-Pacific context, which is ignored by the past studies on firm efficiency since the analysis of return to scale is mostly emphasized on banking sector. The precise nature of SIE is important for a firm to be efficient in achieving the firm’s primary goals of profit maximization and sustaining market competitiveness.

This study empirically investigates the relationship between goodwill assets and capital structure (i.e. debt ratio) of firms and the moderating effect of financial market development on the relationship between goodwill assets and capital structure.

This research applied a quantitative method. The article collects large samples of listed firms from 23 developing and nine developed countries and applied the panel data techniques. This research used firm-level data from the DataStream database for both developed and developing countries. The study uses 4,912 firm-level data from 23 developing countries and 4,303 firm-level data from nine developed countries.

The findings reveal a significant positive relationship between goodwill assets and capital structure in developing countries, but goodwill assets have a significant negative relationship with capital structure in developed countries. Moreover, financial market development positively moderates the relationship between goodwill assets and the capital structure of firms in developing countries. The results inform firm managers that goodwill assets serve as additional collateral to secure debt financing. Moreover, policymakers should formulate a debt market policy that recognizes goodwill assets as additional collateral for the purpose of obtaining debt capital.

The study has several implications. First, goodwill assets are identified as a factor of capital structure in this study. Fixed assets have been identified as one of the drivers of capital structure in previous research, although goodwill assets are seldom included. Second, this article shows that along with demand-side determinants, supply-side determinants also play an important role in terms of the firms' choice about the capital structure. Therefore, firms should take both the demand-side and supply-side factors into consideration when sourcing for external financing (i.e. debt capital).

The study considered goodwill as a component of capital structure. The study analysis includes a large sample of enterprises, including 4,912 big firms from 23 developing countries and 4,303 large firms from nine industrialized or developed countries, which adds to the current capital structure information. Furthermore, a large sample size increases the results' robustness and generalizability.

Recent trends and developments in Bitcoin have led to a proliferation of studies that analyzed the Bitcoin returns and volatility; however, the volatility connectedness between Bitcoin and equity market information in emerging countries quietly remains scarce. Regarding this deficiency, the purpose of this paper is to examine the dynamic connectedness between Bitcoin and equity market information.

Daily data from January 1, 2012 to May 31, 2018 are used. The paper applies a novel time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) model extended by Antonakakis and Gabauer (2017). This model addresses the biases in coefficient estimates, considering innovations from sources of time variation.

The findings reveal that the volatility transmission of Bitcoin return is not an important source of shocks of market returns in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), suggesting that Bitcoin return contributes less volatility to equity market information. The results further show that Bitcoin is the main receiver of volatility while market price risk is the dominant transmission catalysts for innovations in the rest of the stock market returns.

Important implications can be derived from these findings, signaling of the demand to develop and implement volatility connectedness policy measures in order to guarantee the stability of financial assets. However, the most significant limitation lies in the fact that the analysis of this paper is restricted to the volatility connectedness between Bitcoin and equity market information in BRICS countries.

By acknowledging the wide range of econometric models, the paper uses TVP-VAR model because this methodology is a useful and relevant tool in modeling the volatility connectedness of financial variables, thus providing meaningful information to policy makers and international investors.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of the long-debated impact of board busyness within a new framework of firm efficiency in the selected developed and developing Asia–Pacific countries, by assessing the moderation of directors' education towards the relationship between board busyness and firm efficiency. The extant literature on board busyness demonstrates to a lack of clarification of the relationship between board busyness and firm efficiency.

The sample for this paper comprises a panel data of 800 firms in a cross-country context of the selected developed and developing Asia–Pacific countries during the recent period of 2009–2015. This paper performs a non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis to measure firm efficiency and panel regression analysis to examine the moderation of directors' education.

This paper provides support for the busyness hypothesis by documenting that the busy boards are likely to reduce firm efficiency. Moreover, this paper renders support to the upper-echelons theory by demonstrating that the impact of board busyness on firm efficiency is likely to turn positive in the presence of directors' education.

This paper highlights practical implication for managers especially in the Asia–Pacific region who seek to enhance firm efficiency, which is essential for firms in attaining the primary goal of profit maximization.

This paper builds on the extant literature by providing a contemporary research path regarding the moderation of directors' education to explain the long-debated impact of board busyness within a new framework of firm efficiency, based on a recent and significant sample of Asia–Pacific countries.

Dynamic predictions of financial distress of the firms have received less attention in finance literature rather than static prediction, specifically in Malaysia. This study, therefore, investigates dynamic symptoms of the financial distress event a few years before it happened to the firms by using neural network method. Cox Proportional Hazard regression models are used to estimate the survival probabilities of Malaysian PN17 and GN3 listed firms. Forecast accuracy is evaluated using receiver operating characteristics curve. From the findings, it shown that the independent directors’ ownership has negative association with the financial distress likelihood. In addition, this study modeled a mix of corporate financial distress predictors for Malaysian firms. The combination of financial and non-financial ratios which pressure-sensitive institutional ownership, independent director ownership, and Earnings Before Interest and Taxes to Total Asset shown a negative relationship with financial distress likelihood specifically one year before the firms being listed in PN 17 and GN 3 status. However, Retained Earnings to Total Asset, Interest Coverage, and Market Value of Debt have positive relationship with firm financial distress likelihood. These research findings also contribute to the policy implications to the Securities Commission and specifically to Bursa Malaysia. Furthermore, one of the initial goals in introducing the PN17 and GN3 status is to alleviate the information asymmetry between distressed firms, the regulators, and investors. Therefore, the regulator would be able to monitor effectively distressed firms, and investors can protect from imprudent investment.