Search results

This paper introduces the second part of a AAAJ special issue on accounting, accountability and management during the COVID-19 emergency. The authors analyse the themes that emerge from the second part of the special issue, which allows us to identify the diverse accounting and accountability practices across different geographical and organisational contexts. The authors also provide an overall picture of the contributions of the special issue, with insights into avenues of future research.

Building on the first part of the AAAJ special issue, the paper draws together and identifies additional emerging themes related to research into the COVID-19 pandemic and how it impacts accounting, accountability and management practices. The authors reflect on the contributions of the special issue to the interdisciplinary accounting research project.

The authors identify two macro-themes and outline their contributions to the accounting literature. The first deals with the changes and dangers of accounting and accountability practices during the pandemic. The second considers accountability practices in a broader sense, including reporting, disclosure and rhetorical practices in the management of COVID-19.

The paper shows the pervasive role of accounting and accountability in the unprecedented and indiscriminate health crisis of COVID-19. It highlights the important role of special issues in producing timely research that responds to unfolding events.

This paper contributes to current debates on the roles of accounting and accountability during COVID-19 by drawing together the themes of the special issue and identifying future interdisciplinary accounting research on the pandemic's aftermath.

SPACs are reshaping the world of digital entrepreneurial finance. Firms in the digital sector often need access to public markets for long-term competitiveness. SPACs offer a viable solution for these entities to collect capital and transition to public ownership quicker than IPOs. In this context, the paper aims to analyse and compare the performance of SPACs with those of IPOs in the post-business combination phase. The objective is to provide novel insights into the determinants of SPAC operating and market performance by considering firm-specific and deal-specific characteristics and the broader implications of market uncertainty.

The analysis applies univariate and multivariate OLS regressions to a sample of 96 SPACs to investigate the drivers affecting SPACs' performance vis-a-vis IPOs.

The study finds that SPACs underperform the matched group of IPOs on both operating and stock market performance (buy-and-hold strategy). The time to execute a business combination negatively correlates with SPAC performance, and proximity to the 80% deal threshold negatively affects share price performance and EBITDA margin.

The objective is to offer insights for institutional investors to effectively select prime targets within the SPAC framework.

This study strengthens the findings related to the drivers influencing the long-term performance of SPACs that were previously identified in prior research.

Agricultural systems in Mekong Delta have transformed to cope with climate change. Various researches pointed out that integrated agriculture-aquaculture (IAA) farming systems (i.e., rice-shrimp, rice-fish…) emerged as potential climate adaptive practices. However, limited studies are attempting to assess the sustainability of these agricultural practices. Therefore, it is essential to assess whether or not these systems will be sustainable in the context of climate change and what can be done to make it sustainable. The present study conducted the sustainability assessment of the rice-shrimp system to identify potential areas for improvement as well as policy implication to increase resilience and adaptation of coastal IAA system which could contribute to the understanding of other coastal agricultural deltas around the globe.

This study used a quantitative approach including the assessment protocol of van Asselt et al. (2014), the assessment framework of Vanloon et al. (2005), and the MCA methodology to flexibly and holistically assess the sustainability level of agricultural systems.

Results concluded that rice-shrimp systems have the potential to improve livelihood, food security, and adaptation of coastal farmers. Major improvements should be considered for productivity, efficiency, and equity themes, while minor improvements can be made for stability, durability, and compatibility themes.

This research could be used as a guideline for sustainability assessment in a context-specific case study of IAA, which showed a potential for the application of other climate-smart IAAs in similar contexts around the globe.

The purpose of this study is to examine the adoption of the active learning and teaching methods by university lecturers, taking into account the contribution of certain important factors, including trust, empowerment, thinking styles and emotional intelligence. In addition, this study further reveals the diverse nature of university lecturers with regards to their tendencies to adopt active teaching methods using the segmentation technique of marketing.

A structured survey was implemented with university lecturers in Hanoi (Vietnam), obtaining a sample of 218 respondents from six universities. Descriptive analysis was carried out to identify the extent of the adoption of these methods. In addition, cluster analysis and analysis of variance were computed to extract and define the segments of university lecturers.

The findings show that the lecturers, on average, had a tendency to apply active teaching methods. However, the extent of the application of these methods differed among four clusters: “conservatives,” “liberals,” “junior conservatives” and “junior liberals.” In addition, it was found that the degree to which active methods were applied may have been affected by the lecturers' trust in and their empowerment of the students. The application of active methods may also have been influenced by various covert characteristics of the lecturers, including thinking styles (cognition-based) and emotional intelligence (affect-based). The lecturers' overt characteristics, such as age, education and experience, may also have affected their application of active methods, while biological sex seems not to have been a significant factor.

The results of this study expand the literature by explaining the diversity of university lecturers from the perspective of the active teaching and learning methods. They also provide implications for the management of education reform based on the varied implementation of the said methods that has already taken place.

This study explores the effect of local budget retention rate changes (RER) on total factor productivity (TFP) and its components in Vietnam.

The study employs a two-system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator and data from 2012 to 2019 across all 63 provinces/cities of Vietnam.

The study finds that local budget retention rates significantly influence public investment, affecting scale and allocation efficiency. The reallocation of budgets between regions and from the central government to local levels incurs certain costs, often resulting in economically robust provinces experiencing reductions in their retention rates.

Recognizing the challenges of immediate structural budget changes due to cultural and historical factors, the study suggests a more gradual policy approach. It emphasizes the importance of policy predictability, as abrupt reductions in the retention rate lead to higher costs than gradual reductions, thus implementing budget policies with a clearer timeline. This study provides insight into local budget allocation regimes and their impact on productivity in transitioning countries.

First, the study provides fresh evidence of the impact of retention rate changes on TFP and its components in Vietnam. Second, the study provides insights into the mechanisms of the nexus of increased budget spending, capital efficiency and, most importantly, attaining improvement in education. We also offer further insights into inefficient budget allocation agents in Vietnam, especially in large cities, which should alert scholars to explore this topic further in the future.

In an era of global competition, firms need to collaborate for long-term benefits. Researchers have investigated the linkages between supply chain collaboration (SCC), customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, little attention has been paid to these linkages in the home electronics sector. This study attempts to investigate the impacts of SCC on firms' competitive advantage, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the home electronics sector of Vietnam.

Besides aggregation of literature review, the authors conducted an experimental study with a sample of 300 customers who bought household electronic appliances in the first six months of 2021 in Hanoi city, Vietnam. In this study, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that SCC has a positive impact on competitive advantage, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty in the home electronics sector. Evidence also revealed that competitive advantage can be enhanced through information sharing, decision synchronisation and incentive alignment.

This study can be applied to foster a more effective collaboration approach amongst supply chain members in the household electronic appliances sector, which, in turn, will increase competitiveness, customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of investor attention on stock market activity.

The authors employed the Google Search Volume (GSV) Index, a direct and non-traditional proxy for investor attention.

The results indicate a strong correlation between GSV and trading volume – a traditional measure of attention – proving the new measure’s reliability. In addition, market-wide attention increases both stock illiquidity and volatility, whereas company-level attention shows mixed results, driving illiquidity and volatility in both directions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, Nguyen and Pham’s (2018) study has been the only previous study identifying investor attention in Vietnam by using GSV as a proxy and examining the impacts of broad search terms about the macroeconomy on the stock market as a whole – on stock indices’ movements. The paper will contribute to this by quantifying GSV impacts on each stock individually.

This study aims to estimate the pass-through rate of the increases in the excise tax and TCF tax on tobacco in Vietnam. This study seeks to shed light on how the tax burden is split between consumers and producers and inform policy discussions in the country. Using panel micro-level data collected from three waves of a nationwide retailer's survey, this study provides an evidence-based pass-through estimation for tobacco tax in Vietnam and contributes to the understanding of tax policy on smoking and smoking-related issues.

Following increases in the excise tax and TCF tax on tobacco in 2019, the differential effect of the tax hike on the “treatment group” (domestic cigarettes) versus the “control group” (illicit cigarettes) using a difference-in-difference (DID) analysis has been studied. The study utilized unique longitudinal retailers’ data on cigarettes prices in Vietnam from 2018 to 2019 to estimate the tax pass-through rate for some of the most popular factory-made cigarette brands.

This study found evidence of an over-shifting of cigarette taxes on smokers. Specifically, it discovered that the tax increase is absorbed more by low-priced brand smokers compared to premium brand users due to (1) the limited increase in prices under a pure ad valorem system and (2) the way the Vietnamese currency is denominated. Additionally, there is evidence of cushioning to mitigate price shock on consumers as the real prices increase gradually over the period of one year after the tax change.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to collect and analyze a unique panel micro-level data from three waves of a nationwide retailers’ survey, which captures the changes in marketing and pricing strategies of the tobacco industry in Vietnam before and after an increase in excise tax in 2019. The results of this study could be used as a reference for future policymakers in considering increasing taxes on tobacco.

This research investigates how subsidy programs in Vietnam's residential electricity market affect consumers' well-being.

Two perspectives are employed: cash transfer and quantity-based subsidy. The effectiveness of cash transfer is measured in three ways: benefit incidence, beneficiary incidence and materiality. The quantity-based subsidy is established under the increasing block rate pricing, with the first two block rates being lower than the marginal cost. To improve the quantity-based subsidy, the research examines the consumer surplus under four proposals.

The results show that both types of subsidies are ineffective in supporting the poor.

In order to achieve a more equal distribution among households, the subsidy program should remove all subsidized blocks and reflect the full marginal cost. Changes should be made to the price structure regarding both marginal price and intervals.

To mitigate the impact of the quantity-based subsidy, the government should improve the cash transfer by reducing extortion and improving targeting efficiency, especially for poor households living in rented houses.

This paper is the first to discuss the welfare effect of the electricity subsidy in Vietnam. First, it comprehensively evaluates the cash transfer subsidy in Vietnam. Second, it suggests a modification in the residential electricity tariff.

This research aims to investigate the role of the economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in the outward FDI (OFDI) of the United Kingdom (UK) by considering the institutional quality (IQ) and globalization level of the host country as contextual factors.

The UK’s OFDI to its twenty partners is analyzed by using the factor augmented model for the 2005–2019 period.

The results show that the EPU of the host country has a negative and significant effect on the UK's OFDI. Furthermore, the findings surprisingly illustrate that the globalization level of the host country has a negative and significant impact on the UK's OFDI. In terms of IQ, this study indicates that, while government effectiveness and regulatory quality have a negative and significant influence on the UK's OFDI, the rule of law has a positive and significant effect on the UK's OFDI.

This will be one of a few studies considering OFDI in the scope of EPU. Also, the contradicting results of the study add unique perspectives to the literature about the relationship between OFDI, globalization, and IQ.