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1 – 2 of 2Kowsar Yousefi and Ali Taiebnia
Following the COVID-19 outbreak, there are concerns whether economies are becoming farther from equality and competency. While this matters to every economy, it is more crucial…
Abstract
Purpose
Following the COVID-19 outbreak, there are concerns whether economies are becoming farther from equality and competency. While this matters to every economy, it is more crucial for developing ones who already suffer from income inequalities and lack of competency. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses an administrative data from the Iran's Social Security Organization (ISSO) that provides insurance to workers entitled to the Labor Law of Iran. The data contain more than 7,000,000 workers. The authors assess heterogeneous impact of the first wave of the pandemic by firms' size and average payment.
Findings
The authors’ estimation results indicate that, following the initiation of the pandemic, the workers whose corresponding firms are smaller, overall, are more prone to the pandemic and are more likely to submit a request for unemployment benefits. However, the relation is neither homogeneous across sectors nor linear among micro-sized firms. Few sectors indicate a positive relationship between size and likelihood of request submission, including cultural activity, shoemaking and clothing sectors. Besides the size, the authors investigate whether pay grades could explain the probability of becoming unemployed after the pandemic. Results show that workers whose corresponding firms pay less are more likely to submit a request. This is robust within different sectors.
Research limitations/implications
The ISSO dataset is not a panel, so the authors cannot employ methods of causal inferences. The authors’ results should be seen as correlation; however, due to exogeneity and sharpness of the pandemic the result infers to some degree of causality. The data does not cover the informal sector, so the estimates are at lower boundary.
Originality/value
Administrative data on unemployment benefits during COVID-19 show that the pandemic interferes with competition by forcing low-paid workers and small firms to exit the market. This is an alarm for the competition in every economy, specially developing ones.
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Keywords
Somya Arora and Yogesh Chauhan
This paper aims to explore whether financial statement readability overcomes the information disadvantage of foreign equity investors.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore whether financial statement readability overcomes the information disadvantage of foreign equity investors.
Design/methodology/approach
A comprehensive data set of Indian firms listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for 2007–2019 has been used to evaluate the proposed research questions. This study uses the Panel data method to investigate the research question.
Findings
The results reveal that readable financial statements attract foreign investments. The readability benefits are more noticeable for firms operating in less competitive industries and having poor earnings quality.
Originality/value
This study suggests that foreign investors facing informational disadvantages prefer firms with better readability as a substitute for informational acquisition, processing and monitoring.
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