Search results

This paper aims to provide fresh empirical evidence on how Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) monetary policy decisions from a benchmark monetary policy rule affect the profitability of US banking institutions.

It thereby provides a link between the literature on central bank monetary policy implementation through monetary rules and banks’ profitability. It uses a novel data set from 11,894 US banks, spanning the period 1990 to 2013.

The empirical findings show that deviations of FOMC monetary policy decisions from a number of benchmark linear and non-linear monetary (Taylor type) rules exert a negative and statistically significant impact on banks’ profitability.

The results are expected to have substantial implications for the capacity of banking institutions to more readily interpret monetary policy information and accordingly to reshape and hedge their lending behaviour. This would make the monetary policy decision process less noisy and, thus, enhance their capability to attach the correct weight to this information.

This paper aims to examine herding behaviour among investors and traders in UK-listed Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) within three market regimes (low, high and extreme volatility periods) from the period June 2004 to April 2016.

Observations of investors in 36 REITs that trade on the London Stock Exchange as at April 2016 were used to analyse herding behaviour among investors and traders of shares of UK REITs, using a Markov regime-switching model.

Although a static herding model rejects the existence of herding in REITs markets, estimates from the regime-switching model reveal substantial evidence of herding behaviour within the low volatility regime. Most interestingly, the authors observed a shift from anti-herding behaviour within the high volatility regime to herding behaviour within the low volatility regime, with this having been caused by the FTSE 100 Volatility Index (UK VIX).

The results have various implications for decisions regarding asset allocation, diversification and value management within UK REITs. Market participants and analysts may consider that collective movements and market sentiment/psychology are determinative factors of risk-return in UK REITs. In addition, general uncertainty in the equity market, proxied by the impact of the UK VIX, may also provide a signal for increasing herding-related risks among UK REITs.

This paper aims to estimate the impact of job search on the internet on the probability of re‐employment and the duration of unemployment spells.

The study uses national panel datasets from Germany (SOEP 2003‐2007) and South Korea (KLIPS 1996‐2006) to estimate probit and Hausman‐Taylor IV models of the impact of job search on the internet on the probability of re‐employment. The study also explores duration analysis with the aim of estimating the impact of internet job search on the duration of unemployment.

In Germany and South Korea job seekers who used the internet had a 7.1 and 12.7 percentage point higher probability, respectively, of being re‐employed in the next 12 months. Furthermore, job seekers who used the internet had a shorter duration of unemployment in both Germany and South Korea.

Over the past decade, internet penetration rates and use of the internet in job search have risen sharply across the world. The internet has significantly changed the job application process and improved the channels of communication between employers and job seekers. The findings of the research indicate that the internet is beneficial and should be a part of job search efforts.

The contribution of this study is twofold. It is the first study to use panel datasets to analyze the link between internet use and job search outcomes. Therefore, the results are robust to unobserved heterogeneity problems. The study also addresses the issue of endogeneity of job search on the internet by using the Hausman‐Taylor IV model.

Since the launch of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003, Hong Kong cinema is believed to have confronted drastic changes. Hong Kong cinema is described to be dying, lacking creative space and losing local distinctiveness. A decade later, the rise of Hong Kong – China coproduction cinema under CEPA has been normalized and changed the once pessimism in the industry. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Hong Kong cinema adjusted its production and creation in the first 10 years of CEPA.

Beginning with a review of the overall development, three paradigmatic cases are examined for reflecting upon what the major industrial and commercial concerns on the Hong Kong – China coproduction model are, and how such a coproduction model is not developed as smooth as what the Hong Kong filmmakers expected.

Collectively, this paper singles out the difficulties in operation and the limit of transnationality that occur in the Chinese context for the development of Hong Kong cinema under the Hong Kong – China coproduction model.

This is the author’s research in his five-year study of Hong Kong cinema and it contributes a lot to the field of cinema studies with relevant industrial and policy concern.