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The U.S. textile industry has gone through much upheaval in the past two decades. As protective barriers are gradually phased out the industry is faced with stiff foreign competition. Regional trade pacts, such as NAFTA and CBI, on the other hand help to improve the competitiveness of the domestic textile industry. This paper looks at the trends in U.S. textile trade with the various trading zones and the various factors influencing textile imports and exports. We examine the impact of the new global environment, the regional trade pacts, NAFTA and CBI on the changing nature and pattern of trade. The overall trends indicate a significant decline in imports from the EU countries, Asia remains significant, but NAFTA and CBI countries are quickly gaining ground over the old trading partners. The OECD remains the most significant destination for U.S. textile exports followed by NAFTA and Latin American countries.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the effectiveness of the integration of Europe by benchmarking economic progress made by the participating nations.

Using data envelopment analysis, this paper compares the relative performance of 26 European Union (EU) nations against one another with seven economic variables as the benchmark parameters from 1999 to 2006.

The paper finds that not all the participating nations were equally efficient at the beginning of the economic integration in 1999. Economic integration does help in achieving convergence in economic performance of 26 EU nations, because 18 of the 26 nations were efficient in 2002. However, this paper finds that after 2002, there is a lack of convergence in the performance of 26 EU nations and some nations have performed more efficiently in contrast to other nations.

The paper identifies the member nations that are lagging behind and make recommendations as to how they can improve their performance to bring them at par with other participating nations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if the volatility in the US dollar interest rate swap market impacts the volatility of the swap rates in the Indian swap market.

The authors use GARCH, EGARCH, and TGARCH modeling to examine volatility spillover between the US and Indian interest rate swap markets.

Evidence is found of volatility transmission from the US dollar interest rate swap markets to the Indian swap markets. There is no evidence of spillover from the Indian swap markets to the US swap markets. Furthermore, the spillover impact from the US markets to the Indian markets is also asymmetric. The impact on volatility is asymmetric for one‐year swaps, but not for five‐year swaps.

Findings from this study will also identify any arbitrage opportunities that may exist between different segments of the US dollar interest rate swap markets and help to improve interest rate swap market efficiency.

If the financial market liberalization process in these nations has been successful in integrating their market into the pool of the world market, then a foreign investor would not demand a risk‐premium in the returns on deposits in these markets. The findings of this paper are also relevant for other emerging markets' policy makers, as they try to become more integrated in the global economy and try to resolve market inefficiencies and country risk so that obstacles to foreign investments can be removed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of fund expense ratio for Malaysia-based international equity funds. An understanding of what these factors are and how they affect a fund’s expense ratio is important given that international funds can be expensive to operate and that fund expenses have negative impact on investors’ returns.

This study employs a standard cross-sectional regression model in examining the factors that influence fund expense ratio of international equity funds.

The findings show that sales charge is positively related to fund expense ratio although it is not included in the expense ratio computation. This suggests that investor could possibly incur additional “hidden cost” since sales charge represents an upfront cost that an investor has already paid at the time of the fund sale. Additionally, funds with aggressive investment objective and frequent portfolio turnover show higher expense ratios than funds with conservative investment objective and less trading activities. There is no evidence that fund size, fund age, and the number of funds in a fund family are significantly related to the fund expense ratio. While the lack of statistical finding for fund size in this study seems inconsistent with the results of the US market in general, the finding is supportive of the Thai equity fund market and thus implying that finding could be country specific.

There is limited availability of international equity funds in Malaysia.

The findings provide useful insights for investors to make informed international fund selection decisions. Expense-conscious investors should pay particular attention to fund’s sales charge, turnover ratio, and its investment objective when selecting funds for investment.

This paper provides first evidence on the determinants of fund expense ratio of Malaysia-based international equity funds.

To examine the effect of negotiation training and conflict management styles on the relations between third‐party actors involved in international peacekeeping situations, we analyze data from a sample of Dutch military peacekeepers on missions between 1995 and 1999 (N = 850). We predict and find, contrary to the traditional “contact hypothesis” (Allport, 1954), that peacekeepers' contact with Non‐Governmental Organization (NGO) workers was positively associated with conflict between them, and this increased if the peacekeeper possessed an avoiding conflict management style. When sufficiently trained in negotiations, peacekeepers who had intensive contact with NGO personnel and possessed a dominating conflict management style were less likely to become personally involved in conflicts with NGO workers. Implications for conflict management and training are discussed.

Data mining for predicting credit risk is a beneficial tool for financial institutions to evaluate the financial health of companies. However, the ubiquity of selecting parameters and the presence of unbalanced data sets is a very typical problem of this technique. This study aims to provide a new method for evaluating credit risk, taking into account not only financial and non-financial variables, but also the class imbalance.

The most significant financial and non-financial variables were determined to build a credit scoring model and identify the creditworthiness of companies. Moreover, the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique was used to solve the problem of class imbalance and improve the performance of the classifier. The artificial neural networks and decision trees were designed to predict default risk.

Results showed that profitability ratios, repayment capacity, solvency, duration of a credit report, guarantees, size of the company, loan number, ownership structure and the corporate banking relationship duration turned out to be the key factors in predicting default. Also, both algorithms were found to be highly sensitive to class imbalance. However, with balanced data, the decision trees displayed higher predictive accuracy for the assessment of credit risk than artificial neural networks.

Classification results depend on the appropriateness of data characteristics and the appropriate analysis algorithm for data sets. The selection of financial and non-financial variables, as well as the resolution of class imbalance allows companies to assess their credit risk successfully.

Muslim’s hope that the holy month of Ramadan will create something more valuable for them. Through fasting and good actions, they can get rewarded twice than they normally can achieve. With this motivation, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the holy month of Ramadan effect on the returns and volatility of the Shariah index in India.

Using the ordinary least square methods, this paper examines the impact of Ramadan effect on the returns of the Shariah index in India. This paper further investigates the impact of the holy month of Ramadan effect on the volatility of the Shariah index by applying GARCH-modified models. This paper categorizes the Ramadan days into three parts, namely God’s Mercy, God’s Forgiveness and Emancipation from hellfire to examine the relationship between the Ramadan effect and the returns and volatility of the Shariah index in India.

The results show that the returns during the month of Ramadan as a whole are statistically significant. The results further motivate that its last ten days have high influences than other days over the period. Finally, the study examines the Ramadan effect on volatility by applying GARCH modified models and finds an evidence of Ramadan effect during the first ten days of Ramadan month.

The positive impact of Ramadan increases on the days associated with higher worship intensity. The study provides an important information to the ethical investors to invest in the Shariah stocks during Ramadan days. This information is very useful for the investors to get an abnormal return during the Ramadan days.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a retrospection on the importance, origins and development of the research programs in the author’s career.

The study uses an autobiographical approach.

Most of the articles, research monographs and books that constitute this research and publishing efforts can be categorized into seven distinct, but related, research programs: channels of distribution; marketing theory; marketing’s philosophy debates; macromarketing and ethics; relationship marketing; resource-advantage theory; and marketing management and strategy. The value system that has guided these research programs has been shaped by specific events that took place in the author’s formative years. This essay chronicles these events and the origins and development of the seven research programs.

Chronicling the importance, origins and development of the seven research programs will hopefully motivate and assist other scholars in developing their own research programs.

The purpose of this paper is to establish an integrated framework of the antecedents of enforcement after contract violations in construction projects and to examine whether contract provisions (control and coordination provisions) and trust (goodwill and competence trust) affect enforcement mechanisms (contractual enforcement and relational enforcement).

A survey method was employed to test the hypotheses. The authors collected data from the Chinese construction industry, and general contractor respondents were asked to answer a questionnaire about a contract violation by one of their subcontractors.

Control provisions and competence trust are positively related to contractual enforcement, but goodwill trust is negatively related to contractual enforcement. Relational enforcement is influenced by goodwill trust and competence trust.

This study treats contract violations as a given variable, and it focuses on contract violations by subcontractors. The cross-sectional design makes it difficult to confirm the causality of the relationships.

Overly strict contractual enforcement can generate disputes and a vicious cycle of retaliation, and overly severe relational enforcement can damage a potentially profitable long-term relationship. In construction projects, the violating party will benefit from this study to avoid excessively contractual enforcement and relational enforcement, thus developing a more collaborative atmosphere on the current project and even establishing a solid long-term relationship.

This study extends the project management literature by investigating the antecedents of enforcement after contract violations, an area not yet fully researched.

The purpose of this paper is to determine cause and effect relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth (gross domestic product (GDP) taken as proxy) for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS nations) individually for the period 1992-2013. Also, the study tries to explore the reasons behind the linkage between FDI and GDP by estimating a linear regression model consisting of both macro-economic and institutional variables.

Johansen cointegration technique followed by vector error correction model (VECM) and standard Granger causality test are employed to investigate the causal linkage between FDI and GDP. To delve into the reasons behind this linkage, an ordinary least square (OLS) technique is also applied to test the linear regression model consisting of net FDI inflows as dependent variable and nine macro- economic and institutional variables. Residual diagnostics is also conducted using Breusch-Godfrey Lagrange Multiplier test for diagnosing the problem of serial correlation, Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey test for examining heteroskedasticity and Jarque Bera test for verifying the normality of residuals.

The Johansen cointegration result establishes a single cointegrating vector (long run relationship) between FDI and GDP for India, China and Brazil. After proving a cointegration, VECM results revealed that there exists unidirectional long run causality running from GDP to FDI in case of Brazil, India and China. Also, it is confirmed that there exists short run causality between FDI and GDP in China, i.e. the past lags of FDI jointly impact the value of GDP. However, for Russia and South Africa, where there is no cointegration in the long run, standard Granger causality test is conducted which reveals that in both the nations, FDI and GDP are independent of one another. The results of OLS technique reveal different country-specific factors causing this linkage between FDI inflows and economic growth.

Various researchers in the past have examined this issue of linkage between FDI and GDP in the context of various developing or developed nations. This reveals a gap in the existing literature pertaining to this causal linkage in the context of the BRICS. Thus, this study fills this gap by analyzing not just this causal nexus with the help of VECM and Granger causality techniques but also tries to explore further the reasons for such strong/weak/no link with the help of fitting a regression model which comprises of both macro-economic and institutional country-specific variables influencing this causation.