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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of Facebook users' responses to corporate Facebook posts on investor diversity and trading consensus.

The authors collect publicly available data on corporate Facebook posts and user responses to such posts. They use the OLS regression framework to analyze the effects of such Facebook activities on institutional ownership percentage and trading consensus among investors.

The authors find that Facebook users' responses to corporate Facebook posts reduce large institutional investors' ownership. Their interpretation for this finding is that such Facebook activities increase the visibility of the companies across a more diverse group of investors. This increased visibility especially makes information more accessible to smaller investors so that they are attracted to invest more in these companies. They also find that Facebook activities increase the buy-sell consensus among investors, indicating that the information disseminated through social media reduces the disagreements among investors.

This paper examines the effects of user reactions to all kinds of corporate Facebook posts without separately identifying the types of posts such as advertising, financial information and corporate news. Future research may try to identify the differential effects of specific types of posts and reactions on investor diversity.

The results suggest that social media has become a new and effective supplement to traditional disclosure channels in making information available to all investors in the capital market.

This paper is among the first to document the effects of corporate disclosures on social media in changing investor composition and reducing the information gap among investors.

Purpose − Instances of refusal to trade stand in contrast to the theorems on the gains from trade. Two paradigms, second-best and political economy, have been used to explain refusal to trade. Murray Kemp (1962) provided a foundation for the political economy paradigm when he noted that, in the absence of lump-sum redistribution, the theorems on the gains from trade are “true but irrelevant”. This chapter takes Murray Kemp's observation as a point of departure for a consideration of the relation between individual and group gains from trade. Paradigms in explaining refusal to trade are distinguished.

Methodology/Approach − This chapter examines ideas underlying explanations for refusal to participate in international trade.

Findings − Two different approaches are identified in modeling and explaining why the gains from trade are compromised by refusal of governments to allow free trade. The second-best approach suggests a justification for refusal to trade while the political economy approach with public-choice foundations proposes an explanation.

Practical implications − Ideology expressed in how governments are viewed can influence economic analysis.

This paper aims to question the “conventional” privatization of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and to propose the neutral position adopted by the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) to reconcile the divergent views within the World Trade Organization (WTO) regime.

China’s partially privatized SOEs have raised numerous attention in WTO disputes regarding whether China's way of social and economic reform is consistent with its accession commitments and with WTO rules, in particular subsidy rules. Instead of providing a definite legal standard applicable to the “public body” enquiry, the DSB adopts the neutral position to reconcile the divergent views between developed and developing countries on whether not fully privatized SOEs constitute “public body.”

Albeit with interpretative vagueness, the value of DSB’s neutral position lies in its adequacy: first, the adequacy to address the complexity of SOE privatizations in developing countries; second, the adequacy to engage relevant parties to maintain the multilateral trading system; and third, not to impose specific impact on justification of countervailing duties.

This paper captures the recent developments in “public body” enquiry and calls for a compromised approach to maintain the WTO-like multilateral trade regime and to allow for more policy spaces for developing countries that best fit their unique circumstances and needs. It sees new and significant information, in the sense that the paper aims to present why China’s partial privatization benefits from the WTO “neutrality” on the subject.

The purpose of the paper is to address the question of the influence of the administrative tradition and the politico‐administrative context on the formulation and implementation of public management reform in Portugal.

The paper is based on empirical evidence collected from various sources. It reflects the personal experience of the author, who was personally involved in the reform process, and is also the result of a wide‐ranging review of literature on public administration and public management reform in Portugal and other European countries.

The paper identifies different phases of reform, and acknowledges the existence of a recurrent problem with public expenditure and increasing public employment. It concludes that there has been no lack of great reforms, and suggests a different approach – one that does not require special speeches or special doctrine, but is based on discreet work by politicians and managers seeking to fulfil the traditional values of the public service.

Mainly due to a lack of both studies and evaluation practices – make it difficult to assess the actual impact of the different waves of reforms. However, administration has managed to cope with the process of change while maintaining a key orientation towards the citizen and society.

The value of the paper is that it is the first time the whole cycle of reforms, from 1974 until 2007, has been covered and also related to the politico‐administrative tradition. It contains summarised but complete information and suggests a new approach based on the ethical values of the public service.

This paper aims to apply blockchains (BCs) for trade clearing and settlement in a realistic clearinghouse. The purpose is to demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of this approach.

The study uses account BCs and trading BCs as building blocks for trade clearing and settlement. Careful design is made to ensure that this approach is feasible and scalable.

A design has been proposed that can process hundreds of thousands of trades for a clearinghouse and it addresses performance, privacy and scalability of realistic trade clearing and settlement. The design has been implemented and experimented in a clearinghouse for over two months and processes over 3B real transactions from an exchange. The first month was to experiment with the system with historical data, the second month was to experiment with real-time data during market trading hours. The system performed as designed and intended.

This is the first large research paper that applied BCs for clearing in the world. The authors applied the system to a clearinghouse and processed over 3 billion transactions, equivalent to 13 years of London Stock Exchange transaction volume, demonstrating that BCs can handle a large number of transactions.

The design can be duplicated to many clearinghouses in the world, and this also paves the way BCs can be used in large financial institutions.

An implication is that other trading firms, clearinghouses and banks can apply the same technology for trade clearing, ushering the way BCs can be used in institutions. As clearing is a core function in business transactions, this has significant implications. The design can be discussed and improved in various communities.

As this is the first application of BCs to large clearinghouses that uses unique BC designs. This has significant value. Many studies have been performed but few have been reported in the scientific community. The system has been implemented, experimented and demonstrated in public for months.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the arguments for and against a social clause as an ethical benchmark for international trade.

The paper takes a social economic approach in analysing the case for and against a social clause in international trade. It considers an economic, jurisprudential, social and human rights case for a social clause.

The consideration of a social clause purely in economic terms, removed from its social context fundamentally flaws the arguments on both sides of the debate. The conclusion of south‐south labour agreements, north‐south bilateral free‐trade agreements and regional integration schemes incorporating labour standards has a positive impact on diffusing tension and helping in consensus building around the issue. Labour standards are human rights and to claim comparative advantage in human rights in trade is unethical. There is a need to keep the debate alive especially within the World Trade Organization.

The paper provides an insight into the utility of a social clause in the trade and development agenda for both developed and developing countries.

Given the strength of emotions surrounding the issue, the proposed approach will assist in detoxing the debate and in providing an avenue for vertical and horizontal consensus building on the issue.

The aim of this paper is to measure and evaluate the relationship between returns-volatility and trading volume and returns and volatility of financial market indexes using time-varying copulas.

The time dynamic dependence parameter is allowed to evolve according to a restricted ARMA-type equation which includes a constant term that is driven by a hidden two-state first-order Markov chain.

In using this time dynamics in conjunction with non-elliptical distribution functions and tail dependence measure, the authors are allowing for (and focusing on) non-linearities in the returns-volume-volatility relationship. The results support the assumption that current trading volume provides information about future volatility as well as that there is a negative relationship between returns and their volatilities in financial market indexes.

The authors provide an interesting empirical interpretation for the regimes the authors have identified: in the high dependence regime the sequential information arrival hypothesis and/or noise trading hypothesis are valid, consequently future volatility prediction is possible and persistent but does not last indefinitely; in the low dependence regime, the future volatility prediction is more unlikely to occur, since both trading volume and return negatives have a low (near zero) relation with future volatility.

While significant efforts have been made to study auction and logistics theories in the context of perishable supply chain trading (PSCT) over the last few years, the consensus has not yet been reached on how best to examine the impact of physical-internet-enabled auction logistics (AL) decisions and processes on dynamic perishable products transactions. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by investigating the existing situations and identifying future opportunities for both academic and industrial communities.

The relevant literature was sort out along with three dimensions, namely auction mechanism, level of decision and coordination. The methods of field investigation and focus group discussion were also used to explore the factors influencing AL performance.

A number of key findings presented. First, there is an emerging paradigm shift from offline auction to online auction. Robust and resilient AL are needed to fulfill the massive number of orders from different channels while considering dynamic decisions. Second, three-level decisions in AL have been explicitly classified and defined. Various mathematical techniques used in literature vis-à-vis the contexts of AL were mapped. Third, a coordination mechanism that dynamically balances trade-off between logistics efficiency and transaction price was discussed. Lastly, several opportunities for future research were distinguished with coherent connection of research domains and open questions.

This paper not only summaries key themes of current research dimensions, but also indicates existing deficiencies and potential research directions. The findings can be used as the basis for future research in PSCT and related topics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the moderating role of national economic culture on investors’ herding practices in the European Union (EU) equity markets.

The study employs and modify two extensively applied herding measures of cross-sectional standard deviation and cross-sectional absolute deviation, using stock return dispersion as a function of aggregate market return as a proxy for herding behavior. The sample period stretches from January 1, 2001 until December 31, 2015.

The study finds that mandatory IFRS adoption significantly promotes investors’ herding practice in the EU equity markets. However, taking a further look, the results suggest that the new reporting regime seems not to be the only instigator for the observed herding practice; national economic culture, particularly individualism and masculinity, contribute significantly toward investors’ herd-formation around the mandatory IFRS adoption. Overall, it can be concluded that the notion that the adoption of IFRS improves information-based trading and mitigates irrational investment behavior might totally be inaccurate in some instances. For example, in the case of herding bias, the new reporting regime appears to have promoted the phenomenon.

The study employs an approach of herd detection, which explores evidence of herding toward the market consensus. Thus, the results do not in any way exclude the possibility that other types of herding behavior exist in the EU equity markets. Notwithstanding this caveat, the findings of this study would be of special relevance to academics, regulators and policymakers in performing a cost-benefit analysis of the IFRS adoption.

To the researchers’ knowledge, this study is first to explore the nexus between IFRS and investors’ herding practices, while highlighting the role of the national economic culture.