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The authors measure the cost of equity to earnings yield differential for a sample of 2,035 non-financial firms. In a series of Logit and Tobit regressions, the authors examine if the cost of equity to earnings yield differential is related to dividend policy in the manner predicted by agency theory.

Agency theory says a firm's optimal dividend policy is partially determined by the relationship between the earnings yield and the cost of equity capital. When the cost of equity is higher (lower) than the earnings yield, firms are motivated to (not) pay dividends as this reduces the cost of capital and holding other things constant, increases corporate valuations. The authors test whether managers set dividend policies to maximize the value of the firm.

The study’s findings show that when the cost of equity is higher (lower) than earnings yield, firms are more (less) likely to be dividend payers and the payouts are higher (lower). The results are robust to the inclusion of share repurchases as an alternative to cash distributions. The study’s findings support the cost of equity hypothesis and are consistent with alternative dividend theories.

The study’s findings support the cost of equity hypothesis and are consistent with alternative dividend theories. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper testing the cost of equity hypothesis.

Fewer researchers have investigated the climatic and economic drivers of land-use change simultaneously and the interplay between drivers. This paper aims to investigate the nonlinear and interaction effects of price and climate variables on the rice acreage in high-latitude regions of China.

This study applies a multivariate adaptive regression spline to characterize the effects of price and climate expectations on rice acreage in high-latitude regions of China from 1992 to 2017. Then, yield expectation is added into the model to investigate the mechanism of climate effects on rice area allocation.

The results of importance assessment suggest that rice price, climate and total agricultural area play an important role in rice area allocation, and the importance of temperature is always higher than that of precipitation, especially for minimum temperature. Based on the estimated hinge functions and coefficients, it is found that total agricultural area has strong nonlinear and interaction effects with climate and price as forms of third-order interaction. However, the order of interaction terms reduces to second order after absorbing the expected yield. Additionally, the marginal effects of driven factors are calculated at different quantiles. The total area shows a positive and increasing marginal effect with the increase of total area. But the positive impact of price on the rice area can only be observed when price reached 50% or higher quantiles. Climate variables also show strong nonlinear marginal effects, and most climatic effects would disappear or be weakened once absorbing the expected rice yield. Expected yield is an efficient mechanism to explain the correlation between crop area and climate variables, but the impact of minimum temperature cannot be completely modeled by the yield expectation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the nonlinear response of land-use change to climate and economic in high-latitude regions of China using the machine learning method.

Some controversial cases of bail-in in the emerging countries have raised the question about whether for those countries to have in place a regulation for the bail-in is appropriate or not. To assess appropriateness, this paper investigates bail-in credibility among investors, as crucial condition for the credibility’s smooth implementation, by measuring the yield spread between bailinable and non-bailinable bonds.

The authors compare the yield spread of banks located in emerging countries that have in place a framework for the bail-in to the comparable yield spread measured for banks located in emerging countries without such framework. The comparison permits to detect whether there is a significant difference between the two spreads, which would suggest that bail-in regulation has been deemed credible by market participants where enforced, or not, which in this case would signal a problem of credibility.

The authors' results point out a significantly higher yield spread for banks located in emerging countries that have adopted a framework for the bail-in of creditors. Bail-in regulation has, therefore, being deemed credible in the adopting emerging countries, thus ensuring a crucial condition for bail-in regulation's smooth application. The authors also point out bank size and country's gross domestic product (GDP) growth as crucial moderators of bail-in expectations of market participants that can guide the implementation of bail-in rules in emerging countries.

This paper contributes to the literature on the credibility of bail-in with a new perspective from the emerging countries.

Although it has often been studied in finance research, the relationship between dividend yields and stock returns remains an unresolved issue, especially in the Korean stock market. When firms continue to pay non-decreasing dividends for three or five years, they may establish a dividend reputation, which could affect this relationship. The author found firms that pay more dividends, larger firms, older firms, more profitable firms, less leveraged firms, firms with less volatile returns, firms with foreign holdings of more than 5%, and firms with more concentrated ownership build dividend reputations. The author also found that the relationship between dividend yields and future stock returns depends on a firm’s dividend reputation. The evidence shows that when firms with higher yields have dividend reputations, they produce higher future returns, whereas there is no significant relationship between yields and returns for firms with no reputation. These results are inconsistent with the findings of studies that use developed market data. In addition, when larger firms with higher growth potential and firms with less concentrated ownership have dividend reputations, future returns are higher.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge on the economic performance of genetically modified (GM) cotton worldwide based on a wide range of data and source from available literature, and second to assess yield gain and economic performance.

A systematic review was captured to provide the evidence of potential benefits of GM cotton. A country-specific analysis was conducted in order to compare economic indicators and employed meta-analysis to find out the significance of the different of GM cotton over its counterpart.

This paper depicts positive impact of commercialized GM cotton in terms of net revenue, and the benefits, especially in terms of increased yields, are greatest for the mostly farmers in developing countries who have benefitted from the spill over of technology targeted at farmers in industrialized countries.

Due to the variability of the data which came from different methodologies, it is difficult to determine the differences of the performances each individual study.

This, it is believed that results from this study can be useful for operations of all sizes as the authors think about what needs to be focussed on for long-term producers survival.

The paper clearly indicates that China is the highest cotton yield of GM cotton, the lowest cost of GM seed and the lowest cost of chemical spray compare to any other countries. Therefore, this is the fact that the adoption of GM cotton has been widely spread among the farmers across the regions in China.

Productivity and production risks affect the use of agricultural production practices and inputs, particularly in developing countries. This paper aims to investigate the effects of adopting drought-tolerant maize varieties (DTMVs) on farm productivity, yield variance and downside risk exposure of maize growing households of Zambia.

The study uses household survey data collected from 11 maize producing districts of Eastern, Southern and Copperbelt provinces of Zambia using a structured questionnaire. The Antle’s flexible moment-based approach was used in specifying, estimating and testing a stochastic production function. The study further applied an endogenous switching regression model to control for both observable and unobservable sources of bias.

The study revealed that DTMV adoption increases maize yield by 15 per cent and reduces the risk of crop failure: reducing yield variance by 38 per cent and exposure to downside risk by 36 per cent.

This study establishes the benefits of DTMV adoption in Zambia with regards to productivity, yield stability and downside risk in the face of climate change. Results from this study underscore the need for more concerted efforts to scale-out DTMVs for both maize productivity enhancement and for risk mitigation against weather shocks.

This paper investigates the effects of information asymmetry and Credit Rating Agency's reputation on bond yield spread, which is caused by the split bond rating of CRAs. For analysis, We do multivariate analysis, using bond rating and bond yield spread data in Korea from 2004 to 2015. The empirical results are as follows.

First, we examines whether information asymmetry affects the bond yield spread. using split rating data. As a result, the information asymmetry measured by split rating variable is significant, which supports the information asymmetry hypothesis. Additionally we can find bond yield spread is decided by negative credit grade rather than positive credit grade under split rating condition.

Next, we examines the relationship between the CRA’s reputation and the bond yield spread in case of split rating. Here, samples were divided into full samples and split rating samples. Summarizing the result, both samples are suggest similar result, the bond yield spread is changed depending on the specific CRA’s grading which having conservative rating tendency.

Thus, This result suggest information asymmetry caused by split rating and CRA’s reputation measured by CRA’s rating tendency affect bond yield spread in Korea

The amount of food wasted every year is 1.3 billion metric tonne (MT), out of which 0.5 billion MT is contributed by the fruits processing industries. The waste includes by-products such as peels, pomace and seeds and is a good source of bioactive compounds like phenolic compounds, flavonoids, pectin lipids and dietary fibres. Hence, the purpose of the present study is to review the novel extraction techniques used for the extraction of the bio active compounds from food waste for the selection of suitable extraction method.

Novel extraction techniques such as ultrasound-assisted extraction, microwave-assisted extraction, enzyme-assisted extraction, supercritical fluid extraction, pulsed electric field extraction and pressurized liquid extraction have emerged to overcome the drawbacks and constraints of conventional extraction techniques. Hence, this study is focussed on novel extraction techniques, their limitations and optimization for the extraction of bioactive compounds from fruit and vegetable waste.

This study presents a comprehensive review on the novel extraction processes that have been adopted for the extraction of bioactive compounds from food waste. This paper also summarizes bioactive compounds' optimum extraction condition from various food waste using novel extraction techniques.

Food waste is rich in bioactive compounds, and its efficient extraction may add value to the food processing industries. Hence, compressive analysis is needed to overcome the problem associated with the extraction and selection of suitable extraction techniques.

Selection of a suitable extraction method will not only add value to food waste but also reduce waste dumping and the cost of bioactive compounds.

This paper presents the research progress on the extraction of bioactive active compounds from food waste using novel extraction techniques.

Might the impact of the global economic policy uncertainty (GEPU) and the long-term bond yields on oil prices be asymmetric? This paper aims to consider the effects of the GEPU and the US long-term government bond yields on oil prices using quantile-based analysis and nonlinear vector autoregression (VAR) model. The author hypothesized whether the negative and positive changes in the GEPU and the long-term bond yields of the USA have different effects on oil prices.

To address this question, the author uses quantile cointegration model and the impulse response functions (IRFs) of the censored variable approach of Kilian and Vigfusson (2011).

The quantile cointegration test showed the existence of non-linear cointegration relationship, whereas Granger-causality analysis revealed that positive/negative variations in GEPU will have opposite effects on oil prices. This result was supported by the quantile regression model’s coefficients and nonlinear VAR model’s IRFs; more specifically, it was stressed that increasing/decreasing GEPU will deaccelerate/accelerate global economic activity and thus lead to a fall/rise in oil prices. On the other hand, the empirical models indicated that the impact of US 10-year government bond yields on oil prices is asymmetrical, while it was found that deterioration in the borrowing conditions in the USA may have an impact on oil prices by slowing down the global economic activity.

As a robustness check of the quantile-based analysis results, the slope-based Mork test is used.

This study investigates the relation between two kinds of par yield curves estimated in Korean bond market: benchmark par yield curve and company par yield curve. The former is published as a benchmark for corporate bonds with a given credit rating and the latter is utilized for valuing a specific corporate bond. Spot rate curves are extracted from the par yield curves by applying bootstrapping method. The spreads between the two spot rate curves are analyzed for 7 years (2005~2012) of corporate bond transaction data. Six results are obtained from various sub-samples classified by credit rating and maturity. 1) Most of the sample means of the spreads are above zero. 2) Negative average spreads are found mainly from the sample of BBB rated bonds. 3) Average spreads from the sample with credit greater than or equal to A tend to positively related with credit risk. 4) Absolute value of the average spreads are positively related with credit risk. 5) The average spreads are increased rapidly after the year of 2009. 6) The proportion of sub-samples having negative average spreads are decreased as the average maturity of the sample is shortened.