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Economic studies have always underlined the cyclical trends of many industries and their different relations to the macro-economic cycles. Shipping is one of those industries and it has been often characterised by peaks that have influenced both the trade patterns and industry investment structure (e.g. fleet, shipyard activity, freight rates). One of the main issues related with the cycles is the effect on overcapacity and prices for newbuilding and how the understanding of these patterns can help in preventing short-hand strategies. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate different effects of business elements on shipbuilding activity, in relation to different economic-cycle phases.

This paper proposes a non-linear econometric model to identify the relations between shipbuilding and economic cycles over the past 30 years. The research focuses on identifying the cycle characteristics and understanding the asymmetrical effect of economic- and business-related variables on its development.

The study underlines the presence of an asymmetric effect of several business variables on the shipbuilding productions, depending on the cyclical phases (i.e. market expansion or economic slowdown). Moreover, lagged effects seem to be stronger than contemporaneous variables.

The paper is a first attempt of using non-linear modelling to shipbuilding cycles, giving indications that could be included in relevant investment policies.

The literature mostly investigates the business cycle transmission of the United Kingdom (UK) and France as a part of a wider group (e.g. European Exchange Rate Mechanism or G7), despite their historical links and regional significance. Thus, herein paper aims to analyse the inter-dependence of these economies and how a shock from one of them affects the other for the data since 1978 to 2019.

In this paper, first, preliminary statistics were calculated in order to describe the historical relationship between these countries. The econometric part estimates the vector auto-regression model (VAR) to assess the inter-dependence of the economies. VAR model allows further to inspect the impulse response functions that shows the shock dynamics from one country to another. In order to verify if a shock from one of the economies is important to another, the study uses granger causality test.

The study establishes a strong link between these countries. A business cycle is transmitted significantly between the economies of France and UK, with a single standard deviation shock from France resulting in a long term effect of 0.4% change in gross domestic product (GDP) of UK and 1% vice versa. Additionally changes in GDP of both of the countries significantly Granger-cause change to GDP of the corresponding economy.

This is the first empirical study investigating the business cycle transmission between France and UK and providing a quantitative assessment of their inter-dependence.

Previous approaches have employed the SCOR model for evaluating supply chain management, and in particular, have focused on cash-to-cash cycle time (C2C). This paper reviews the Supply Chain Index (SCI) developed by Supply Chain Insight LLC, which evaluates supply chain performance based on balance, strength, and resiliency. The main aim of this study is to review SCI as a new methodology to measure performance management, as well as to apply C2C for a case study of Korean firms, to compare and present differences for further complementary application.

In the early 1930s, Nicholas Kaldor could be classified as an Austrian economist. The author reconstructs the intertwined paths of Kaldor and Friedrich A. Hayek to disequilibrium economics through the theoretical deficiencies exposed by the Austrian theory of capital and its consequences on equilibrium analysis.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The integration of capital theory into a business cycle theory by the Austrians and its shortcomings – e.g. criticized by Piero Sraffa and Gunnar Myrdal – called attention to the limitation of the theoretical apparatus of equilibrium analysis in dynamic contexts. This was a central element to Kaldor’s emancipation in 1934 and his subsequent conversion to John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). In addition, it was pivotal to Hayek’s reformulation of equilibrium as a social coordination problem in “Economics and Knowledge” (1937). It also had implications for Kaldor’s mature developments, such as the construction of the post-Keynesian models of growth and distribution, the Cambridge capital controversy, and his critique of neoclassical equilibrium economics.

The close encounter between Kaldor and Hayek in the early 1930s, the developments during that decade and its mature consequences are unexplored in the secondary literature. The author attempts to construct a coherent historical narrative that integrates many intertwined elements and personas (e.g. the reception of Knut Wicksell in the English-speaking world; Piero Sraffa’s critique of Hayek; Gunnar Myrdal’s critique of Wicksell, Hayek, and Keynes; the Hayek-Knight-Kaldor debate; the Kaldor-Hayek debate, etc.) that were not connected until now by previous commentators.

The study uses the multivariate GARCH-BEKK model (which was first proposed by Baba et al. (1990) and then further developed by Engle and Kroner (1995)) to examine the return and volatility spillover between India and four leading Asian (namely, China, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong) and two global (namely, the United Kingdom and the United States) equity markets.

The study employs a multivariate GARCH-BEKK model to quantify return correlation and volatility transmission across the pre- and post-2008 global financial crisis periods (apart from other conventional time series modelling like cointegration, Granger causality using vector error correction model (VECM)).

The results show a tendency of the Indian stock market index to move along with the US and Hong Kong market indices. The decrease in the value of the co-integration coefficient during the recession was explained by reduced investor confidence in developing countries. The result further shows a clear distinction in terms of volatility spillover between the Asian market vis-a-vis US and UK markets. Volatility transmission from India to Asian markets was found to be significantly higher as compared to the US and UK. So also, the study’s results show a puzzling result giving us comparable co-integration ranks for phase 2 (expansion) and phase 3 (slow-down) of the business cycle in most cases.

In Granger causality testing, the results were unable to ascertain the difference between phase 2 (expansion) and phase 3 (slowdown). However, the multivariate GARCH (MGARCH)-BEKK model showed a clear reduction in volatility transmission to NIFTY50 (is the flagship index on the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. (NSE)) as India entered slow-down. This shows that the Indian economy does go through different business cycles, and the changes in parameters hence prove hypothesis 3 to be true with respect to volatility transmission to India from International markets.

The results show that for all countries, the volatility transmitted to India increases significantly going from phase 1 (recession) to phase 2 (expansion) and reduces again once the countries enter slow-down in phase 3 (slowdown). This shows that during expansion shocks and impulses in international markets affect the Indian markets significantly, supporting the increase in co-integration in phase 2 (expansion). During expansion, developing markets like India become profitable for investors, due to the high growth rate when compared to developed countries. This implies that a significant amount of capital enters Indian markets, which is susceptible to the volatility of international markets. The volatility transmission from India to the US and UK was insignificant in phase 1 (recession and recovery) and phase 3 (slow-down) showing a weak linkage between the markets during volatile time periods.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of global macro and other risk factors of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)- and National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (NASDAQ)-listed shipping companies’ stock returns from January 2001 to December 2019.

The methodological design includes multi-factor regressions for individual companies, augmented versions of these regressions to examine the likely impact of additional factors and finally panel regressions to assess the impact risk factors on all companies simultaneously. Estimations are done via ordinary least squares and the generalized method of moments.

Multi-factor model results showed that some of the US-specific and global macro risk factors surfaced as statistically significant for most of the companies and appeared to exhibit a consistent pattern in the way they affected shipping stocks. Thus, these companies’ exposures emanate mostly from the general US market’s movements and to a lesser extent from other firm-specific factors. Second, from the results of panel specifications, this study observes that domestic risk factors such as unemployment, inflation rates and industrial production growth emerged as significant for the NYSE-listed companies. As regard, the NASDAQ-listed ones, it was found that Libor and the G20 inflation rate were also affecting their stock returns.

Companies examined are listed only in the US’s NYSE and NASDAQ. Hence, companies listed elsewhere were excluded. It may be concluded that these US exchange-listed companies abide mostly by domestic fundamentals and to some extent to selected global factors.

The significance of the findings in this study pertains to global investors and shipping companies’ managers alike. Specifically, given the differential sensitivities of the shipping companies to various risk factors (and the global business cycle, in general), it is possible to view the shipping companies’ stocks as a separate, alternate asset class in a global, well-diversified portfolio. Thus, such a broader portfolio would permit investors to earn positive returns and reduce overall risk. Managers of shipping companies would also benefit from the findings in this study in the sense that they should better understand the varying exposures of their companies to changing global and domestic macro conditions and successfully navigate their companies through business cycles.

Research on the global shipping industry has lagged behind and was mainly concentrated on the investigation of the sources of shipping finance and capital structure of shipping companies, investment and valuation, corporate governance and risk measurement and management. Empirical research on the potential micro and macro determinants of the stock returns of shipping companies, however, is scant. This paper fills the gap in the literature of identifying and evaluating the various macroeconomic, US and international risk, factors that affect shipping companies’ stock returns in a highly financially integrated world.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the flash crash, and explain why and how it happened.

The author summarizes several studies suggesting various perspectives on the flash crash and its causes. Furthermore, the author highlights recently proposed and introduced improvements and regulations to reduce the risk of having similar market collapses in the future.

It is an overview paper that highlights the state of the art on the subject.

Paper does not report any research findings of the author.

High-frequency trading (HFT) along with its pros and cons is the new normal for most of the current electronic trading activity in the markets. It is well recognized by the experts that HFT may have its important shortcomings whenever the rules and regulations are not up to date to match the technological progress offering faster computational and execution capabilities.

HFT has created a societal discussion about its benefits and potential deficiencies as the common practice for trading due to potentially unequal access to market data by various categories of participants. Such arguments help the regulators to develop improvements to reduce the market risk and nurture more robust and fair markets for all.

The paper has a tutorial value and summarizes the current state of HFT. The readers of more interest are guided to the most relevant literature for further reading.

This paper aims to investigate the possible non-linear effect of net working capital (NWC) level on profitability for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region listed companies. Furthermore, the study tests the possible interactive effect of cash levels on the relationship between NWC and profitability.

NWC level is the independent variable and profitability is the dependent variable using two proxies, return on assets (ROA) and returns on equity (ROE). Control variables are size, leverage, gross domestic product growth and sales revenue growth. The generalized method of moments was used to analyze the data of 134 consumer-goods listed firms in 12 MENA countries for the period 2013–2019.

The results demonstrate that NWC levels had a non-linear effect on profitability using ROA as a profitability proxy while results were insignificant using ROE as a profitability proxy. Furthermore, results show the absence of interactive effects between NWC, cash levels and both profitability proxies.

The study fills a gap in the working capital management (WCM) literature by providing new evidence on WCM’s non-linear effect of corporate performance in the MENA region emerging markets using the consumer-goods industry sample. The study contributes to the financial managers’ working capital optimization efforts in the MENA region by providing evidence on the usefulness of WC optimization efforts in the region from a financial performance point of view. According to the researchers’ knowledge, a few studies attempted to investigate this non-linear relationship for neither MENA region countries nor the consumer-goods industry.