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Abstract - A Theory of Currency Unions and Equity Price Shocks
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Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of financial shocks on per capita national income of multiple currency unions in different geographic locations. Though exposure to financial market shock is hardly considered and not generally measured as an important convergence criterion for unionization, currency unions are generally formed to attain greater regional and global economic integration. As a general theory, this paper finds that shocks to equity prices have imprecise implications for the performance of currency unions with divergent sources of income, different currency arrangements, evolutionary trade alliances, and unequal financial exposure. Specifically, historical alliances, geographic proximity, or even union membership, may not provide sufficient explanation for income volatility in currency unions after an exposure to equity price shocks. By utilizing annual time series data without seasonal adjustments to decompose variances, this paper finds that changes in equity prices may not significantly account for the volatility in per capita income of currency unions with weak intra-union trading patterns and less stringent currency arrangements. Keywords: Currency Unions, financial shocks, national income, variance decomposition. |
Abstract - Theravada Buddhism and Thai Luxury Fashion Consumption
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Abstract: This paper reviews the Thai national character according to Hofstede’s (1991, 2001, 2017) cultural dimension theory and Komin’s (1991) nine values cluster (Psychology of the Thai people), analyses the social hierarchy of Thai consumers according to the Luxury 4P Taxonomy (Han et al., 2010), integrates the Theory of Cultural Capital (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986), and expounds the features of social class. The global luxury fashion industry has grown significantly in recent years, but much of the research has been limited to conspicuous consumption and social identity. This paper involves religious beliefs that are argued to influence luxury purchasing motives. The purpose of the paper is to develop an analytical framework to aid in understanding luxury fashion consumption in a Buddhist country such as Thailand in order to inform luxury products vendors on how to improve their marketing strategies. Keywords: Luxury fashion consumption, Purchasing motives, Buddhist beliefs, Marketing strategies, Thailand. |
Abstract - Defining the Role of Competition in the Airport Industry: A Critical Assessment
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Abstract: Defining the relevant market is a preliminary step in every assessment of the degree of Significant Market Power (SMP). A firm with total market power can raise prices without losing any customers to competitors. SMP exists when prices exceed marginal cost and long run average cost, so the firm makes economic profits. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. On the one hand, a critical assessment of the role of competition in an industry/sector is performed. To this end, we discuss the most recent quantitative and qualitative techniques in market delineation. On the other hand, we try to shed some light on the competitive constraints in the Cypriot airport industry where little prior knowledge is evident. Although the airport industry is a crucial economic sector and has oligopolistic, to some extent even monopolistic structure, there is no standard and universal approach established by the National Competition Authorities (NCAs) for exact categorization of market delineation. Τhis paper tries to perform a thorough market power assessment in order to analyse all the competitive constraints faced by an airport operator, regardless of whether they arise from within or outside the relevant market(s). Keywords: Competition, Relevant market, Significant market power, Airport industry. |
Abstract - Market Efficiency in the MENA Equity Markets: Evidence from Newly Developed Tests and Regime Change
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Abstract: A major issue in financial economics is the behavior of stock market returns over long horizons. This paper provides an empirical investigation of the random walk hypothesis in the MENA equity markets. We use the variance ratio tests developed by Wright (2000), Kim and Wang and Chow Denning (1993) to test for the weak form market efficiency. Then, we use the unit root tests proposed by Saikkonen and Lütkepohl (2002) and Lanne et al. (2002), which allow for a level shift in the data generating process. Our results confirm the stationarity of the MENA equity markets returns in the presence of structural breaks, with the breaks happening mostly during the 2008 and 2009 periods. Further, the findings from our sub-samples indicate that the results from the last sub-periods support the belief that these markets may have been approaching a state of being fairly weak-form efficient, which reflects the future prospects of the MENA countries. Keywords: Random Walk Hypothesis, MENA Equity Markets, Emerging Markets, Weak-form Market Efficiency. |
