Search

We examine the effect of several agricultural factors in determining the likelihood of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the global agricultural and food sector. We find that, better acquirer (target) country agricultural resources, productivity, and environments are associated with lower (higher) likelihood of cross-border M&As. Further analyses suggest that these agricultural factors have similar though weaker effects in non-agricultural deals. Overall, we highlight the important roles played by such agricultural factors in determining cross-border M&As, especially in the agricultural and food sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vietnamese government is concerned with long‐term food security due to the rising demand for food and potential climate‐induced conversion of areas under food production. This article is among the first studies which examine the climate‐induced uptake of crop substitution and its likely impact on the national target of maintaining food areas to sustain food security. In contrast to most crop choice analyses which obtain cross‐household evidence using a Multinomial Logit model, we model within household competition across alternative uses of land using a Fractional Multinomial Logit model. Our empirical findings suggest that Vietnamese farmers have adapted to the changing climate by selecting different crops. Increases in winter and summer temperatures mean that farmers are more likely to substitute cereals for others. Farmers choose annual industrial crops in locations with warmer springs and autumns. The choice of perennial industrial crops is sensitive to spring and autumn temperatures. Precipitation has small impacts on land use choice. The projected climate changes are not likely to jeopardize the national target of maintaining 40 percent of farmland under food production. However, we expect projected climate changes to result in large shifts from cereals to annual industrial crops in the main rice bowl of Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores New Zealand fresh fruit and vegetables import survival from 1989 to 2019 and identifies the key determinants. We find that around 58% of trade relationships survived only 1 year. Significant factors influencing the hazard rate of import survival are the number of entries, distance, per capita gross domestic product, production, import prices, and the number of import origins and export destinations. However, the estimated impacts of the phytosanitary treatments covered in New Zealand Import Health Standards are mixed and associated with exporting countries' level of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business cultural diversity is particularly important in the Banking sector. Using 2002 to 2018 data from 516 banks across the globe, this study provides evidence–both board diversity and workforce diversity have a significant negative relationship with ethics compliance costs, implying that enhancing diversity in the board room and employee workforce improves the ethical performance of banks. And, the results show a significant positive relationship between diversity compliance costs and ethics compliance costs. We further demonstrate a significant inverse U‐shape between diversity in the workforce and costs of business unethical behavior in the banking sector. The results remain statistically and quantitatively unchanged from further robustness tests and endogeneity estimates. Overall, this paper sheds light and highlights the important role of diversity in shaping banks' ethics activities and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding the availability of hybrid rice varieties has been regarded as the most important measure addressing food security in developing Asian countries. The success story of hybrid rice production in China motivated the Vietnamese government to import hybrid seeds in an effort to increase rice productivity. Despite increased use of hybrid rice seeds and rising input intensity, rice productivity growth has slowed since 2006. Using a ten‐year balanced panel of households with changing adoption status, we estimate productivity impacts of hybrid rice adoption. We combine propensity score matching in adoption decisions with fixed‐effects estimators to control for heterogeneity in farming household and farmland characteristics. The frontier models are specified to allow for direct comparisons of the base productivity, factor productivity, and technical efficiency between hybrid and the current high‐yielding varieties. Our major finding is that hybrid rice varieties provide no productivity superiority over high‐yielding inbred seeds in our sample. A substantial technical efficiency gap (35%) exists in rice production, suggesting a potential benefit of improvements in management skills with the existing technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the co-integration relationship between sovereign bonds and credit default swaps (CDS) and then examines the impact of CDS-bond deviation from the relationship on market volatility using the Markov-switching approach. Our empirical sample consists of the daily CDS premium and bond yield spread obtained with the DataStream database for the period from 2008 to 2014. Our empirical results show that the absolute value of the CDS-bond deviation is positively related to the probability of a high volatility regime and negatively related to the probability of a low volatility regime. This result implies a positive association between the CDS-bond deviation and the volatility in the CDS-bond market. Our findings are consistent across mature-market and emerging-market countries. Moreover, the evidence we uncover suggests that the practice of managing default risk of bonds via the use of CDS may increase the interest rate risk of the bond, which implies both wins and woes from the introduction of CDS, particularly for mature-market countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents estimates of the value of statistical life (VSL) in rural Thailand using the contingent-valuation (CV) method. These estimates are applied to an economic analysis of landmine clearance. The estimated VSL of US$250,000 suggests that the value of lives saved from landmine clearance is at least an order of magnitude greater than the values used in existing studies. JEL classification--Jl7, 022 Key words--Asia, Thailand, benefit-cost analysis, contingent valuation, landmines, value of statistical life

The vast majority of farmers in the drylands are resource-poor smallholders, whose livelihoods depend heavily on their farming systems. Therefore, increasing the resilience of these smallholders is vital for their prosperity. This study quantified household resilience and identified livelihoods and their influence on resilience in the semiarid tropics of India by analysing 684 households. A resilience capacity index was devised based on the composition of household food and non-food expenditure, cash savings, and food and feed reserves. The index ranged from 8.4 reflecting highly resilient households with access to irrigation characteristics, to −3.7 for households with highly limited resilience and low household assets. The livelihoods were identified through multivariate analysis on selected socioeconomic and biophysical variables; households were heterogeneous in their livelihoods. Irrigated livestock and rainfed marginal types had the highest and lowest resilience capacity index with the mean score of 0.69 and −1.07, respectively. Finally, we quantified the influence of livelihood strategies on household resilience. Household resilience was strengthened by the possession of livestock, crop diversification and access to irrigation. Low resilience is predominantly caused by low household assets. The resilience capacity index and derived livelihood strategies helps to understand the complexity of household resilience, and will aid in targeting technology interventions for development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the economic impacts of changes in climatic conditions on Vietnamese agriculture. We apply the two‐step Hsiao method to a 10‐year panel of household data which focuses on the production of 20 crops across seven regions in Vietnam. This study allows for variable market feedbacks across regions that grow different selections of crops. In this way, our article differs from most panel Ricardian analyses which assume uniform market shocks on households. Our analysis also includes climate interactions to allow the effects of temperatures to be dependent on the levels of rainfall. Panel evidence from the Ricardian model suggests heterogeneous climate impacts across seasons and regions. Rising seasonal temperatures are associated with losses to most regions, with spring temperatures being the exception. Increases in summer precipitation are valuable to mitigate the negative effects of rising temperatures. Changes in climate normal should not be the focus of policymakers since the simulation indicates marginal losses to agricultural productivity, both in the short term and the long term. Regions with cool climates are likely to be most affected by the projected climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates if gender diversity on boards is an effective driver of financial performance. For this purpose, this study choses two countries, one of which has the soft law approach (Singapore) while the other has mandatory requirements (India) on corporate boards gender diversity. By doing so, it examines if there is a comparability between the listed firms of the two countries. Our results suggest that the gender diversity has a positive and significant effect on the financial performance of the firms of both the countries. Although, the gender diversity of the two countries does not seem to affect the growth opportunities of both the countries. Further, our results indicate that the board characteristics affect the performance positively and significantly when the sample is divided into five quantiles for the firms in these two countries. These findings have implications to the managerial decision making and relevance to stewardship theory and resource dependency theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: Krishna Reddy, Stuart Locke, Frank Scrimgeour, Abeyratna Gunasekarage The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of corporate governance practices of small cap companies have had on their financial performances. Previous studies have mainly examined governance practices of larger corporations. This analysis focuses on the governance variables that have been highlighted by the New Zealand Securities Commission (2004) governance principles and guidelines and also on the governance variables that are supported in the literature as providing an appropriate structure for the firm in the environment in which it operates. The data for 71 small cap companies listed in New Zealand over a five-year period from 2001 to 2005 was analysed. Pooled data, OLS and 2SLS regression techniques were used and Tobin's Q, ROA and OPINC were used as the dependent variables. The evidence does support the hypothesis that the existence of board independence and audit committee has enhanced firm financial performance, as measured by Tobin's Q.

The importance of culture on economic outcomes has been an element of ongoing research mainly in the disciplines outside of mainstream economics such as sociology and anthropology. From an economic perspective, there is a strong feeling among the corporate community that culture can be influential in business dealings. International trade is one area of business where cultural diversity can matter. This paper investigates the effect of trading partner cultural diversity on trade within the gravity model framework. The gravity model incorporates four measures to capture cultural diversity: religion, ethnicity, language and legal origin. Using data on New Zealand's trade with Asia and employing the panel corrected standard errors estimation procedure, the empirical findings reveal that Asian diversity in religion and languages is positively correlated with New Zealand–Asia trade. The results reveal that the expected effects of standard gravity variables, and we conclude that the cultural diversity of trading partners positively influences international trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public Ownership and the Community is Peter McKinlay's third book prepared for the Institute of Policy Studies since 1987 on matters pertaining to public sector reform. The focus of this [...]

The Young Economists' Prize is awarded annually for the best paper submitted to the Editor of New Zealand Economic Papers by an author who is under 30 years of age [...]

Modern primary industry makes obsolete the conventional analysis of private and social performance. This is due to the dominance of chain failure as opposed to the more familiar market failure. This paper makes the case that value addition dominates aspirations for primary industries, and vertical coordination and shifts in commercial power balances feature in the sharing of benefits within value chains. Moreover, complexity in chain relationships and some particular features of primary industry bring challenges to forward planning and concerted effort. Value addition in New Zealand's forestry and wood products' industry presents several such challenges, and these are examined with a qualitative system dynamics model. Potential policy responses that eliminate chain failure are discussed in association with the Australian beef industry research model. The paper advocates joint industry-university-government action in terms of research and skills development. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate measurement and interpretation of pollution emissions and reduction in these emissions is a crucial part of reporting to enhance environmental management and improve the sustainability of both business and the environment. This study uses industrial chemical release, as listed in Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs) as a proxy for environmental performance and presents toxicity weightings for over 90 chemicals in the Australian PRTR. It incorporates three different dimensions: human health, the environment, and exposure. The use of toxicity weighted emission indicators has far-reaching advantages for corporate managers and policy-makers, and external analysts. In contrast to mass-based emission indicators, it provides robust guidance for risk amelioration. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores bank lending to agriculture in Fiji, a small developing country. It examines bank lending by bank type—commercial bank lending and lending by the Fiji Development Bank (FDB), a non-commercial bank. The findings reveal the importance of both banking types as well as a significant drop in lending since 1993, despite the need to fund the agricultural sector to boost food production activities. Interest rates, government spending and food production strongly determine FDB lending to agriculture. The availability of arable land has a negative and significant effect on FDB lending to agriculture. The results show commercial banks are performing a slightly different role in the agricultural sector than the Fiji Development Bank; they appear to be unresponsive to economic variables that the FDB is responsive to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Zealand has been ranked consistently as one of the five least corrupt countries in the world (Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, TI-CPI) over the past 16 years, but may have suffered somewhat from its international renown. There is no clear legal definition of corruption in New Zealand. There is a rather diffuse institutional policing of whatever is considered to be corruption, an apparent growth of organised crime, and sometimes public controversy surrounding conflicts of interests in public procurement. Some concerns have been raised about the sale of state assets in the 1980s and 1990s. There is also occasionally evidence of corruption in high public offices and with the parliament's tardiness in ratifying the United Nations Convention against Corruption. TI-New Zealand has recently commented that the country's consistently high ranking on the CPI may actually discourage closer examination of these and other issues. Against this background, and with some comparative reference to Hong Kong and mainland China, this article seeks to move towards aframework for future research on corruption in New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines whether the corporate governance practices recommended by the New Zealand Securities Commission (NZSC) in 2004 have affected the financial performance of public sector corporate entities in New Zealand. The findings indicate that these entities have universally adopted the Securities Commission recommendations by establishing subcommittees for audit and remuneration, and having a majority of independent directors on the boards. The results show that leverage has a statistically significant positive effect on all performance measures. Both the Remuneration Committee and dividend payout have positive effects on performance when measured by sales to total assets. Board size and an Audit Committee have a positive effect on reducing agency cost. Results also show that entity risk and industry type also have a positive effect on performance and agency cost reduction. Entity size has a consistent negative effect across all performance measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper seeks to address the effect that principle-based corporate governance practices have on the financial performance of large publicly-listed companies. In 2004, the New Zealand Securities Commission (NZSC) promulgated nine high level principles and guidelines for all business entities with an aim of improving corporate governance practices and boosting investor confidence in the New Zealand capital market. This event provides a point for empirically testing companies' responses. Design/methodology/approach – Panel data for the NZX top 50 companies over the period 1999-2007 are analysed using ordinary least squares (OLS) and two stage least squares (2SLS) regression techniques to evaluate whether: those firms that were continuously compliant with the NZSC requirements perform better; and the firm performance post-NZSC recommendations is better than pre-NZSC recommendations. Tobin's Q, market-to-book (MB) and return on assets (ROA) metrics are used as dependent variables.. Findings – The findings indicate that large listed companies have universally adopted the Securities Commission recommendations, establishing subcommittees for audit and remuneration, and having a majority of non-executive/independent directors on the board which, on average, have seven members. There is support for the view that the NZSC recommendations have had positive influence on firm performance measured by Tobin's Q, MB and ROA. The results show that the presence of a remuneration committee has had a positive influence on firm performance. Research limitations/implications – This study provides empirical support for the corporate governance recommendations made by the NZSC in 2004, giving support to the principle-based corporate governance practices to be adopted in New Zealand. The sequential testing of each NZSC recommendation provides a comprehensive picture of performance outcomes which has not been achieved in prior research. The interdependency issues are of interest and the correlation between recommendations provides useful insights. Originality/value – This study offers insights for policy makers interested in adopting principle-based corporate governance practices within their country. Within New Zealand, public policy developments and stock exchange listing requirements/regulatory issues with associated compliance burdens are better informed as a consequence of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]