Developing economies and the emergence of new stakeholder group: an examination of stakeholders in the Chinese stock market

As a consequence of the development of the Chinese economy, there has been an emergence of “new” stakeholder groups for the Chinese listed firms. New stakeholder groups include creditors, regulatory agencies, private investors, professional associations and environmentalists. With the use of secondary data, a review was undertaken to explore the emergence of these new stakeholder groups and discuss their influence over listed firms in China. The stakeholder typology developed by Mitchell et al (1997) is used to identify stakeholder attributes of each stakeholder group and assess their stakeholder power. The changes of stakeholder power over the years mirror China’s transition from a centrally planned economy to a more market oriented one.

Estimating the equity risk premium for economies in the Asian region

The Equity Risk Premium (ERP) is widely used in economic and financial analysis, yet it is difficult to find empirical estimates of the ERP that are generally accepted. The paucity of data in Asian economies exacerbates the problems of estimation. This study estimates the ERP for the larger market-orientated Asian economies and compares the estimates with those of the United States. Surprisingly, of the seven economies examined, the ERP of four cannot be statistically differentiated from that of the United States.

Does oil price volatility matter for Asian emerging economies?

This article investigates the impact of oil price volatility on six major emerging economies in Asia using time-series cross-section and time-series econometric techniques. To assess the robustness of the findings, we further implement such heterogeneous panel data estimation methods as Mean Group (MG), Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCEMG) and Augmented Mean Group (AMG) estimators to allow for cross-sectional dependence. The empirical results reveal that oil price volatility has a detrimental effect on these emerging economies. In the short run, oil price volatility influenced output growth in China and affected both GDP growth and inflation in India. In the Philippines, oil price volatility impacted on inflation, but in Indonesia, it impacted on both GDP growth and inflation before and after the Asian financial crisis. In Malaysia, oil price volatility impacted on GDP growth, although there is notably little feedback from the opposite side. For Thailand, oil price volatility influenced output growth prior to the Asian financial crisis, but the impact disappeared after the crisis. It appears that oil subsidization by the Thai Government via introduction of the oil fund played a significant role in improving the economic performance by lessening the adverse effects of oil price volatility on macroeconomic indicators.

Aid and institutions in transition economies

We investigate whether aid contributed to institutional development in transition economies. We find that aid flows have a positive effect on democratization, especially on constraints on the executive and political participation. At the same time, total aid has no effect on overall quality of governance, while US aid appears to have a negative impact on some dimensions of governance. Aid's differential impact on democracy and governance is consistent with uneven development of institutions and the democracy consolidation hypothesis. We also find that aid has a non-linear effect on democracy. Openness has a positive effect on both democracy and good governance. Oil resources have an adverse effect on democracy. Adult mortality, civil war and adherence to Islam are all detrimental to good governance.

Golden opportunities: a horizon scan to expand sandy beach ecology

Robust ecological paradigms and theories should, ideally, hold across several ecosystems. Yet, limited testing of generalities has occurred in some habitats despite these habitats offering unique features to make them good model systems for experiments. We contend this is the case for the ocean-exposed sandy beaches. Beaches have several distinctive traits, including extreme malleability of habitats, strong environmental control of biota, intense cross-boundary exchanges, and food webs highly reliant on imported subsidies. Here we sketch broad topical themes and theoretical concepts of general ecology that are particularly well-suited for ecological studies on sandy shores. These span a broad range: the historical legacies and species traits that determine community assemblages; food-web architectures; novel ecosystems; landscape and spatial ecology and animal movements; invasive species dynamics; ecology of disturbances; ecological thresholds and ecosystem resilience; and habitat restoration and recovery. Collectively, these concepts have the potential to shape the outlook for beach ecology and they should also encourage marine ecologists to embrace, via cross-disciplinary ecological research, exposed sandy beach systems that link the oceans with the land.

Economic freedom and productivity growth in resource-rich economies

The focus of this paper is to test whether free market institutions that protect property rights and support freedom of choice and voluntary exchange can change the curse of natural resources into a blessing. To examine the above question, this paper uses the Fraser Institute's economic freedom index and its five sub-indices, namely government size, property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade, and setting proper regulations. Using data from 99 sample countries over the period 1970-2010, the system GMM estimates suggest that the negative growth effects of resource rents may turn positive in countries with greater economic freedom.