Does economic self‐interest determine public attitudes toward immigrants? An econometric case study in Japan

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Abstract

We examine two economic self-interest hypotheses regarding the determinants of public attitudes toward immigrants: (1) the labor market hypothesis, which states that the employment and wage impacts of immigration determine the public attitudes, and (2) the welfare state hypothesis, which states that natives hold negative perceptions of immigrants due to concerns that they may strain the country's welfare budget. The first hypothesis predicts that natives' education will affect pro-immigrant attitudes more positively when immigrants come from lower income countries. The second hypothesis predicts that natives' income affects the pro-immigrant attitudes more negatively when immigrants come from lower income countries. We use the Japanese General Social Survey, which asks respondents' tolerance toward immigrants from different countries, allowing us to control for unobserved individual characteristics through a method akin to the fixed effect estimation. Our results indicate no difference in the effects of education and income on pro-immigrant attitudes regardless of whether immigrants come from high- or low-income countries. We conclude that economic self-interest does not explain Japanese public attitudes toward immigrants. We discuss the policy implications about how to improve public attitudes toward immigrants.

The impact of compulsory primary education law on the educational attainment of children: Evidence from Vietnam

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Abstract

This study examines the short-term impact of the compulsory primary education law (CPEL) on the educational attainment of children in Vietnam. This study uses the 1999 Vietnam Population and Housing Census and survival analysis to account for the right-censoring problem in the educational outcomes of children. The study found that CPEL reduces the dropout rate of children by 12%. However, the effect is minor, especially when compared with the impact of family income and parents' education. This finding is similar to those of other studies, suggesting that in addition to CPEL, other family income support and parent-oriented policies are crucial to improving children's educational attainment.

Family planning and fertility inequality: Evidence from the abolition of China’s one‐child policy

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Abstract

This study takes China's one-child policy (OCP)—a widely known policy intervention for family planning—as an example to illustrate that an income-based penalty scheme for above-quota births may cause fertility inequality. A couple can legally have only one child under the OCP, and those who exceed the quota are subject to fines. To ensure that this penalty scheme does not biasedly affect only low-income people who are relatively more sensitive to fines of a certain amount, it was designed to be income-based, which makes the perceived cost of the rich equal to that of the poor. However, we find that due to the limited liability nature of the financial penalty, it unintentionally created fertility inequality that favors the poor. Relying on city-year-level panel data, we find that this mechanism partly explains the lower birth rates in rich cities in the OCP era; the gap narrowed rapidly after the OCP abolition.

The impact of COVID‐19 pandemic on the Thai economy and the effectiveness of monetary policy: A Bayesian DSGE model approach

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Abstract

This study estimates a medium-scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for the Thai economy to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic containment policy on key macroeconomic aggregates. The shock to labor supply is considered as the main transmission channel. The paper discussed the role of monetary policy in regard to economic recovery and also identified the dominant shocks driving the business cycle. Thai quarterly series from 2011Q1 to 2021Q2 is used for the Bayesian estimation of the model. Though the pandemic shock caused a sharp decline in output, consumption and investment, the results suggest a fast recovery in the growth rates of the variables in about 2.5 years. At the same time, the dominant shocks that account for output variation in the medium to long term are investment, labor supply and productivity shocks. Monetary policy is effective in shortening the recovery due to its impact on private investment. The key drivers of Thai household consumption in the long run are investment, labor supply and productivity shocks. On average, the investment shock appears to be the key driver of the business cycle at all horizons.

Machine learning to predict grains futures prices

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Abstract

Accurate commodity price forecasts are crucial for stakeholders in agricultural supply chains. They support informed marketing decisions, risk management, and investment strategies. Machine learning methods have significant potential to provide accurate forecasts by maximizing out-of-sample accuracy. However, their inherent complexity makes it challenging to understand the appropriate data pre-processing steps to ensure proper functionality. This study compares the forecasting performance of Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural Networks (LSTM-RNNs) with classical econometric time series models for corn futures prices. The study considers various combinations of data pre-processing techniques, variable clusters, and forecast horizons. Our results indicate that LSTM-RNNs consistently outperform classical methods, particularly for longer forecast horizons. In particular, our findings demonstrate that LSTM-RNNs are capable of automatically handling structural breaks, resulting in more accurate forecasts when trained on datasets that include such shocks. However, in our setting, LSTM-RNNs struggle to deal with seasonality and trend components, necessitating specific data pre-processing procedures for their removal.

Using machine learning and 10‐K filings to measure innovation

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a text-based measure of innovation using latent Dirichlet allocation on a sample of 45,409 10-K filings from US listed companies. We expect that the text-based innovation measure is associated with innovation and can be used to measure innovation for companies without patents or significant research and development expenditures. The empirical results are consistent with these assumptions, but reveal that thorough initial testing is required to ensure robustness. This study extends the research on innovation measurement and company disclosures, and provides a new method for assessing innovation using company disclosures.

Can asset‐backed securitisation reduce corporate leverage? Evidence from China

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Abstract

Although Chinese regulatory authorities view corporate asset-backed securitisation as a powerful tool for deleveraging, its effectiveness remains unexamined. Employing a look-through approach to data from nonfinancial corporate asset-backed securitisation transactions in China, we identify the actual originators and examine the impact of corporate asset-backed securitisation on their leverage ratios. Regrettably, we find that corporate asset-backed securitisation significantly increases the leverage ratio. This result holds true across both state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises, as well as large-scale and small-scale enterprises. Finally, this study reveals that the effect of corporate asset-backed securitisation on the leverage ratio is partially mediated by internal financing capacity.

The market value of cash holdings from related‐party sales: The role of source of cash flows

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Abstract

This paper finds that investors evaluate cash holdings differently based on the source of cash flows. Using cash flows from related-party sales as a proxy for diverse sources, we find that shareholders discount the value of cash holdings for firms with higher cash flows from related-party sales. We find that firms use related-party sales cash flows differently; cash flows from related-party sales are more likely to be retained as internal cash reserves or distributed as dividends, rather than utilised for necessary investments. We further document a negative valuation of investments for firms with more related-party sales.

Comments of the AFAANZ Auditing and Assurance Standards Committee on Proposed International Standard on Auditing 570 (Revised) Going Concern

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) issued for public comment Proposed International Standard on Auditing 570 (Revised) Going Concern. The Australian Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (AUASB) and New Zealand Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (NZAuASB) also called for comments. The Auditing and Assurance Standards Committee of AFAANZ prepared a submission, based on the findings reported in extant research, informing a number of the questions asked by the IAASB. This technical note presents the formal submission made to the IAASB.

Does the proliferation of smartphones reduce consumer search costs? The case of the Korean gasoline market

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Abstract

This study treats the introduction of smartphones and access to the Korean gasoline market as a natural experiment, investigating how they affect consumer search costs. We estimate consumer search costs in different regional districts in Seoul and examine how smartphone proliferation affects search costs. Our findings indicate that the widespread use of smartphones reduced consumer search costs, and this reduction was more significant in districts with higher competition across firms. We can also infer that reduced search costs narrowed the market's dispersion of prices and markups.