Narrow Results

We investigate how corporate governance influences R&D across 13 emerging markets. We find that superior corporate governance increases corporate R&D spending. These results suggest that corporate governance may influence management's discretion to avoid risky innovative projects. We also find that the link between firm-level governance and corporate R&D is stronger in countries with weaker country-level governance. These results suggest substitutability between firm and country governance in generating innovation activities.

A growing volume of studies indicate that the information asymmetry problem is a serious issue which significantly hinders stock market development. This problem is more pronounced in emerging markets with weak institutions. The domination of large shareholders in a firm might be a cause of information asymmetry because they are commonly believed to have access to private and value-relevant information. The current paper offers insight into the relationship between multiple large shareholder ownership and stock market information asymmetry in the context of Vietnam, an important emerging market. Employing fixed effects and GMM estimators for a panel data sample of firms listed on the Ho Chi Minh City stock exchange covering the period 2007–2015, the results suggest that the concentration of large shareholder ownership is positively and significantly associated with information asymmetry. This finding has strong implications for policy making process in promoting stock market development.

Market efficiency is an area of enormous interest in financial literature. Numerous researchers conducted empirical studies in testing weak-form market efficiency in several stock markets and employed various techniques but the empirical evidence is controversial. Triangulation econometric approach is employed to assess the predictability of daily return series of Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) and to test the null hypothesis of random walk model. The empirical results reject the null hypothesis of random walk model for the daily return series of BSE for the period of 1989–2005 and evidenced serial autocorrelation of return series, which clearly indicate predictability and volatility of security prices of Botswana market. However, the empirical evidence of both non-parametric (Kolmogrov–Smirnov: normality test and run test) and parametric test (Auto-correlation test, Auto-regressive model, ARIMA model) reject the hypothesis of random walk model and indeed violate the notion of weak-form market efficiency.

This paper investigates the underlying factors that determine share returns on the Dhaka Stock Exchange. The empirical analysis does not support the critical condition of the Capital Asset Pricing Model of a positive relationship between share return and beta. However, it shows that variables such as size, price to book, volume of shares traded, earnings yield and cash flow yield have a significant influence on share returns. The degree and direction of relationship among the variables are similar to other emerging markets, but are not always consistent with developed markets perhaps due to lack of homogeneous expectations regarding risk return characteristics and different market microstructure.

This study attempts to address two research questions on the idiosyncratic return volatility and stock price informativeness. First, whether idiosyncratic return volatility is a valid proxy for stock price informativeness in emerging markets, and if it is, whether there exists a monotonic relationship between the idiosyncratic return volatility and stock price informativeness throughout the whole sample. We find that the idiosyncratic return volatility reflects the stock price informativeness in China. However, such a relationship does not exist in a monotonic fashion. These results indicate that idiosyncratic return volatility serves as an information measure, but must be used with caution.

This paper has presented a case of the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technology in telecommunications in Pakistan. Through an exploratory case study, it has explored the need for IoT technology, the role of the telecom sector in IoT development, IoT strategies and business models adopted, challenges confronted, and benefits gained by telecom operators in Pakistan. The business-centric, customer-centric, and country-centric approaches were the basis for IoT technology adoption by telecom operators. By providing networks and connectivity, the telecom sector has played a significant role in the development of IoT. The telecom operators have developed their business strategies and used different business models to capitalize on their digital enabler role in the IoT domain. They also have faced challenges related to technological integration, infrastructure resources, and human resources when adopting IoT technology. The benefits realized by telecom operators were improved operational planning and processes, increased productivity, enhanced organizational performance, and IoT knowledge. These findings can guide practitioners, regulators, and policymakers in understanding the opportunities and implications of IoT in telecommunications.

By comparing respondents in Egypt and the United States this paper examines whether the rise of virtual social networks to support entrepreneurship may be more important in driving entrepreneurial intent in countries undergoing disruption. Further, this research developed a new factor of “social media self-efficacy” as a predictor of perceived behavioral control in entrepreneurial intent. Results were analyzed using Partial Least Squares (PLS), employing the double bootstrap comparison method for improved accuracy. Social media self-efficacy provided significant, unique variance for both samples in predicting perceived behavioral control above and beyond the contribution of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and access to entrepreneurial resources. Social media self-efficacy was significantly more influential for Egyptians than for Americans in predicting perceived behavioral control; entrepreneurial self-efficacy and access to resources were significantly more influential for Americans. This research introduces a framework for conceptualizing a social media role in promoting entrepreneurship, with an emphasis on its likely importance for contexts suffering from institutional voids or severe institutional instability.

The significance of digital transformation for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), especially in the time of disruption, is frequently demonstrated by research. Nevertheless, not much consideration is placed on how digital transformation is experienced by SMEs. This study examines how SME digital transformation will be affected by CEOs’ digital literacy from a micro-foundation viewpoint. Utilizing survey data from 292 SMEs located in Indonesia, we evaluate a moderated mediation model. According to our research, CEOs’ digital literacy affects digital transformation through digital technology utilization. Additionally, CEOs’ gender further influence the association between CEOs’ digital literacy and digital technology utilization. Our work is among initial endeavors to assess the digital transformation among SMEs in an emerging nation such as Indonesia. Despite the urgent need for SMEs to digitally transform and the importance of CEOs’ digital capabilities in accelerating this process, none of the identified existing studies examines SME digital transformation from a micro-foundation perspective, specifically on the link between CEOs’ digital literacy and digital transformation and how digital technology utilization mediates this link, which makes this study unique.

Our paper investigates the influence of state ownership on the linkage between revenue diversification and risk of Vietnam domestic commercial banks in the period 2009–2018. By using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation for a dynamic panel model, the empirical results indicate that Vietnamese domestic commercial banks with higher state equity are promoted to take more risks in the revenue diversification process. Our findings are robustly checked by a variety of measures of banking risk, income diversification, and state equity. Empirical results from our dynamic model are not only accordant with the previous findings of Batten and Vo [(2016). Bank risk shifting and diversification in an emerging market. Risk Management, 18(4), 217–235] estimated by Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression on the positive relationship between banking risk and income diversification in Vietnamese domestic commercial banks but also provide new evidence on the tradeoff relationship between risk-return in the operating strategy of Vietnamese state-owned banks in the post-financial crisis. This paper proposes a framework for evaluating the nexus between revenue diversification and risk from the state ownership aspect in other frontier markets.

This study aims to measure the volatility behavior and movement property of the Nifty Index through the strap option strategies by using the trigonometric ratio of options (tan $\theta$). These strategies have been analyzed on the data from 2007 to 2020 on a monthly basis. Long and short strap strategies have been used in this analysis. In both strap option strategies, the angle $\theta$ lies more in the bearish volatility quadrant and the range-bound movement quadrant, which indicates that any trader on the Nifty can consistently apply the short strap option for profit generation trading in Nifty.

This study contributes to the literature by evaluating the ability of Altman’s Z”-score model to predict the economic distress of 12 Kazakh banks over the period 2008–2014. The original Z”-score model with a cut-off point implied by Altman (2005) produced a prediction accuracy ratio of 44.05% and correctly classifies 76.19% of the observations as an economically distressed group. This study then re-estimates the model using three approaches, namely, the “leave-one-out”, Direct, and Wilks’ methods, and identifies new, optimal cut-off points for the re-estimated models. The re-estimated models, together with the new, optimal cut-off points, improved the prediction accuracy ratio to 70% and correctly classified over 90% of the observations originally assigned to the economically distressed group. The results imply that the Kazakh banking regulator and other market participants could use Altman’s Z”-score model to detect economically distressed banks.

The challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic have made it an undeniable fact that digital technologies provide the strongest means to transform industries and markets. Technology ventures bear a notable role in supplying these tools to incumbents, governments, and indeed to small conventional companies, which all thrive to adjust themselves to the “new normal.” Thereupon, this chapter seeks to examine the impact of digital economy ventures by demonstrating their role to advance digital transformation efforts in an emerging market context. In doing so, it depicts striking examples from Turkey regarding; (i) the collaboration between incumbents and digital economy ventures, (ii) the rise of new stars exploiting digital economy opportunities, and (iii) the ventures using digitalization to create social impact for extremely vulnerable actors.