Narrow Results

Developing economies are aiming to upgrade the sophistication of their exports. Previous studies have explored the drivers of export sophistication. However, the intellectual property rights (IPR) protection has attracted little attention. This paper studies how IPR protection affects export sophistication. The empirical results show that in developing countries, foreign direct investment (FDI) and imports play a mediating role in the relationship between IPR protection and export sophistication; while for developed countries, the corresponding mediating effects rely on research and development (R&D) and FDI. In addition, when making a more accurate classification of developing countries' imports and inward FDI origin, we find that the mediating effect depends on South–South imports and North–South FDI.

We analyze cross-correlation between return fluctuations of stocks of an emerging market by using random matrix theory (RMT). We test the statistics of eigenvalues of cross-correlation (C) between stocks of the Tehran Price Index (TEPIX) as an emerging market and compare these with a mature market (US market). According to the "null hypothesis," a random correlation matrix constructed from mutually uncorrelated time series, the deviation from the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble of RTM is a good criterion. We find that a majority of the eigenvalues of C fall within the bulk (RMT bounds between λ₊ and λ_-) for the eigenvalues of the random correlation matrices. Further, we find that the distribution of eigenvector components for the eigenvectors corresponding to the largest deviating eigenvalues, display systematic deviations from the RMT prediction. Analyzing the components of the deviating eigenvectors by Inverse Participation Ratio, leads us to know that the largest eigenvalue corresponds to an influence common to the whole market. Our analysis of the other deviating eigenvectors shows distinct industries, whose identities corresponds to the structure of the Iran business environment.