International Journal of Business and Development Studies

Recent strong growth of China’s exports has elevated the country to a rising global economic power and caused geo-political concern to policy-makers in the country and its trading partners world-wide. What are the determinants of this growth, how has it affected major economies in ASEAN (World Bank, 2009) in particular, and what kind of evidence-based responses are required and appropriate? The paper focuses on the first issue and introduces an endogenous trade model (ETM) and, using historical data, empirically investigates the causes of China’s exports in recent years for regional trade policy analysis. The ETM (see Tran Van Hoa, 2004, 2008a for earlier applications) is a system approach and contains improved structural and modelling features, in comparison to conventional gravity theory, panel regression and CGE/GTAP, to provide more credible outcomes and policy options in the sense of Friedman (1953) and Kydland (2006). Significantly, the ETM also incorporates multiple structural changes in the form of crises and policy reforms to accommodate and manage recent economic and financial developments in regional and global economies. Policy options and choice recommendations are, finally, suggested for debate and analysis

The Asia-Pacific region generates over half of global economic activity (54.2%) and about 43.7% of global trade, and is the most dynamic region in the global economy. At the core of this is an increasingly dynamic, vibrant and entrepreneurial small-medium sized enterprise sector. Advances in information and communications technology, market liberalisation and moves towards closer regional economic integration (e.g. ASEAN, and prospective ASEAN+1, ASEAN+3, ASEAN+5 and ASEAN+6 arrangements) provide new opportunities, as well as new challenges, for regional small business entrepreneurs. In conjunction with these developments has come the increased recognition by regional governments, particularly in the wake of the 1997-98 financial and economic crisis, of the need for expanded entrepreneurial activity in the context of small businesses for the generation of regional income, employment, exports, investment, economic growth, poverty alleviation and regional development. This would also facilitate comprehensive restructuring of corporate sectors, with the aim of improving transparency, improving corporate governance, developing globally competitive enterprises, and further developing the region’s burgeoning and economically significant production networks. This paper reviews the contribution of small-medium sized business entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region, the challenges and opportunities they face in the context of globalisation and regional developments, key capacity building areas, government support measures and potential competitiveness strategies for their survival and development.

Trade relationships built through production chains appear to be lasting due to relation-specific nature of the transactions, compared with the usual transactions of goods sold on the open market. This paper aims to verify such stability of international production networks at the global level, with special emphasis on intra-East Asian trade. A series of survival analyses provide an evidence suggesting that the stability of international production networks is a particularly prominent feature of East Asia. In addition, East Asian countries are more likely to engage in long-lasting trade relationships of intermediate goods with each other than with outsiders as well as compared to outside the region, unlike in the case of finished products.

We apply the two-sector production function developed by Ram (1986) to estimate the threshold regression model for Iran, concerning the effect of government size on economic growth. Three government size indicators are used to find out the different threshold points. The results show a non-linear relationship of the Armey curve in Iran, in which the threshold effects corresponding to total government expenditure share in GDP, government consumption expenditure share in GDP, and government investment expenditure share in GDP of about 34.7%, 23.6% and 8%, respectively.

This paper provides a critical perspective on entrepreneurial characteristics and gives an input to the discussion on the influence of entrepreneurial leadership, communication skills, determination and motivation on sales and customer satisfaction. It also presents the findings from an empirical study examining the structural effect of these four entrepreneurial characteristics on performance. Few have attempted to investigate the link between entrepreneurial characteristics and performance. It is said that entrepreneurial characteristics have positive associations with the firm’s performance. However, the link between entrepreneurial leadership, communication skills, determination and motivation on sales and customer satisfaction in the Malaysian context has not been fully addressed in empirical studies. To address this issue, this paper investigates the influence of these entrepreneurial characteristics on those performances using Pearson’s correlation, cluster analyses and structural equation modeling (SEM). The result of the study reveals that entrepreneurial leadership, communication skills, determination and motivation exhibit high and significant structural effects on sales and customer satisfaction. Findings of the study provide a striking demonstration regarding positive influences of certain entrepreneurial characteristics on performances.

This paper investigates the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty for the period of 1990-2009 by using monthly data in the Iranian economy. The results of a two-step procedure such as Granger causality test which uses generated variables from the first stage as regressors in the second stage, suggests a positive relation between the mean and the variance of inflation. However, Pagan (1984) criticizes this two-step procedure for its misspecifications due to the use of generated variables from the first stage as regressors in the second stage. This paper uses the Full Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) method to address this issue. The estimates we gathered with the new set of specifications suggest that inflation causes inflation uncertainty, supporting the Friedman–Ball hypothesis.

The objective of this paper is to explore the effect of financial crisis on trade flows of steel industries in the major Asian-Pacific steel producing countries. Using a static and dynamic panel data analysis, we test the hypothesis that the global financial crisis has a negative effect on Asia-Pacific bilateral steel trade flows. We also examine the role of regional trade integration in bilateral steel trade in Asia and Pacific. The underlying assumption is that such integration contributes to increase trade relations and possibly adjust the imposed costs of financial crisis on the sector. To this end, we use cross-sectional data on steel trade flows of the selected Asian-Pacific countries over a specific period (2002-2006). The study is based on an extended gravitational model, in order to incorporate the main gravity variables and qualitative factors as well. The implication of this study can be towards implementation of an integrating block of steel industry by collaborating different countries in Asia and Pacific. This creates a larger regional steel trade market, and leading possibly to reduce the global or regional crisis.

One of the most important concepts in financial statement analysis and evaluation is conservatism. Thus recognition of the factors which influence conservatism can considerably help the investor in managing the selection of more conservative assets properly and avoiding the untrue exposure of financial statements. This research is about to consider the relation of effective factors on organizations’ conservatism that one of them is the portion of shares’ market value to shares’ book value. Data was collected from annual reports of listed companies on Tehran Stock Exchange during 2003-2009. The results of the study revealed that there was no significant relationship between earnings conservatism and price to book ratio

This paper aims to investigate the effect of budget deficit shock on government spending in Indonesia. For this propose, this reasearch uses an alternative error correction model based on loss function of government spending. The model assumes the short run disequilibrium, in which shock variables may play an important role. A spesific loss function model is applied to develop the long run government hypothetical model. Using data of the period 1970-2010, the empirical model shows that real GDP, tax revenue and multi period shock of budget deficit are statistically significant in determining the government spending, both for operating and development spending. In other words, this finding also shows the significant impact of unanticipated of budget deficit on the government spending. It implies a weaknes of government finance management, in which government spending has not created new tax sources.

Resources’ scarcity, especially in developing countries, has caused allocation essentially among competing activities to create value. The importance of resource allocation would be more understood if we pay attention to growing complexity in societies and economic development problems they face. In the context of the national economic development literature, the notion of “Key or Critical Sectors” has become an accepted component of development strategy. By and large, key sector analysis is an attempt to determine the economic effect of a sector in a given economy. From macroeconomic point of view, Agriculture and Non Agricultural Manufacturing (NA-Manufacturing) as two parts of production sector, compete for absorbing limited resources. This paper with using 31 indices; factor analysis; numerical taxonomic analysis; and three level of assessment aims to answer the question of which one of these two is the key sector, and be a completion to previous studies which their common deficiency is the lack of indices. Results of this study for Iran economy show that Agriculture sector is preferred to NA-Manufacturing sector.

The increase of greenhouse gases (GHG) in which CO2 emissions constitute the principal component, is of major environmental problems of all societies. Economic growth impels intensive use of resources and as a result, more residues and wastes thrown in the nature that could lead to environmental degradation. This article tries to trace the eventual relationship between trade openness and environmental degradation in Iran. For this purpose, a multivarate model is employed in which economic growth and trade openness are related to CO2 emissions for the period of 1971-2006. By carring out the Granger causality test, there appeared a unidirectional relation from trade openness to CO2 emissions. To analyze the variables’ relationships, the approach of GMM is applied. Results indicate that economic growth has a significant negative effect on carbon dioxcide emissions. But, the impact of trade openness on carbon dioxcide emissions is significantly positive.

This study analyses the concept of cost functions for semi-automated Straddle Carrier (SC), Rubber Tyred Gantry (RTG) and automated Rail Mounted Gantry (RMG) container yard operating cranes. It develops a generic cost based model for a pair-wise comparison, analysis and evaluation of economic efficiency and effectiveness of container yard equipment to be used for decision-making by terminal planners and designers. The cost function analysis of this study incorporates major cost attributes used in modern container terminal operations and discussed in the literature. They play a determining role over the total cost of advanced operating systems in a container terminal. The cost model in this study enables the planner and designer of container terminals to make a pair-wise comparison of handling systems to help determine the most appropriate container yard operating system for a port, based on the required technological capabilities and functions. The sensitivity analysis proposed in this study compares and demonstrates the magnitude and intensity of the selected attributes which determine preference of one system over another. The analysis assists a terminal planner in decision-making and selecting a container yard operating system with a minimum operating cost and a maximum annual throughput.

This paper investigates the relationship between inflation and growth uncertainty in Iran for the period of 1988-2008 by using quarterly data. We employ Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity in Mean (GARCH-M) model to estimate time-varying conditional residual variance of growth, as a standard measures of growth uncertainty. The empirical evidence shows that growth uncertainty affects the level of inflation. This result is in line with Feizi Yengjeh (2010), supporting Deveraux (1989) hypothesis.