IMF Bank-Restructuring Efficiency Outcomes: Evidence from East Asia

We report new findings on bank efficiency in East Asian countries for the preand post-IMF restructuring periods. We find that bank efficiency has improved, but only to the pre-IMF intervention level, and that restructured banks are not more efficient than their unrestructured counterparts. Different restructuring measures have different effects. Bank closures are economically justified, but mergers show short-term efficiency losses. Recapitalization and reprivatization of badly performing banks lead to efficiency improvement, but also increase government ownership. Ease of entry that has allowed for more foreign bank participation results in slightly improved performance of badly performing banks.

IMF BANK-RESTRUCTURING EFFICIENCY OUTCOMES:EVIDENCE FROM EAST ASIA

This paper reports new findings for the first time on bank efficiency over the pre- and post-IMF-restructuring periods for East Asia using the DEA and regression models. Bank closures that followed the IMF interventions are economically justified; but mergers and acquisitions experience short-term efficiency losses. Recapitalization and then re-privatization of bad banks have led to efficiency improvements, but still increased government ownership. Ease of entry has resulted in more foreign bank participation with improved performance; further spurts in improvements, however, may take longer time. These findings advocate bank restructuring during the crisis; but well-designed measures are vital to ensure its success. Bank mergers and acquisitions need to be scrutinized. Privatization, particularly with strategic foreign ownership, of domestic banks which should be further encouraged. To reap the potential benefits of such foreign participation, stronger economic reforms of the host countries should be further pursued.

DO ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE TOOLS SERVE GOVERNANCE?

A brief review of recent literature on corporate governance is provided, which is then concluded with a proposed corporate governance framework as a starting point for further development. We propose that it is stakeholder concentration that determines the quality of corporate governance. Next objective of this paper is the more ambitious one of addressing the role of accounting and finance disciplines to serve corporate governance. We test empirically if the use of some accounting and finance tools would have alerted management, auditors and regulators as well as investors to the impending collapse of failed firms ahead of time. If performance deterioration is not verifiable by using such acclaimed tools of these disciplines, then the advocacy of these disciplines is untenable and their contribution is overstated. Careful application of accounting-cum-finance tools, it appears, would have pre-identified the financial weakening of troubled firms, well ahead of time to catastrophic failures.

Parity Theorems Revisited: An Ardl Bound Test With Non-parity Factors

The research question addressed in this paper is, do inflation and interest rate differences across two major economies fully drive the long-run exchange rate changes if controls for non-parity factors are embedded? Exchange rate behaviour research is once again an interesting topic given the availability of powerful econometric approaches to resolve unsolved issues. We re-examine the exchange rate behaviour of the US economy, applying a more appropriate econometric model using 55 years of quarterly data. The model explains 96% of variation in exchange rates, which testifies to the model’s appropriateness. The error correction estimate indicates a time-to-equilibrium of 0.139 per quarter; that is, full adjustment takes seven quarters. Tests indicate evidence of a long-run relationship among the exchange rate, prices, and interest rates. The coefficients on both parity factors (prices and interest rates) are statistically significant with correct theory-suggested signs. These findings constitute strong evidence in support of parity and non-parity theorems while confirming that the US currency behaviour over 1960–2014 is consistent with parity and non-parity theorie

The US exchange rate behavior: an advanced test on price parity theorem

We researched a significant topic on exchange rate behavior by restating the test procedures in a novel manner and applying an appropriate econometric methodology to re-examine exchange rate behavior of the US economy. The central research question is: Do inflation differences across two economies fully account for exchange rate changes, if controls for non-parity factors are embedded while controlling for interest rate differences? The results affirm, for the first time, that price parity factor holds well while other factors - interest rates and non-parity factors - also affect exchange rates significantly. Our tests also identifies the time to equilibrium to be 0.139 (13.9%) per quarter to adjust to equilibrium value. In our view, these findings extend our knowledge of how the US dollar behavior is consistent with parity and non-parity theorems. Prior tests have been inconclusive on parity factors. The Malaysian Ringgit is heavily dependent on the US dollar exchange rate, and our findings thus have monetary policy implications for the Malaysia's regulators

Earnings response coefficient of banking shares: a multi-country study with control for risk

This paper reports new finding on earnings response coefficients of banking firms on how information disclosed regarding (i) total earnings and (ii) fee earnings is associated with share price changes around the time of financial report releases. This paper extends to banking firms a widely used analysis of earnings response studies on non-banking firms. To obtain robust test results, we extended this common model, for the first time, by adding control variables and also by applying panel regression. Changes in total earnings do influence share prices significantly in the four countries studied i.e. Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea and Australia. Australian investors appear to use disclosed information on fee income also to revise share prices significantly as being value relevant. Investors regard both total and fee incomes as equally important in Australia whereas investor actions in the other three markets studied lead to weak evidence on fee income effect. This paper reports new findings on value relevance of disclosures extended to banking firms

Do accounting and finance tools serve governance?

A brief review of recent literature on corporate governance is provided, which is then concluded with a proposed corporate governance framework as a starting point for further development. We propose that it is stakeholder concentration that determines the quality of corporate governance. Next objective of this paper is the more ambitious one of addressing the role of accounting and finance disciplines to serve corporate governance. We test empirically if the use of some accounting and finance tools would have alerted management, auditors and regulators as well as investors to the impending collapse of failed firms ahead of time. If performance deterioration is not verifiable by using such acclaimed tools of these disciplines, then the advocacy of these disciplines is untenable and their contribution is overstated. Careful application of accounting-cum-finance tools, it appears, would have pre-identified the financial weakening of troubled firms, well ahead of time to catastrophic failures

Re-examination of price level differentials using economic freedom index

Findings reported in this paper provide improved explanation as to what factors are correlated with price levels across a large sample of 152 countries. The results are obtained from using a new set of variables called economic freedom indices, covering 19 years. Prior studies used income, trade openness, and productivity, which led to results with much less explanatory power compared to findings reported in this paper. We apply advanced panel data econometrics to obtain robust estimates of parameters, which, in our view, led to results with substantially high coefficient of variations close to 90%. The findings show that all the nine dimensions of economic freedom used in this study significantly account for the variations in national price levels

Purchasing power parity in South East Asian countries economies: a cointegration approach

This paper presents findings from a study of the long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) conditions in five Asian economies. The cointegration tests using exchange rates and price indices from end-of-quarter observations over the last twenty years reject the PPP proposition for all countries. The absolute version of the PPP hypothesis is tested next by using lower frequency, that is, semi-annual and annual, data. In general these tests also failed to support the long-run PPP hypothesis. Further analysis using the Johansen-Juselius (1990) multivariate approach also failed to support the hypothesis