Journal of Business & Financial Affairs

The study estimates the relationship between trade facilitation indicators and trade flow in Asian countries. It prioritizes the main trade facilitation determinants that need to be improved for the faster and more international trade flow. The study consists of Asian countries based on main trade facilitation variables such as tariffs, time to import/ export and cost to import/export, population, ICT. The study consist on secondary data and most of the data obtained from the World Bank doing business and economic development database and used 44 Asian countries in sample. In this study we have used fixed and random affect methodology for estimation and then uses Husman test to choose between fixed and random affect results. The obtained results shows the significant impact on imports and exports volume and it clarify that tariff and number of documents to import and export has negative affect on trade flow. A one percent change in tariff rates can affect the trade flow with 6% negatively. So for the cheaper and maximum trade flow, tariff must be brought to minimum level while the number of documents has much more affect than tariff as it shows one percent change in number of documents affects with 25% exports and 6% on imports flow negatively. That is why the number of documents should be reduced to the minimum level too. But for ICT, human capital and customs shows a positive relationship with trade flow. According to this study’s results it shows that 1% improvement in ICT can increase the imports and exports by 5%. The same way trade infrastructure is most important determinant of trade facilitation, It is because infrastructure includes both time and cost, the cheaper and faster trade flow become more beneficial for both of the trading partners. The results suggest 1% reduction in trade costs results in 20% increase in imports and 16% increase in exports. And 1% reduction in time can affect the imports with 8% and exports with 14%. 

The aim of this paper is to study the potential effects of liberalization process and global financial crisis on conditional volatility. Our sample comprises three Asian emerging markets (Philippines, Korea and Indonesia) over the period from December 1987 to September 2014.Using the ST-GARCH models, our findings show several interesting facts. First, the ST-GARCH processes perform better than the linear GARCH models, since they take into consideration the regime changes in the conditional volatility. Moreover, these models are able to absorb the nonlinear dependence and the asymmetric effects detected on the residuals. Second, whatever the nonlinear model used (ST-GARCH models), financial liberalization has reduced the conditional volatility. By cons, the global financial crisis has increased the conditional variance of the Asian stock markets. Overall, our results confirm that Asian region cannot fully benefit from financial liberalization, because the negative effects of these crises (notably in terms of financial instability) can minimize the benefits of this process (integration). 

Firm performance is one of the most important concepts of business strategy. Regardless of its importance and ubiquitous use, there is no consensus about its precise definition and dimensionality. This paper examined the mediating effect firm performance on the relationship between firms’ ownership structure and its disclosure of CSR activities. Firm performance was proxied by return on assets. Ownership structure dimensions are managerial, institutional, foreign and ownership concentration. The paper employed Barron and Kenny mediation procedure. The results showed that firm performance mediated positively the relationship between managerial, institutional and ownership concentration and the corporate social responsibility disclosure at coefficient’s 0.165, 0.025 and 0.024, respectively. Further, there was negative (-0.001) mediation effect on the relation between foreign ownership and the corporate social responsibility disclosure. The form of mediation was partial mediation. The positive relationship suggests that for a company to engage and disclose its CSR activities, performance plays a critical role. It confirms that firms with a better firm financial performance leads to better quality CSR reporting and that the older the companies compounded with stable financial performance the more aggressive they participate in the CSR activities. Firms need to utilize various risk management practices such as identification, analysis, monitoring and evaluations of the firm activities to enhance efficiency in firm performance and in return engage and disclose more on CSR issues. This may be achieved through establishment and implementation of risk identification, monitoring and evaluation policy framework which significantly influence firm performance and thereby enhances shareholder capabilities to identify, analyze and evaluate all risks that hinder the institutions from achieving its objectives.