Total debt in the People’s Republic of China surged to nearly 290% as a ratio to GDP by the second quarter of 2016, mostly on account of non-financial corporate debt. The outpouring of credit to stem the impact of the global financial crisis accentuated industrial overcapacity in traditional sectors, such as steel, cement, and energy, while feeding asset bubbles in the property, equity and bond markets. At the Chinese corporate level, this has translated into weakened fundamentals and a fall in industrial profits, particularly of SOEs. As debtors struggle to service interest payments, non-performing loans (NPLs) have been on the rise. This paper assesses the financial fragility of the Chinese economy by looking at risk factors in the non-financial sector. We apply quantile regressions to a dataset containing all Chinese listed companies in Standard & Poor’s IQ Capital database. We find higher sensitivity over time of corporate leverage to some of its key determinants, particularly for firms at the upper margin of the distribution. In particular, profitability increasingly acts as a curb on corporate leverage. At a time of falling profitability across the Chinese non-financial corporate sector, this eases the brake on leverage and may contribute to its continuing increase.

Based on a simultaneous-equation model consisting of aggregate demand and short-run aggregate supply, this paper estimates a reducedform equation specifying that the equilibrium real GDP is a function of the real effective exchange rate, the government deficit as a percent of GDP, the real interest rate, foreign income, labor productivity, the real oil price, the expected inflation rate, and the interactive and intercept binary variables accounting for a potential change in the slope of the real effective exchange rate and shift in the intercept. Applying the exponential GARCH technique, it finds that aggregate output in Australia has a positive relationship with the real effective exchange rate during 2003.Q3 – 2013.Q2, the government deficit as a percent of GDP, U.S. real GDP, labor productivity and the real oil price and a negative relationship with the real effective exchange rate during 2013.Q3 – 2016.Q1, the real lending rate and the expected inflation rate. These results suggest that real appreciation was expansionary before 2013.Q3 whereas real depreciation was expansionary after 2013.Q2 and that more government deficit as a percent of GDP would be helpful to stimulate the economy. Hence, the impact of real appreciation or real depreciation on real GDP may change overtime. Keywords: Exchange Rates, Government Deficit, Interest Rates,

This study investigates the causal relationship between stock prices and exchange rates for six Middle Eastern countries, namely, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia before and during (after) the 2007 global financial crisis for the period between January 2004 and September 2015. The sample is divided into two sub-periods, that is, the period from January 1, 2004 to September 30, 2007 and the period from October 1, 2007 to September 30, 2015, to represent the pre-crisis period and the post-crisis period, respectively. Using Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model in a multivariate framework (including two control variables, inflation rates and oil prices) the results suggest that in the case of Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, there exists bidirectional causalities after the crisis period but not the before. The opposite status is available for the case of Iran. In the case of Oman, there is bidirectional causality between the variables of interest in both periods. The results also reveal that the relationship between stock prices and exchange rates has become stronger after the 2007 global financial crisis. Overall, the results of this study indicate that fluctuations in foreign exchange markets can significantly affect stock markets in the Middle East.

This study develops an early warning system (EWS) to prevent the banking crisis. The proposed system incorporates both the perspective of crises and fundamental characteristics of the banking system in each economy. A fuzzy logic method with data from 1990-2009 is employed to construct the EWS of banking crisis based on 21 pre-determined variables from the aspect of total economy, financial and banking sectors. Our results show: Firstly, South Korea recorded higher probability to have a banking crisis in 1997 as there was large foreign debt in dollars. Secondly, China, Australia and New Zealand banking systems appear to be vulnerable to the crisis in 2007. The surge of China export, FDIs and booming stock market were signs of a heated economy. Australia with high commodity prices was also vulnerable to crisis. Thirdly, Australia, China, Japan and New Zealand banking systems appear to be exposed to the higher chance of a crisis in 2010. Japan with deflation coupled with expensive yen did not augur well for its export. Overall, the findings show that in Asian Financial Crisis 1997/98 and Global Financial Crisis 2008/09, many economies are exposed to a higher probability of having the crisis and this shows an urgent need of having surveillance in these economies.

The aim of the study is to assess the asymmetry of influence of factors of economic growth of national economies, which are included in the integration. Unlike previous research, the scientific significance of the obtained results consists in the use of a new method of study – external demand as a factor of economic growth, disaggregated into two components. The first is net exports mutual trade in goods within integration associations. The second is net exports of foreign trade in goods outside the integration. By use of these methods we have evaluated the contribution of these factors on economic growth of the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space (CU/CES), as well as Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus. In the conducted analysis of scientific research was based on the fact that the economies of the member (CU/CES) are very different in scale, economic potential and volume of foreign trade. Based on this research we conclude: integration is developing successfully and efficiently only with the rise of the national economies of the member countries; to enhance economic growth and competitiveness of the countries of the Eurasian integration it is necessary to increase the volume of mutual trade of member countries of this integration.

The purpose of this paper is to review the quality of corporate governance from the prior empirical literature. This study finds that most of the researchers developed the self structured corporate governance index and few researchers used the corporate governance index provided by rating agencies. This study also finds that there is no uniform basis to measure the corporate governance quality and observed the variation in terms of overall and individual attributes of corporate governance; sub-indices of corporate governance; scoring system; weighted and un-weighted method; statistical method; time period; financial and non financial companies; code of corporate governance; listing requirement; disclosure practices; legal environment; firms characteristics; and country perspective. This study also observed that overall corporate governance quality is very low in most of the studies and even quality of corporate governance varies in the firms within the same country. This study recommends that the boundary of corporate governance quality should be defined based on the agreed set of rules and regulation, code of governance and practices. This study also suggests that the regulator and policy makers should more emphasize on code of corporate governance and regulatory framework and monitoring to improve the quality of corporate governance.

The competitive nature of enterprises requires organizations to foster an environment that encourages employee innovation that leads to profitability and customer satisfaction. Organizational innovation is influenced by several factors with employee behaviour being one of the important factors. Employees contribute in the innovation process and thus, it is important for organizations to understand employee expectations to demonstrate innovative work behaviour in order to create and maintain an innovative work culture. In the present study, a conceptual model based on culture, reward and program, training, compensations, leadership and systems was tested to assess that impact on employee expectations leading to innovative work behaviour. The study was conducted in the context of city-state of Singapore due to its significant emphasis on promoting and nurturing employee innovation. The model was tested using empirical data collected through a survey of employees in Singapore. The results indicate that while culture, rewards and training programs have a direct relationship on employee expectations to demonstrate innovative work behaviour, when considered together, leadership and systems are significantly and positively associated with employee expectations. These factors are usually under the control of organizations and can be enhanced through systematic interventions, thereby providing practice managers an avenue to improve employee innovation behaviour. The other implications of the findings and future scope are discussed.

With the increasing trend of popularity of websites and social networking sites, it is quite evident that companies need to take cautionary measures in protecting the reputations with respect to company and brands. In this process, every company should indulge in enhancing their company and brand image through websites and social networking sites that fortify the bonding nature among them. The always-on nature of websites and social networking sites has contributed to their phenomenal marketing power and altered the balance of power between consumers and firms. Websites and social networks are used by hundreds of millions of people to communicate about a huge range of topics, including personal interests, activities, social events and even public issues. The paper explores a case study of the Ritz- Carlton hotel for their marketing strategy and organizational use of their website and social media in communicating with their customers. Even for the normal luxury traveler who would not have previously used the Internet to research a hotel or make a reservation, ritzcarlton.com is making it possible for them to do so in a sense of the luxury and typical Ritz-Carlton style. It seems to be a staple of the company for years to come.