ABSTRACT
In the past, it was believed that investors may generate abnormal returns (AR) for trading stocks by employing technical trading rules. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, stock markets around the world seem to suffer a serious impact. Therefore, whether investors can beat the markets by applying technical trading rules during the period of COVID-19 pandemic becomes an important issue for market participants. The purpose of this study is to examine the profitability of trading stocks with the use of technical trading rules under the COVID-19 pandemic. By trading the constituent stocks of DJ 30 and NASDAQ 100, we find that almost all of the trading rules employed in this study fail to beat the market during the COVID-19 pandemic period, which is different from the results in 2019. The revealed findings of this study may shed light on that investors should adopt technical trading with care when stock markets are seriously affected by black swan events like COVID-19. © 2023 World Scientific Publishing Company.
ABSTRACT
This Article tests the claims of supporters of stakeholder capitalism ("stakeholderism") in the context of the COVID pandemic. Supporters of stakeholderism advocate encouraging and relying on corporate leaders to use their discretion to serve stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, and the environment. The pandemic followed and was accompanied by peak support for, and broad expressions of commitment to, stakeholderism from corporate leaders. Nonetheless, and even though the pandemic heightened risks to stakeholders, we document that corporate leaders negotiating deal terms failed to look after stakeholder interests. We conduct a detailed examination of all the $1B+ acquisitions of public companies that were announced from April 2020 to March 2022, totaling 122 acquisitions with an aggregate consideration exceeding $800 billion. We find that deal terms provided large gains for the shareholders of target companies, as well as substantial private benefits for corporate leaders. However, although many transactions were viewed at the time of the deal as posing significant post-deal risks for employees, corporate leaders largely did not obtain any employee protections, including payments to employees who would be laid off post-deal. Similarly, we find that corporate leaders failed to negotiate for protections for customers, suppliers, communities, the environment, and other stakeholders. After conducting various tests to examine whether this pattern could have been driven by other factors, we conclude that it is likely to have been driven by corporate leaders' incentives not to benefit stakeholders beyond what would serve shareholder interests. While we focus on decisions in the acquisition context, we explain why our findings also have implications for ongoing-concern decisions, and we discuss and respond to potential objections to our conclusions. Overall, our findings have significant implications for long-standing debates on the corporate treatment of stakeholders. In particular, our findings are inconsistent with the implicit-promises/team-production view that corporate leaders of an acquired company should and do look after stakeholder interests;on this view, fulfilling implicit promises to protect stakeholder interests serves shareholders' ex-ante interest in inducing the stakeholder cooperation and investment that are essential to corporate success. Our work also supports the agency critique of stakeholder capitalism which suggests that, due to their incentives, corporate leaders cannot be relied upon to look after stakeholder interests and to live up to pro-stakeholder rhetoric.
ABSTRACT
Market practitioners and speculators attempt to make benefits from the existence of market price gaps and profit opportunities by arbitrage strategies. Although some investors trade stocks based on the available financial and fundamental information of a particular share, there are others who make profits by risk hedging and swing trading opportunities. One of these strategies is pairs trading, which is a sub‐category of statistical arbitrage. Pairs trading can assure reasonably a risk‐free profit gaining. This paper aims to make a hypothetical portfolio composed of pairs of stocks by exploring a significant association between their prices in the Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX. We compare the profitability of distance, co‐integration, and copula functions as the pair's selection and trading strategy devices in TSX over January 2017 to June 2020. Our results show that the highest profitability comes from trading by the copula method. Our time frame includes two heterogeneous pre and post COVID‐19 periods. Although the financial markets are struggling with a hard situation over the COVID‐19 days, the performance of the methodologies is not affected by the crisis.
ABSTRACT
Purpose>This study aims to explore how corporate social responsibility (CSR) has assumed a new meaning today, with the COVID-19 pandemic. This, in turn, has changed the way companies now view the impact of their activities on the environment, customers, employees, community and other stakeholders.Design/methodology/approach>This paper uses a qualitative case study approach and draws a critical lens to document the complex interplay between dimensions of CSR, business sustainability and social issues, applying theoretical tools such as social capital theory and stakeholder theory to elucidate the nature of collaborative managerial responses to the organisation's challenges during the pandemic. This is a case study paper. This paper applies multi method approach to develop a case study analysis through participant observation and report analysis to investigate the CSR approaches undertaken in India by Infosys Genesis, a global leader in technology services and consulting, and Akshaya Patra Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), which operates the world's largest lunch school program. This was an appropriate methodology since the focus was on an area that was little understood, while the analysis required an in-depth understanding of a complex phenomenon through observation and a case study. In addition, case study research has been recommended for how, why and what type of research questions that focus on contemporary events (Saunders et al., 2003;Yin, 1994), such as CSR participation in the existing business environment. Furthermore, the issue under investigation is a real-life situation where the limitations between the phenomenon and the body of knowledge are unclear (Yin, 1994). This was the case because CSR has been probed by numerous disciplines through the application of various theoretical frameworks, each interpreting the context from their own perspective. Leximancer was used for the analysis (a text-mining software for visualising the structure of concepts and themes across case studies). This process differs from the traditional content analysis in that specific word strings are not needed;instead, Leximancer recognises what concepts are present in a set of texts, permitting concepts to be automatically coded in a grounded fashion (Cretchley et al., 2010, p. 2). The paper will be looked at from three levels comprising themes, concepts and concept profiling to create rich and reliable dimensions of a theoretical model (Myers, 2008). The themes are created in Leximancer software and are built on an algorithm that looks for hidden repeated patterns in interactions. The concepts add a layer and discover which concepts are shared by actors. The concept profiling allows to discover additional concepts and allows to do a discriminant analysis on prior concepts (Cretchley et al., 2010). Words that come up frequently are treated as concepts. Although the limited number of cases does not represent the entire sector, it enabled collection of rich data through quotes revealing some of the most crucial aspects of large organisations and non-profits in India.Findings>The findings demonstrate how these robust, innovative, collaborative CSR initiatives between a multinational firm and an NGO have been leveraged to combat manifold issues of education, employment and hunger during the pandemic.Research limitations/implications>Despite significant implications, this study has limitations. A response from only two companies is investigated to the COVID-19 pandemic. The scope of this study is only India, a developing nation, thereby, cross country research is recommended. A comparative study between developed and developing countries may be conducted. A quantitative approach may be used to get empirical findings of the COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic policies of companies from an international perspective. Hence, there is ample opportunity to research organisations' response to the pandemic and CSR as a strong arm to deal with critical disasters.Practical implications>The paper offers new insights into exploring research and praxis agenda for collaborative potentials towards the evolution of CSR and sustainability.Social implications>The findings develop new initiatives and combat manifold issues of education, employment and hunger during the pandemic to provide quick relief.Originality/value>The paper offers new insights into how companies are considering issues related to the crisis, including avoidance of layoffs and maintaining wage payments, and may be in a better position to access fresh capital, relief programs and emergency funds. Taking proactive health and safety measures may avert legal risks to the company. It is likely that the way in which companies are responding to the crises is a real-life test on resilience and adaptation.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: This paper aims to examine tourists' behavioral changes in response to health crises, this study examines the individual's uncertainty and adaptability to the challenges using behavioral coping strategies. Design/methodology/approach: The study combines the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and protection motivation theory. Using the PLS-SEM technique, this study examines the relationship between the destination's competitive profits and travel intention of Iranian tourists in the post-Covid-19 pandemic. Findings: The social-support coping (Instrumental) does not incorporate tourists' adaptive behaviors. Vulnerable vaccination significantly affects the extremeness of an individual's problem-focused coping, which affects tourist's adaptive behaviors in crisis time, indicating the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccination on travel intention. Research limitations/implications: The findings may assist tourism authorities and planners develop unique tourism products and services based on tourist behavior following the health crises. Originality/value: This study contributes to development of the TPB method, indicating that visa exemption and competitive profits of a destination would motivate travel intention existing inefficacy of local government and its negative background, reshaping and thus influencing changing behavior. © 2022, Amir Hossein Qezelbash, Sarasadat Makian and Rasoul Shahabi Sorman Abadi.