John W. Goodell

Political-Economy of Pension Plans: Impact of Institutions, Gender, and Culture

National pension systems are an important part of financial intermediation and worker welfare in most countries, but how and why do they differ internationally? Controlling for important political, economic and social institutions, we document that international differences in pension progressivity, or how pensions reflect lifetime earnings, are negatively related to masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, long-term orientation, employment rights, average pension levels, social trust and economic inequality. We also find that pension progressivity is positively related to the economic and societal role of women, the extent of Catholicism; as well as political voice and accountability. These results provide important insights for both public policy and MNC managers.

Scholarship of Teaching International Business: Challenges and Opportunities

International business (IB) is an important topic for business schools as business is global, but much business school teaching of IB still seems inadequate. IB education can be challenging but also presents many opportunities. We need to build our knowledge base of effective IB teaching methods and procedures. Such knowledge can not only be used to improve the teaching of IB, but it can also improve data-driven resource allocation for teaching IB. Clearly, the Journal of Teaching International Business has an important role to play in these processes.

National Cultural Dimensions in Finance and Accounting Scholarship: An Important Gap in the Literatures?

In spite of cultural dimensions being included in hundreds of business and management research studies, there have been relatively few studies in finance and accounting that include the use of cultural dimensions. We note the need for such studies in accounting and finance and review published studies in these areas that use cultural dimensions. We conclude that both the accounting and finance fields make sparse use of cultural dimensions in scholarship. However, the field of accounting has made greater use of cultural dimensions than the field of finance. We note that this is in part due to particular seminal theories regarding the connection of national culture with the behavior of individuals in accounting. Finance, on the other hand, has been more focused on effects of larger market aggregates. Finance just recently seems to have discovered the impact of national culture, particularly via the impact of individualism on market momentum and the impact of uncertainty avoidance on transaction costs. We conclude that there is much opportunity for further investigation of the impact of national culture on finance. Thus, the field of finance is being well served by the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance championing research on cultural finance.

Price-Earnings Changes During US Presidential Election Cycles: Voter Uncertainty and Other Determinants

Using electronic-markets data, this paper investigates partial determinants of change in Graham’s price-earnings ratios (P/E) during US presidential election cycles. We document evidence over six elections, that as the probable winner of the election becomes clearer, markets surprisingly respond with decreases in P/E ratios. We consider that our results are consistent with rational markets reacting to presidential campaigns focused on influencing biased, sociotropic voters. These results should be of great interest to researchers concerned with market reaction to election cycles, public policy, and the overall role of election uncertainty in financial markets.

Expanding the International Business Classroom Experience: Introduction

Teaching and learning international business goes beyond merely conveying facts and concepts and involves changing mind-sets and ways of thinking. It involves students becoming comfortable with truly “out of the box” thinking where they must bring to bear their knowledge and understanding of foreign nations and cultures to understand and solve international business problems and challenges. Such “foreign” knowledge and understanding by definition involves ideas and concepts that are unfamiliar. Consequently, as much research on cognition has shown, it is important that students in international business classes undergo experiential learning that will help internalize these “foreign” ideas and concepts. These experiential educational processes include the well-known and studied study-abroad programs. Such programs are generally highly impactful and most participating students report them to be so. However, the percentage of business students that participate in study-abroad programs nationally remains very small, especially among undergraduates. Of course, there are some schools that are exceptions, but they are the exceptions. In spite of decades of effort and support, study-abroad programs remain relatively expensive options (in terms of time, money, and disruption of jobs) and only very small percentage of business students take advantage of them before graduation. Thus, it is important that business schools explore other experiential processes to educate international business students and help change their mind-sets. Interestingly, many recent surveys have noted the rising number of hours spent by undergraduates on social media and gaming activities. This fact provides a natural area to explore to add experiential processes to international business classes.

Improving Learning Outcomes in IB Education

It is important to note the differences between teaching and learning—especially in international business (IB) teaching and learning. Learning IB involves multiple subject matters and cultures and an expansion of mindsets. Generally, it seems teaching is an input that should lead to measurable student learning outcomes. Unfortunately, in practice this important distinction is often lost among the many competing demands on academics and the problem is often compounded by poor and misdirected evaluation systems that focus too littler on learning outcomes. While good teaching is essential, to be efficiently effective such teaching needs to be directed to maximize student learning. This generally involves assessing and accounting for a number of critical intervening factors. These factors may include the notion that various groups of students may have varying sensitivities and absorptive abilities toward the nature of the material to be learned and the various presentation styles (e.g., visual versus verbal versus written material). There may be many additional differences in learning styles (Aggarwal & Goodell, 2015). Fortunately, there has been much scholarly interest in exploring these issues. Nevertheless, we still need to learn much more about how best to apply scholarly findings regarding maximizing learning outcomes to different settings, subject matters, and types of students. Underlying efforts to increase the effectiveness of teaching, it is important to focus on learning outcomes. In addition, given the limited resources available to educators, it is important to allocate resources to activities and policies that maximize learning outcomes (Aggarwal, 1989). As noted by Davis (2003) and others, the move to outcome-based education has been one of the most important trends in education in recent years. Facilitating desired learning outcomes is a challenging but rewarding task. However, as noted by Boyatzis, Stubbs, and Taylor (2002), to facilitate learning outcomes relevant to IB education such as a global mindset, emotional intelligence, and out-of-thebox thinking, will likely require continual adjustments and changes to existing curricula and pedagogies. For instance, Harden (2002) suggests assessments should provide evidence of how well respective students have specifically learned what they were intended to learn. Therefore, what is intended for students to learn, it could be argued, should guide the design of assessments. And since teaching activities and assessment are generally aligned, aligning activities with learning goals is of paramount importance. As another example that is particularly important for IB teaching, is the importance of experiential learning especially as IB education seeks to change mindsets toward foreign and culturally different settings and behaviors (Aggarwal, 2011). However, we need better understanding and implementation of outcome measurements of experiential learning activities; especially as such activities are generally among the highest cost activities (in terms of both financial and resource costs and the time required) compared to other teaching activities. Documentation of learning outcomes is also important to guide ongoing improvements and for accreditation purposes (Bruner & Iannarelli, 2011). Thus, given the brief discussion above, it is important that educators, especially in IB education, increase their focus on learning outcomes and their accurate measurement. Such improvements have important implication for improving IB teaching, meeting accreditation requirements, and improving resource allocation. JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 2016, VOL. 27, NOS. 2–3, 65–67 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08975930.2016.1219614

Variations in Emerging-Market Equity Premia: Impact of Financial Architecture

This article examines a topic of much interest, the association of financial architecture and national equity premia for recent eight-year period from 15 emerging-market countries. Modeling simultaneously our estimate of the ex-ante equity premium as a dependent variable and our measure of financial architecture as an instrumental variable, we document that equity premia are larger in countries that have a more bank-oriented financial architecture, as well as greater control of corruption, more foreign access to capital, and higher spending on education. Smaller equity premia are associated with greater political stability, greater measures against self-dealing, higher market volatility and greater uncertainty avoidance. Given the importance of the ex-ante equity premium in long-term investment decisions, the anticipated demographic challenges and financial reform in most countries and recent increases in cross-border investment, there is much interest among bankers, managers and policy-makers in these results, documenting the determinants of cross-national variations in equity premia.

Assessing Time-Series Versus Cross-Sectional Influences in Panel Estimates:International Financial Architecture and Expected Equity Premia

In the study of economic and financial panel data it is often important to differentiate between time-series and cross-sectional effects. We present two estimation procedures that can do so and illustrate their application by examining international variations in expected equity premia and financial architecture where a number of variables vary across time but not cross-sectionally while other variables vary cross-sectionally but not across time. Using two different estimation procedures we find a preference for market financing to be negatively associated with the size of expected premia. However, we also find that U.S. corporate bond spreads negatively determine financial architecture according to the first procedure but not according to the second estimation as U.S. Corporate bond spreads change value each year but have the same value across countries. Similarly some measures that change across countries but do not change across time, such as cultural dimensions as well as the an index of measures against self dealing, are significant determinants of financial architecture according second estimation but not according to the first estimation. Our results show that using these two estimation procedures together can assess time-series versus cross-sectional variations in panel data. This research should be of considerable interest to empirical researchers.

Introduction: Importance of Teaching International Business in Greater China: Some Challenges and Opportunities

This issue of the Journal of Teaching in International Business is a special issue on the challenges and opportunities in Teaching International Business in Greater China. This issue has been jointly guest edited by Patrick Poon and Tsang Sing Chan of Lingnan University. The articles in this issue address a variety of timely topics with regard to business education in China: internationalizing and integrating ethics into the international business curriculum; the challenges of service learning; and study and teaching abroad in China. But, why do a special issue on the teaching of international business in greater China? The main reason is that China has once again become a very important part of the global economy. This economic rise of China also means that Chinese firms and business schools must now take a global perspective.

Financial Transparency of Microfinance Institutions: Influence of Performance, Stakeholders, and Society

We investigate the determinants of microfinance institution (MFI) financial transparency and report a positive association of transparency with MFI performance. However, subsequent structural-equation modeling and other tests conclude that causality is in the direction of transparency levels determining portfolio quality. Regarding stakeholders, we find greater transparency is positively associated with MFIs being for-profit and negatively associated with taking deposits, even when controlling for prudential regulation and other factors. We conclude that MFI transparency is positively responsive to for-profit stakeholders but negatively responsive to depositor discipline. Finally, at the country level, we observe that MFI transparency is positively associated with social trust and de jure regulation and negatively associated with de facto national governance.