Syed Shams

Halal Market Emergence and Export Opportunity: The Comparative Advantage Perspective

The comparative advantage theory of international trade states that countries should export commodities for which they have high comparative advantage and import commodities for which they have low comparative advantage. Analyzing the Halal trade flows for Malaysia’s 11 food/food-related commodities from 1991 to 2012, this study finds an interesting development of the standard view of comparative advantage in the emerging Halal export market. It finds that the greater the country’s current comparative advantage in an exported good, the higher the risk of export diversion (one- or two-way causality) between the Halal market and the conventional market with the country’s expansion of Halal exports; while the diversion risk disappears with lower current comparative advantage. Thus, the study suggests that if a country wants to take advantage of the fast-emerging market, it should aim to expand export of commodities with relatively low current comparative advantage but high demand in the emerging market.

Developing a generic review framework to assure capstone quality

ABSTRACT Within the higher education context, capstone units can be viewed as a significant means of assuring intended learning outcomes for programmes. They provide students with the opportunity to consolidate and apply prior and new disciplinary learning, as well as employability skills and graduate attributes. This paper describes the first stage of an initiative in a regional, Australian university to develop a capstone quality review framework that can be applied across disciplines. A deductive, thematic analysis of relevant literature, guides and institutional strategic documents using a constant comparison method was used to develop a collectively agreed upon set of capstone quality domains and related criteria. These would enable reviewers to assess whether capstone curricula were fit-for-purpose. Capstone domains and criteria were validated and revised using a multi-stage, moderated review of 10 capstone units. This validation process affirmed that to avoid issues with reviewer inter-rater reliability, future use of our framework should emphasise calibrating reviewer interpretation to ensure greater levels of shared understanding of underlying concepts. It further suggested the desirability of incorporating aspects of teacher self-assessment, teacher feedback and student results. Provided these findings are accounted for, we conclude that the proposed capstone review domains and criteria could be used for quality review and enhancement, or capstone benchmarking processes, regardless of discipline area.

Top Management Acquisitive Behaviour and Tax Avoidance

This study uses merger and acquisitions (M&A) activities as a proxy for managers’ aggressive style and shows that firms with a higher degree of acquisitions (dollar value of acquisitions and number of acquisition announced in a given year) are associated with more tax avoidance. This finding is consistent with the idea that managers of firms that make self-maximizing decisions at the cost of shareholders in the form of high M&A activities within a short period of time are also likely to take high-risk tax positions. We also document that the negative effect of high acquisitiveness on tax avoidance is prevalent when CEOs equity based compensation increases in post-acquisition period suggesting agency problem is a key driver of high acquisitiveness and tax avoidance behavior. Additional tests show that managerial acquisitiveness is different from overconfidence in explaining corporate tax avoidance activities of the bidding firms.

Private public distinction of the target and the long run operating performance of acquirers

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine whether the acquirers of private targets outperform their peers that acquire public targets in the long run. Design/methodology/approach – Using two samples of acquirers of private and public targets, this paper analyses their short-run market performance and long-run operating performance. Univariate analyses and multiple regressions are used to analyse abnormal stock returns and abnormal cash flow performances of bidders. Findings – Acquirers of private targets earn significantly higher abnormal return than acquirers of public targets during the announcement period. Similarly, the long-run operating performance of acquirers of private targets is significantly higher than that of the acquirers of public targets. However, the performance difference between two groups is more pronounced when cash flows are scaled by the market value of acquirers. Originality/value – This is the first Australian study to examine whether the long-run operating performance of ...

Does the Post-Acquisition Performance of Bidding Firms Depend on the Organizational Form of Targets Acquired?

A number of theoretical arguments such as corporate monitoring hypothesis, liquidity hypothesis and managerial motive hypothesis propose that the acquisitions of private targets are more value creating than the acquisitions of public targets. Using two large samples of acquirers of public targets and acquirers of private targets, we examine the post-acquisition operating performance of Australian bidders. The excess returns earned by these two samples during the announcement period reveal that the market perceives the acquisitions of private targets as value creating decisions while having a neutral view on the acquisitions of public targets. These findings corroborate existing evidence in the area while providing support for the relevant theories. An analysis of acquisition year financial profiles reveals that the acquirers of public targets are much larger in size, highly profitable and cash rich than the acquirers of private targets. Compared with acquisition-year performance, acquirers of public targets were able to maintain their performance in the post-acquisition years while the acquirers of private targets were able to show a significant improvement. However, when the industry-adjusted abnormal performance was analyzed, it was found that the former group outperformed their industry peers as well as the latter group by a significant margin. A number of bid and firm characteristics were found to have differential influences on the performance of two types of acquirers. Our sensitivity analyses revealed that the influences of bid and firm characteristics are somewhat sensitive to the benchmark used to generate abnormal performance and the scaling factor used to calculate performance measures.