• Journals

Digital Payments, Advances in ICT, and Country Culture: Cross-country Evidence

The use of digital payment methods is related to information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and the skills of financial consumers in using such technology. Thus, financial payment methods will only change through the development of ICT-based financial technology together with the improved skills of financial consumers in using ICT devices. However, the adoption of new method for financial transactions may affect by the atmosphere of country culture. To analyze the relationships among ICT development, country culture, and digital payments, this paper employed a country's ICT development index and the number of installed automatic teller machines as proxy variables for ICT. Hofstede cultural dimensions are chosen as the proxy for country culture. Empirical results demonstrate that the ICT development index exhibits a positive relationship with digital payments. Also, a society with higher individualism or long-term orientation tendency exists a higher proportion of digital payments.

• Journals

Trade between Vietnam and East Asian Economies: An Approach of Gravity Model

Using a gravity model with the approach of fixed effects covering a period of 2001-2015, the main purpose of this paper is to investigate determinants of trade flows and potentials between Vietnam and East Asian economies. The empirical estimated results show that variables of economic size of East Asian economies, foreign direct investment (FDI) from East Asia, and bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) promoted positively to the trade flows between Vietnam and East Asian economies, conversely the change of real exchange rate caused negative impacts on trade. Interestingly, there is no empirical evidence to support that whether economic size of Vietnam and distance index contribute to the performance of trade. Regarding trade potentials, the trade performances between Vietnam and with its partners such of China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea were predicted to be overtraded, while it was untapped with Taiwan.

• Journals

A Model for Recycling Target Policy under Imperfect Competition with and without Cooperation between Firms

This paper developed a general theoretical model that describes production and recycling in an n-firm oligopoly market where firms can cooperate for recycling. We used a three-stage game to analyze a specific recycling issue. In stage 0, the government sets a target recycling rate and virgin material and final disposal tax rates. In stage 1, n identical firms simultaneously invest to reduce the cost of recycling given the recycling target. We treated this activity as a type of R&D. Furthermore, we considered three kinds of R&D activities depending on what firms maximize in stage 1, namely, industry-wide cooperation and noncooperation. In stage 2, firms engage in a Cournot competition. Surprisingly, positive virgin material taxes or positive final disposal taxes discourage firms from engaging in recycling R&D efforts in normal situations, regardless of whether R&D cooperation takes place. We compared the second-best social welfare levels under the two regimes described earlier. From a welfare perspective, we found that noncooperation is inferior to industry-wide cooperation.

• Journals

Financial Performance and Growth Pattern: A Case Study of Taiwan's Tourism Industry

Financial performance prediction and growth pattern established are important for economic activities. This study was aimed to evaluate the financial performances of the publicly traded companies in the tourism sector in Taiwan between 2008 and 2010 via the super efficiency model of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). All data, including 3 input items and 5 output items, were fuzzified, which not only eliminated negative and extreme data values but also made the data suitable for the various models of DEA. The results of DEA model showed that the financial structures were divided into 5 blocks and all of the companies were simultaneously examined. The financial performances of tourism companies will improve using the growth patterns.