Market crash factors and developing an early warning system: Evidence from Asia

The emergence of Bitcoin in 2009 has received considerable attention surrounding the validity of cryptocurrencies as a viable and, in some jurisdictions, a legal currency alternative. Despite widespread concern that these cryptocurrencies are fostering the environment within which a substantial bubble can occur, it is important to analyze whether these new assets are behaving similarly to major international currencies. This paper investigates the effects of international monetary policy changes on bitcoin returns using a GARCH (1.1) estimation model. The results indicate that monetary policy decisions based on interest rates taken by the Federal Open Market Committee in the United States significantly impact upon bitcoin returns. After controlling for international effects, we find significant evidence of volatility effects driven by United States, European Union, United Kingdom and Japanese quantitative easing announcements. These results show that, despite its nature and ideals, bitcoin seems to be subject to the same economic factors as traditional fiat currencies, and is not entirely unaffected by government policies. This result has implications for investors using bitcoin as a hedging or diversification tool. In addition, we contribute to the existing debate regarding the classification of bitcoin as an asset class, by illustrating that bitcoin volatility exhibits various reactions that bear resemblance to both currency pairs and store-of-value assets.

A rigorous and extensive application of the value chain management (VCM) has become the vogue in modern day business practices and processes. However, due to the complex and multidimensional nature of value chains, achieving efficient and effective value chain management in real value chains remains a major conundrum for practitioners. Many unknown barriers continue to impede effective and efficient value chain management in developing countries’ industrial value chains. The purpose of this study was to find out the common barriers to effective value chain management in a developing country’s industrial value chains using evidence from the cotton industry in Zimbabwe. The analysis was based on survey data sets obtained from 157 purposively sampled experts from the cotton industry value chain in Zimbabwe. Exploratory factor analysis was used to find the barriers to effective value chain management. The results revealed both architectural and governance barriers to effective value chain management. The findings also presented major policy implications for industrial value chains in the developing countries and also indicated areas for further robust research founded on a broader data set from other developing countries’ industrial chains as a way of validating the findings of this study.

Realization of agricultural production complying with the sustainable development principles has resulted in a separate direction – organic farming. Its big difference from all other economy sectors is in its dependence on the natural and climatic conditions. Therefore, agricultural production has a dual nature, namely it depends on the environment health on the one hand, and, on the other hand, directly affects this health through the use of technologies that can both improve and substantially worsen the environmental situation. The institutional support for the organic farming is of great importance. This issue is relevant for scientists from countries, where organic farming is actively developing. In Ukraine, this is also a topical issue. The paper presents a conceptual framework of institutional support for the organic farming development, which includes elements such as state regulation, self-regulation, objects and subjects of organic farming, as well as an organic product market. Legal, informational, infrastructure and financial directions of ensuring the development of organic farming are also defined. The essence of each element is revealed. The main indicators of the organic farming development in Ukraine are analyzed, i.e. the organic farming areas, their proportion in agricultural lands, the number of producers, the volume of the organic market, the volume of organic consumption per capita, as well as the share of domestic organic land in the world's territory. A correlation analysis based on data from the largest world market of the USA made it possible to determine the factors that have the greatest impact on the development of the organic agricultural sector. The number of organic producers is statistically significant, and the share of land in the organic farming does not have a significant impact on the organic product consumption. At the same time, this can be seen from the point of view that the more producers will offer their products, the more saturated the market will be, and therefore the level of the organic products coverage can be greater.