• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.607-617
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• 2020

This study investigates the causal relationship between public and private external debt and economic growth in developing countries. Our model includes 18 selected Asian developing and transition economies from 1995 thru 2019. We employ the dynamic heterogeneous panel data methods, pooled mean group (PMG), robust cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL), and pairwise panel causality test. The results of PMG and CS-ARDL show the existence of causality between external debt and economic growth both in the short-run and long-run. The pairwise Granger causality test found the bidirectional causal relationship runs from total external debt, public external debt, and private external debt to economic growth and economic growth to external debt. The results showed first the existence of causality in the short-run and long-run between external debt and economic growth and the second, bi-directional causality that runs from external debt to economic growth and economic growth to external debt. Both the dynamic models and robust estimator found the same inferences about the impact of main variables on economic growth in Asian developing and transition economies. The findings of this study suggest to assure debt management, investment in productive sectors, increase domestic savings, decrease external dependency, and focus on international trade.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.835-842
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• 2020

The study aims to investigate the impact of debt on corporate profitability in the context of Vietnam. The paper investigates the impact of debt on corporate profitability in non-finance listed companies on the Vietnam stock market. The panel data of the research sample includes 118 non-financial listed companies on the Vietnam stock market for a period of nine years, from 2009 to 2017. The Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) is employed to address econometric issues and to improve the accuracy of the regression coefficients. In this research, corporate profitability is measured as the return of EBIT on total assets. The debt ratio is a ratio that indicates the proportion of a company's debt to its total assets. Firm sizes, tangible assets, growth rate, and taxes are control variables in the study. The empirical results show that debt has a statistically significant negative effect on corporate profitability. The result also shows this effect is stronger in a non-linear (concave) way, we show that the debt ratio has nonlinear effects on corporate profitability. From this, experimental evidence shows that the optimal debt ratio is 38.87%. This evidence provides a new insight to managers of the non-finance companies on how to improve the firm's profitability with debt.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.551-559
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• 2021

The maturity structure of corporate debt is one of the significant financing choices that a firm must make simultaneously while deciding how to finance its operational and investment decisions. Even though the capital structure is one of the scrutinized topics of interest in the corporate finance literature, scarce studies have investigated corporate debt maturity, even less so in the context of emerging markets. The choice of a suitable debt maturity structure is exceptionally relevant for firms. It can enable them to avoid mismatch by aligning assets in line with liabilities, addressing agency-related problems, sidestep the ill effects of cost of capital, and signaling the firms' earning quality and value. The study investigates the firm-specific and macroeconomic determinants significant for the debt maturity structure of Vietnamese corporate firms. A sample of 722 non-financial firms listed on the Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi Stock Exchange in Vietnam from 2007 to 2018 was taken to test the hypothesis. The study's methods fixed effects panel data analysis provides empirical evidence that firm size, firms' quality, liquidity, leverage, asset maturity, tax impact, and macro variables are significantly related to the debt maturity structure.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.21-32
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• 2021

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between country-level institutional quality and public debt in the context of Pakistan. The hypotheses of this study were assessed by using the country-level institutional quality data for Pakistan throughout the years from 1996 to 2018. Data came from the World Databank, IMF and Worldwide Governance Indicators databases. For the analysis, ordinary least square, quantile regression and robust regression were employed to assess the factors influencing the public debt. The results of this study indicate that the factors of voice and accountability, regulatory quality, and control of corruption have a positive and significant relationship with public debt, while political stability, government effectiveness, and the rule of law have a negative and significant effect on public debt. Based on the findings, a weak country-level institutional quality poses a substantial market risk as it signals the existence of an unfavorable economic condition that raises public debt. It was also revealed that an improved performance of country-level institutional quality can lead to the improvement of financial market transparency, hence reduce public debt. In contrast to previous studies, the present study will be breaking ground in enhancing public insight regarding the impact of country-level institutional quality on Pakistan's public debt.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.9
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• pp.229-239
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• 2020

This paper examines the impact of gender on access to debt finance among Vietnamese enterprises. The paper investigates data and variables retrieved from the World Bank Enterprise Survey dataset using five Probit models. The regression results suggest that there exist more unfavourable debt financing conditions for women-led firms (WLF), measured as a lower probability of having loan applications fully approved. Firm's age, working sector, and perception of access to finance as a difficulty are found to have explanatory power on the discrimination. More importantly, the perception of debt finance as a difficulty or firms' level of confidence significantly explains the variance of the dependent variable of probability of loan approval, or gender effect would be more pronounced if the firm already has a low level of confidence. The paper also contributes in testing for the gender effect on Vietnamese enterprises from different sectors and scale, unlike other prior research papers focusing on specific sectors and/or small and medium enterprises only. The findings are highly useful for Vietnamese credit institutions to set out a specific business policy to attract more WLFs and help promoting gender equality in the working environment, especially in debt financing, which is often neglected in existing regulation and policy frameworks.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.133-142
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• 2022

This study examines the relationship between debt maturity structure and bankruptcy risk. There are various studies of leverage's effect on bankruptcy risk. Debt maturity, however, has not received the attention it deserves, especially in emerging markets with a high degree of information asymmetry. Using Vietnamese listed company data and various estimations, we find that leverage is positively associated with the likelihood of default. Importantly, short-term leverage shows a significantly positive effect on bankruptcy risk, while long-term leverage does not show significant results. The findings highlight that rollover risk firms are exposed to when using short-term debt increases bankruptcy risk. Meanwhile, firms do not cope with this risk in case of long-term debt adoption. High information asymmetry in emerging markets may be the main reason for the difference. The result is robust for subsamples of firms in different financial conditions, in concentrated and competitive industries, as well as for manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies. We also find that firms in a better financial situation and concentrated industries experience a higher short-term leverage effect than their counterparts. We, however, do not find a significant difference in the impact between manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies. This paper is among the first to examine the relation between debt maturity and bankruptcy risk in Vietnam.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.414-422
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• 2020

In this study, an empirical analysis of 55 ship finance cases executed by a specific ship finance bank from 2009 to 2016 during the recession period was conducted. The purpose of this study was to find the factors affecting changes in the debt performance of Korean shipping companies. The main factors were the loan nature (investment purpose, loan-to-value (LTV), syndicated loans, loan terms, put-option, balloon, and spread), financial nature (total assets turnover, net profit-to-sales ratio, debt ratio, quick ratio, total borrowing, bonds payable to total assets, interest expenses-to-sales ratio, debt service coverage ratio (DSCR), and total assets), and the company nature (company age, chief executive officer's (CEO's) shares, and listing status). In this study, the factors affecting the debt repayment capability of domestic shipping companies (loan nature, financial nature, and company nature) were verified. The credit rating was used to measure the dependent variable, debt repayment ability. The variables of investment purpose, put-option, balloon, and spread in the loan nature, debt ratio in the financial nature, and the CEO's shares and company age in the company nature were found to be significant.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.283-289
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• 2022

Public investment is the process of investing capital in projects that serve national interests and thereby create a driving force for economic development in each country. Especially in developing countries, investment capital is limited, so improving the efficiency of public investment becomes a decisive factor for economic development and enhancing the country's status and ultimately making the country a should be rich. Vietnam has a low starting point, has gone through the doi moi process, and has gradually become a middle-income country, and public investment is attracting attention to improve the quality of the country's infrastructure. The objective of this study is to evaluate the factors affecting the effectiveness of public debt management in Vietnam, through a survey of 150 experts with knowledge of public investment and public debt management, using the results of the estimation through the Using SPSS software, the research results show that the monitoring system and human resource quality have an impact on the effectiveness of public debt management. The study could not, however, discover any proof of the influence of institutional quality, geographic location, or accountability on the effectiveness of public debt management. The research also addresses several policy recommendations for Vietnam that would help the country manage its public debt better in the future.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.61
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• pp.273-302
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• 2014

Project finance ("PF") is a method of raising long-term debt financing based on lending against the cash flow generated by the project alone. Project finance is a nonrecourse or limited recourse financing structure against the sponsors(or the investors). The debt terms in a project finance are not based on the creditor's credit support or on the value of the assets of the project. Lenders rely on the future cash flow to be generated by the project for debt repayment and interest, rather than the value of the project or the credit ratings of the sponsors. The non-recourse or limited recourse financing usually prompt potential project finance lenders to assess carefully all possible risks that might arise in a project to ensure that those risks are mitigated and controlled. In this respect, project finance is a opposite financing method of corporate finance. Project finance has rapidly grown over the last 20 years due to the worldwide process of privatization of public sector and development of natural resources. Global project finance volume reached the record USD 406.5 billion in 2011. In 2012, however, Global project finance volume dropped 6% to USD 382.3 billion. Infrastructure overtook Energy to lead all sectors with USD 113.6 billion. It is generally recognized that there are more and higher risks in project finance compared with corporate finance. Project finance is exposed to commercial risks as well as political risks. The main commercial risks are completion risks, environmental risks, operating risks, input supply risks, revenue risks, etc, and the main political risks are currency convertibility and transfer risks, expropriation risks, war and civil disturbance risks, risks of breach of government concession agreement, etc. Completion risks include permits risks, risks relating to the EPC Contractor, construction cost overrun, delay in completion, inadequate performance on completion, etc.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.9
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• pp.283-291
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• 2020

Although the corporate governance plays a crucial role in protecting shareholder wealth, the effect of corporate governance on cost of debt is unclear. On one hand, the corporate governance reduces asymmetric information between corporate and external investor including debtholder leading to a decreasing in cost of debt financing. On the other hand, bondholders require higher rate of return for an improvement corporate governance. Hence, this study aims to investigate the relationship between the mechanism to improve corporate governance namely board effectiveness and the cost of debt in an emerging market. As we aim to explore the relationship between cost of debt and board effectiveness, we select corporation in Thailand as our sample because the businesses in Thailand are major debt-financing. Hence, our sample include listed firm in Stock Exchange of Thailand between 2007 and 2016. Our main findings support the sub-optimal investment hypothesis in that improved board effectiveness is associated with higher cost of borrowing. In addition, we find that the number of board member-board size, the number of board meeting, and the percentage of non-executive on audit committee play are positively associated with the cost of debt financing. Furthermore, we perform two-stage-least square (2SLS) to ensure that our results are far from endogeneity issue.