Economics - Journal Articles
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Item Exploring female entrepreneurship experience of Ireland’s business ecosystem: implications for business support(Emerald Publishing, 2024-10-22) Turley, Anna-Marie; Ryan, Marie; Doyle, EleanorPurpose: This paper investigates the motivations and challenges of women entrepreneurs in Ireland, assessing the role of policies and Enterprise Ireland (EI) support for women-led companies and high potential start-ups (HPSUs). It employs the gendered theory of entrepreneurship and opportunity recognition theory to analyse the enablers and obstacles to women’s entrepreneurship, particularly in the context of EI’s support, aiming to suggest improvements. Design/methodology/approach: Grounded in a feminist epistemology and employing a mixed-methods approach, a targeted survey explores motivations, barriers and supports the needs of female entrepreneurs in Ireland, offering a comprehensive gender perspective evaluation for policy enhancement. Findings: Findings note a shift in Irish women’s entrepreneurship motivations and outlines major hurdles like limited funding and work–life balance issues. It recommends policy enhancements in data collection, website usability, financial guidance and childcare support. Practical implications: This paper aims to highlight the impact of gender-specific factors on entrepreneurship, the study highlights the importance of ongoing data collection and gender comparative analyses. It advocates for women mentoring networks and improved financial support to build a more inclusive entrepreneurial environment in Ireland, with potential global implications. Originality/value: This study is unique for its in-depth exploration into Irish female entrepreneurship challenges, this study proposes actionable strategies with local and global relevance. Advocating for caregiving support integration and women’s increased involvement in tech, it offers a blueprint for fostering female entrepreneurship. It contributes to global discussions on creating supportive, equitable entrepreneurial ecosystems, serving as a valuable resource for advancing gender inclusivity and equity in entrepreneurship worldwide. It identifies scope for integration of a feminist epistemology in policy development.Item The Baby Club: paternity and performance in a high‐pressure setting(John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2024-12-12) Butler, David; Butler, RobertWe offer new insights into fatherhood by asking if the onset of paternity changes workplace productivity. We do this in the well‐monitored and high‐pressure setting of professional football using a novel dataset that matches 115 birth disclosures to the performance of 96 players. Our empirical approach involves specifying a performance equation for a suite of match‐level performance statistics and estimating OLS and Poisson fixed‐effect panel regressions. We find a negative correlation between fatherhood and collaborative performance as measured by expected assists—a player's ability to create goalscoring opportunities. We also report negative effects for the perinatal period for expected assists and passing measures. There is no evidence of performance changes resulting from expectancy news. As negative performance effects are observed in a context of ‘superstar wages’, this raises concerns for high‐pressure labour markets where workers are remunerated less but have low uptake of leave entitlements or where paternity leave is culturally taboo.Item The liquidity timing ability of mutual funds(Elsevier Inc., 2024-06-08) Yin, Zhengnan; O’Sullivan, Niall; Sherman, Meadhbh; University College CorkWe apply the nonparametric methodology of Jiang (2003) to test the market liquidity timing skills across individual equity mutual funds in three countries (the US, UK, and China). We calculate the monthly stock market liquidity using simple averages (across stocks) as well as the asymptotic principal component analysis (APCA) method based on six stock liquidity measures. Using an across-measure of market liquidity from APCA, we find a relatively small number of funds demonstrate statistically positive liquidity timing skills at a 5% significance level for the period of 2000–2021. After controlling for lagged market liquidity information, we still find a small number of mutual funds that have conditional liquidity timing ability using the nonparametric method.Item The market timing ability of bond mutual funds(Springer Nature, 2024-09-17) Yin, Zhengnan; O’Sullivan, Niall; Sherman, MeadhbhWe apply the nonparametric methodology of Jiang (Journal of Empirical Finance 10:399–425, 2003) to examine whether bond mutual funds can time the bond market by adjusting their portfolios' market exposure based on anticipated market movement. This approach offers several advantages over the widely used regression-based tests such as Treynor and Mazuy (Harvard Business Review 44(4):131–136, 1966) and Henriksson and Merton (The Journal of Business 54(4):513–533, 1981). In a comprehensive study covering the USA, UK, and China, we find some evidence of positive market timing of bond funds at the individual fund level. On average, bond funds show neutral to slightly negative market timing abilities. After controlling for public information, we find that a smaller number of bond funds successfully time the market based on private timing signals. In terms of categories, we find strong evidence of positive market timing for Government bond funds as a group, consistent with the findings of Huang and Wang (Management Science 60:2091–2109, 2014).Item The performance of asset allocation mutual funds(Springer Nature, 2024-10-14) Yin, Zhengnan; O’Sullivan, Niall; Sherman, Meadhbh; University College CorkWe analyze the performance of asset allocation funds using a best-fit multifactor model that includes both stock and bond market factors. Utilizing large samples of allocation funds from both the US and the UK, we find that, on average, asset allocation funds do not outperform their benchmarks, and there is little or weak evidence of performance persistence when examining both decile portfolios and small-size portfolios. However, asset allocation funds still demonstrate superior abilities. At the individual fund level, some funds exhibit significant positive alphas, stock market timing, and bond market timing in both the US and UK markets. Furthermore, we find that US allocation funds with low past maximum drawdowns (MDDs) outperform those with high past MDDs during periods of high stock market returns and high stock market volatility. In contrast, UK allocation funds with low past MDDs outperform those with high MDDs when bond market returns are high.