Dr. Don Lee and Dr. Amrita Dhar presenting their paper together at the 93rd annual SEA Conference.

The Southern Economic Association had their 93rd annual conference this year in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Southern Economic Association is a global professional organization that wants to help further the education of scholars and the public. The three-day conference allows for a multitude of topics to be explained and discussed. UMW’s Economics program was showcased by Associate Professors of Economics Donghyun Lee and Amrita Dhar. 

Lee and Dhar presented “Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions, Cultural Distance and Growth: Industry-level Analysis.” While there has been significant research done to explore the cultural distance as a determinant of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), studies on the effect of FDI on growth and the role of cultural distance at the sector level are scant in the literature. In this paper, Lee and Dhar empirically examine the role of cultural distance on the effect of FDI on growth using values system data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and worldwide mergers and acquisitions (M&A) data at industry level from 1986-2012. They examine the effect of FDI on growth at sector-level and the role cultural distance plays in different sectors. 

Dr. Amrita Dhar also presented “Central Bank Communications and International Capital Flows,” co-authored with Dr. Zach McGurk. The focus of the paper is using a novel approach of text mining techniques to estimate central bank sentiment, and its subsequent impact on international capital flows.