Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030124
Authors: Nabil Ahmed Mareai Senan
This study investigates the moderating effect of corporate governance on the associations of the internal audit and quality of the internal audit with the quality of financial reporting among commercial banks in the Republic of Yemen. The final sample includes 210 internal auditors, heads of internal auditors, chairpersons, and members of audit committees. Using a survey-based methodology, the results of the Smart-PL4 analysis showed a positive association between the internal audit and quality of the internal audit and quality of financial reporting. Interestingly, the results showed an insignificant association between the internal audit, quality of the internal audit, and quality of financial reporting when considering the moderating effect of corporate governance. It is worth noting that the results confirm the existence of a positive relationship between the internal audit, quality of the internal audit, and quality of financial reporting. This confirms the importance of the internal audit and quality of the internal audit in enhancing the quality of financial reports and instilling confidence in improving internal control processes and the financial reporting framework. Among the study’s many contributions are that it enhances current research on the interrelationship between internal auditing, quality of internal audits, and quality of financial reporting. It highlights the pivotal role of the internal audit, its effectiveness, and its ability to improve the quality of financial reports. This study calls for more stringent internal controls and posits that strengthening the internal audit and quality of the internal audit, along with improving corporate governance, can enable managers to raise financial reporting standards in banks. It also provides a mechanism for audit committees to monitor internal audit processes and evaluate internal performance.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030122
Authors: Maria Immanuvel Susai Lazar Daniel
This study strives to examine when and where most of the gold smuggling takes place in India. It further analyses the causal relationship between smuggled gold and other macroeconomic variables. Finally, it analyses how the smuggled gold affects the Indian bullion industry. The data related to gold smuggling has been sourced from the website of the Directorate Revenue Intelligence and analysed using graphs and the Granger causality test. The variables used in the study are the quantity of smuggled gold, exchange rates, the major stock indices in the world, the number of auspicious days in a month, domestic and international gold prices, India’s jewellery export, the GDP, customs duty, and the domestic gold supply. The results revealed that most of the gold smuggling takes place on Fridays and mostly occurs in the months of October, November, and December. The states of West Bengal, Delhi, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu account for most of the gold smuggling in India. A positive correlation is observed between the smuggled gold, India’s gold demand, the number of auspicious days in the month, India’s jewellery export, India’s GDP, India’s domestic gold supply, and stock indices such as SENSEX, FTSE100, DFMGI. Gold smuggling in India is caused by India’s gold demand, the level of jewellery export, the GDP, domestic and international gold prices, and India’s customs duty.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030123
Authors: Jinwang Ma Jingran Feng Jun Chen Jianing Zhang
The carbon emission trading markets represent an emerging domain within China. The primary objective of this study is to explore whether carbon price volatility influences stock market volatility among companies subject to these emission trading regulations. Employing daily returns data from 293 publicly traded companies regulated by these emission trading markets, this study encompasses the national carbon market and eight pilot regional carbon markets spanning from August 2013 to October 2023. The results demonstrate that volatility in regional carbon prices positively impacts the stock volatility of companies in the corresponding emission trading region, indicating a volatility spillover effect. Moreover, this spillover effect is more pronounced in sectors marked by lesser carbon intensity than those with greater carbon intensity. The volatility transmission is more pronounced in coastal areas than in inland regions. However, no notable distinctions in volatility transmission are discerned between the periods before and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Vector autoregression analyses substantiate that lagged carbon price fluctuations possess limited predictive capacity for contemporaneous equity market volatility and vice versa. The robustness of these outcomes is fortified by applying the E-GARCH model, which accounts for the volatility clustering phenomenon. As the first investigation into the volatility spillover effect between China’s emission trading market and corresponding stock markets, this study offers valuable insights into the investment strategies of retail investors, the formulation of carbon regulations by policymakers, and the carbon emission strategies of corporate managers.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030121
Authors: Lingyu Li Xianrong Zheng Shuxi Wang
This article studies the relationship between renewable energy stocks’ performance and climate risk. It shows that publicly held renewable energy stocks underperform as a reaction to climate policy information releases, modeled by feed-in tariff (FIT) legislation announcements. The study examined stock price behaviors 2 days before and 30 days after FIT policy announcements. The stock sample used in the study has 3702 firm-day combinations, which included 180 cleantech firms and 32 events from 2007 to 2017. Based on the residual analysis of the sample’s abnormal return, it indicated that the FIT announcements are associated with significant declines in returns. The cumulative abnormal return until Day 18 was a significant −0.83%, while the average abnormal return on the day was −0.16% at normal levels. The study partially excluded the likelihood of a transitory result by varying the measurement horizon. It also adopted both the market model and the Fama–French three-factor models to rule out model misspecification when estimating abnormal returns and thus increased the robustness. In fact, the results were stable to changes in estimating the model’s specifications. In addition, the study compared the portfolio’s performance with mimicking portfolios in terms of size, book-to-market equity (BE/ME), and the firms’ geographic location. It demonstrated that the documented anomaly of the portfolio of renewable energy companies is robust.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030120
Authors: Ahmad Ahed Bader Yousef A. Abu Hajar Sulaiman Raji Sulaiman Weshah Bisan Khalil Almasri
This study intends to identify the motives that lead to increasing or fighting the fraud risk in the Financial Statements (FSs) of industrial companies whose shares are traded in regulated and unregulated markets at the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) based on the Hexagon theory, which divides the motives for fraud into six factors. The study relied on secondary data to collect and measure the study variables by extracting them from the annual reports that were published by those companies on the website of the ASE during the period of 2012–2017. The collected data were analyzed using the logistic regression model on the SPSS program. The results confirmed that the return on assets (ROA), percentage of independent members in audit committees, and tone-related party transactions had a statistically significant relationship with predicted fraudulent FSs, where these three variables belong to pressure, opportunity, and collusion fraud motives, respectively. Thus, it is worth mentioning that this study is distinguished from previous studies that examined the issue of fraud in Jordanian companies by detecting the motives of fraud according to the Fraud Hexagon theory. Moreover, some of the fraud motives were measured using new variables such as a change in inventory, the age of auditing committee’s members, and tone-related party transactions.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030119
Authors: Archillies Kiwanuka Athenia Bongani Sibindi
The purpose of this study was to establish whether digital literacy and insurtech adoption influence insurance inclusion in Uganda. Principally, we sought to determine whether insurtech adoption mediates the nexus between digital literacy and insurance inclusion. This study adopted a cross-sectional and quantitative correlational approach. The study’s sample was 391 individuals who had used digital platforms such as mobile phones and computers to access insurance products and services in Uganda. Data were collected using structured survey questionnaires. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLSEM) was employed to test the hypothesised relationships. The results demonstrated that both digital literacy and insurtech adoption significantly and positively influence insurance inclusion. We also found digital literacy to be a significant and positive determinant of insurtech adoption. Markedly, it was found that insurtech adoption mediates the association between digital literacy and insurance inclusion in Uganda. However, this study was conducted in a developing country with an underdeveloped insurance market and with low technological advancement. This may affect the generalisation of the study’s findings. This study’s novelty lies in establishing how digital literacy and insurtech adoption interact to influence insurance inclusion in Uganda. This is the first study to examine the effect of digital literacy and insurtech adoption on insurance inclusion.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030118
Authors: Oscar V. De la Torre-Torres Francisco Venegas-Martínez José Álvarez-García
This paper evaluates the relationship between investing in workforce well-being and profitability of listed companies in Mexico compared to European companies from an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investor perspective. In this case, the Refinitiv workforce score or High-Performance Work Policies (HPWP) is used as an indicator of the quality of workforce well-being by including the industry effects (economic and business sectors) and the behavioral (sentiment) factors as control variables. Specifically, this article examines the relationships between HPWP, stock price changes (measured as a percentage), profitability (ROE), and market risk (betas). We used a sample of companies from the Refinitiv Mexico and European stock indices for this purpose. In the Mexican case, the results show that a higher level of well-being promotion relates to better company profits. The opposite happens in European companies. Regarding market prices, European companies show higher prices when they have higher HPWP and Mexican companies confirm the opposite. Regarding market risk, only European basic materials with high HPWP show less risk. Finally, in almost all Mexican business sectors, the relationship between market risk and workforce well-being is negative.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030117
Authors: Gab-Je Jo
In this study, the impact of arbitrage resulting from Covered Interest Parity (CIP) deviations on Korea’s long-term interest rates was analyzed, utilizing Vector Error Correction (VEC) models for Granger Causality and Impulse Response Function analyses. This analysis covered the period from February 2002 to September 2023, with a comparative analysis of the periods before and after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The Granger Causality analysis indicated that changes in the swap basis reflecting CIP deviation presented a significant Granger causal relationship with the variations in domestic long-term interest rates. Notably, in the post-GFC period, when CIP deviations were relatively pronounced, the incentives for arbitrage trading exhibited a stronger leading effect in terms of inducing changes in domestic long-term interest rates. The Impulse Response Function analysis showed that domestic long-term interest rates significantly and negatively responded to the positive shocks in the swap basis. This response was even more pronounced during the period following the GFC. Additionally, foreign long-term interest rates and monetary policy variables also demonstrated a significant impact on domestic long-term interest rates. These findings imply that the adjustment path back to equilibrium from CIP deviations, driven by arbitrage, was developed more through changes in domestic interest rates rather than exchange rate fluctuations, especially after the GFC.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030116
Authors: Willem Thorbecke
Many shocks, including COVID-19, wars, inflation, contractionary U.S. monetary policy, and oil price hikes, have recently buffeted the world economy. The literature has reported mixed results concerning how these shocks impact Malaysian stock returns. Some studies found that U.S. monetary policy mattered for Malaysia, while others reported that it did not. This paper, employing two U.S. monetary policy measures over the 2001–2019 period, finds that U.S. policy matters little for Malaysian equities. Some studies found that oil price hikes increased Malaysian stock returns while others reported that they did not. This paper, employing updated data, reports that oil price increases, driven by both world demand shocks and oil supply shocks, raise Malaysian stock returns. The paper also compares the performance of Malaysian equities since the pandemic began, with returns forecasted based on macroeconomic variables. The period since the pandemic started has been labeled the megacrisis era. Interconnected crises, including the pandemic, wars, rising commodity prices, and climate events, all overlapped. The results indicate that industrial metals and banks have performed well since the pandemic began. Food producers, healthcare providers, medical equipment suppliers, tourist-related companies, and semiconductor firms have suffered. This paper considers several steps that could help these sectors to recover.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030115
Authors: Peterson K. Ozili
Loan loss provision is an important accounting accrual in the banking sector. There have been numerous debates about the determinants of loan loss provision in several contexts. This study extends the debate by investigating the determinants of bank loan loss provision in non-crisis years for 28 countries from 2011 to 2018. The non-crisis years cover the periods after the global financial crisis and the periods before the COVID-19 pandemic while the countries consist of African, European, and Asian countries. Using the generalized linear model regression and the quantile regression methodologies, the results show that institutional quality is a significant determinant of bank loan loss provision, indicating that the presence of strong institutions decreases the size of bank loan loss provision in non-crisis years. In the regional analyses, it was found that economic growth is a significant determinant of bank loan loss provisions in African and Asian countries. Loan loss provision is higher in times of economic prosperity in African and Asian countries. Bank overhead cost is a significant determinant of bank loan loss provisions in Asian countries. Meanwhile, bank loan loss provision determinants are insignificant in European countries.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030114
Authors: Lydia N. Kotur Goodness C. Aye Josephine B. Ayoola
This study investigates the asymmetric effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on food security in Nigeria, utilizing annual time series data from 1970 to 2021. The study used descriptive statistics, unit root tests, the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model and its associated Bounds tests to analyze the data. The analysis reveals that adult population, environmental degradation, exchange rate uncertainty (EXRU), financial deepening, food security (FS), government expenditure in agriculture uncertainty (GEAU), inflation, and interest rate uncertainty (INRU) exhibit positive mean values over the period, with varying degrees of volatility. Cointegration tests indicate a long-term relationship between EPU variables (GEAU, INRU, and EXRU) and food security. The study finds that cumulative positive and negative EPU variables have significant effects on food security in the short run. Specifically, negative GEAU, positive INRU, positive and negative EXRU have significant effects in the short run. In the long run, negative GEAU, positive and negative EXRU have significant effects on food security. Additionally, the research highlights asymmetric effects, showing that the influence of GEAU and EXRU on food security differs in the short- and long-run. The study underscores the importance of increased government expenditure on agriculture, control of exchange rate and interest rate uncertainty, and the reduction in economic policy uncertainty to mitigate risks in the agricultural sector and enhance food security. Recommendations include strategies to stabilize exchange rates to safeguard food supply and overall food security.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030113
Authors: Hoontaek Seo Sangho Yi Qing Yang William McCumber
Our study investigates how CEO-friendly boards influence the value and utilization of cash resources. In this paper, we analyze two conflicting views on CEO-friendly boards and their impact on corporate cash holdings: one view posits that such boards might be too lenient, fostering managerial moral hazard problem, while the other contends that they encourage CEOs to share information, despite CEOs knowing that better-informed boards could enforce stricter oversight. By measuring board friendliness through CEO-board social ties, we find that firms with a friendly board tend to maintain lower cash reserves but their excess cash is valued higher by the market compared to firms without such a board. Moreover, these boards deploy excess cash in ways that significantly enhance firm value. The results remain robust even after controlling for various governance variables and CEO characteristics. Our findings offer crucial insights for corporate practitioners and policymakers, highlighting the importance of appointing and retaining CEO-friendly directors to foster effective information exchange, especially in firms with substantial CEO-board information asymmetry in capital budgeting.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030112
Authors: Miguel Resende Carla Carvalho Cecília Carmo
This article delves into the pro-cyclicality of loan loss provisions (LLPs) and earnings management, along with equity management, in Portuguese banks against the backdrop of implementing the IFRS 9’s expected credit loss (ECL) model. It concentrates on how LLPs mirror economic cycles and financial management practices, providing valuable insights into the operational dynamics of the Portuguese banking sector, marked by distinct economic and regulatory challenges. The research examined a sample of five Portuguese commercial banks, chosen from a group of seventeen in the Portuguese Banking Association. Data spanning from 2013 to 2022 were manually gathered. A multiple linear regression model was employed to scrutinize the relationship between LLPs and variables indicative of economic cycles and the earnings and equity management. The methodology use was a multiple linear regression model. The analysis indicates a pro-cyclicality in LLPs within the Portuguese context, with a positive response of LLPs to economic indicators like unemployment. Contrarily, the extent of earnings and equity management under the ECL model was less marked compared to the incurred credit loss (ICL) model, suggesting the impact of more stringent regulatory measures. The research corroborates the pro-cyclicality of LLPs in Portuguese banks under the ECL framework, underscoring the necessity for ongoing monitoring and refinement of models for forecasting and recognizing credit losses. The findings point to an area for improvement in financial management practices, despite regulatory enhancements, to promote transparency and ensure financial stability.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030111
Authors: Douglas Mwirigi Mária Fekete-Farkas Zoltán Lakner
Understanding borrowers’ behavior is essential in making lending decisions, strengthening financial inclusion, and alleviating poverty. This research adopts a bibliometric approach to provide an overview of the borrower’s behavior relative to the selected literature. Bibliometric analysis quantifies the impact and quality of scientific production. This study reviewed 989 articles obtained from SCOPUS and published from 1987 to 2023. Data were cleaned, formatted, and analyzed using VOS viewer (1.6.19) and the R-Bibliometrix package. The research established an increased interest in borrowers’ behavior among scholars. Nonetheless, it is overshadowed by studies in lending behavior, microfinance, banking, peer-to-peer lending, and fintech. The scholarly focus is mainly on the supply side of the credit industry with little regard to demand-side dynamics, such as borrowers’ decision-making processes, which can affect the performance of credit facilities. This study recommends that further studies on credit facility demand-side dynamics should be carried out to understand the drivers of borrowers’ decisions.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030110
Authors: Mingguo Zhao Hail Park
This study aims to investigate bidirectional risk spillovers between the Chinese and other Asian stock markets. To achieve this, we construct a dynamic Copula-EVT-CoVaR model based on 11 Asian stock indexes from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2021. The findings show that, firstly, synchronicity exists between the Chinese stock market and other Asian stock markets, creating conditions for risk contagion. Secondly, the Chinese stock market exhibits a strong risk spillover to other Asian stock markets with time-varying and heterogeneous characteristics. Additionally, the risk spillover displays an asymmetry, indicating that the intensity of risk spillover from other Asian stock markets to the Chinese is weaker than that from the Chinese to other Asian stock markets. Finally, the Chinese stock market generated significant extreme risk spillovers to other Asian stock markets during the 2007–2009 global financial crisis, the European debt crisis, the 2015–2016 Chinese stock market crash, and the China–US trade war. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the risk spillover intensity of the Chinese stock market was weaker, and it acted as the recipient of risk from other Asian stock markets. The originality of this study is reflected in proposing a novel dynamic copula-EVT-CoVaR model and incorporating multiple crises into an analytical framework to examine bidirectional risk spillover effects. These findings can help Asian countries (regions) adopt effective supervision to deal with cross-border risk spillovers and assist Asian stock market investors in optimizing portfolio strategies.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030109
Authors: Toto Edrinal Sebayang Dedi Budiman Hakim Toni Bakhtiar Dikky Indrawan
A new normal has been established as a result of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social behavior, technology, and business. This has a significant effect on how technology is used, such as mobile banking services, which offer more hygienic and secure payment alternatives than cash. Mobile banking has been viewed as having the ability to enhance access to unbanked customers in developing economies such as Indonesia, where 100 million people remain unbanked. This study aims to develop strategies using importance-performance analysis (IPA) to improve adoption based on the perceived importance and performance of 1441 mobile banking users during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected using an online questionnaire administered during the period of September 2022 to March 2023 using the mobile banking adoption attributes of Attitude, Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Compatibility, Subjective Norm, Interpersonal Influence, External Influence, Perceived Behavior Control, facilitating conditions, self-efficacy, firm reputation, trust, disease risk, performance risk, financial risk, privacy risk, time risk, psychological risk, and perceived risk. IPA results were divided into four quadrants: “concentrate here”, “keep up the good work”, “low priority”, and “possible overkill” with a representation that respondents regard as important and well-addressed. The findings show that bank strategists seeking competitive advantage must push innovation efforts to protect users by improving privacy risk and financial risk and enhancing mobile banking security from potential cyberattacks. Digital banks and associated institutions need to educate mobile banking customers on the benefits of security measures for these services, which may improve confidence and trust, and consequently, accelerate mobile banking adoption.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030108
Authors: Muhammed Basid Amnas Murugesan Selvam Satyanarayana Parayitam
Exploring the potential of financial technology (FinTech) to promote financial inclusion is the aim of this research. This study concentrated on understanding why people use FinTech and how it affects their access to financial services by taking into account the mediating role of digital financial literacy and the moderating effect of perceived regulatory support. This study used partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for testing the research model by collecting data from 608 FinTech users in India. The results revealed the role of trust, service quality, and perceived security are essential in promoting the utilization of FinTech services. This study also demonstrated that FinTech positively impacts financial inclusion, making it easier for individuals to get into formal financial services. Furthermore, digital financial literacy emerged as an important mediator between FinTech use and financial inclusion. The research also confirmed that perceived regulatory support has a significant moderation influence on the relationship between FinTech and financial inclusion. This research would contribute to advancing theoretical frameworks and offer practical advice for policymakers and FinTech companies to make financial services more inclusive.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030107
Authors: Thitipong Kanchai Wuttichai Srisodaphol Tippatai Pongsart Watcharin Klongdee
Insurance serves as a mechanism to effectively manage and transfer revenue-related risks. We conducted a study to explore the potential financial advantages of index insurance, which protects agricultural producers, specifically sugarcane, against excessive rainfall. Creation of the index involved utilizing generalized additive regression models, allowing for consideration of non-linear effects and handling complex data by adjusting the complexity of the model through the addition or reduction of terms. Moreover, quantile generalized additive regression was deliberated to evaluate relationships with lower quantiles, such as low-yield events. To quantify the financial benefits for farmers, should they opt for excessive rainfall index insurance, we employed efficiency analysis based on metrics such as conditional tail expectation (CTE), certainty equivalence of revenue (CER), and mean root square loss (MRSL). The results of the regression model demonstrate its accuracy in predicting sugar cane yields, with a split testing R2 of 0.691. MRSL should be taken into consideration initially, as it is a farmer’s revenue assessment that distinguishes between those with and those without insurance. As a result, the GAM model indicates the least fluctuation in farmer income at the 90th percentile. Additionally, our study suggests that this type of insurance could apply to sugarcane farmers and other crop producers in regions where extreme rainfall threatens the financial sustainability of agricultural production.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030106
Authors: Jessica Hall Gregory Jones Claire Beattie John Sands
This study uses a qualitative research mixed methods design to explore the Coronavirus pandemic’s uncertainty effect on mature board governance practices and a board decision processes framework within 16 large Australian financial services entities. Findings provide support for two effects. Firstly, the Coronavirus pandemic had led to a hesitation effect on the board members on-going journey of developing a conscious sense of ‘self’ and awareness. Secondly, the skills and diversity of personalities of directors comprising the board has a positive impact on the effectiveness and success of strategic decisions. The ongoing ambiguity impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on effective board decision-making processes was investigated. The board members expressed confidence in the Australian financial services sector’s ability to overcome the global Coronavirus pandemic’s temporary uncertainty impact on board decision processes frameworks. Future research may extend the focus to senior executives’ or owners’ EI personality traits to investigate the relationship between such individual’s or teams’ traits and ongoing effective board decision-making processes during uncertainty in either developing or developed countries or a cross-cultural study.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030105
Authors: Deepak Mishra Vinay Kandpal Naveen Agarwal Barun Srivastava
This study provides an overview of the different dimensions of financial inclusion, its socioeconomic impacts on society’s sustainable development, and future research agendas. Initially, 620 studies were identified using Scopus and other databases, employing keywords such as financial literacy, financial inclusion, financial capability, women’s empowerment, fintech, artificial intelligence, financial accessibility, sustainable development goals, and economic growth. After refinement based on focus and relevance, 325 papers were analyzed in detail for review, primarily focused on India and emerging economies. This review highlights that access to finance by untouched segments of society is essential for sustainable and socio-economic development in developing economies. The official banking system, an effort by the government to assist the financially disadvantaged, can incorporate the impoverished into a formal financial system through campaigns and credit system reforms. Socioeconomic programs reinforce one another and foster the development of children, women, families, and society. This research paper undertakes a systematic literature review primarily focused on relevant articles in broad areas of financial inclusion and its impact analysis and offers a valuable agenda for future research.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030104
Authors: Ahmet Faruk Aysan Bekir Sait Ciftler Ibrahim Musa Unal
This study utilizes the random forest technique to investigate risk management practices and concerns in Islamic banks using survey data from 2016 to 2021. Findings reveal that larger banks provide more consistent survey responses, driven by their confidence and larger survey budgets. Moreover, a positive link is established between a country’s development, characterized by high GDPs and low inflation and interest rates, and the precision of Islamic banks’ survey responses. Analyzing risk-related concerns, the study notes a significant reduction in credit portfolio risk attributed to improved risk management practices, global economic growth, stricter regulations, and diversified asset portfolios. Concerns related to terrorism financing and cybersecurity risks have also decreased due to the better enforcement of anti-money laundering regulations and investments in cybersecurity infrastructure and education. This research enhances our understanding of risk management in Islamic banks, highlighting the impact of bank size and country development. Additionally, it emphasizes the need for ongoing analysis beyond 2021 to account for potential COVID-19 effects and evolving risk management and regulatory practices in Islamic banking.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030103
Authors: Bashar Abu Khalaf Antoine B. Awad Scott Ellis
This study examines the effects of non-interest income on bank performance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, addressing existing research gaps and conflicting results. The analysis is based on data from 40 banks (5 banks from each country) operating in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates between 2010 and 2022. Using correlation analysis and three regression models (OLS, FE, and RE), this study explores the relationship between non-interest income, overheads, capital adequacy, loan loss provision, bank size, and return on assets. The findings reveal positive associations among banks’ overhead, size, capital adequacy, and loan loss provision. Additionally, a favorable correlation is observed between non-interest income and bank performance. Non-interest income significantly influences the profitability of MENA region banks across all three models, supporting the main hypothesis. While the study’s limitations include sample size and geographic focus, the findings of this study provide valuable insights for policymakers, allowing them to recognize the positive impact of increasing non-interest income on commercial bank profitability in the MENA region and consider implementing policies that encourage and support banks in diversifying their income sources.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030102
Authors: Katarzyna Bilicka Danjue Clancey-Shang Yaxuan Qi
In this paper, we explore the relationship between the culture of the country where a multinational corporation (MNC) is headquartered and the MNC’s stock market reaction to tax avoidance regulations. Specifically, we examine the different responses of MNCs following the implementation of the 2010 UK reform that restricted profit shifting for a specific group of firms. We find that, in countries with short-term-oriented cultures, MNCs affected by this reform experienced positive stock market responses relative to their unaffected counterparts. This is not found in long-term-oriented cultures. This difference in response can partly be explained by the differing perceptions of the role tax havens play in tax minimization practices between more long-term-oriented cultures and those oriented towards the short term. We provide evidence that investors from more future-oriented cultures may recognize the short-lived effectiveness of a regulation ex ante, and thus price the quasi-exogenous market shock differently than their more short-term-oriented counterparts.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030101
Authors: Loc Dong Truong H. Swint Friday Tan Duy Pham
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a key driver of economic development of both developed and developing countries. Understanding and having insights into the factors that motivate increased FDI arevery important for both academics and policy makers. A key factor that multinationals incorporate in their decisions on FDI is geopolitical risk (GPR). Therefore, this study is devotedto investigating the short-term and long-term effects of GPR on FDI in Vietnam. Data used in this study are the yearly geopolitical risk index, FDI, and other control variables covering the period from 1986 to 2021. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach, the empirical results confirm that geopolitical risk (GPR) has a significantly negative effect on FDI in Vietnam in the longterm. Specifically, in the longterm, 1 percent increase in the GPR index is associated with 5.7983 percent decrease in Vietnam’s FDI. In addition, the results derived from the ARDL model indicate that in the shortterm, GPR has a significantly positive effect on the FDI for the one-year lag, meaning that an increase in the GPR index leads to an increase in FDI. Moreover, the results derived from the error correction model (ECM) indicate that 42.89% of the disequilibria from the previous year are converged and corrected back to the long-run equilibrium in the current year. Based on the findings, some policy implications are drawn for policymakers to mitigate the negative effects of GPR on FDI.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030100
Authors: Yuvraj Sunecher Naushad Mamode Khan
Intra-day transactions of stocks from competing firms in the financial markets are known to exhibit significant volatility and over-dispersion. This paper proposes some bivariate integer-valued auto-regressive models of order 1 (BINAR(1)) that are useful to analyze such financial series. These models were constructed under both time-variant and time-invariant conditions to capture features such as over-dispersion and non-stationarity in time series of counts. However, the quest for the most robust BINAR(1) models is still on. This paper considers specifically the family of BINAR(1)s with a non-diagonal cross-correlation structure and with unpaired innovation series. These assumptions relax the number of parameters to be estimated. Simulation experiments are performed to assess both the consistency of the estimators and the robust behavior of the BINAR(1)s under mis-specified innovation distribution specifications. The proposed BINAR(1)s are applied to analyze the intra-day transaction series of AstraZeneca and Ericsson. Diagnostic measures such as the root mean square errors (RMSEs) and Akaike information criteria (AICs) are also considered. The paper concludes that the BINAR(1)s with negative binomial and COM–Poisson innovations are among the most suitable models to analyze over-dispersed intra-day transaction series of stocks.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030099
Authors: Poshan Yu Haoran Xu Jianing Chen
Extreme shocks, including climate change, economic sanctions, geopolitical conflicts, etc., are significant and complex issues currently confronting the global world. From the US–China perspective, this paper employs the DCC-DAGM model to investigate how diverse market risks asymmetrically affect return volatility, and extract correlations between stock indices and hedging assets. Then, diversified and hedging portfolios, constructed by optimal weight and hedge ratio, are investigated using multiple risk reduction measures. The empirical results highlight that, first, diverse risks exhibit an asymmetric effect on the return volatility in the long term, while in the short term, the US stock market is more sensitive to negative return shocks than the Chinese market. Second, risks impact correlations differently across time horizons and countries. Short-term correlations are stronger than long-term ones for the US market, with the Chinese stock market displaying more stable correlations. Third, the hedging strategy is more effective in reducing volatility and risk for US stocks, while the diversification strategy proves more effective for Chinese stocks. These findings have implications for market participants striving to make their portfolios robust during turbulent times.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030098
Authors: S. Al Wadi Omar Al Singlawi Jamil J. Jaber Mohammad H. Saleh Ali A. Shehadeh
This empirical research endeavor seeks to enhance the accuracy of forecasting time series data in the banking sector by utilizing data from the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE). The study relied on daily closed price index data, spanning from October 2014 to December 2022, encompassing a total of 2048 observations. To attain statistically significant results, the research employs various mathematical techniques, including the non-linear spectral model, the maximum overlapping discrete wavelet transform (MODWT) based on the Coiflet function (C6), and the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. Notably, the study’s findings encompass the comprehensive explanation of all past events within the specified time frame, alongside the introduction of a novel forecasting model that amalgamates the most effective MODWT function (C6) with a tailored ARIMA model. Furthermore, this research underscores the effectiveness of MODWT in decomposing stock market data, particularly in identifying significant events characterized by high volatility, which thereby enhances forecasting accuracy. These results hold valuable implications for researchers and scientists across various domains, with a particular relevance to the fields of business and health sciences. The performance evaluation of the forecasting methodology is based on several mathematical criteria, including the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), the mean absolute scaled error (MASE), and the root mean squared error (RMSE).
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030097
Authors: Foteini I. Pagkalou Christos L. Galanos Eleftherios I. Thalassinos
Academics and professionals alike are highly interested in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate Governance (CG), environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and corporate non-financial reporting (CNFR) and how they can improve a brand’s reputation, financial efficiency, and sustainability within businesses and organisations. The main objective of our study was to examine whether the financial data of large companies can be correlated with the data in their non-financial reports and provide information on the level of corporate governance and corporate responsibility and to examine the correlation between them. For this purpose, we conducted research by examining the 100 largest companies in Greece, over a period of 3 years, collecting both financial and non-financial data from their official reports. Using appropriate quantitative tools such as similarity, classification and econometric methods (stepwise method and panel least-squares method), the correlations between the data for CSR, CG and non-financial actions and key financial performance ratios are evaluated. Our research has revealed a strong link between financial performance and ESG actions of large companies and, in particular, we demonstrated the positive correlation of CSR performance with their total assets and whether they are listed on the stock exchange, and of CG with CSR and EBITDA. This study adds to the existing academic discourse on the relationship between financial and non-financial information of corporations in the areas of Corporate Responsibility and Governance and provides a valuable way to assess the decisions of businesses.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030096
Authors: Jonathan Leightner
This paper uses Reiterative Truncated Projected Least Squares to estimate the effects of US monetary and fiscal policy on Australia using quarterly data between 1960 and 2022. When Australia had a fixed exchange rate (1960–1983), both US fiscal and monetary policies were positively correlated with Australia’s GDP, which fits the predictions of a small-country IS/LM/BP model with relatively immobile capital. When Australia had a flexible exchange rate (1984–2022), US fiscal policy was positively correlated with Australia’s GDP, but US monetary policy was negatively correlated with Australia’s GDP, which fits the predictions of a large-country IS/LM/BP model.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030095
Authors: Barkha Jadwani Shilpa Parkhi Pradip Kumar Mitra
The last few years have witnessed tremendous challenges in the management of operational risks faced by banks and the emergence of newer risks. The working models for bank staff are now different; additionally, there has been a massive increase in the digitization level. All these aspects make operational risk management in banks an attractive field of study. There is a need to perform systematic bibliometric analysis in this research area, providing the various trends and highlighting areas for further research analysis. This research paper has examined the various aspects of operational risk management in Banks by performing a thorough bibliometric analysis of 676 articles extracted from two data databases, i.e., Scopus and Web of Science, from 2010 until March 2023. These were analyzed using the tools Biblioshiny and VOSviewer. Various bibliometric techniques like analysis of trends, citations, contributing authors, keywords, and bibliographic coupling have been performed. This research paper has significant theoretical and practical implications which can assist future researchers. Operational risks are ever-dynamic, and five themes, i.e., climate risk, information security risks, geopolitical risks, third-party risks and compliance risks, have been identified in this research paper as key focus areas for conducting research in the future. The findings of this study and suggestions for future research will be useful to academicians, policymakers, and operational risk management professionals for identifying potential areas of collaboration in the future to strengthen the operational risk management framework.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030094
Authors: Diana-Sabina Branet Camelia-Daniela Hategan
Combating corruption is an important objective of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group, with the aim of helping public institutions to act in the interest of citizens. To ensure this objective is met, the spending of public money is controlled by the supreme audit institutions of each country. The objective of this paper is to identify trends in and approaches to the field of auditing in the public sector to combat corruption and prevent fraud. To achieve the proposed objective, a bibliometric analysis of papers published in the journals indexed in Web of Science Clarivate Analytics for the period 2003–2022 was carried out; selection criteria was based on instances of the keywords “public audit fraud”, “supreme institution”, and “fraud” appearing in a sample of 528 articles. The results showed that there was a research interest in this field, with the trend being more pronounced since 2017. The main topics addressed were those related to the performance audit and the fight against corruption, and the most relevant studies were conducted on samples from Nordic European countries. Thus, it is confirmed that the external audit in public sector is an important factor in combating the phenomenon of corruption in the public sector, both by detecting fraud and by offering recommendations aimed at making the activity of this sector more efficient.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030093
Authors: Andrejs Čirjevskis
One of the most essential issues in business partners’ collaboration is whether the integration of their businesses creates a collaborative synergy and adds market value to merging companies. This paper aims to develop a methodological framework that will be convenient for managerial praxis and helpful for scholars’ research in forecasting explicit synergy and valuing tacit synergy in strategic collaborations. The paper theoretically and empirically contributes twofold to strategic foresight. It employs the ARCTIC framework as an extension of the VRIO model to predict an explicit synergy and real options methodology to measure tacit competence-based synergies in M&A deals. The paper makes several theoretical contributions and managerial implications to corporate finance and strategic management disciplines. Finally, the paper discusses research limitations and future work.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030091
Authors: Dietmar Ernst Florian Woithe
We use the S&P 500 to investigate whether companies with a good ESG score benefit from a lower cost of capital. Using Bloomberg’s financial data and MSCI’s ESG score for 498 companies, we calculated the measures of descriptive statistics, finding that companies with better ESG ratings enjoy both a lower cost of equity and a lower cost of debt. However, their WACC shows no improvement with a higher ESG score. Companies with a poor ESG rating have a lower WACC due to the higher proportion of debt capital, coupled with a higher cost of debt, compared to the cost of equity capital. Calculating the Pearson correlation coefficient, we found a slightly negative linear relationship between the ESG score and the beta factor, and between the ESG score and the cost of debt. No linear relationship was found between the WACC and the ESG score. Finally, linear regression analysis shows a negative and significant effect of the ESG score on the root beta factor. This research indicates that companies with better ESG scores benefit from lower cost of equity and debt. Our results may encourage companies to operate more sustainably to reduce their cost of capital.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030090
Authors: Mika Vaihekoski
Stock market indices play a central role in portfolio and risk management and performance evaluation, as well as academic research. This paper presents a fully updated and extended stock market index for the Finnish stock market using new and updated historical databases that cover the period from the establishment of the Helsinki Stock Exchange in October 1912 to the end of 1981. In addition to the all-share market index, four industry indices are presented for the first time. The observed geometric mean market return is 1.034 percent per month (13.14% p.a.). Of the industry indices, the banking sector performed the worst as it was found to have clearly lagged behind in the market, whereas the paper and forest and the metal and manufacturing industries performed the best during the sample period. The results also highlight the importance of taking into account corporate capital actions—which are, historically, often the hardest information to obtain—as they can have a material effect on the index performance.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030092
Authors: Chan Kyu Paik Jinhee Choi Ivan Ureta Vaquero
Using stochastics in stock market analysis is widely accepted for index estimation and ultra-high-frequency trading. However, previous studies linking index estimation to actual trading without applying low-frequency trading are limited. This study applied William%R to the existing research and used fixed parameters to remove noise from stochastics. We propose contributing to stock market stakeholders by finding an easy-to-apply algorithmic trading methodology for individual and pension fund investors. The algorithm constructed two oscillators with fixed parameters to identify when to enter and exit the index and achieved good results against the benchmark. We tested two ETFs, SPY (S&P 500) and EWY (MSCI Korea), from 2010 to 2022. Over the 12-year study period, our model showed it can outperform the benchmark index, having a high hit ratio of over 80%, a maximum drawdown in the low single digits, and a trading frequency of 1.5 trades per year. The results of our empirical research show that this methodology simplifies the process for investors to effectively implement market timing strategies in their investment decisions.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17030089
Authors: Lidija Hauptman Berislav Žmuk Ivana Pavić
Complex tax systems can result in tax evasion, which further impacts the revenues necessary to achieve sustainable development goals. Enhancing taxpayer education, tax knowledge, and tax fairness perception is essential for boosting revenues to support societal sustainability. The aim of this study was to assess the levels of tax knowledge and tax fairness perception within the Slovene taxpayer population, with a specific focus on the differences related to gender and settlement size. Further, the connections between tax knowledge and various aspects of tax fairness were explored. The Kruskal–Wallis test was used to assess the statistical significance of gender and settlement size differences and the Kendall’s coefficient of rank to determine the association between the tax knowledge and fairness perception dimensions. The results provide evidence that highlights disparities in tax knowledge between male and female taxpayers (p-value = 0.0116). Additionally, this study demonstrates that settlement size does not significantly impact tax knowledge perception among Slovene taxpayers (p-value = 0.2067). However, tax fairness encompasses various dimensions, and our research reveals no disparities based on gender (p-value = 0.7263) or settlement size (p-value = 0.2786). When assessing the correlation between tax knowledge and tax fairness perception, the results indicate statistically significant but weak correlations in both directions, depending on the specific fairness dimension.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020087
Authors: Arif Hasan Priyanka Sikarwar Arun Mishra Sandeep Raghuwanshi Abhishek Singhal Astha Joshi Prashant Raj Singh Abhilasha Dixit
In the current study, we sought to construct an integrated model to identify various elements and evaluate the impact of these identified factors on customers’ behavioral intention to use or not use specific M-wallets for payment. To this end, we proposed and validated a conceptual model. In all, 600 questionnaires were distributed, and 482 responses were deemed usable. Structural equation modeling was used to demonstrate the stability of the proposed model and to test the research hypotheses. Perceived value, trust, compatibility, and social influence were all found to have a substantial influence on behavioral intention; however, consumers are less likely to use an M-wallet on the basis of perceived enjoyment. We also found that trust, followed by compatibility, has a stronger influence on customers’ behavioral intentions in the context of M-payments. This study only included six M-wallets and was restricted to a certain age group in a single city. Understanding the many characteristics of behavioral intention can help M-wallet providers gain consumer trust and increase the frequency with which consumers use M-wallets for M-payments. The findings suggest that M-wallet service providers should consider and manage all influencing elements as proactive strategies for M-wallet intention. This strategy can be used to create an M-wallet-user behavioral intention model that will assist enterprises/companies in managing the establishment of their users’ behavioral intentions.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020088
Authors: Hooman Lajevardi Murshed Chowdhury
This study investigates the relationship between the real effective exchange rate (REER) and its volatility with the net inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Canada, placing a novel emphasis on sector-level analysis. The study utilizes time series data from 2007 to 2022 and employs the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to assess short-run and long-run relationships between the said variables. The findings reveal significant impacts of changes in REER, its volatility, and GDP on net FDI in the short run, with lasting effects of REER and its volatility, lagged GDP, and trade openness on FDI in the long run. At the sectoral level, FDI inflows in energy and mining, manufacturing, finance, and insurance exhibit significant sensitivity to changes in REER. Simultaneously, the volatility of REER has a significant impact on FDI inflows in manufacturing industries and the finance and insurance sector in the short run. In the long run, REER exerts a significant influence on the net FDI inflows in energy and mining, as well as manufacturing industries. The asymmetry in findings suggests a need for sector-specific attention to retaining and attracting FDI to Canada.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020085
Authors: Masaru Tsuruta
This study analyzes the term structures of sovereign quanto credit default swap (CDS) spreads and currency options, which are driven by anticipated currency depreciation risk following sovereign credit default (Twin Ds). We develop consistent pricing models for these instruments using a jump-diffusion stochastic volatility model, which allows us to decompose the term structure into the risk components. We find a common risk factor between the intensity process of sovereign credit risk and the stochastic volatility of the exchange rate, and the depreciation risk mainly captures the dependence structure between these markets during periods of high market stress in the Eurozone countries. Depreciation risk is an important component of sovereign quanto CDS spreads and is evident in the negative slope of the volatility smile in the currency option market.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020083
Authors: W. Eric Lee
This study examines (1) how risk–payoff preference can be affected by differences in consideration of future consequences (CFC), prior gain/loss, and personal risk profile, and (2) whether one’s risk–payoff preference may vary with justification prompts. Using an experimental design with 366 undergraduate business students, participants are tasked to make risk–payoff choices in two scenarios, with the combined risk–payoff outcomes serving as the dependent variable. In addition, participants are assessed on their personal risk profiles and also complete the 14-item CFC scale to gauge the propensity to take into account future consequences of their behaviors. Findings show that one who scores low (high) in CFC will prefer lower (higher) risk and payoff. Further, for an individual who scores high in CFC and has a prior gain (loss), he/she will be more inclined to prefer lower (higher) risk and payoff, though this effect is moderated by one’s risk profile. Finally, justification prompts help to reduce one’s propensity toward high risk–payoff, irrespective of prior gain/loss and risk profile considerations. With regard to consumers’ financial choices, particularly in a volatile economic environment, the findings here indicate that prompting for strategic justifications before making decisions can help lower one’s overall propensity toward high risk–payoff choices.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020086
Authors: Mohammad I. Almaharmeh Ali Shehadeh Hani Alkayed Mohammad Aladwan Majd Iskandrani
This study examines the impact of family ownership on tax avoidance decisions. This study further investigates the effects of corporate governance quality on the relationship between family ownership and tax avoidance. We construct a sample of non-financial firms listed on the ASE for the period 2015–2021. The results demonstrate that family-owned firms have high levels of tax avoidance. This result supports the private-benefit expropriation hypothesis. Regarding the mediating effect of corporate governance variables, the results suggest that large audit committees and audit committees that meet more frequently curb attempts by family owners to avoid paying tax.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020081
Authors: Hatem Adela Wadeema Aldhaheri
The rise in crime against a person in rapidly growing cities poses significant risks to societies and economies, affecting both microeconomic and macroeconomic aspects. This trend could potentially deter economic performance and domestic investment. Consequently, this study aims to analyze the impact of crime against a person on domestic investment in Dubai spanning 1989–2021. Dubai is considered an emerging economy and a highly competitive global city. It is also acknowledged as one of the world’s smart cities. This study employed the novel nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach to investigate the impact of both the escalation and contraction of crime against a person on domestic investment in Dubai. The findings exhibit that the fluctuation in crime against a person has an asymmetrical impact on domestic investment. In addition, estimations of the positive and negative long-run asymmetric coefficients indicate that crime against a person has a negative impact on domestic investment in Dubai.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020084
Authors: Antonio Pacifico Daniela Pilone
This paper proposes a penalized Bayesian computational algorithm as an improvement to the LASSO approach for economic forecasting in multivariate time series. Methodologically, a weighted variable selection procedure is involved in handling high-dimensional and highly correlated data, reduce the dimensionality of the model and parameter space, and then select a promising subset of predictors affecting the outcomes. It is weighted because of two auxiliary penalty terms involved in prior specifications and posterior distributions. The empirical example addresses the issue of pandemic disease prediction and the effects on economic development. It builds on a large set of European and non-European regions to also investigate cross-unit heterogeneity and interdependency. According to the estimation results, density forecasts are conducted to highlight how the promising subset of covariates would help to predict potential contagion due to pandemic diseases. Policy issues are also discussed.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020082
Authors: Jaheera Thasleema Abdul Lathief Sunitha Chelliah Kumaravel Regina Velnadar Ravi Varma Vijayan Satyanarayana Parayitam
In the wake of inflation, investors engage in identifying inflation hedging instruments. Most importantly, investors attempt to minimize risk and maximize returns to safeguard against inflation. Risk plays an important role in this process. The objective of this research is to examine the relationship between risk factors and investor behavior, particularly in the Indian context. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), we built a conceptual model investigating the intricate relationship between risk factors, investment priority, investment strategy and investment decision-making. We collected data from 537 respondents in the southern region of India and analyzed the data using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The result indicate: (i) risk factors (risk capacity, risk tolerance, and risk propensity) are positively related to investment priority and investment strategy, (ii) investment priority is positively related to investment decision-making, (iii) conscientiousness moderates the relationship between investment priority and investment decision-making, (iv) investment strategy is positively related to investment decision-making. Finally, the practical and theoretical implications for research are discussed.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020080
Authors: Mihaela Neacșu Iuliana Eugenia Georgescu
To adapt to the business environment, organisations adhere to management strategies capable of removing the effects of negative events, transforming themselves into resilient organisations. Physical and mental difficulties are the consequences of recent corporate developments, and protecting these organisations is a significant concern for managers. Using regression analysis of panel data, we evaluate the effectiveness and performance of 34 tourism and transport companies listed on the BSE in the 2005–2022 period by testing the effect of leverage on financial performance. Then, we focus on identifying the effects of recent crises (the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic) on financial performance and, implicitly, on organisational resilience. The findings suggest that the research hypotheses were partially validated, noting that the indicators included in the study registered significant decreases for the COVID-19 crisis period compared to the global financial crisis period. The paper provides information on measuring the resilience of companies through their ability to withstand the global financial crisis and the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is also among the first to examine the role of financial crises in the leverage and financial performance relationship in Romania.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020079
Authors: Masoumeh Fathi Klaus Grobys James W. Kolari
While well-established literature argues that realized variances are close to a lognormal distribution, this study follows Benoit Mandelbrot by taking a fractal perspective. Using power laws to model realized foreign exchange rate variances, our findings indicate that power laws offer an alternative to the lognormal in terms of goodness-of-fit tests. Further, our analysis shows that estimated power law exponents for seven out of nine realized FX variances are α^<3, which indicates that the variance of realized variance is statistically undefined. We conclude that the foreign exchange rate market is far riskier than earlier believed. By implication, documented research in an enormous body of literature that draws conclusions from variance analyses stands on shaky grounds.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020078
Authors: Fernando Anuno Mara Madaleno Elisabete Vieira
An efficient and effective portfolio provides maximum return potential with minimum risk by choosing an optimal balance among assets. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyze the performance of optimized portfolios in minimizing risk and achieving maximum returns in the dynamics of Timor-Leste’s equity portfolio in the international capital market for the period from January 2006 to December 2019. The empirical findings of this study indicate that the correlation matrix showed that JPM has a very strong positive correlation with one of the twenty assets, namely BAC (0.80). Moreover, the optimal portfolio of the twenty stocks exceeding 10% consists of four consecutive stocks, namely DGE.L (10.69%), NSRGY (10.37%), JPM (10.04%), and T (10.03%). In addition, the minimum portfolio consists of two stocks with a minimum variance of more than 10%, namely SAP.DE (11.20%) and DGE.L (10.39%). The evaluation of the optimal portfolio using Markowitz parameters also showed that the highest expected return and the lowest risk were 1.22% and 3.12%, respectively.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020077
Authors: Nektarios Gavrilakis Christos Floros
We here analyze the factor loadings given by the CAPM, the Fama–French three (FF3), and the five-factor model (FF5), and test the performance and the validity of adding two more factors (volatility and dispersion of returns) to the FF5 factor model of European index-based ESG leaders’ portfolios. Our ESG leaders’ portfolios generated significant negative alphas during 2012–2022, corroborating the literature’s negative argument. The negative abnormal returns of ESG leaders’ portfolios are homogeneous across the three ESG pillars. We conclude that European ESG leaders’ portfolios are biased toward large cap and value stocks with robust operating profitability and against aggressive investments. As robustness tests, we examine Global ESG leaders’ index-based portfolios, producing the same results but with reduced importance in some loading factors like profitability and investment strategy. Furthermore, we deduced that European and Global ESG leaders’ portfolios tilt towards volatility and herding bias.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020076
Authors: Ian Grigg
Classical double entry accounting has provided the foundation for accounting within the firm for many centuries. The digitally signed receipt, an innovation from financial cryptography, gives rise to exactly duplicated entries for each of 3 parties or roles, the outcome of which we call triple entry accounting. This presents a challenge to double entry bookkeeping by expanding the use of accounting from inside firms to activity between the firms. When applied to digital cash and digital assets, the approach of negotiating a single signed receipt between parties lowers costs by delivering reliable data to support stronger accounting, and makes much stronger governance possible in a way that positively impacts on the future needs of corporate and public accounting. By turning the opinions of firm owners into facts agreed between firms, triple entry bookkeeping creates the bulletproof accounting layer to support aggressive uses and adversarial users such as are found in the Bitcoin system of transactions.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020075
Authors: Mogens Steffensen Savannah Halling Vikkelsøe
This paper studies optimal consumption and investment strategies with lifetime uncertainty to design a smooth pension product. In a simplified Black–Scholes market, we investigate three strategies for consumption and investment: the classical strategy, the habit strategy, and the hybrid strategy. Incorporating additive habit formation in preferences leads to a request for less consumption volatility. Studying the consumption dynamics, it turns out that the hybrid strategy complies with the same preferences as the habit strategy. In our design of a smooth pension product, we are highly inspired by the consumption structure under the hybrid strategy and let consumption be specified as a time-dependent weighted average of last year’s consumption level and a standard market rate life annuity. We give two approaches for the investment portfolio. The numerical examples show that consumption under these approaches is less volatile than consumption under the classical strategy.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020074
Authors: Nataliia Yaroshevych Iryna Kondrat Tetyana Kalaitan
The growth of state transfers to offset disparities in regional development affects the stability of the country’s financial system. This article delves into this outcome, empirically analyzing whether the transfer system for horizontal fiscal alignment leads to decreased financial system stability through increased borrowing at municipal and national levels. To test this hypothesis, we employ a quasi-experimental analysis strategy, examining potential scenarios of configuring transfers to Ukrainian municipalities for addressing horizontal fiscal imbalance. Across various transfer calculation scenarios involving changes in the calculation period, the number of budgets in consideration, and the alignment subject, we find that a suboptimal system of horizontal fiscal alignment, transferring funds from financially secure municipalities to insecure ones, leads to a rise in the public finance debt, subsequently decreasing financial system stability. Additionally, we discover that the current mechanism in Ukraine for horizontal fiscal alignment, designed to mitigate inequalities in socio-economic development among communities and regions, paradoxically exacerbates these disparities, artificially inflates indicators of decentralization reform success, and undermines public finance stability.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020073
Authors: Bilal Adel Moustafa Abdallah Mohamed Gaber Ghanem Wagdi Hamed Hijazi
The exercise of audit judgment is essential because it is impractical to perform an audit on all types of evidence. These types of evidence are considered in forming an opinion on audited financial statements, making audit judgment a determinant of the audit’s outcome. The objective of this research is to analyze the factors that affect an auditor’s judgment and decision making (JDM) during an audit. This study used an exploratory research design, with the factor analysis approach as its methodology. However, the data were collected using the questionnaire method. The questionnaire was sent to all member auditors of the Lebanese Association of Certified Public Accountants (LACPA). A total of 310 completed questionnaires were collected and analyzed. The data analysis findings indicate that the auditor’s JDM throughout the audit process is affected by three factors: personal, task, and environmental factors. The auditor’s personal factor becomes the dominant factor because it has the largest eigenvalue of 7.949. These findings demonstrate the complex and diverse nature of auditor judgment, highlighting the significance of considering audit JDM factors. Therefore, auditors may improve their abilities to make informed and effective judgments throughout the audit process by acknowledging the importance of personal, task, and environmental factors.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020072
Authors: Pasquale Lucio Scandizzo Odin K. Knudsen
This paper delves into the evolving post-pandemic business arena, focusing on how liability options and social norms are reshaping industry structures. We anticipate lasting transformations due to the emergence of new safety standards that bridge the gap between corporate interests and societal welfare. To foster these changes, effective post-lockdown economic policies could encompass not only rigorous social standards but also specific financial incentives. Examples of such incentives include tax relief for businesses implementing comprehensive health protocols and subsidies for those transitioning to remote work or modifying production layouts to minimize infection risks. Our analysis delineates two predominant operational frameworks for firms in this new environment: the liability and property regimes. These are determined by each firm’s financial outcomes and the extent of damages incurred, all measured against societal expectations. Firms within the liability regime may exhibit only partial compliance, often attributed to ambiguous standards and prevailing uncertainties, potentially leading to a dip in profits. In contrast, entities operating under the property regime are likely to engage in more extensive organizational restructuring. A key insight from our study is the paradigm shift in investment behavior, increasingly influenced by risk management, particularly in the strategic choice between liability and property rules. This shift is evident in how firms now prioritize managing potential external liabilities, such as environmental hazards or evolving regulatory landscapes, in their investment decisions. Consequently, the traditional growth-centric investment paradigm is being supplemented by strategies that emphasize safeguarding against various external risks, marking a significant realignment in corporate investment philosophies post-pandemic. This transition underscores the intricate interplay between economic policies, corporate strategies, and societal dynamics in the contemporary business milieu.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020071
Authors: Michael William Ashby Oliver Bruce Linton
We show that three prominent consumption-based asset pricing models—the Bansal–Yaron, Campbell–Cochrane and Cecchetti–Lam–Mark models—cannot explain the dynamic properties of stock market returns. We show this by estimating these models with GMM, deriving ex-ante expected returns from them and then testing whether the difference between realised and expected returns is a martingale difference sequence, which it is not. Mincer–Zarnowitz regressions show that the models’ out-of-sample expected returns are systematically biased. Furthermore, semi-parametric tests of whether the models’ state variables are consistent with the degree of own-history predictability in stock returns suggest that only the Campbell–Cochrane habit variable may be able to explain return predictability, although the evidence on this is mixed.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020070
Authors: Eberhard Mayerhofer
Shadow prices simplify the derivation of optimal trading strategies in markets with transaction costs by transferring optimization into a more tractable, frictionless market. This paper establishes that a naïve shadow price ansatz for maximizing long-term returns, given average volatility yields a strategy that is, for small bid–ask spreads, asymptotically optimal at the third order. Considering the second-order impact of transaction costs, such a strategy is essentially optimal. However, for risk aversion different from one, we devise alternative strategies that outperform the shadow market at the fourth order. Finally, it is shown that the risk-neutral objective rules out the existence of shadow prices.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020069
Authors: Khudhayr A. Rashedi Mohd Tahir Ismail Sadam Al Wadi Abdeslam Serroukh Tariq S. Alshammari Jamil J. Jaber
We aim to detect outliers in the daily stock price indices from the Saudi Arabia stock exchange (Tadawul) with 2026 observations from October 2011 to December 2019 provided by the Saudi Authority for Statistics and the Saudi Central Bank. We apply the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) algorithm for detecting outliers in stock returns. We select the inflation rate (Inflation), oil price (Loil), and repo rate (Repo) as input variables to the MLP architecture. The performance of the MLP is evaluated using standard metrics for binary classification, namely the false positive rate (FP rate), false negative rate (FN rate), F-measure, Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC), accuracy (ACC), and area under the ROC curve (AUC). The results demonstrate the efficiency and good performance of the MLP algorithm based on different criteria tests.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020068
Authors: Banu Dincer Caner Dincer
This review aims to provide a comprehensive synthesis of the coverage of sustainability reporting (SR) aspects within the corpus of qualitative SR literature. It seeks to elucidate the theoretical and conceptual foundations that have guided the trajectory of the sustainability field and illuminate the qualitative methodologies used in this body of literature. Employing a systematic review methodology, this study undertakes an exhaustive examination of 242 selected empirical studies on sustainability reporting conducted during the period spanning from 2001 to 2022. The noteworthy contribution of this review to the realm of sustainability research lies in its identification of unexplored and underexplored domains that merit attention in forthcoming investigations. These include but are not limited to employee health and safety practices, product responsibility, and gender dynamics. While stakeholder theory and institutional theory have been dominant theories within the selected literature, the exploration of moral legitimacy remains largely underinvestigated. It is essential to underscore that this review exclusively encompasses qualitative studies, owing to the richness and versatility inherent in qualitative research methods. This deliberate selection enables researchers to employ diverse methodological and theoretical frameworks to gain a profound understanding of engagement within the practice of sustainability reporting. This review introduces an interesting approach by considering the thematic scope, as well as theoretical and methodological choices, observed across the selected studies.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020067
Authors: Haim Levy Moshe Levy
The Black–Scholes model and many of its extensions imply a log-normal distribution of stock total returns over any finite holding period. However, for a holding period of up to one year, empirical stock return distributions (both conditional and unconditional) are not log-normal, but rather much closer to the logistic distribution. This paper derives analytic option pricing formulas for an underlying asset with a logistic return distribution. These formulas are simple and elegant and employ exactly the same parameters as B&S. The logistic option pricing formula fits empirical option prices much better than B&S, providing explanatory power comparable to much more complex models with a larger number of parameters.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020066
Authors: Abdalla Al Khub Mohamed Saeudy Ali Meftah Gerged
This study explores the role of digital financial inclusion in mitigating poverty and bolstering economic growth, with a special focus on developing nations during the COVID-19 era. Centering on Jordan, it seeks to identify key influencers of financial access by analyzing data from 260 participants using a non-linear probit regression model. The research uncovers a significant disparity in financial inclusion between Jordanian adult males and females, attributable to differences in education, wealth, employment, and income levels. These findings point to the necessity of prioritizing financial accessibility for marginalized groups such as women, the elderly, and those with lower income to effectively combat poverty and facilitate economic advancement and sustainable development in emerging markets.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020065
Authors: Tobias Schütze Ulrich Schmidt Carsten Spitzer Philipp C. Wichardt
Financial decision making requires a sound handling of chance events. However, various studies have suggested that people are prone to illusion of control, i.e., the belief that prospects of a chancy event are better if they are involved in the randomisation process. This paper reports results from an experiment (N=420) suggesting that psychological characteristics moderate risk-taking behaviour under such circumstances. For example, we find that subjects high in sensation seeking buy more tickets of a risky lottery if they determine the winning numbers themselves and the random event lies in the future. The findings suggest that “illusion of control” effects are at least partly driven by underlying (idiosyncratic) emotions/preferences rather than an actual belief in control. Regarding applications, the results emphasise the importance of individual characteristics for the behaviour of decision makers in a financial context.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020064
Authors: Jinxi Chen Bowen Cai
The purpose of this study is to verify whether the transportation infrastructure investment carried out by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has promoted the economic development of its recipient countries. Since the establishment of the AIIB, its investments in infrastructure development, aimed at promoting economic growth in Asian developing countries, have garnered considerable attention. This study selects India, the largest recipient country of the AIIB, as the research object and chooses the Gujarat Road Project as the research case, since it is a completed infrastructure construction investment project in the transportation field. This paper provides an overview of the project’s operation and summarizes key factors in the project’s implementation. In the data analysis section, the per capita GDP is selected as the explained variable to measure economic development, and the LASSO regression method is used to select several variables that affect economic development. Moreover, the random forest model is used to obtain the causal relationship between road construction and the per capita GDP from 2001 to 2022. The results indicate that road construction in India has a significant positive effect on per capita GDP growth, the Gujarat Road Project supported by the AIIB also has a positive effect on per capita GDP growth, and this effect is stronger than that at the national level. The main contribution of this work is the validation of the investment strategy of the AIIB and the quantification of the economic contribution of AIIB investment projects to the local area.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020063
Authors: Román Culebro-Martínez Elena Moreno-García Sergio Hernández-Mejía
Financial literacy is the ability of people to process economic information to make better financial decisions. Therefore, the financial literacy of entrepreneurs could affect the management of their companies and their results. The aim of this research is to determine if there is a significant relationship between companies’ performance and financial knowledge, financial behavior, and financial attitude of micro, small, and medium-sized entrepreneurs. The incidence of the variables age, size, and sector of the companies, as well as the entrepreneur’s age, gender, and educational level on companies’ performance, is also analyzed. Data from 206 entrepreneurs from Veracruz, Mexico, were analyzed using a logistic regression model. The results show that the financial behavior of the entrepreneurs has a positive and highly significant effect on companies’ performance, although the entrepreneur´s knowledge and attitude don´t have a significant relationship with companies´ performance. The results also show that companies in the industrial sector led by men are less likely to obtain high performance compared to those in the commerce sector. No incidence was found of the variables age, size of the company, and entrepreneur´s educational level on the performance of their companies.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020062
Authors: Nguyen La Soa Do Duc Duy Tran Thi Thanh Hang Nguyen Dieu Ha
This research study aims to assess the impact of environmental accounting information disclosure on financial risk within the context of Vietnam’s stock market. The data collection process involved 60 non-financial companies, carefully selected from both the pool of 100 Sustainable Companies listed in the “Programme on Benchmarking and Announcing Sustainable Companies in Vietnam (CSI)”, as organized by VBCSD, and companies outside this list. The data span a timeframe from 2018 to 2022. Afterward, we utilize regression models to assess relationships and employ the t-test to evaluate differences. The results indicate that environmental accounting information disclosure has an inverse effect on the financial risk of the current year and the following year. This implies that companies that are more transparent and proactive in reporting their environmental performance are likely to experience decreased financial risk. Furthermore, the results also show differences in financial risk between the group of companies within the “100 Sustainable Companies” list and the group of companies outside this list. This disparity underscores the potential financial benefits of being recognized as a sustainable company. Based on the findings, the research team has provided several recommendations to enhance environmental accounting information disclosure and awareness.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020061
Authors: Martin Abrahamson
In an initial public offering (IPO) the firm can set the offer price of its shares, based on the valuation of the firm, by changing the number of shares. This study uses stock ownership records and hand-collected IPO data to analyze the offer prices, the underpricing of IPO shares (measured as the initial return, IR) and the relationship with the post-IPO ownership structure. Specifically, the paper focuses on individual IPO investors. The results show that for the lowest priced IPOs the IR is significantly higher priced IPOs. Furthermore, for the low-priced IPOs, there is a negative relationship between offer price and breadth of ownership. This implies that stocks with a low price can attract more investors than stocks with higher offer prices. However, for high-priced IPOs the relationship is positive, suggesting that also the IPOs with highest price attract more investors. Overall, this study shows that the offer price of an IPO firm may have a moderate effect on its post-IPO ownership structure.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020060
Authors: Theofanis Petropoulos Yannis Thalassinos Konstantinos Liapis
The public sector has limited resources, and how these resources are allocated in expenditures and investments is crucial. Our article focuses on controlling this allocation for the Greek economy from 2000 to 2021, which includes the country’s debt crisis. To do so, we utilized data from national accounts, categorized inputs and outputs, and examined their volatility and stability over time using statistical and mathematical methods. Our analysis revealed that the crisis impacted the size and allocation of public inputs and outputs. While some sectors of the Greek economy displayed stability in financing over time, others were more volatile. Using a mathematical accounting approach contributes to the academic discourse on rational resource allocation in the public sector. Our results validate the tax hypothesis for primary revenues and expenditures and advocate that it is necessary to make targeted recruitments in the sector that is needed each time while keeping the total number constant, which leads to the need to redistribute public sector workers. In the same way, public projects should not only focus on infrastructure projects but should also be spread to new areas related to climate change and the agricultural sector.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020059
Authors: Durga Acharya
Stock bubbles are characterized by unpredictable price surges and subsequent declines, causing significant losses for investors. This study investigates the effectiveness of the Generalized Sup Augmented Dickey–Fuller (GSADF) test in identifying mild explosive patterns and speculative bubbles within individual S&P 500 stocks, as compared to the Sup Augmented Dickey–Fuller (SADF) test. Utilizing real-time monitoring data, this research examines unit roots, stationarity, and the ability to detect multiple structural breaks. The GSADF test consistently outperforms the SADF test in rejecting the null hypothesis, demonstrating greater sensitivity and efficacy in recognizing stock bubbles. Monte Carlo simulations address size distortions in the GSADF test, enhancing accuracy.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020058
Authors: Umar Kayani Fakhrul Hasan
The advent of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology has sparked a revolutionary shift in the financial sector. This study sets out on a wide-ranging investigation to understand the nuanced dynamics, repercussions, and potential future paths of this shifting environment in the UK and USA. The primary goals of the research are to examine how cryptocurrencies affect financial markets and conventional banking systems; to examine how blockchain technology might be used in the financial sector; to assess policy and regulatory considerations; and to predict and plan for the future. This research digs into how cryptocurrencies have revolutionized the banking and finance sectors. Analysis of adoption rates, market volatility, and integration methods sheds light on the changing position of cryptocurrencies in investment portfolios, reconfiguration of asset classes, and coping mechanisms of conventional financial institutions. When looking at the financial sector as a whole, the transformational potential of blockchain technology becomes clear. The advent of DeFi, smart contracts, and asset tokenization offers new prospects to improve financial transactions, increase transparency, and broaden participation in the investment market. The research analyzes cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology from a policy and regulatory perspective. The delicate balancing act between stimulating innovation and guaranteeing consumer protection, market integrity, and financial stability is highlighted by a comparison of the regulatory methods adopted in the United Kingdom and United States, as well as proposals from international organizations. The research identifies potential future paths for these technologies and their implications. Opportunities and challenges that will influence the future of finance emerge, with a focus on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), sustainable blockchain solutions, and interdisciplinary collaborations. As this deep dive comes to a close, the transformational power of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology is highlighted. It sheds light on the forces that are altering the structures of the world’s financial markets, conventional banking structures, and regulatory frameworks. The findings and critical assessment stress the need for well-considered choices, ethical innovation, and interdisciplinary cooperation in order to succeed in an ever-changing environment. To further democratize access, improve transparency, and reshape the economic fabric of our planet, the future of finance resides at the confluence of tradition and innovation, where cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology exist.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020057
Authors: Joseph K. W. Fung F. Y. Eric Lam Yiuman Tse
The study examines the return performance and resilience to market volatility of the recently introduced environment, social/sustainable, and governance (ESG) weight-tilted Hang Seng index compared to its parent, the Hang Seng index. The ESG-infused index has a higher mean return and lower return volatility than the parent index, although the differences are statistically and economically insignificant, a result consistent with the high correlation between the two index returns. Most importantly, the ESG weight-tilted index is more resilient to volatility spikes than the parent index and, therefore, has lower downside risks. The overall results show that stocks with high ESG ratings are less susceptible to trading pressures triggered by volatility-induced turnovers. The paper contributes to the literature by providing significant incremental information on the emerging market for ESG-related equity products in Hong Kong.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020055
Authors: Antonín Korauš Eva Jančíková Miroslav Gombár Lucia Kurilovská Filip Černák
This paper deals with ensuring the sustainability of the financial system and combating hybrid threats in relation to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) measures. International cooperation in the field of combating hybrid threats is only at the beginning, and in many ways, the experience of international cooperation in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, which is based on many years of experience in the institutional and legislative fields, could be used. Hybrid threats are constantly changing and evolving, which means our response to them must also constantly evolve and adapt. The aim of the presented study is the analysis of the problem of the legalization of income from criminal activity and the financing of terrorism and their possible relationship with the fight against hybrid threats and maintaining the stability of the financial system.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020056
Authors: Kudret Topyan Chia-Jane Wang Natalia Boliari Carlos Elias
This paper empirically evaluates the impact of ownership structure on the cost of credit in US banks. It does so by comparing their grouped option-adjusted credit spreads on the outstanding debt issues. As the overall risk of the creditors is reflected in the yield spread of the firms’ outstanding bonds, separately classifying bank-holding companies and stand-alone banks and controlling risk ratings, maturities, and issue sizes enables us to compare the yield spreads tied to ownership structure. After computing the option-adjusted yield spreads of outstanding operating and holding company bonds, we used these values in a master regression equation to test the statistical and economic significance of the binary variable separating the option-adjusted spreads of the two sets. Our work finds that when the S&P ranks and maturities are controlled, US bank-holding companies finances with higher cost of credit compared with stand-alone banks, although holding companies add a layer of liability protection due to the legal separation between the assets and the owners. This suggests that certain characteristics of US bank-holding companies, such as higher leverage and higher systematic risk levels, make them riskier compared with traditional stand-alone banks, offsetting the benefits of forming a holding company.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020054
Authors: Binh Nguyen Thanh Ha Xuan Son Diem Thi Hong Vo
This paper examines how the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology can enable autonomous AI agents to engage and execute economic and financial transactions. We critically examine the constraints on AI agents in achieving predefined objectives independently, especially due to their limited access to economic and financial institutions. We argue that AI’s access to these institutions is vital in enhancing its capabilities to augment human productivity. Drawing on the theory of institutional economics, we propose that blockchain provides a solution for creating digital economic and financial institutions, permitting AI to engage with these institutions through the management of private keys. This extends AI’s capabilities to form and execute contracts, participate in marketplaces, and utilize financial services autonomously. The paper encourages further research on AI as a general-purpose technology and blockchain as an institutional technology that can unlock the full capabilities of autonomous AI agents.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020053
Authors: Ilker Yilmaz Ahmed Samour
This work aimed to examine the effect of corporate cash holdings on financial performance. The data covered 536 non-financial firms for the 2006–2020 period from 11 MENA region countries. This study used fixed- and random-effects testing models. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that aimed to study the effect of corporate cash holdings on financial performance in MENA countries in two aspects: linear and non-linear relationships. By using the return on assets, return on equity, earnings before interest, and the tax margin as the indicators of financial performance, we developed two groups of models investigating the linear and non-linear relationships between cash holdings and profitability measures. The models included several control variables, namely leverage, firm size, sales growth rate, tangibility, dividend pay-out ratio, and gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate. The results of this study revealed that both the linear and non-linear models produced significant results for the return on assets and the return on equity, but for the earnings before interest and tax margins, the linear model was insignificant. The non-linear models indicated an optimal level of cash holdings. In this context, the policymakers must actively evaluate these policies, such as working capital management and its effect on financial performance. In addition, the policymakers must consider macroeconomic conditions when designing corporate cash-holding policies.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020052
Authors: Thomas Korankye Blain Pearson Yi Liu
This study examines how automatic enrollment and employer contribution provisions relate to the retirement plan participation decisions of Millennials using data from the 2018 U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA) Millennial Investment Study. The analysis controls for various factors such as total debt, household income, risk tolerance, and investable assets. The findings underscore the notion that automatic enrollment and employer contribution provisions are associated with an increased likelihood of participation in retirement plans among Millennials. The empirical results reveal that the absence of auto-enrollment, lack of employer-matching contributions, or communication inadequacies are fundamental reasons for Millennials’ non-participation in employer retirement plans. These findings have important implications for employer retirement plan design and the effectiveness of their communication strategies.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020051
Authors: Kariena Strydom Joseph Olorunfemi Akande Abiola John Asaleye
Recent empirical literature has focused on the social aspect of gender-based violence regarding domestic violence and physical abuse while the implications of economic empowerment in an attempt to reduce gender-based violence remain under-researched. This study investigated the connection between female economic empowerment and factors that could reduce gender-based violence in sub-Saharan African countries. We used the panel fully modified least squares estimation method to investigate the long-run implications. The gender inequality index, the female genital mutilation prevalence, and the number of female children out of school were used as proxies for gender-based violence. Likewise, economic empowerment was a proxy for female economic participation; it was replaced by female employment for the robustness test. Evidence from the panel fully modified least squares estimation showed that female economic empowerment had a negative relationship with the gender inequality index, the number of female children out of primary school, and female genital mutilation. We concluded that an increase in the economic power of females through increased economic participation could reduce gender-based violence in the long run. Based on these findings, this study recommends policies to improve the situation. This study shifts attention to the macro-connection between factors that can reduce GBV and increase female economic empowerment in selected areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020050
Authors: Haokun Dong Rui Liu Allan W. Tham
An accurate prediction of loan default is crucial in credit risk evaluation. A slight deviation from true accuracy can often cause financial losses to lending institutes. This study describes the non-parametric approach that compares five different machine learning classifiers combined with a focus on sufficiently large datasets. It presents the findings on various standard performance measures such as accuracy, precision, recall and F1 scores in addition to Receiver Operating Curve-Area Under Curve (ROC-AUC). In this study, various data pre-processing techniques including normalization and standardization, imputation of missing values and the handling of imbalanced data using SMOTE will be discussed and implemented. Also, the study examines the use of hyper-parameters in various classifiers. During the model construction phase, various pipelines feed data to the five machine learning classifiers, and the performance results obtained from the five machine learning classifiers are based on sampling with SMOTE or hyper-parameters versus without SMOTE and hyper-parameters. Each classifier is compared to another in terms of accuracy during training and prediction phase based on out-of-sample data. The 2 data sets used for this experiment contain 1000 and 30,000 observations, respectively, of which the training/testing ratio is 80:20. The comparative results show that random forest outperforms the other four classifiers both in training and actual prediction.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020049
Authors: Hani Alkayed Esam Shehadeh Ibrahim Yousef Khaled Hussainey
In this in-depth study, we explored the nuanced dynamics of boardroom gender diversity and its consequential impact on sustainability reporting within the U.S. Healthcare sector. Leveraging a comprehensive dataset from Refinitiv Eikon, our analysis spanned a spectrum of 646 observations across 57 healthcare entities listed in the S&P 500, covering the period from 2010 to 2021. Our methodology combined various empirical techniques to dissect correlations, unravel heterogeneity, and account for potentially omitted variables. Central to our findings is the discovery that various metrics of board gender diversity, such as the proportion of female directors and the Blau and Shannon diversity indices, exhibit a robust and positive correlation with the intensity and quality of sustainability reporting. This correlation persists even when controlling for a multitude of factors, including elements of corporate governance (such as board size, independence, and meeting attendance), as well as intrinsic firm characteristics (such as size, profitability, growth potential, and leverage). The presence of female directors appears to not only bolster the breadth and depth of sustainability reporting but also align with a broader perspective that their inclusion in boardrooms significantly influences corporate reporting practices. These insights extend beyond academic discourse by offering tangible and actionable intelligence for policymakers and corporate decision-makers. By elucidating the intrinsic value of gender diversity in governance, our study contributes a compelling argument for bolstering female representation in leadership roles as a catalyst for enhanced corporate responsibility and stakeholder engagement.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020047
Authors: Zeeshan Ahmed Huan Qiu Yiwei Zhao
Using a hand-collected sample of non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) over the period of 2011–2021, we examine the joint effect of intellectual capital and innovation on the financial vulnerability of a firm, which is an important risk factor that a firm may face in its operation. We first use the static fixed-effect panel model as our baseline regression model and find that the level of intellectual capital of a firm strengthens the positive effect of the adoption of product and market innovation on reducing the financial vulnerability of the firm. We also conduct additional analyses using alternative measures of financial vulnerability, as well as various regression models, and confirm that the results are robust under different scenarios. Overall, the results highlight the positive role of the intellectual capital, as well as the joint effect of intellectual capital and innovation, in mitigating the financial vulnerability faced by a firm and thus have academic and practical implications to academic researchers and practitioners.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020046
Authors: Juan Mariscal-Cáceres Carmen Cristófol-Rodríguez Luis Manuel Cerdá-Suárez
The aim of this paper is to analyze the evolution of bank liquidity regulations, considering the global regulatory framework applicable to financial institutions, from the beginning of the banking and liquidity crisis in 2007–2008 to the present. The new liquidity requirements under Basel III regulations are defined. An analysis is made of the recent evolution of credit institutions in Spain from different banking prisms to determine how the new banking regulation and supervision, following the start of supervisory powers by the European Central Bank at the end of 2014, has affected them. The methodology applied has been firstly the literature review, followed by a compilation and analysis of the financial and statistical evidence available on the main Spanish financial institutions, from the European Central Bank and the Bank of Spain, as well as information published by other agencies and the financial institutions themselves. It concludes with a reflection and analysis of the outlook for the sector once the most recent impacts, derived from COVID-19, and the supply crisis with the rise in global inflation and the increase in interest rates have been overcome. It can be stated that credit institutions in Spain have significantly improved their liquidity position over the last 15 years.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020048
Authors: Ayth I. Almubarak Abdullah A. Aljughaiman
The rising adoption of FinTech is changing the financial sector. However, the determinants of FinTech have not been examined thoroughly. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether corporate governance is related to FinTech products in the banking sector, given that governance may influence the quantity and quality of innovation. Specifically, we investigate the association between the size of the board of directors, the percentage of independent directors on the board and FinTech services. Furthermore, we show how the composition of the board can influence the association between FinTech services and a bank’s performance. Using a sample of 12 Saudi banks for the period 2014–2019, we find that board size is significantly and negatively associated with a bank’s FinTech score. We further show that independent members on the board contribute to performance by bringing more FinTech services (innovation development) to the banks. As the first study examining the determinants of FinTech in the Saudi banking sector, this paper may help regulators to better understand the drivers of FinTech and its quality in the banking sector.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020045
Authors: Pythagoras Petratos
Triple Entry Accounting (TEA) provides an opportunity for fundamental change in accounting. TEA is a foundational development of Blockchain technology, which is considered a pillar of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Nevertheless, in order to augment its impact, TEA should be integrated with other systems. This paper aims to examine the relationship of TEA with system integration (SI) and how it can affect integration. This study reviews the SI literature in the context of accounting, examines how the literature on TEA has evolved over the years, and finally contributes to the analysis of how TEA is related to integration. A key theme is the connection of accounting controls and system integration. The methodology of the four design principles of control in system integration is adopted. Transparency is the main perspective of these principles. It was found that TEA promotes transparency, reduces the risk of fraud, and facilitates system integration.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020044
Authors: Yooin Noh Pei Liu
During the pandemic, the restaurant industry placed greater emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. However, there seems to be a dearth of comprehension regarding how customers’ perceived risks impacted their dining intentions. This challenges the industry to devise an effective crisis response strategy. Thus, this study investigates the relationship between perceived CSR, restaurant image, and dining intentions during the crisis. In addition, this study examines how perceived CSR influences three types of perceived risks associated with restaurants (quality, health, and environment) and how these types of risks influence restaurant image and dining intentions during this period. The results demonstrate that perceived CSR positively impacted a restaurant’s image and concurrently reduced perceived risks among consumers during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Furthermore, perceived health risks had a negative influence on customers’ dining intentions. This study offers valuable insight into the theoretical foundations and managerial implications of CSR’s effects and risk management, particularly in the context of future pandemics within the restaurant industry.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020043
Authors: Mahdieh Aminian Shahrokhabadi Alexander Melnikov Andrey Pak
In option pricing, we often deal with options whose payoffs depend on multiple factors such as foreign exchange rates, stocks, etc. Usually, this leads to a knowledge of the joint distributions and complicated integration procedures. This paper develops an alternative approach that converts the option pricing problem into a dual one and presents a solution to the problem in the optional semimartingale setting. The paper contains several examples which illustrate its results in terms of the parameters of models and options.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17020042
Authors: Baochan Li Anan Pongtornkulpanich Thitinan Chankoson
The purpose of this study is to summarize the research results on corporate value published from 2000 to 2022; show the research overview, hot trends, and topic evolution of this research field; provide new ideas for the mining of the research frontiers of corporate value and a summary of the change rules of research hotspots; and describe prospects for the evolution direction and path of future research. Combining the bibliometric research method with a literature review, the research results on corporate value were analyzed quantitatively by querying the WOS database from 2000 to 2022; the analysis tool was CiteSpace. This study has five findings. First, researchers are paying increasing attention to the study of corporate value, and most of the research results are obtained by independent authors. Second, Chinese research institutions rank among the top three in publication volume. However, their research results have had little impact, with Univ Penn and Peking Univ having the most significant impact. Third, the top three keywords that scholars pay attention to are performance, impact, and corporate governance. Keyword burst analysis, CSR, value reliability, and sustainability are the latest research frontiers. Fourth, evolutionary trends are divided into three stages: research on the influencing factors of corporate value, research on the impact of corporate behavior on corporate value, and research on the evaluation and growth of corporate value. Fifth, knowledge domains include corporate value research methods, the factors influencing corporate value, and corporate behavior. The aims of this study are to provide a new perspective for researchers to study corporate value, provide new ideas for enterprise managers to manage corporate value, and achieve the sustainable development of corporate value. At the same time, the scientific knowledge graph method is applied in corporate value research, adding a new research path for corporate value.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010041
Authors: Samar Issa Gulhan Bizel Sharath Kumar Jagannathan Sri Sarat Chaitanya Gollapalli
The study presents a comprehensive approach to examining the potential risk of bankruptcies in financial sector organizations. This investigation explores 20 financial sector entities and evaluates their fiscal history from 2000 to 2018. The developed model assesses the chance of these companies going bankrupt by analyzing indicators like liquidity, profitability, debt composition, and operational effectiveness. These metrics are contrasted to regulatory requirements and assessed as having low, moderate, or elevated risk repercussions, ultimately contributing to an overall threat rating. Additionally, the model has a unique algorithm that compensates for excessive debt levels, strengthening the reliability of the risk appraisal grade. This straightforward instrument illustrates the demand to incorporate a variety of financial health indicators. According to the findings, excessive amounts of debt have a detrimental influence on profitability, leading to decreased stock returns and a greater probability of bankruptcy. These findings have practical implications for investors and stakeholders, providing insightful information to help inform decision-making, especially during periods of economic unpredictability such as pandemics. Furthermore, they encourage the enhancement of financial market efficiency.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010040
Authors: Miramir Bagirov Cesario Mateus
The multifaceted interrelationship between petroleum prices and equity markets has been a subject of immense interest. The current paper offers an extensive review of a plethora of empirical studies in this strand of literature. By scrutinising over 190 papers published from 1983 to 2023, our survey reveals various research themes and points to diverse findings that are sector- and country-specific and contingent on employed methodologies, data frequencies, and time horizons. More precisely, petroleum price changes and shocks exert direct or indirect effects dictated by the level of petroleum dependency across sectors and the country’s position as a net petroleum exporter or importer. The interlinkages tend to display a time-varying nature and sensitivity to major market events. In addition, volatility is not solely spilled from petroleum to equity markets; it is also observed to transmit in the reverse direction. The importance of incorporating asymmetries is documented. Lastly, the summarised findings can serve as the basis for further research and reveal valuable insights to market participants.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010039
Authors: Martin G. Haas Franziska J. Peter
We implement the VIX methodology on intraday data of a large set of individual equity options. We thereby consider approaches based on monthly option contracts, weekly option contracts, and a cubic spline interpolation approach. Relying on 1 min, 10 min, and 60 min model-free implied volatility measures, we empirically examine the individual equity return–volatility relationship on the intraday level using quantile regressions. The results confirm a negative contemporaneous link between stock returns and volatility, which is more pronounced in the tails of the distributions. Our findings hint at behavioral biases causing the asymmetric return–volatility link rather than the leverage and volatility-feedback effects.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010038
Authors: Marjan Alirezaie William Hoffman Paria Zabihi Hossein Rahnama Alex Pentland
The complexities arising from disparate data sources, conflicting contracts, residency requirements, and the demand for multiple AI models in trade finance supply chains have hindered small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with limited resources from harnessing the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, which could otherwise enhance their business efficiency and predictability. This paper introduces a decentralized AI orchestration framework that prioritizes transparency and explainability, offering valuable insights to funders, such as banks, and aiding them in overcoming the challenges associated with assessing SMEs’ financial credibility. By utilizing an orchestration technique involving symbolic reasoners, language models, and data-driven predictive tools, the framework empowers funders to make more informed decisions regarding cash flow prediction, finance rate optimization, and ecosystem risk assessment, ultimately facilitating improved access to pre-shipment trade finance for SMEs and enhancing overall supply chain operations.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010037
Authors: Bruno Torres Zélia Serrasqueiro Márcio Oliveira
This study aims to analyze and classify the evolution of crowdfunding in Portugal from 2014 to 2020, addressing the central question, “What is the evolution of literature on crowdfunding and its research focuses in Portugal?”. Additionally, it investigates, through the sub-question, if crowdfunding is perceived as an alternative form of financing. The methodology employs a systematic review, covering four thematic areas: (1) research focus—concepts; (2) research method—quantitative/qualitative identification; (3) geographical area—countries of study; (4) innovation—future research areas. The research begins with Google Scholar, followed by a more specific search of the B-On database, focusing on the Portuguese context. Results highlight the scarcity of research in Portugal, emphasizing the nascency of crowdfunding in the country. The study reveals the importance of investor behavior, influenced by platform security and regulations. Growth in crowdfunding in Portugal is anticipated, attracting multidisciplinary interest but emphasizing the need for more comprehensive studies. Despite limitations in data availability, the study provides valuable insights for entrepreneurs seeking alternative financing in Portugal, demonstrating crowdfunding as an alternative financing method. Integration of crowdfunding with technology, especially blockchain, is suggested as a potentially disruptive system, paving the way for future research and innovations.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010036
Authors: Gordon Anderson
Of necessity, people make many investment decisions regarding their human resource stock early in their life cycle, long before outcomes predicated upon those choices are realized. Different choices involve very different initial effort and financing outlays and issues arise as to how these alternative paths can be compared and evaluated. Here, techniques for the cardinal comparison of human resource contingent work–life-cycle income value profiles under alternative income valuation function assumptions are outlined and instruments for examining potential ambiguities in comparison developed. All are applied in an analysis of the impact of different levels of investment of human resources in 21st-century Canada. The results, with one notable exception (the choice for boys between a trade or a bachelor-level degree), indicate unambiguous life-cycle benefits to higher levels of human resource stock investment for both girls and boys. Within gender, best–worst relative magnitudes are increasing over time for both genders but more so for girls. Boys are enjoying a universal but diminishing premium over time, reflective of male–female income convergence.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010035
Authors: Thilini V. Mahanama Abootaleb Shirvani Svetlozar Rachev Frank J. Fabozzi
This study discusses how financial economic theory and its quantitative tools can be applied to create socioeconomic indices and develop a financial market for the so-called “socioeconomic well-being indices”. In this study, we quantify socioeconomic well-being by assigning a dollar value to the well-being factors of selected countries; this is analogous to how the Dow 30 encapsulates the financial health of the US market. While environmental, social, and governance (ESG) financial markets address socioeconomic issues, our focus is broader, encompassing national citizens’ well-being. The dollar-denominated socioeconomic indices for each country can be viewed as financial assets that can serve as risky assets for constructing a global index, which, in turn, serves as a “market of well-being socioeconomic index”. This novel global index of well-being, paralleling the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), provides a comprehensive representation of the world’s socioeconomic status. Through advanced financial econometrics and dynamic asset pricing methodologies, we evaluate the potential for significant downturns in both the socioeconomic well-being indices of individual countries and the aggregate global index. This innovative approach allows us to engineer financial instruments akin to portfolio insurance, such as index puts, designed to hedge against these downturn risks. Our findings propose a financial market model for well-being indices, encouraging the financial industry to adopt and trade these indices as mechanisms to manage and hedge against downturn risks in well-being.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010034
Authors: Rocío Maehara Luis Benites Alvaro Talavera Alejandro Aybar-Flores Miguel Muñoz
Financial inclusion is a fundamental and multidimensional matter that has acquired importance on the global agenda in recent years. In addition, it is still a source of great interest and concern for lawmakers, international organizations, scholars, and financial institutions worldwide. In that regard, this research focuses on Peru to assess the country’s financial inclusion condition, which continues to face significant hurdles in providing financial services to its whole population despite economic improvement. The aim of this article is twofold, based on recent data on demand for financial services and financial culture in the country: (1) to empirically test how machine learning methods, such as decision trees, random forests, artificial neural networks, XGBoost, and support vector machines, can be a valuable complement to standard models (i.e., generalized linear models like logistic regression) for assessing financial inclusion in Peru, and (2) to identify the most influential sociodemographic factors on financial inclusion assessment in the country. The results may catalyze the integration of machine learning techniques into the Peruvian financial system, garnering the interest of finance researchers and policymakers committed to augmenting financial access and utilization among Peruvian consumers.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010033
Authors: Eddy Junarsin Rizky Yusviento Pelawi Jeffrey Bastanta Pelawi Jordan Kristanto
This study investigates governance mechanisms and their relation to firm value, i.e., executive compensation restrictions during the regulatory period and their effects on the performance of firms that received Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds. We employ an event study to investigate the market reactions for TARP recipients, followed by OLS regression to examine the stock return effects of 10 announcements. For comparison, we also employ a multivariate regression model (MVRM) based on a system of equations with seemingly unrelated regressions (SURs). Our evidence shows that changes in firm value have a negative and significant relationship with changes in total compensation for TARP companies that have paid back their debts to the government. However, the relationship is weaker than that for TARP companies that have not paid back the bailout money.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010032
Authors: Linh N. Phan Mario G. Beruvides Víctor G. Tercero-Gómez
Following the 2008 financial crisis, Hyman Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH) emerged as a prominent financial theory to explain the occurrence of business cycles in the U.S. economy. There have been many theoretical, but few empirical studies dedicated to FIH. The current literature also lacks the statistical support to confirm the necessary conditions leading to financial instability and whether FIH concepts remains applicable in the post 1980s periods. This article presents a statistical methodology to analyze the financial debt ratios related to FIH for the 1945–2023 periods through the use of nonparametric statistical analyses of ordered alternatives and a binomial test for meta-analysis. The results indicated that the conditions leading to financial instability such as debt ratios did increase prior to the onset of a recession as prescribed by FIH during the 1945–1980s era. Furthermore, such conditions also repeated prior to some recessions occurred in the 2001–2023 periods. This study provides statistical support for Minsky’s FIH theory.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010031
Authors: Martin Bolfek Karmen Prtenjača Mažer Berislav Bolfek
This research investigates whether banks that adopted new regulatory requirements earlier, such as Basel III, are more profitable, as well as more efficient, than banks that adopted these requirements later. In addition, all 138 banks are based in the G7 member countries, which are the most developed countries in the world. Also, banks are categorized into early and late adopters based on Basel III Leverage Ratio performance by using Fitch Connect. Moreover, profitability ratios, such as the Return on Equity, Return on Assets and efficiency ratio Operating Efficiency, were collected from Fitch Connect to analyze if early adopters were more profitable and efficient than the late adopters. Also, STATA is used to analyze descriptive statistics and a univariate analysis of both groups. Furthermore, the finding is that early adopters of the Basel III Leverage Ratio are not the more profitable or efficient firms compared to late adopters as anticipated. In addition, the results of early and late adopters do not differ that much in the analysis regarding profitability and efficiency ratios. This implies that it is not necessarily correct to assume that stricter regulation, such as Basel III, will negatively affect the profitability or efficiency of banks. In addition, these results are useful to regulators and policymakers of the G7 member countries for two reasons. Also, regulators can clearly see how banks are adopting new stricter regulation.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010030
Authors: Annette Hofmann Peter Zweifel
The consistently missing demand for catastrophe insurance and for coverage of other low-probability–high-consequence risks is often referred to as the catastrophe insurance puzzle. People show reluctance to insure low-probability–high-consequence events, even with some disastrous consequences, yet insure against small high-probability–low-consequence events. There has been no convincing explanation of this puzzle to this date. This article points out that the underlying rationale may be that individuals interpret insurance contracts with low payout probability as an investment with negative expected net present value. While premium payments start with the conclusion of the contract, usually there is only one loss payment in the near or far future. Using a simple annuity model with fixed annual premiums and expected indemnity payouts, it is found that even an individual characterized by the degree of risk aversion found in the literature is unlikely to purchase insurance with these characteristics. To alleviate this unfavorable insurance purchase syndrome, combining a low-probability with a high-probability loss insurance contract may be a way to incentivize individuals to purchase catastrophe risk coverage.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010029
Authors: Alberto Manelli Roberta Pace Maria Leone
The Russia–Ukrainian war, which began in 2014 and exploded with the invasion of the Russian army on 24 February 2022, has profoundly destabilized the political, economic and financial balance of Europe and beyond. To the humanitarian emergency associated with every war has been added the deep crisis generated by the strong energy and food dependence that many European countries, and not only European, have developed over decades on Ukraine (especially for wheat) and Russia (especially for natural gas). The aim of this article is to verify the existence of a link between the performance of the Eurostoxx index and the price of wheat futures and TTF natural gas, from 25 February 2019 to 28 September 2023. Through a quantile VAR analysis, a link is sought between the Eurostoxx 50 index, and wheat and TTF gas futures prices. Furthermore, the analysis intends to understand whether the presence of such relationship only manifested itself following the war events, or whether it was already present in the market. The analysis carried out also shows that the relationship between the stock market and raw material prices was present even before the conflict.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010028
Authors: Alexander D. Volkov Natalia A. Roslyakova Anastasia V. Vasilieva Alexander O. Averyanov Sergey V. Tishkov Ekaterina V. Nalivaychenko
The preferential regime of the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation is the latest regulatory mechanism designed to overcome negative socio-economic trends in the macroregion. The accumulated factual data over the three-year period of this work have made it possible to make the first reasonable estimates of its effects on the regional economy. The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of transformational changes in the relationship between employment and investment due to the introduction of the preferential regime for key sectors in the regions that are fully or partially included in the Russian Arctic. The relationship between investment and employment in regional industries was studied using least squares regression analysis using Advanced Grapher 2.2 software. The results show, firstly, significant differences in trends in the implementation of preferential treatment: increased economic specialization of some regions and diversification of the economies of other regions. Secondly, there is a slowdown in the emergence of new projects. Thirdly, the markedly different employment effects across industries and regions of the Russian Arctic, as well as the changing nature of the relationship between investment and employment, require a significant revision of regulatory measures and economic policies to maximize regime effects and achieve sustainable long-term regional development.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010027
Authors: Nguyen Thi Mai Anh Le Thi Khanh Hoa Lai Phuong Thao Duong Anh Nhi Nguyen Thanh Long Nguyen Thanh Truc Vu Ngoc Xuan
This research article focuses on investigating the impact of technology readiness (TR) on the adoption of artificial intelligence (AD) by accountants and auditors, utilizing intermediary factors, such as perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease-of-use (PEOU), within companies in Vietnam. Based on 143 survey responses, the results demonstrate a positive relationship between TR and AI adoption among professionals in the accounting and auditing industry. Additionally, the analysis reveals that the intermediary factors PU and PEOU positively influence AI adoption. TR consistently relates with PU and PEOU in applying artificial intelligence in accounting and auditing. The result of the experiment study is that technology readiness positively impacts the AI adoption of accountants and auditors from companies in Vietnam. Hence, perceived usefulness and ease of use mediate the relationship between technology readiness and the adoption of AI technologies by workers in the accounting and auditing industry. This study contributes not only academically by enriching scientific knowledge on AI adoption but also holds practical significance by suggesting training and development policies from a business perspective in the future.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010026
Authors: Vidiyanna Rizal Putri Nor Balkish Zakaria Jamaliah Said Farha Ghapar Rizqa Anita
Despite being a crucial source of funding for the government, tax revenue collection in Indonesia has yet to reach its ideal and satisfying level for the economy. Therefore, this study explores the impact of executive incentives, foreign ownership, and transfer pricing on tax avoidance. The conventional banks of Indonesia that were listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) between 2015 and 2019 are the subject of this study. This study employed a purposive selection technique, with a final sample of 17 banks chosen after screening to ensure they met the requirements of having foreign ownership and not having suffered losses during the study year. The results of this study show that while CEO incentives harm tax avoidance, foreign ownership has a beneficial effect. Furthermore, tax avoidance is not significantly impacted by transfer pricing. The findings of this investigation open the door for accountable authorities in the economy.
]]>Journal of Risk and Financial Management doi: 10.3390/jrfm17010025
Authors: Sang Hu Zihan Zhou
This study investigates the dividend optimization problem in the entropy regularization framework in the continuous-time reinforcement learning setting. The exploratory HJB is established, and the optimal exploratory dividend policy is a truncated exponential distribution. We show that, for suitable choices of the maximal dividend-paying rate and the temperature parameter, the value function of the exploratory dividend optimization problem can be significantly different from the value function in the classical dividend optimization problem. In particular, the value function of the exploratory dividend optimization problem can be classified into three cases based on its monotonicity. Additionally, numerical examples are presented to show the effect of the temperature parameter on the solution. Our results suggest that insurance companies can adopt new exploratory dividend payout strategies in unknown market environments.
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