The research examines how interactions of financial literacy and peer effect indicators impact financial market participation of Vietnamese investors. In this research, financial literacy indicator is constructed from two levels, namely, basic financial literacy and advanced financial literacy. An empirical study was carried out by investigating 387 individuals who are currently working in finance-related areas such as banking, insurance and real estate industries. The findings indicate that individuals with higher level of financial literacy, specifically those with advanced financial literacy level, tend to participate in financial market. However, individuals with basic financial literacy level tend to walk away from financial market because the nexus between basic financial literacy and financial market participation is found negative statistically significant. The findings also suggest that peer effect and perceived financial literacy have a positive significant relationship with financial market participation. These findings remain robust after endogenous problem is addressed by employing instrument variable (IV) method, especially Ivprobit regression. Hence, these findings recommend that policy-makers should design and develop financial literacy programs, specifically at sophisticated level, to adapt and overtake the trend in financial innovation development. This should be done, not only on individual, but also national scale to ensure greater financial market participation.

The paper aims to investigate the interactions between rule of law, economic growth and the shadow economy in 18 selected transition economies. This study uses annual data over the period 2002-2015 for 18 transition countries to estimate the effects of rule of law and other factors on the size of shadow economy. The transition country group is classified based on International Monetary Fund resources and is selected on the basis of the availability of data. The data examined in this research are derived from the World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators project and Working Paper from International Monetary Fund. This study employs GMM method. The results show that the economic growth indicators have negative and statistically significant impact on the shadow economy. Additionally, these results also reveal that in transition countries the size of shadow economy is negatively related to the quality of rule of law. However, the findings of this research also point out that there are positive relationships between inflation, public expenditure and the size of shadow economy. Hence the results from this study suggest that the size of shadow economy could be controlled by improving the effectiveness of rule of law and the growth of economy particularly in transition countries.