This study examines the effect of financial reporting opacity and audit quality on stock price crash risk using listed firms in Japan. This study is the first research to examine the effect of financial reporting opacity on crash risk using a Japanese listed company. Furthermore, the effect of audit quality on crash risk is verified. High level auditors can mitigate crash risk by playing a role as a corporate governance device mechanism to reduce agency costs. We use a logistic regression and linear regression model to test whether financial reporting opacity and audit quality affect crash risk using listed firms in the Japanese stock exchange market during the fiscal years 2015 January through 2017 February. The results of this study suggest that the financial reporting opacity variable shows a positive relationship with CRASH, which states that a firm with more opaque financial reporting increases crash risk. The results suggest also that the firms audited by Big4 auditors experience less crash risk, implying that the audit quality in Japan can be one of the factors mitigating firm's crash risk. This study provides implications for financial reporting and audit quality to external stakeholders who wants to avoid losses.

Dividend policy is an important business decision and is considered a channel to communicate a firm’s performance to shareholders. Given the empirical findings that earnings quality significantly affects financial analysts’ forecasting activities, it is predicted that higher earnings quality would positively influence forecast accuracy. Specifically, it is expected that financial analysts would forecast dividends more accurately for firms with higher earning quality. Unlike the research on financial analysts’ earnings forecasts was heavily conducted, there is little study about financial analysts’ dividend forecasts. This paper examines the effect of earnings quality on financial analysts’ dividend forecast accuracy. We use a sample of South Korean firms for the period of 2011–2015 for multivariate regression. Earnings quality is measured by accruals quality and performance-adjusted discretionary accruals followed by prior studies. We first compare the accuracy between dividend forecasts and earnings forecasts using t-test and Wilcoxon singed-rank test. It is confirmed that financial analysts’ dividend forecasts are more accurate than earnings forecasts in Korea. We find that financial analysts’ dividend forecasts are more accurate for firms with higher earnings quality. We also find that the result is still valid after controlling for the accuracy of financial analysts’ earnings forecasts. This confirms that earnings quality positively affects financial analysts’ dividend forecasts.

The paper aims to investigate the linkage among prior financial performance, organizational reputation and earnings quality. Firstly, it examines the influence of prior financial performance on organizational reputation and on earnings quality. Secondly, this research explores the moderating role that prior financial performance plays in the causal relationship from organizational reputation to earnings quality. Thirdly, the mediating role of organizational reputation in the effect of prior financial performance on earnings quality is analyzed. The empirical findings show that, prior financial performance positively affects both earnings quality and organizational reputation that in turn partly mediates the causal connection from prior financial performance to earnings quality; whereas prior financial performance imposes a positive moderation in the influence of organizational reputation on earnings quality. This research is expected to provide scholars and practitioners with a thorough understanding of the complex link among prior financial performance, organizational reputation and earnings quality. That helps them to deliver good decisions on the investment of suitable resources in maintaining and enhancing their organizational reputation, which assures a higher quality of reported earnings that in turn improves involved stakeholders’ confidence in their firm. This likely leads the firms to gain better performance in the future.

The paper examines the level of disclosure on Islamic banks’ performance in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The data was collected through content analysis of annual reports and financial statements of all fully-fledged Islamic banks working in the UAE over the period 2009 to 2013. Return on Assets is used as a proxy for the performance of Islamic banks while disclosure index is used as a proxy for Islamic banks’ disclosure. Also, predetermined variables are used in the study like Size, Deposits, Non-Performing Investments and Capital to Risk Weighted Assets Ratio. Two-Stage Least-Square regression method is used to check the interdependence relationships between disclosure and performance of Islamic banks in the UAE. The results show a significant relationship between performance and disclosure in the UAE Islamic banks. Our regression results show that Islamic banks with higher levels of disclosure lead to higher operating performance. Furthermore, the performance has a great impact on the level of disclosure which means Islamic banks with high performance measures will disclose more information for investors and other institutions in order to reduce the cost of equity and increase their values in the market. This study is considered as a battery for further studies in the relationship between disclosure and financial performance of Islamic banks at a global level.

The aim of this research is to contribute to enhancing the competitiveness of automotive parts suppliers while departing from the dependent relationship structure, by developing and interpreting factors that affect sale, which are financial achievements, in a practical way. The research data covered 200 companies from 2013-2017. The study hypothesis was verified by dividing the hypothesis into Model1 with control variables only and Model2 with control variables in independent variables. As a result of hypothesis testing, regarding sales, only capital size showed to have an effect in Model1, while in Model2, asset size, number of employees and joint ventures with foreign companies did but the other remaining factors did not. In particular, the results showed that an increase in financial performance required ‘Economies of scale’, and that companies that concentrated on a small number of items, diversified products into four or more items, or owned two to four suppliers, reaped positive results in financial performance. Therefore, in addition to the selection and concentration of corporate management for production items and account management, applying strategies, like the inter-company M&A, consortiums and co-branded strategies to achieve ‘Economy of scale’, would highly enhance the financial performance of automotive parts suppliers.

Under the Act No. 21 of 2008, Islamic banks in Indonesia as an intermediary institution are obligated to manage the resources simultaneously, the financial funds as well as the social funds, e.g. zakah, infaq, and sadaqah. This study aims to investigate the productivity change of social funds and financial funds of Islamic Banks in Indonesia. Non-parametric tests of Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) is applied to annual data from period 2012 to 2017, encompassing post-reform of banking authority from Bank Indonesia to The Financial Services Authority (OJK) at 2012. The samples are nine Islamic banks in Indonesia which were able to provide the data during observation period. The results indicate that social funds are more productive than financial funds and productivity change tends to trade off. The productivity of social funds is progressed by 8.2% while the financial funds is regressed by 5.4%. Overall, the productivity change of Islamic banks is influenced by technological aspect rather than the efficiency aspect. Besides, BRI Syariah is the best performer in managing financial funds while BCA Syariah as the best performer in social funds. It implies that the policymakers may strengthen the supervisory and coaching to increase the Islamic banks’ productivity in both activities.

본 연구에서 기업가치의 대용변수로 활용된 투하자산수익률과 재무구조(부채비율)은 정(+)의 관련성을 보이고 있다. 이는 재무적 곤경에 처하기 이전에는 자기자본비용보다 절세효과가 있는 부채의 자본비용이 저렴하기 때문에 기업가치와 재무구조는 정(+)의 관련이 있다 는 정태적 절충이론과 부합되는 결과이다. 또한, 영업수익성(EBITDA/매출), 투자안전성, 총자산 성장률, 순운전자본 그리고 감가상각비는 재무구조(부채비율)와 부(-)의 관련성을 띠고 있다. 이는 성장률이 낮을수록 부채비율이 높다는 Jensen의 부채의 통제가설과 수익성과 현금흐름이 높은 기업은 내부자금조달이 원활하므로 부채비율이 낮다는 자금순위이론에 부합되는 연구결과이다. 연료비, 차입금, 총자산회전율, 금 융비용, 용선료, 유형자산율은 부채비율과 유의적인 정(+)의 관련성을 띠고 있다. 이는 대리이론과 부합되는 결과이며 파산한 H선사처럼 과도한 용선료가 우리나라 외항선사의 재무구조를 압박하는 요인으로 확인하였다.

한국에서 1970년대에 시작된 새마을운동은 국제적으로 농촌개혁의 하나의 모범으로 여겨진다. 새마을 운동이 성공한 첫 번째 중요한 원인으로는 농촌에 금융 제공을 지원했다는 점이다. 중국공산당의 19차 당 대회에서는 2050년까지 농업강화, 아름다운 농촌건설, 농민의 재산증대를 위한 농촌진흥을 전면적으로 실시하자는 의견이 나왔다. 농촌진흥전략의 성공을 위해서 한국 새마을운동의 성공적인 경험을 참고해 농촌 금융을 지원하는 정책이 룽요하다.

Purpose - The aim of this study is to explore the effectiveness in educational differences between students of the government's financialfunded groups and the non-financial-funded groups at a university in Korea. Research design, data, and methodology - The study was conducted using a survey tool of National Assessment for Student Engagement in Learning. In total, 334 participants were surveyed, of which 290 students were participants in economic support program and 44 were nonattendance program students. The general characteristics of all of the participants were investigated by frequency analysis. The analysis of participants’ collective characteristics used independent t and f-test, and one-way ANOVA with IBM SPSS Statistics package program 22.0. Results - The number of participating students is higher than that of non-participating students in relation to in-activities of university immersion, but the number of participating students is lower than that of non-participating students in relation to in-quality of student support. However, there was no statistical significance. The confidence coefficient of the university-immersion and student support questionnaire is 0.860 and 0.913, respectively. Conclusions - There is no significant difference in the activities of university immersion and student support between students who participate in the economic support program and those who do not.

The paper aims to evaluate the combination of strategies that influence the success of New Technology Based Firms (NTBFs) located in isolated areas with resource constraints. We utilize the Kauffman Firm Survey to construct a subset of 224 firms operating in primary metal manufacturing industries and who are located in non-thriving areas. We focus on the impact of technological strategy, in the form of Inward Technology Licensing (ITL), combined with financial strategy, in the form of increased financial slack. Using a negative binomial-specification technique to model these relations, we find that ITL positively impacts internal innovation in the firm and this relation is strengthened by the presence of greater financial slack. This positive impact of financial slack supports the behavioral theory of the firm rather than agency theory in that financial slack enables further innovation rather than stifling it. This research confirms the importance of resource acquisition, suggesting that entrepreneurs may utilize external sources of knowledge in an effort to build a favorable situation when facing the challenges of location. Finally, by presenting evidence showing the compatibility of a financial strategy with a knowledge strategy (ITL), this study emphasizes the importance to entrepreneurs of choosing the proper combination of varying strategies.

This paper examines the impact of financial integration on economic growth in Southeast Asia over the period 1993-2013. This paper further investigates whether the relationship depends on the level of financial and economic development, government corruption, and macroeconomic policy. These questions raise important issues both from a theoretical and a policy perspective. We employ the generalized methods of moment (GMM) in the dynamic panel estimation framework to analyse several factors, including initial income, initial schooling, financial development, inflation, trade openness, corruption, and financial crisis. The study further analyzes the data using the EGLS model to examine the consistency of the GMM model. We found that financial integration has a significant positive effect on economic growth in Southeast Asia. Our findings suggest that increasing financial integration could improve the productive capacity of the economy, including more investments and efficient allocation of capital, and thus enhancing economic growth in this region. More specifically, the results suggest that the government should work towards eliminating corruption and stabilizing macroeconomics in order to enhance financial integration and economic growth. This paper sheds new insights on a better evaluation of the past and present theorizing on the subject of financial integration and economic growth; especially, in Southeast Asia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the social system of deposit insurance affected the financial market in Korea. Specifically, we want to know how much the risk-seeking behavior of financial institutions has increased or decreased. The most important feature of the deposit insurance system is to prevent the insolvency of financial institutions and to properly protect depositors. In recent studies, it has been argued that characteristics of deposit insurance bring moral hazard of financial institutions and that financial institutions make unreasonably risky investments. Therefore, in this study, we will first examine whether such previous research can be applied to the Korean financial market. Next, we will examine the appropriateness of the differential premium rate that is currently used for each financial institution in the Korean financial market. In order to test the first hypothesis, we used the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) to calculate the total risk for each financial institution. As a result, significant changes were found in all regions before and after the introduction of the deposit insurance system. As for testing the second hypothesis, we conducted a variance analysis of financial institutions' indexes before and after the introduction of the deposit insurance and we discovered significance of the total risk difference.

The objective of the study is to examine the impact of financial development and foreign remittances on poverty and income inequality in the context of Pakistan. The study used ARDL-Bounds testing approach for robust inferences. The results show that in the short-run, remittances increases poverty and income inequality, which further translated into its long-run impact. The result confirmed the inverted Ushaped relationship between per capita income and income inequality, while the second order coefficient of per capita income substantially decline poverty incidence in a country. In the long-run, the results disappeared and it’s turned into U-shaped relationship between income inequality and country’s per capita income. Education largely decreases income inequality both in the short and long-run, however, it increases poverty in the long-run. Unemployment rate substantially damaged the pro-poor growth scenario, as high unemployment rate increases both the poverty rates and income inequality, which suffered poor more than non-poor in a country. Financial development has a positive impact on poverty reduction and income inequality in the short-run. The impact of income inequality on poverty incidence is positive both in the short- and long-run, which need pro-poor growth policies and rationale income distribution in a country.

Purpose – The goal of this study is to analyze the differences in education performances between students of the government's financial support program and those who do not receive support at a local university in Korea. Research design, data, and methodology - The questionnaire used was NASEL. NASEL is considered a highly suitable survey tool for professors, courses, and performances in Korean universities. The 290 students who participated and 44 students do not participate in the financial support program were surveyed for 10 days. The characteristics of students were investigated by frequency analysis and technical statistics. The analysis of student collective characteristics used independent t and f-tests,and one-way ANOVA with IBM SPSS Statistics 22.0 for statistical purposes. Results – The p-value of the group receiving financial support and the group without financial support in active-collaborative learning is 0.167. The p-value of the economically supported group and the non-supported group of the faculty-student interaction is 0.281. The confidence coefficient of the active-collaborative learning questionnaire is 0.861. The reliability coefficient of the questionnaire for the faculty-student interaction questionnaire is 0.871. Conclusions – There are no clear differences in active-collaborative learning and faculty-student interaction between participating and non-participating students in the economic program.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effectiveness of Offcial Development Assistance (ODA) in recipient countries' economy. ODA is designed to mitigate poverty and stimulate economic growth in the developing countries. We classify total ODA into bilateral ODA and multilateral ODA depending on the number of donor countries. If the ODA flows from one donor country to one recipient country, it is classified as bilateral ODA. If the multiple countries simultaneously become donor countries through the international organizations such as United Nations and World Bank, it is classified as multilateral ODA. This paper compares the effect of bilateral ODA and multilateral ODA in determining recipient countries' economic development, and tries to provide policy implications to Korean ODA. Research design, data, and methodology - Our primary explanatory variables are bilateral and multilateral ODA. Private credit in recipient countries is adopted as additional explanatory variables to capture the level of financial development in recipient countries. We measure the ODA effectiveness using economic growth and quality of life of the recipient countries as the dependent variable. We collect 142 recipient countries' data from OECD statistics, during the period from 1970-2014. Panel least squares estimation with country fixed effect is employed as the empirical model. Results - Our results support that ODA variable has a negatively significant impact on recipient countries' economic growth, while it is positively correlated with human development index. Recipient countries' private credit is positively correlated with economic growth and human development index. The interaction variable of ODA and financial development turns out to be significant in general. We find that the positive effect of ODA depends on recipient countries' financial market development and this effect is stronger in multilateral aid than bilateral one. Conclusions - From the analysis, we have confirmed that the recipient countries financial development is the necessity condition to achieve positive effect of ODA. Based on these results, we suggest that Korean government should increase the share of multilateral funding and pay attention to recipient countries' financial market development to maximize the effectiveness of ODA.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to find out the determinants of the quality of financial information in the financial environment of the cement companies of Bangladesh. Research design, data and methodology - This study considers a total of fifty-eight firm years as the sample from the seven listed cement companies of Bangladesh during the period of 2007 to 2015. This study applies the multivariate regression analysis including the pooled OLS, panel and controlling time. Results - This study finds that profitability and external financing are the two major explanatory variables in determining the quality of financial information. This study also finds that firm size and accrual quality don’t have any significant influence on quality of financial information. Conclusion - This study observed that profitability of this sector which is much volatile and prone to be manipulated. Thus, this paper suggests that higher profitability needs more scrutiny while assessing quality of financial information. Finally, this study provides some indications for future research such as considering the listed firms of other sectors of Bangladesh or cross country comparison in different country setting.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between regional financial development and corporate investment efficiency as well as the relationship between firm-level characteristics and corporate investment efficiency. Using a large sample of A-listed companies in China from CSMAR database between 2003 and 2016, this paper explores corporate investment efficiency and its influencing factors in emerging market on the basis of heterogeneous stochastic frontier model. The results show that: (1) the average investment efficiency of Chinese listed companies is 74.5%, and the investment efficiency of large enterprises, state-owned enterprises and enterprises with relatively high financial development level is significantly higher; (2) compared with average corporate investment efficiency in the year 2003, the investment efficiency of different types of enterprises in 2016 is significantly higher, and the gap is gradually widening; (3) enterprise heterogeneity namely firm size, nature of property right, and institutional environment reflected by the level of regional financial development indirectly affects corporate investment efficiency by influencing the financing constraints and uncertainty. The findings suggest that to improve corporate investment efficiency in emerging market, financial market should be accelerated, regional balance should be restored and the differences among regions, industries and differences between public and private sectors should be eliminated.

Global rating agencies, such as Moody’s and S&P, have assigned credit ratings to corporate bonds issued by Japanese firms since 1980s. Local Japanese rating agencies, such as R&I and JCR, have more market share than the global raters. We examine the yield spreads of 1,050 yen-denominated corporate bonds issued by financial firms in Japan from 1998 to 2014 and find no evidence that bonds rated by at least one global agency are associated with a significant reduction in the cost of debt as compared to those rated by only local rating agencies. Unlike non-financial firms, the reputation effect of global rating agencies does not exist for Japanese financial firms. We also observe that firms with less information asymmetry are more likely to acquire ratings from Moody’s or S&P. Additionally, the firm’s financial profile does not affect its choice to seek out ratings from global raters. Our findings are contradictory to those by Han, Pagano, and Shin (2012), who employ bonds issued by non-financial firms in Japan. Our conjecture is that the asymmetric nature of financial firms makes investors less likely to depend on a credit risk assessment by rating agencies in determining the yields of new bonds.

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze the comparative financial performance of outsourcing and vertically integrated corporations from Footwear and Apparel industry. Research design, data, and methodology - Secondary data is collected from the published audited annual reports of the footwear and apparel corporations listed on stock exchanges globally. In the current study, 40 footwear firms have been opted that include 20 vertically integrated and 20 outsourcing firms. The sample is distributed into two groups based on threshold up-to 50 percent respectively outsourcing and vertically integrated companies. Sample independent t-test is applied to compare the financial performance of outsourcing and vertically integrated firms. Results - Based on the investigation of 10 years’ data of financial ratio, the results of the study show that there is significant difference between outsourcing and vertical integration strategy on return on assets, return on equity while insignificant difference has found with profit margin. Conclusions - The findings of the current study indicates that there is significant difference between the financial performance of outsourcing and vertically integrated firms in terms of return on asset, return on equity and insignificant difference in terms of profit margin.

Purpose – This paper explores the determinants of bank lending to firms during and after the global financial crisis using firm- and bank-level data to answer the questions what caused the contraction of lending to firms despite the loosening monetary policy during this crisis period. Research design, data, and methodology – We investigate the effects of the monetary policy that followed the global financial crisis on firms borrowing. We use a dynamic panel model to address how firms lending respond to monetary policy. The data are obtained from CRETOP and we consider the manufacturing sector for the analysis to control for unobserved heterogeneity such as industry-specific shocks. Results – The findings from the empirical analysis suggest that both bank- and firm-level characteristics are significant determinants of bank lending. Especially, we find that corporate risk, measured by default risk, is one of the key factors that led to a decline in lending during the crisis. Conclusions – This paper shows that companies borrow more from liquid banks, and high bank capital can also contribute to an increase in a firm’s borrowing from banks. Especially, the results confirm that the default rate measured at the firm level has increased during and after the global financial crisis, which implies that default risk interplays with other firm and bank-level characteristics.