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The purpose of this study is to examine investors’ awareness in Amman Stock Exchange of the effects of earnings manipulation incentives on the earnings manipulation practices of managements through the usage of the available level of flexibility in the accounting standards, and to examine whether those investors are able to detect these practices. A self‐administered questionnaire of three sections was developed and used to achieve the purposes of this study. A sample of 144 respondents from four industries was selected using a stratified sampling method. The study found that investors in Amman Stock Exchange have enough awareness to the effects of earnings manipulation incentives on the practices of managements toward the manipulation of earnings. Moreover, this study concluded that investors in Amman Stock Exchange have the ability to detect those practices.

With reference to the methodology of Prof Choudhry in his book “Tawhidi Epistemology and its Applications: Economics, Finance, Science, and Society” in 2014, in a different context, this study aims to present the conceptual fundamental of Islamic finance investment, where investment decisions are governed by Divine law and Islamic jurisprudence, followed by the empirical nature of real-world issues where investment decisions are governed by only financial indicators, using the Amman Stock Exchange as a case study.

As pointed out by Raderbauer (2011), research and industry initiatives mainly focus on environmental measures while ignoring the economic and socio-cultural dimension of sustainability. Recognizing the importance of a holistic understanding to define sustainable business practices for the accommodation industry. Financial markets are no exception; moral and values either coming from secular or religious understanding help to examine relationships between attitudes and actions, as well as differences in attitudes and actions related to the business’ characteristics. In business, ethical considerations apply to a broad list of virtues that companies, their managers and employees customarily seek to adopt. These include, but are not limited to, the encouragement of honesty, integrity and efficiency, as well as diversity and communication skills. One of the most common sources of ethical considerations is religion. In these cases, religious doctrine imparts a sense of applied ethics, where one considers what right conduct is, how to live a life pleasing to the Divine and how one should treat him/herself and others in accordance with those teachings. Again, as ethical considerations is a broad philosophical concept, it can apply to any situation where the person ponders the nature of right and wrong, how to recognize the difference and the meaning those conclusions carry for everyday life.

It can be concluded that the overall the quantitative and qualitative statistics showed that accommodation business manager’s decision has had a very little positive attitude toward sustainability and the implementation of sustainable business practices in ASE financial transaction, no matter what classification, type of business, ownership or size of business. Only rules and regulations govern the attitude and behavior when making financial transactions with profit is the main target. Moral indicators could not be seen throughout the analysis and test used to achieve objectives of the study at hand. One can imagine that the combined two factors together “Moral-Material” in implementing financial transactions will produce a more beneficial outcome. Achieving a material and holistic objective will produce an optimum situation, which can contribute positively to sustainable development.

Islamic alternatives to traditional investment tools have been driven by the fact that such tools do not conform to the Islamic general principles of the Shari’ah (Usmani, 2002). There has been a growing desire to have funds in which profits are not based on riba or interest, which is prohibited in Islam. Muslims deem that profit should come because of efforts; this is not the case in interest-dominated investments. In addition, there is a desire to have investment portfolios, which are morally purified. Thus, investments in companies that are not in compliance with the Shari’ah are not permitted and are eliminated from the portfolio. To ensure compliance with the forgoing condition, Shari’ah advisory boards whose role is mainly to give assurance that money is managed within the framework of Islamic laws govern Islamic mutual funds (Hassan, 2001; Hassan, 2002). On the other hand, dealing with the applied part, the paper will deal with a case study from Jordan (Amman Stock Exchange), where, code of ethics is issued by virtue of the provisions of Article 26 (e) of the Securities Law No. 23 of 1997. The Amman Stock Exchange operates as an exchange for the trading of securities. The company lists securities such as equities and bonds. Its activities include providing enterprises with a means of raising capital by listing on the exchange; encouraging an active market in listed securities based on the determination of prices and trading; providing facilities and equipment for trading the recoding of trades and publication of prices; monitoring and regulating market trading; and coordinating with the Jordan Securities Commission as necessary. The company’s activities also include ensuring compliance with the law, fair market and investor protection; setting out and enforcing a professional code of ethics.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the market efficiency, asymmetric effect and time varying risk–return relationship for daily stock return of Amman Stock Exchange (ASE).

The Box–Jenkins selection model is used to determine the stochastic process of equity returns; the exponential generalized autogressive conditional heteroscedesticity (EGARCH) and threshhold autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity in mean are utilized to measure the persistent of volatility, risk–return relationship and volatility magnitude to bad and good news.

The univariate statistics show negative skewness, excess kurtosis and deviation from normality for the ASE index. The results show that stock return follows an ARMA (1, 1) stochastic process with significant serial correlation, implying stock market inefficiency. The results also show significant positive relationship between equity return and risk in the ASE, which is consistent with the portfolio theory. The EGARCH model suggests the existence of the asymmetric effect.

The paper offers insights into market efficiency, time‐varying volatility and asymmetric effect in the ASE.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of qualified audit opinions on the returns of stocks listed at Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) after the introduction of the recent amendments by the International Auditing and Assurance Standard Board (IAASB) on audits reporting and conclusions. It further investigates if results differ between first time qualified and sequenced qualifications, and between plain qualified opinion and qualifications with going concern.

Audit opinions’ announcements and stock returns data are collected from companies’ annual reports for the fiscal years 2016 to 2019 while stock returns are computed from stock closing prices published at ASE website. The authors apply the event study approach and use the market model to calculate normal returns. Cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) and average abnormal returns (AARs) are computed for all qualified audit opinions’ announcements.

The empirical evidence suggests that investors at ASE do not react to qualified audit opinions announcements. That is, the authors find an insignificant impact of qualified audit opinion announcements on stock returns using both CAR and AAR estimates. The results are robust to first time and sequenced qualifications, and for qualifications with going concern. Results are also robust to the use of risk adjusted market model.

The insignificant impact of qualified audit opinions on stock returns have two potential conflicting research implications. First, the new amendments introduced to auditors’ report made them more informative and reduce the negative signals contained in the qualified opinions. That is, investors are now aware of the real causes of qualifications and not overreacting to the qualified opinion. Second, the documented insignificant impact confirms that ASE is not a semi-strong form efficient.

The apparent excessive use of qualifications should ring the bell on whether auditors misuse their power or companies are really in trouble. Hence, the Jordanian regulatory bodies need to warn auditors against the excessive use of qualifications on the one hand, and to raise the awareness of investors on the implications of auditors’ opinions on the other hand.

This study is innovative in twofold. First, it explores the impact of qualified audit opinions on stock returns after the introduction of new amendments by IAASB at ASE. In addition, it uses event study approach and distinguishes between first time qualified and sequenced qualifications, and between plain qualified opinion and qualifications with going concern. The results are consistent with efficient market theory and behavioral finance explanations.

This empirical study’s primary goal is to examine the connection between accounting information and share price for financial companies listed on Jordan’s expanding Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) between 2014 and 2018.

The correlation between accounting data and share price was investigated using multiple regression analysis. In this vein, “pooled ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effect and random effect” static panel data estimators were used. The OLS model was chosen as the best model after a series of diagnostic tests.

The multiple proxies of accounting information value relevance have a positive and considerable impact on the market value per share, according to panel data research. Comparatively, the authors find proof that among the other accounting data – earnings, dividends and cash flow from operations – book value is statistically the most value-relevant.

This empirical investigation was only conducted in Jordan. Because it is very likely to obtain different results in other nations, the findings cannot be applied to other business environments.

The findings of this paper may highlight the amazing relationship between accounting information and share price for policymakers, regulators and other stakeholders in developing nations, notably in Jordan. This could pave the way for effective accounting disclosures.

Seldom does empirical research on the relationship between accounting data and share prices from publicly traded companies on ASE exist. So, by demonstrating empirical findings from Jordanian companies, this study fills the gap in the existing literature and knowledge.

This study examines the univariate ARIMA forecasting model, using the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) general daily index between 4/1/2004 and 10/8/2004; with out‐of‐sample testing undertaken on the following seven days. Different diagnostic tests were performed to find the best model describing the data. The selected model predicted that the ASE would continue to grow by 0.195% for seven days starting on 11/8/2004. This forecast, however, was not consistent with actual performance during the period of the prediction (11/8/2004 ‐ 19/8/2004) since ASE declined by ‐ 0.003% assuring the fact that ASE followed most closely the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) in its weak form.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the sources of Dubai Financial Market Index volatility shocks if they are from its own or previous shocks on the one hand, or if they are out board shocks (FSTE and S&P500) on the other.

A daily time series data were collected over the period 1st January 2014-31st December 2015 and the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) methodology was implemented.

Empirically, the authors find that the current volatility of Dubai Financial Market Index is largely dependent on its own shocks and part of the external shock; in particular, S&P500. However, other external volatility (FSTE) cannot contribute to this volatility. Furthermore, our findings indicate that Abu Dhabi stock Exchange (APX) affects Dubai Financial Market Index.

These results conclude that Securities Regulation Department in the federal state of United Arab Emirates had captured the effect of outside shocks from the UK only, but not from USA; this is basically due to the strong ties between the two countries. Accordingly, UAE investors seek capital outside their home country within a climate of increasing overseas’ investment options in the UK. More transparency of transactions via information technology will increase the efficiency of Dubai Financial Market.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first work that shows the external and internal sources of volatility shocks at once; previous studies have focused almost exclusively on one type of shocks. To investigate DFM volatility shocks, the authors employed GARCH methodology; this method is an advanced econometric method and is often a preferred method to depict actual effects because it provides a more real-world context than other forms when trying to predict volatility shocks of financial instruments.

This study aims to utilize the mean–variance optimization framework of Markowitz (1952) and the generalized reduced gradient (GRG) nonlinear algorithm to find the optimal portfolio that maximizes return while keeping risk at minimum.

This study applies the portfolio optimization concept of Markowitz (1952) and the GRG nonlinear algorithm to a portfolio consisting of the 30 leading stocks from the three different sectors in Amman Stock Exchange over the period from 2009 to 2013.

The selected portfolios achieve a monthly return of 5 per cent whilst keeping risk at minimum. However, if the short-selling constraint is relaxed, the monthly return will be 9 per cent. Moreover, the GRG nonlinear algorithm enables to construct a portfolio with a Sharpe ratio of 7.4.

The results of this study are vital to both academics and practitioners, specifically the Arab and Jordanian investors.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study in Jordan and in the Arab world that constructs optimum portfolios based on the mean–variance optimization framework of Markowitz (1952) and the GRG nonlinear algorithm.

This study aims to investigate the extent and nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in the context of Jordan. It also empirically examines the impact of board composition variables (size, independent [non-executive] directors, CEO/chairman duality, age and gender) and ownership structure variables (board ownership concentration, institutional ownership and foreign ownership) on CSR disclosure level.

A CSR disclosure index is constructed, and content analysis is used to analyze the extent and nature of CSR disclosure in the annual reports of Jordanian manufacturing companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) during the period (2013-2015). Regression analysis using panel data is undertaken to analyze the potential impact of board composition and ownership structure on CSR disclosure level.

The results reveal that, on average, a listed Jordanian manufacturing company has disclosed 30.8 per cent of the 42 items of CSR information included in the disclosure index. In addition, there was a very slight improvement in the CSR disclosure over the study period. These results suggest there is considerable room for improvement in CSR disclosure. The regression analysis identified board size to be significantly and positively associated with CSR disclosure level. On the other hand, the percentage of independent (non-executive) directors on the board, duality of CEO and chairman positions, director’s age, board ownership concentration and the percentage of shares outstanding held by institutional shareholders were found to have had a significant negative impact on CSR disclosure level.

The study contributes to the literature on CSR practice and disclosure in various ways. First, it demonstrates the extent to which listed companies in developing countries, such as Jordan, take their social role seriously. Second, the study adds to the existing literature on the potential impact of board composition and ownership structure on CSR disclosure by using new variables that have not been tested before using Jordanian data. Third, the study is anticipated to provide feedback to Jordanian regulators in the Jordan Securities Commission and the ASE on the adequacy of current regulations on corporate disclosure requirements in Jordan. Finally, the study raises some issues of interest to other researchers who are currently or intend to conduct research in this area.

This paper seeks to examine the risk relevance of fair value income measures under IAS 39 and IAS 40.

The study sample comprises Jordanian insurance companies. Data were collected from two main sources: Jordanian insurance companies' annual reports, and the official website of the Amman Stock Exchange. The study begins by investigating the volatility of four income measures, calculated by including and excluding holding gains or losses of financial instruments and property investments. Then it examines the association between its four income volatility measures and one stock market‐based risk factor, in order to provide evidence on the risk‐related information content of each income volatility measure.

Income based on fair values reflects income volatility more than historical cost‐based income. It is also found that income is (not) more volatile with the recognition of unrealized fair value gains/losses on financial instruments (investment property). Results of assessing the relative explanatory power of income volatility measures suggest that not all fair value income volatility measures can be a good proxy of the total risk. On the contrary, none of our income volatility measures provides significant incremental risk‐relevant information for total risk.

Most prior studies have focused on the value relevance of fair value accounting in Western developed countries, and mainly in the banking sector. This study makes a significant contribution to existing knowledge via exploring the applications of fair value accounting by insurance companies and investigating the implications of mark‐to‐market on risk, instead of share price, in an emerging country – Jordan. The findings of this study are useful to researchers and capital‐market participants interested in explaining accounting and market risk measures.