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The purpose of the paper is to analyze the new Bankruptcy Law in Saudi Arabia (KSA Bankruptcy Law) under both a comparative lens and a policy-oriented one, while highlighting some of the most essential operational steps and procedures in a bankruptcy proceeding under the law.

The approach adopted analyzes the specific mechanics and procedures of a bankruptcy law under the general policies and goals of bankruptcy. Additionally, where appropriate, a brief comparison to the US Bankruptcy code and its provisions is presented to provide an alternative approach on how similar issues are handled under a reputable and proven bankruptcy system.

Overall, the KSA Bankruptcy Law is a major accomplishment and advancement to the Kingdom’s insolvency regime. The law consolidated and codified the laws governing bankruptcy under the Kingdom’s prior regime, and followed the structure of a modern bankruptcy regime. In doing so, several of the law’s policies and objectives have been fulfilled by providing an effective, predictable and reliable bankruptcy system.

Given the relatively recent adoption of the KSA Bankruptcy Law, the paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the law’s operation and its effectiveness in achieving its policy goals as a modern bankruptcy law.

This study investigates insurance demand in a two-period model when a decision-maker (DM) is averse to the ambiguity of loss distributions. This study derives sufficient conditions such that the ambiguity-averse DM purchases more insurance than an ambiguity-neutral one when the DM maximises the expected utility. It also derives each sufficient condition to increase insurance demand as ambiguity aversion, ambiguity and downside ambiguity increase, respectively.

This paper aims to develop the best practices of Islamic estate planning for Muslims. Islamic estate planning is a fixed proposal for the management and outlook of an individual’s assets throughout their life and upon their passing, created by means of existing Islamic estate planning tools, for instance, farāʾiḍ (inheritance), waṣiyyah (will), hibah (gift) and waqf (endowment).

The paper used an interview method to obtain information on the best practices of Islamic estate planning. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the respondents and estate planning providers in the northern region of Peninsular Malaysia. The data gathered was analysed using thematic analysis which involved five phases to construct the best practices of Islamic estate planning.

The paper identifies important elements in Islamic estate planning. The elements were outlined as the crucial things that Muslims should do to plan for intergenerational transfer and earning a good share in the hereafter.

The first limitation of the paper is that the best practices were developed based on a qualitative method. There is no evidence of its validity, which is a gap that can be explored in the future. Second, it involves the perceptions of two types of respondents (individuals and Islamic estate planning providers), which may be broadened to other related stakeholders such as regulators, in future studies.

This paper presents a framework of best practices of Islamic estate planning, it being one of the first studies to do so, which is not only useful and relevant for Malaysian Muslims but also for Muslims in other countries.

In the process of reform, although every landmark theoretical breakthrough is marked by the speech of the highest leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) or the decision of the CPC National Congress, each breakthrough is attributable to the theoretical contribution made by the academia of political economy. Notably, these theoretical breakthroughs invariably embrace innovations in the discourse system of political economy. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The innovations and breakthroughs thereof have led to the political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The success of China’s economy highlights the superiority of the socialist economic system and development path with Chinese characteristics.

These major breakthroughs are accompanied by breakthroughs in relevant theories, which constitute a synthesis of a series of major theoretical innovations in political economics.

Quantitative and spatial-explicit flood risk information is of great importance for strengthening climate change adaptation and flood resilience. Shanghai is a coastal megacity at large estuary delta with rising flood risks. This study aims to quantify the overall economic-societal risks of storm flooding and their spatial patterns in Shanghai.

Based on multiple storm flood scenarios at different return periods, as well as fine-scale data sets including gridded GDP, gridded population and vector land-use, a probabilistic risk model incorporating geographic information system is used to assess the economic-societal risks of flooding and their spatial distributions.

Our results show that, from 1/200 to 1/5,000-year floods, the exposed assets will increase from USD 85.4bn to USD 657.6bn, and the direct economic losses will increase from USD 3.06bn to USD 52bn. The expected annual damage (EAD) of assets is around USD 84.36m. Hotpots of EAD are mainly distributed in the city center, the depressions along the upper Huangpu River in the southwest, the north coast of Hangzhou Bay, and the confluence of the Huangpu River and Yangtze River in the northeast. From 1/200 to 1/5,000-year floods, the exposed population will rise from 280 thousand to 2,420 thousand, and the estimated casualties will rise from 299 to 1,045. The expected annual casualties (EAC) are around 2.28. Hotspots of casualties are generally consistent with those of EAD.

In contrast to previous studies that focus on a single flood scenario or a particular type of flood exposure/risk in Shanghai, the findings contribute to an understanding of overall flood risks and their spatial patterns, which have significant implications for cost-benefit analysis of flood resilience strategies.

In this paper, we investigated the risk averse ness of KOSPI 200 option investors with very flexible risk preference structure. Contrary to the most of previous research either assuming a time-invariant underlying asset return distribution or assuming a well-known functional form for the underlying utility functions. we directly assume functional forms for Investors’risk aversion functions. With the direct specification on the risk aversion functions themselves. we can avoid the possibility 이 suffering from Internal inconsistency and of obtaining misleading risk aversion functions. From our empirical results using KOSPI 200 Index option prices from 1997 through 2006. we discovered that the investors' relative risk aversions exhibit ‘sharply decreasing' across wealth. In addition, our Implied subjective PDFs are found to more accurately forecast the distribution of realization than both the risk neutral PDFs and implied subjective PDFs from previous methods. For the robustness of our empirical results, we test the effects of estimation errors In the expected risk premium, and of financial crisis in the late of 1990s.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth performance evaluation of funds offered by the Turkish pension system.

This paper compares aggregate fund index returns with the corresponding asset class returns, estimates a factor model to decompose excess returns to factor exposures, i.e., β return and excess return originating from residual α and analyzes persistence of fund returns using migration tables and Fama–MacBeth regressions and tests for market timing ability.

Majority of pension funds are unable to generate excess returns. Majority of funds are unable to generate a positive α and fund returns are predominantly driven factor exposures. There is evidence for slight persistence in returns, mainly due to factor exposures and funds do not exhibit market timing ability.

In this paper, the authors perform an in-depth analysis of pension fund performance for the Turkish pension fund system. The authors identify weaknesses and strengths of the pension fund industry and provide policy recommendations for a better design of pension fund system.

Previous research has indicated that trusts are used to commit various economic crimes, but limited studies examine the exact method of how trusts are abused. This paper aims to determine how trusts are abused to conceal assets in insolvency and divorce proceedings. Apart from discussing how fraudulent trusts are evaluated by South African courts, two court cases will also be analysed to determine how trusts have been abused in the past to conceal assets in insolvency and divorce proceedings.

The methodology used is a literature study, predominantly using court cases and relevant statutes as the primary sources of information. The difference between a sham and alter ego trust is discussed, whereafter two court cases are dissected to identify how trusts have been abused to conceal assets.

The study found that trusts can be abused in different ways to conceal assets in insolvency and divorce proceedings. This can vary from the way the trust is established to the way the trust is used. But trusts are particularly susceptible to abuse when there is no separation between the ownership and enjoyment of trust assets, and the trust lacks independent trustees.

The research finding can be used to better understand how trusts are abused in divorce and insolvency proceedings.

This paper aims to develop a credit-risk model in which firms face rollover risk, and the markets for defaulted assets are segmented due to entry costs. The paper shows that reducing the entry costs in this economy may decrease the total surplus of the economy. This outcome can arise because when market barriers are lifted, the gap between the liquidation prices across the markets will shrink, but then the market that would experience a price drop may face more bankruptcies because the rollover risk will increase in that market. The paper describes under which condition such an intervention policy improves or hurts the total surplus.

At present, the Chinese economy has entered the “new normal” phase with the transformation of development stages from the low-income to the middle-income ones. Accordingly, there appear a series of innovations in development theories. Innovations involve creative destructions. Therefore, innovative development theories at the present stage either deny the prevailing principles of development economics, or deny the theories that once effectively guided development at the low-income stage, or even sublate some of the development polices which were propelled and proved effective at the beginning of the reform and opening-up. The fundamental reason is that, as the development stages evolve, there occur new development tasks, new periodical characteristics and new laws of development. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Any development theory from abroad will find it difficult to correctly guide and clarify development problems in a socialist country, such as the huge population and the extreme imbalance between the urban and the rural and among regional developments.

In conclusion, China, as a large world economy, has made innovations in its economic development theory, which indicates that it intends to perfect itself rather than seek hegemony. As the world’s second largest economy, China should adapt to the transformation and further free people’s minds instead of adhering to the old patterns of thinking. It should think over the path of development for a great world economy from the historical starting point of a large world economy and find development strategies to transform itself from a large economy to a great economy, so as to realize the dream of the Chinese nation to build a powerful country.

Only political economy studies both the relations of production and the productive forces, and only a theory combining both can correctly guide China’s economic development, which especially needs to be promoted by taking advantage of socialist economic system. Therefore, the first and foremost principle for a socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics is to insist on liberating and developing productive forces.