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This study aims to investigate window dressing as practiced by commercial banks in Kuwait, using monthly aggregate balance sheet data covering the period January 1993 to December 2017.

This study applies the structural time series model to decompose an observed time series into unobserved components based on monthly data covering January 1993 to December 2017 on the consolidated balance sheet of commercial banks in Kuwait.

The empirical results indicate that Kuwaiti commercial banks indulge in upward window dressing to boost size and liquidity. This kind of behaviour is indicated by a statistically significant rise in assets under the control of banks in December, followed by a statistically significant decline in January. The operation is funded by borrowing, leading to a December rise and a January fall in foreign and other liabilities, which are also under the control of commercial banks.

This study uses a novel methodology to detect window dressing based on the seasonal behaviour of balance sheet items. This study suggests a unified framework for the motives, targets, types and consequences of window dressing and how they are related.

Present some empirical evidence on long‐run Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) using a sample of annual data covering the period 1900‐1987. Three exchange rates are used in the analysis: the dollar, yen and French franc against the pound. It is shown that PPP does hold in the long run and that is some evidence for the proportionality and symmetry restrictions. Evidence for exclusiveness is mixed and the results are influenced by model specification. Estimates of error‐correction models show that there are substantial short‐run deviation from PPP that take two to three years to correct.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the cyclical relationship between the demand for crude oil and real output for the OECD.

The paper employs Harvey's structural time series model to analyse the contemporaneous and non-contemporaneous cyclical co-movement of the demand for crude oil with real output, using quarterly observations for the period 1984:1-2010:4.

The empirical evidence suggests that a strong and positive cyclical relationship between the two variables exists, with the demand for crude oil being procyclically contemporaneous.

The implication of this finding suggests that consuming countries cannot stockpile oil reserves to guard against the cyclical nature of demand, while producing countries face weak and bearish oil markets during economic recessions, because oil consuming countries cannot smooth out their demand for oil on an intertemporal basis.

The paper provides further evidence supporting the procyclically contemporaneous relationship between the demand for crude oil and real output for the OECD.

The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of financial regulatory announcements on risk and return in the Vietnamese equity market.

The event study methodology is used for the return analysis, and asset pricing models are adjusted for the risk analysis. Various robustness tests are used, including the Corrado non-parametric ranking test and the Chesney et al. non-parametric conditional distribution test, as well as GARCH, TARCH, EGARCH and PARCH specifications for the risk models.

The authors find evidence for both negative and positive reactions as well as risk shifting behaviour in the form of a diamond risk structure.

This paper fills a major gap in the literature by investigating the market’s reaction to bank regulatory announcements across financial and non-financial sectors in the Vietnamese equity market.

This paper is about the effect of human capital on foreign direct investment (FDI). The purpose of this paper is to find out if developing countries with high levels of human capital (educated people and well-trained labour force) are more successful in attracting FDI. The underlying hypothesis has been tested repeatedly without reaching a consensus view or providing an answer to the basic question. This is to be expected because FDI is determined by a large number of factors, making the results sensitive to the selected set of explanatory variables, which forms the basis of the Leamer (1983) critique of the use of multiple regression to derive inference. Furthermore, confirmation bias and publication bias entice researchers to be selective in choosing the set of results they report.

The technique of extreme bounds analysis, as originally suggested by Leamer (1983) and modified by Sala-i-Martin (1997), is used to determine the importance of human capital for the ability of developing countries to attract FDI. The authors use a cross-sectional sample covering 103 developing and transition countries.

The results show no contradiction between firms seeking human capital and cheap labour. No matter what proxy is used to represent human capital, it turns out that the most important factor for attracting FDI is the variable “employee compensation”, which is the wage bill, implying that multinational firms look for cheap and also skilled labour in the host country.

In this paper, the authors follow the procedure prescribed by Leamer (1983), and modified by Sala-i-Martin (1997), using extreme bounds analysis to distinguish between robust and fragile determinants of FDI, with particular emphasis on human capital. Instead of deriving inference from one regression equation by determining the statistical significance of the coefficient on the variable of interest, the extreme bounds or the distribution of estimated coefficients are used to distinguish between robust and fragile variables. This means that emphasis is shifted from significance, as implied by a single regression equation, to robustness, which is based on a large number of equations. The authors conduct tests on three proxies for human capital to find out if they are robust determinants of FDI and also judge the degree of robustness relative to other determinants.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of 75 announcements of environmental policies on British equities over the period 2003 to 2012. In particular, the research has the following specific objectives: finding out whether there is wealth creation/destruction for investors as a result of the announcements of green policies and identifying changes in risk structure following the introduction of green policies.

Using event study methodology and non-parametric tests, the authors attempt to find out whether announcements of environmental/sustainability policies are value constructive or destructive for equity investors. The CAPM is fitted with interaction variables to measure the change in systematic risk following announcements.

The results show that the UK market is particularly sensitive to domestic, international and nuclear announcements. Cumulative abnormal returns in the range of 30-40 per cent were recorded in certain sectors. Consistent with the emerging literature, the authors observe that environmental policies induce changes in the systematic risk of businesses, both in the short run and the long run.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, the literature does not provide any answer as to how the risk and return of British equity portfolios change following the announcement of green policies in the aftermath of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Furthermore, the literature does not differentiate among various categories of announcements (domestic, international and nuclear). Therefore, this paper bridges the gap in the literature on these two grounds.

This paper aims to document the measures taken by Australian corporate treasurers in the areas of cash, inventory, accounts receivable, accounts payable and risk management to survive the global financial crisis (GFC).

Using qualitative techniques like interviews and a survey questionnaire, this paper summarises the various measures adopted by working capital managers.

The results show that more than half of the participants in the survey altered their working capital management practices during the crisis. Capital expenditure was curtailed, as they aimed at preserving their cash levels while reducing inventory levels. Credit worthiness of institutions became more important, and there was a general decline in credit availability. The results also show that Australian working capital managers exhibit behavioural biases, particularly overconfidence.

It is the first paper that uses open-ended questions to capture the effects of the GFC on working capital management in Australia.

The structure of the Malaysian fund market presents a unique setting in which to examine behavioural and cultural differences in the performance of fund managers. The purpose of this paper is to utilise Taylor's extension of the tournament model of Brown et al. who argued that using an exogenous (endogenous) benchmark induces losing (winning) managers to gamble. This presents two competing testable hypotheses that are investigated in the current study.

The authors use a sample of Malaysian unit trusts covering the period 1982 to 2010, applying the non‐parametric cross‐product ratio methodology to test all Malaysian funds and determine whether there is empirical evidence of tournament behaviour. The authors separate Malaysian funds into two main categories (conventional and Islamic) to find out whether different fund types affect the behaviour of the funds as a whole.

Overall, Taylor's theory does not hold in the Malaysian fund market, as conventional funds display tournament behaviour regardless of the benchmark used. However, Islamic funds do not display any significant tournament behaviour.

The current study uses a non‐parametric approach to look for evidence of tournament (gaming) behaviour in the performance of fund managers in Malaysia. In doing so, the authors extend the tournaments literature by examining the performance of three data sets pertaining to the performance and evidence of tournament behaviour in: all managed funds in Malaysia; Islamic funds; and conventional funds. A major motivation for choosing the Malaysian data of unit trusts is to investigate and examine the behaviour of funds operating in an economy that is an emerging market in the rapidly expanding Asian economy; is a market that has a reporting period in line with the calendar year; and is an economy with a strong presence of Islamic funds (Shariah) and Muslim population.

The purpose of this paper is to: first, test if information-adjusted noise model (IANM) can be applied in China; second, quantify noise trader risk, overreaction, underreaction and information pricing errors in that market; and third, explain the relationship between noise trader risk and return.

The authors use a behavioural asset pricing model (BAPM), CAPM, the information-adjusted noise model and model proposed by Ramiah and Davidson (2010).

The findings show that noise traders are active 99.7 per cent of the time on the Shenzhen A-share market. Furthermore, our results suggest that the Shenzhen market overreacts 41 per cent of the time, underreacts 18 per cent of the time and information pricing errors occur 40 per cent of the time.

Various methods have been applied to the Chinese stock market in an effort to measure noise trading activities and all of them failed to account for information arrival. Our study uses a superior and alternative model to detect noise trader risk, overreaction and underreaction in China.