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The main purpose of this study is to examine the disclosure of earnings forecasts in firms' prospectuses to explain investor demands or, in other words, oversubscription rates of Malaysian initial public offerings (IPOs).

Ordinary least squares and robust methods were used to examine cross-sectional data comprising 466 fixed-price IPOs reported for the period from January 2000 to February 2020 on Bursa Malaysia.

The results showed that IPOs with earnings forecasts obtained higher oversubscription rates than those without earnings forecasts. IPOs with earnings forecasts provide value-relevant signals to prospective investors about the good prospects of firms, resulting in an increase in the demand for IPO shares. For the IPO samples listed during the global financial crisis (GFC) period, IPOs with earnings forecasts had negative impacts on the oversubscription rates. These results were robust to quantile methods and the two-stage least squares method.

The research findings provide fresh information for investors regarding the importance of earnings forecasts as a trustworthy signal of a firm’s quality when making share subscription decisions.

The regulator is advised to encourage issuers to include earnings forecasts in their prospectuses since such forecasts help to increase the demand for IPOs.

This study contributes to the literature by offering empirical evidence regarding the signalling impact of earnings forecast disclosures on investor demands for Malaysian IPOs. Moreover, this study provides evidence demonstrating the impact of earnings forecast disclosures on oversubscription rates of Malaysian IPOs during the GFC period.

This brief is designed to inform disaster risk reduction and management in Philippine jails and prisons. It draws upon research conducted in nine jails and prisons between July 2015 and January 2016. This research included 44 interviews with stakeholders, including inmates and prisoners, and nine focus groups with inmates and prisoners in different regions of the country. The research indicates that natural hazards are one amongst the many threats that inmates and prisoners face in their everyday life. Natural hazards are significant because inmates and prisoners are particularly vulnerable. Inmates' and prisoners' vulnerability stems from a thread of proximate and root causes that range from insalubrious and overcrowded facilities and limited resourcing from the government, to the neoliberal nature of the Philippine state. However, inmates and prisoners are not helpless “victims” in dealing with natural hazards. They display a wide range of skills, resources and knowledge (i.e. capacities) that are grounded in everyday practices and values reflective of the broader Philippine society. This policy brief finally makes some recommendations for strengthening hazard prevention, fostering vulnerability mitigation, enhancing preparedness, and reinforcing disaster management in Philippine jails and prisons. These recommendations emphasise the contributions of a number of stakeholders, including the active role of inmates and prisoners who are the first line of defence in facing disasters in jails and prisons.

This paper aims to investigate the possible non-linear effect of net working capital (NWC) level on profitability for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region listed companies. Furthermore, the study tests the possible interactive effect of cash levels on the relationship between NWC and profitability.

NWC level is the independent variable and profitability is the dependent variable using two proxies, return on assets (ROA) and returns on equity (ROE). Control variables are size, leverage, gross domestic product growth and sales revenue growth. The generalized method of moments was used to analyze the data of 134 consumer-goods listed firms in 12 MENA countries for the period 2013–2019.

The results demonstrate that NWC levels had a non-linear effect on profitability using ROA as a profitability proxy while results were insignificant using ROE as a profitability proxy. Furthermore, results show the absence of interactive effects between NWC, cash levels and both profitability proxies.

The study fills a gap in the working capital management (WCM) literature by providing new evidence on WCM’s non-linear effect of corporate performance in the MENA region emerging markets using the consumer-goods industry sample. The study contributes to the financial managers’ working capital optimization efforts in the MENA region by providing evidence on the usefulness of WC optimization efforts in the region from a financial performance point of view. According to the researchers’ knowledge, a few studies attempted to investigate this non-linear relationship for neither MENA region countries nor the consumer-goods industry.

This paper aims to explore how the Celtic Tiger economic boom and Great Recession influenced drug and alcohol use in one Irish city.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 48 people, living in Cork City, who had previously used drugs and/or alcohol problematically. All participants had engaged with services for their problematic use and had at least one year of abstinence at time of interview.

Some participants reported that their drug and/or alcohol consumption increased during the economic boom; others, who were already in (self-defined) active addiction, reported how full employment lessened some of the harms of their problematic use. For others, problematic use struck once the economy entered a downturn and, heavy drink and drug use became a means of soothing the strains of economic recession.

The paper provides two key contributions. Methodologically, it demonstrates how large-scale national quantitative data can mask local idiosyncratic tendencies, suggesting the need for mixed-method approaches for understanding drug market trends. The paper also provides insights into the impact of global and local economic conditions on drug and alcohol consumption in Ireland.