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This paper aims to investigate the implications of earnings management for funding and diversification strategy within the context of developing and emerging economies.

The authors raise two issues pertinent to bank earnings management: first, whether there is evidence of earnings management of banks in the selected African countries; and second, what must have accounted for the banks to engage in such practices?

The results show that almost all the 330 banks in the 29 African countries sampled are found to have engaged in some management of their earnings during the period 2002-2009. The authors also find evidence that bank activity mix and funding modes explain bank earnings quality. Overall results indicate that the sensitivity of earnings management to revenue diversification across interest income decreases, as bank market shares increases.

The authors investigate how earnings management is affected by banks intermediation strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine whether the way African banks use loan loss provisions (LLP) to smooth earnings is influenced by capital market motivations and the type of auditor, after controlling for non-discretionary determinants of provisions and fluctuations in the business cycle.

To test the income smoothing hypothesis, the model was estimated using panel least square with White’s robust standard error correction, as well as, with and without period fixed effect.

The findings support the income smoothing hypothesis and indicate that African banks use LLP to smooth earnings; listed African banks use LLP to smooth earnings to a greater extent compared to non-listed African banks, possibly, for capital market reasons; income smoothing via LLP is not reduced among African banks with Big 4 auditors; and after controlling for macroeconomic fluctuation, there is evidence that bank provisioning is procyclical with fluctuations in the business cycle.

The findings have three implications. One, listed African banks smooth income because they are more visible to investors; investors do not view stock price fluctuations as a good signal. Securities market regulators in African countries should enforce strict disclosure rules that reduce earnings smoothing practices to improve the transparency of bank earnings in the region. Two, the presence of a Big 4 auditor did not improve the informativeness of LLP estimates among African banks. Three, the evidence for procyclical provisioning suggest the need for dynamic LLP system in Africa.

This paper is the first cross-country African study to investigate whether provisions-based income smoothing decreases with the presence of a Big 4 auditor. The findings indicate that this is not the case among African banks.

The purpose of this study is to collaborate with environmental engineering and management making an effort to provide evidence for the irresponsible behavior of small business set up in north India with special reference to Aligarh City. Corporates have huge accountability for sustainable development, and they cannot overlook the major responsibilities which are lying on their shoulders. CSR is related to the concept of “doing good” but, beyond “doing good” businesses have the responsibility for “avoiding bad” to avoid corporate social irresponsibility (CSI), such as damaging the environment by polluting land, water and air, cheating customers, violating human rights, or doing any unethical practices.

In this study, random groundwater samples were collected from “Aligarh Nagar Nigam” installed hand pumps from industrial influence areas of Aligarh during the month of October and November 2017. These samples were collected nearby small-scale metal plating industries plants. The samples analyzed by the Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS) Perkin Elmer PinAAcle 900 F, for Fe, Mn, Pb, Zn, Cu and Cr (Jahromi et al., 2007; Chen and Teo, 2001; Bidari et al., 2007; Land and Hoops, 1973; de Oliveira et al., 2016; Akoto et al., 2016). In addition, some other parameters also taken in this study and the results obtained are compared with the World Health Organization (WHO) and Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS).

These results of the study revealed that the penetration of heavy metals like Cr, Pb, Cu, Zn, Fe and Mn into the soil is found much higher than the permissible limit stated by the government. The concentrations of metals in groundwater found to be within limits, but some metals are exceeding the standard limits in few samples. Concentrations of these heavy metals Cr>Cu>Pb>Fe>Mn are exceeding standard limits, Zn found within permissible limits as per WHO and BIS standard. This result proves to be a means to an end for an irresponsible behavior toward the society and environment which leads to serious health and environmental hazards.

The results are beneficial for data generation on various quality parameters of groundwater. The results of this study help in proper decision-making by concerned authorities to prevent, reduce toxic levels and begin to take steps for making water fit for drinking and other purposes. The research is limited in Aligarh City and other cities are like Kanpur, Noida and Ghaziabad are also tested by taking samples of water, as these cities are extensively captured by SME’s and large scale industries.

The results of this study have several implications for both governmental and non-governmental practice and policy development. As society expects positive attitudes of the businesses toward CSR activities and concern about the environment, businesses, institutions and governments should pay more attention to promote the initiative of environment safety to intensify their public concern. The small business unit must know about the serious health hazards of discharging the waste water in the open and therefore regular checking of heavy metal contamination in the groundwater in these areas is needed and use of contaminated water must be prevented to lessen the health risk caused by using the metal contaminated groundwater. The small-scale industries should follow the guidelines for proper disposal of wastewater discharge. The water treatment technology should involve and take possible steps to remove heavy metals contamination.

This study provides real data to municipality and other government offices which can be used as a benchmark to plan strict policy to prohibit the open discharge of wastewater by industries.

This chapter seeks to investigate the ways individualistic versus collectivistic values moderate neural responses to social exclusion among African American and White respondents. The author hypothesized that the vmPFC – a key brain region for emotion regulation – would correspond to collectivistic value moderation and the dlPFC – the cognitive control center of the brain – would be associated with individualistic value moderation.

This study used a virtual ball tossing game (Cyberball), where 17 African American and 11 White participants were excluded or included with ball tosses, while inside an fMRI scanner. Before the start of each round the participants were primed with individualism, collectivism or a comparison condition.

Results showed that (1) African Americans showed stronger neural responses to exclusion and (2) offered support for the hypothesis that the dlPFC showed greater activation in African Americans (compared to Whites) when they were primed with individualism values during exclusion. There was no support for the collectivism hypothesis.

Research limitations included a relatively small sample size (N = 28), a comparison of only two racial groups and that the partners in the game were virtual (pre-programmed by the experimenter).

This research offers an empirical framework for sociologists seeking to apply social theories into neurological studies.

Identifying effective coping strategies for historically oppressed racial groups.

The chapter is original for demonstrating the moderating effects of values on neural responses to exclusion for the first time and by offering a novel neurosociological framework.

This paper examines the effect of both de jure and de facto measures of financial integration on bank profitability in five regional economic communities of Africa.

Using panel data from 405 banks operating in 47 African countries across five regional economic communities over 2007–2014, the study constructs a composite measure of bank profitability. The study then employs the dynamic two-step system GMM estimation technique to test the effect of both de jure and de facto measures of financial integration on bank profitability in Africa and across five sub-regional markets.

Overall, the results support a positive relationship between financial integration and overall bank profitability in Africa, except for the Arab Maghreb Union and Southern Africa Development Community.

The findings of this study suggest that increased financial integration in Africa directly improves bank’s overall profitability and the variations among the sub-regional markets inform tailored policy initiatives.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study on Africa to employ a composite measure of bank profitability to assess its determinants. It is also the first to include both de facto and de jure financial integration measures in a single study. This is also the first largest comparative study on bank profitability in Africa.

Contemporary literature has paid scholarly attention to financial criminal practice from a variety of competing perspectives. However, this paper seeks to encourage reflections on some questionable practices of the political and economic elite which increase their capital accumulation but harm citizens.

Within a socio‐political framework, this study adopts the theories of the developmental state and globalisation in order to understand the relationship between social agency and society, and focuses on the institutional structures and the role of social actors.

The paper used publicly available documents to construct case studies to provide some evidence of the strategies and tactics used by political elite to facilitate their capital accumulations. Evidence is provided to show that large sums of government revenue have been undermined by the financial criminal practices of the Nigerian political and economic elite (both local and international), which have enriched a few, but impoverished most, Nigerians.

Financial criminal practices have played a major role in causing serious damage to the economic and social landscape of Nigeria, which in turn, has undermined social welfare and also investment in the public services, thereby eroding the quality of life and producing a decline in average life expectancy. As a consequence of recurring corrupt practices by the political and economic elites in Nigeria, there is a need for reform in order to curb the practice which has had and continues to have, a serious effect on Nigeria and its future development.

Broader accounts of the impact of financial criminal practices on development in developing countries are relatively scarce. Previous studies have tended to individualise the problem.

“Corrupt practices” is a recurring feature of media coverage. The paper seeks to encourage debates about the influence of institutional structures on agency to break away from methodological individualism. This paper aims to encourage reflections on the role of both the structures and actors which have shaped the continuous expansion of corrupt practices in Nigeria.

Whilst recognising that deviant behaviour by some individuals is always possible, this paper has rejected methodological individualism and shows the value of locating anti-social practices within the broader socio-political and historical context. Within a socio-political framework, this study adopts the theories of critical realism, developmental state and globalisation to understand the relationship between social agency and society, focusing upon the institutional structures and the role of social actors.

The evidence shows that socio-political and economic development, politics, power, history and globalisation have continued to reproduce and transform the institutional structures and actors which have facilitated anti-social practices in Nigeria. The paper concludes that large sums of government revenue have been undermined by the anti-social practices of the Nigerian political and economic elite (both local and international), which have enriched a few, but impoverished most, Nigerians.

As a consequence of recurring corrupt practices in Nigeria, there is a pressing need for reform to curb these practices which have had, and continue to have, a serious effect on Nigeria and its future development.

It provides a framework for understanding and explaining the inter-relations of actors and institutional structures and the linkages and influences that have shaped the practices in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of 191 equity unit trusts in an emerging market, South Africa over the period from February 2006 to January 2016, which captures different market conditions (pre-global financial crisis, crisis and recovery periods). Besides testing for managerial ability, both cross-sectional regression and the non-parametric rank correlation test are used to test whether the performance generated by unit trusts does persist.

To evaluate the managerial ability of portfolio managers, two widely used methods, the Treynor-Mazuy (1966) model and Henriksson-Merton (1981) model, are employed. Both models test whether portfolio managers have stock selection and market timing ability. The cross-sectional regression and the rank correlation test are implemented which account for both parametric and non-parametric approaches of persistence testing, respectively.

Weak evidence of stock selection as well as market timing ability was found. Moreover, most of the unit trusts are reported to have insignificant coefficients. When testing for performance persistence using returns, the Sharpe ratio and the Sortino ratio as performance metrics, the overall results also revealed weak evidence of persistence that is equally spread across winning and losing funds.

While research on unit trusts’ performance has been conducted in emerging economies, little has been done in testing for managerial ability in general and in South Africa in particular. Moreover, the research tends to focus more on one class – Equity General. This paper extends the performance literature by testing whether portfolio managers in the South African equity unit trusts industry have stock selection and market timing ability.

This paper aims to analyse the implications of globalisation and the adoption of international standards (International Financial Reporting Standards [IFRS]) for accounting information quality.

This paper uses a sample of 329 banks across 29 countries leading up to and beyond the implementation of IFRS to test for related hypotheses.

First, banks’ financial statements are prepared on the basis of international standards as national economies are integrated when social norms are diffused. Building on these results, the second test suggests that the relatively high-quality earnings among banks in Africa during the period is attributable to the adoption of and interaction of IFRS with globalisation and the strategy of banks to diversify within and across interest and non-interest income.

The authors investigate how globalisation and the adoption of IFRS affect accounting information quality.

One of the main obstacles to the flourishment of African entrepreneurship is financial constraint. Existing studies on the nexus between entrepreneurship and financial development are inconclusive, while the position of African economies remains unknown. The purpose of this paper is to empirically study the impact of financial development on entrepreneurship in Africa.

This study utilizes data of 20 selected countries in Africa over a period of 2006–2017. International Monetary Fund (IMF) data on broad-based financial development were combined with World Bank Entrepreneurship database. This study uses system generalized methods of moments (system GMM) technique and the recently developed dynamic panel threshold based on dynamic panel GMM.

The following findings emerged: financial development does not spur entrepreneurship in Africa; there is a threshold at which financial development improves the level of African entrepreneurship; and the tendency of financial development to improve the level of entrepreneurship is conditioned on conducive business regulation and strong institutional quality at a specific threshold value.

This is one of the few studies that examines the impact of financial development on entrepreneurship in Africa. This study shows that the financial development relies on the effectiveness of regulatory environment to extend loan and other financial services to new firm entrants. In addition, the results of this study reveal that the assumption of linearity in the nexus between finance and entrepreneurship is not tenable for the case of Africa. Therefore, policymakers should keep on developing African financial system to accelerate the pace of entrepreneurship development.