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This paper provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date (1997–2016) review of the archival empirical risk-reporting literature. The reviewed papers are classified into two principal themes: the incentives for and/or informativeness of risk reporting. Our review demonstrates areas of significant divergence in the literature specifically: mandatory versus voluntary risk reporting, manual versus automated content analysis, within-country versus cross-country variations in risk reporting, and risk reporting in financial versus non-financial firms. Our paper identifies a number of issues which require further research. In particular we draw attention to two: first, a lack of clarity and consistency around the conceptualization of risk; and second, the potential costs and benefits of standard-setters’ involvement.

The objective of this study is to analyze the framework within which microfinance institutions (MFIs) deliver their services and provide an assessment of their operations and financial management. These institutions are examined because of their current importance to a special group of consumers, primarily the poor and disenfranchised in the developing world, and of their future promise as an economic development solution. Since the objective of these institutions is somewhat unique, the manner of their assessment must also differ from that used to assess the performance of traditional financial intermediaries. In particular, assessment of MFIs must recognize their dual (bank and development instrument) status. Their efficiency, then, must be analyzed in terms of its economic (or financial) dimension as well as its social dimension. The first dimension may be examined with traditional measures, while examination of the second requires measures that reflect the MFI’s social objectives. In order to accommodate the special nature of MFIs, this study proposes the use of a Balanced Scorecard approach. It contributes to the study of financial institution performance by examining a non‐traditional group of institutions using a variety of assessment measures. The findings should be of value to those interested in the financial sector as well as those involved in public policy decision making.

A number of digital libraries have been set up in the course of various research and development activities in different parts of the world during the last few years. How do these digital libraries fair in terms of information retrieval features? This paper looks into this question by reviewing the information retrieval features of 20 digital libraries chosen from around the globe. The first part of the paper briefly describes the features of the chosen digital libraries in terms of their nature and content. The second part looks into the information retrieval features of each digital library. Unique features of some digital libraries have been indicated. Major areas of research that would improve the information retrieval features of the future digital libraries have been indicated.

This paper investigates the determinants of the capital structure of large corporations headquartered in the United States and Korea. We consider five explanatory variables: profit, company size, non‐debt tax shields, growth, and business‐risk, along with several industry indicator variables as independent variables and examine, for each country, the relationship to market value based leverage ratio. With our rigid criteria for inclusion in the study, we study the top thirteen companies (by size) in each of seven industries. The majority of our findings indicate that we can generalize to Korea what has been found for Japanese companies/industries relative to the U.S.

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is an expert‐driven system that has been applied to numerous fields but has yet to be applied to portfolio selection. This study shows how the AHP can be modeled to effectively assess barriers to cross‐border investments. It demonstrates that it is capable of effectively contributing to the selection of an optimal investment portfolio (OIP), herein a diversified portfolio composed of national markets where barriers to capital flows are least likely to adversely affect its return.

This study employs a multivariate GARCH model to investigate the relative sensitivities of the first and the second moment of bank stock return distribution to the short‐term and long‐term interest rates and their respective volatilities. Three portfolios are formed representing the money center banks, large banks, and small banks, respectively. Estimation and testing of hypotheses are carried out for each of the three portfolios separately. The sample includes daily data over the 1988‐2000 period. Several hypotheses are tested within the multivariate GARCH specification. These include the hypotheses of: (i) insensitivity of bank stock return to the changes in the short‐term and long‐term interest rates, (ii) insensitivity of bank stock returns to the changes in the volatilities of short‐term and long‐term interest rates, and (iii) insensitivity of bank stock return volatility to the changes in the short‐term and long‐term interest rate volatilities. The findings indicate that short‐term and long‐term interest rates and their volatilities do exert significant and differential impacts on the return generation process of the three bank portfolios. The magnitudes and the direction of the effect are model‐specific namely that they depend on whether the short‐term or the long‐term interest rate level is included in the mean return equation. These findings have implications on bank hedging strategies against the interest rate risk, regulatory decisions concerning risk‐based capital requirement, and investor’s choice of a portfolio mix.

The spatial design of a building affects the movement of occupants. In complex buildings with a large population, such as places of assembly, the movement of people towards the exits under emergency situations is a major concern. Ideally, people should leave the building smoothly under emergency situations. Traditionally the layout design is governed by the building fire codes. However, the building fire codes merely govern the design of the capacity of individual components, and do not guarantee that smooth egress will occur. Full‐scale egress exercises may be needed to examine the layout arrangement in order to understand the layout problem. However, such exercises may be time‐consuming, or may be impossible when the building has yet to be constructed. Therefore, the use of computer models to simulate the egress pattern can assist not only the building designer, but also the facility manager to plan the spatial arrangement as well as to manage the crowd flow during emergency situations. Discusses the use of a computer model for analysing building layout design.