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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between rural banks’ efficiency and their lending provision for micro and small businesses (MSBs) in West Java Indonesia. Rural banks are special banks that are generally located in the district and sub-district areas and they are very involved in providing loans to MSBs.

The study includes 212 rural banks in various districts in West Java province over the 2012–2016 period. Data envelopment analysis is employed to obtain banks’ technical efficiency and panel data analysis is used to reveal the impact of rural banks’ efficiency on their loan provision to MSBs.

The findings reveal that technical efficiency of the rural banks has a significant positive impact on their loan provision to MSBs in West Java Indonesia. These results have underscored the importance of rural banks in maintaining and increasing their bank efficiency levels to enhance their capacity in providing loans to MSBs.

The results of this study have brought some implications for practitioners (rural bank management) to maintain and improve their efficiency in order to expand their capacity to lend to MSBs. The roles of Otoritas Jasa Keuangan or the Indonesia Financial Services Authority in monitoring the efficiency of rural banks and overseeing the provision of their loans to MSBs are also very necessary in ensuring good performance of rural banks in terms of both aspects, respectively.

This study highlights the importance of rural banks in providing loans to MSB segments. The contribution of rural banks in stimulating the development of MSBs is believed to be able to produce positive social implications in terms of empowering the economic and social life of MSBs in their local communities.

The study fills the literature gap by revealing a significant relationship between bank efficiency and loan provision for MSBs in the context of rural banks.

The banking sector in West Asia has always experienced positive growth except for Palestine. Apart from some negligible outlying outcomes in some countries that have faced political crises and war, most West Asian countries have gained bank profitability and efficiency. However, the stability in the banking sector has been rarely examined in the literature. Hence, this study sheds light on examining bank stability by considering 12 countries in West Asia.

A fixed effect panel data regression analysis is employed on strongly balanced panel data using data from 2004 to 2018.

Results reveal that the net interest margin has a positive relationship with bank stability. The bank’s stability rises as the net interest margin improves. Furthermore, the non-interest income reveals a positive significant impact on the stability of banks, depicting that the increase in non-interest income increases the stability of banks. Additionally, the non-interest expense also reveals positive significant results with the stability of banks. Nevertheless, leverage ratio and long-term debt portray a negative significant impact on banks’ stability. The finding reveals that higher long-term debt and leverage ratios may decrease the stability of the banks in West Asia.

Overall, the authors’ findings add to the literature on the stability of the banks by providing some new but significant information. Some of the recommendations may be beneficial to the long-term success of 12 Western Asian countries’ banks.

The study examines the stability of banks by incorporating both profitability and operating efficiency along with net-interest income, which extends to the current literature’s insight.

The development of organised crime in today's Russia is, first of all, a study of its powers. These powers are not a fixed form of dominion but a constantly shifting, dynamic series of elements used and manipulated in ways ranging from the most primitive physical intimidation and force to the most subtle and sophisticated methods. It is becoming more obvious that of all elements of organised crime powers the greatest threat now and for the future comes from the immense financial resources available to organised crime in Russia. This paper focuses primarily on the problem of integration of criminally accumulated capital which is coming from the Russian Federation into West European markets. The author poses an objective to identify the problem and the factors which facilitate and inhibit the infiltration of organised crime from Russia into Western Europe, indicating possible implications and trends. In particular attention is given to the problem of the so‐called illegal flight of capital, which goes mainly to Western Europe. Furthermore, for the creation and recycling of their financial resources organised crime has to use the conventional banking system inside and outside of Russia, in particular Western Europe, as well as other methods. Therefore, the problem of organised crime in Russia's banking industry and its internationalisation into the European financial services industry have been explored.

Drawing on the theories of social identity and realistic conflict theory, the purpose of this study is to enrich the literature by proposing and testing a model conceptualizing the relationships between animosity, an antecedent (tourists’ perception of a heritage site) and demand variables (e.g. length of stay).

Data collected for the study is based on a combination of qualitative (20 interviews) and quantitative research (n = 330) methods.

The study demonstrates that animosity should be integrated into tourism research. The study provides relevant insights indicating that animosity harbored toward locals is crucial to the understanding of tourists’ behavior.

The study provides relevant insights indicating that animosity harbored toward locals is crucial to the understanding of tourists’ behavior.

Managerial implications for those entrusted with the promotion of tourism and site management are suggested in areas at the heart of a conflict.

The study of animosity challenges the common view in heritage tourism which focus on positive emotions harbored by tourists. In the present study, the authors focus on the consequences of negative emotions.

摘要

采用社会认同和现实冲突等理论来尝试充实文献, 具体做法为：提出并测试模型以确立憎恶、先行条件（游客对遗产地的感知）、需求变量（例如停留时间）之间的关系。

结合定性（20次访谈）和定量（n = 330）两种研究方法, 为本项研究收集数据。

研究表明：应将憎恶纳入旅游业研究中。本次研究提供的相关见解表明：游客对当地人怀有的敌意, 对于理解游客行为至关重要。

遗产旅游业的普遍观点侧重于研究游客所怀有的积极情绪, 对其敌意情感的研究对这一普遍观点提出了挑战。在本项研究中, 我们侧重于负面情绪产生的后果。

憎恶、遗产地、西岸、行为意图、犹太定居者、巴勒斯坦人

研究论文

Basándonos en las teorías de la identidad social y la teoría realista del conflicto, intentamos enriquecer la literatura proponiendo y probando un modelo que conceptualice las relaciones entre la animosidad, un antecedente (percepción que tienen los turistas de un sitio patrimonial) y las variables de demanda (por ejemplo, la duración de la estadía).

Los datos recopilados para el estudio se basan en una combinación de métodos de investigación cualitativa (20 entrevistas) y cuantitativa (n = 330).

El estudio demuestra que la animosidad debe integrarse en la investigación turística. El estudio proporciona información relevante que indica que la animosidad contra los lugareños es crucial para comprender el comportamiento de los turistas.

El estudio de la animosidad desafía la visión común en el turismo patrimonial que se enfoca en las emociones positivas que albergan los turistas. En este estudio nos centramos en las consecuencias de las emociones negativas.

Animosidad, sitios patrimoniales, cisjordania, intenciones de comportamiento, colonos judíos, palestinos.

Trabajo de investigación

This study investigated the influence of institutional environment on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) accounting practices of banks in West Africa. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the size of an economy and the governance structure of a country is relevant for ESG accounting practice.

The study applied content analysis on 602 annual reports of 67 banks in 5 countries in West Africa. A generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation technique was used for the regression analysis.

The evidence showed that GDP has a positive and insignificant relationship with ESG reporting, suggesting that the size of an economy is not relevant for ESG accounting. The study further found that Corruption Perception Index has a positive and significant relationship with ESG accounting. This result implies that a country’s political environment is germane for ESG accounting. Firm-specific factors, such as firms’ size, value and age have positive and significant relationships with ESG accounting while net profit margin and leverage have negative relationships with ESG accounting. The study concludes that a country’s institutional environment influences the ESG accounting practices of its firms.

The governments of countries in West Africa must lay an enabling political and economic foundation to improve the accounting practices of firms, which is a critical factor for attracting investments.

The study contributes to the ESG accounting literature in developing countries which is found to be scarce.

Arafat and Rabin's famous handshake opened a new stage in the Middle East peace talks. Recent delays in the process have centered more around economic than political issues. Two main controversies revolve around means for distributing aid funds and the development of viable financial networks in the Israeli Occupied Territories. These agenda are reviewed from the viewpoint of promoting U.S. trade interests in the region. Islamic banks, if they are granted licenses by the Israeli government, may provide an effective means for distributing funds, while at the same time promoting U.S.‐Arab mercantile trade.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the factors that attract (pull) or discourage (push) Palestinian students from Israel (PSI) to study at a Palestinian university, the Arab American University in Jenin (AAUJ), for the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948.

A qualitative research method using in-depth interviews with 15 PSI who study at AAUJ attempts to define the motivations behind PSI preferring AAUJ, on one hand, and constraints, on the other hand.

The findings of the study show factors that attract PSI to study at the AAUJ and what subjects they choose to study there, the encounter with a similar culture and nationalism in a Palestinian campus in the occupied West Bank; the most significant difficulties and impediments they face there, whether economic or political, are discussed. This paper contributes to an understanding of the new national re-encounter between two Palestinian groups in a university campus, one under Israel’s occupation and the other that has Israeli citizenship.

It is a unique phenomenon in the trends of international students’ mobility in the world.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the motivations underpinning the foreign direct investment (FDI) activities, including the location and entry mode decisions, of nascent multinational enterprises (MNEs) from West Africa.

This research adopted a case study approach entailing the triangulation of interview data with documentary evidence on two leading West African financial service companies that have FDI footprints in over 50 country markets.

Evidence suggests the primacy of market-seeking motivations in explaining the FDI activities of the explored nascent MNEs, with relationship, efficiency and mission-driven motivations emerging as strong sub-themes. Having neither the global resonance of their traditional counterparts nor the government-augmented resource profile of their Asian counterparts, the study firms appear to have shied away from costly strategic asset and prestige-seeking FDI, and preferred psychically and institutionally proximate sub-Saharan African markets and non-organic collaborative entry modes.

The above insights should be considered tentative given the study’s limited evidence base. This underscores the need for a larger scale empirical effort to assess the propositional inventory outlined at the end of this paper.

Africa’s growing population of MNEs are urged to continue to strengthen their positions across African markets, view these regional markets as a platform to learn and upgrade their capabilities for future expansion into more challenging global markets, and to augment their limited resource profiles, including by tapping into their global diaspora networks. Policy makers should support their market-seeking initiatives given evidence that they could be a pathway to higher order FDI motivations. This evolutionary approach reflects enduring lessons from earlier generations of MNEs. Policy makers should also support continuing intra-African investment flows as a pathway to creating more sizeable, integrated African markets and generating positive spill-overs, including in typically blind-sided post-conflict or fragile African markets. This also entails pushing for cross-border regulation needed to minimise the transfer of systemic risks across countries.

The study provides rare empirical evidence on hitherto neglected MNEs from sub-Saharan Africa, thus extending the geographic compass of research on FDI motivations. It identifies some distinctive aspects of the explored MNEs’ FDI behaviour, including the previously unheralded mission-driven motivation, whilst also revealing shared characteristics with traditional MNEs and emerging market multinational enterprisess.

The main objective of this paper is to identify the factors that have the potential to cause a contractor's business failure in the West Bank in Palestine and to determine their impact level from the contractor's viewpoint.

A survey of 84 contractors from the West Bank in Palestine was performed. A total of 44 factors were considered in this study and were listed under three groups, i.e. financial, managerial, and external.

Contractors have ranked the following factors as highly influential with huge potential to cause contractor's business failure: fluctuation in construction material costs; delay in collecting dibs from clients; lack of experience in contracts; low margin of profit due to competition; and closure and limitation of movement between West Bank areas.

This paper identified the factors that have the potential to cause contractor's business failure in the West Bank in Palestine and determined their impact level from the contractor's viewpoint.

This paper aims to examine the response of monetary policy to financial instability in the West African Economic and Monetary Union.

Through annual aggregated data from 1970 to 2019, the empirical strategy is based on the Markov regime-switching model with fixed probabilities.

The results revealed that the monetary policy of the central bank of the West African Economic and Monetary Union is characterized by two regimes (calm and distress) with respect to the trend of financial stability. The authors also found that the occurrence of the calm regime was likely greater than that of the distress regime. In addition, the calm regime is longer than the distress regime. The authors finally revealed that the central bank reacts to financial instability risk by increasing its short-term interest rate when financial instability reaches a threshold.

The limitation of this study is the unavailability of monthly or quarterly data that are more suitable for the methodological approach adopted.

This study is the one to estimate the response of the Central Bank of West African Countries to financial stress using a novel approach based on the Markov-Switching regression.