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This study analyzes the role of regional cooperative banks in identifying and financing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from a proximity perspective. Access to finance is a major challenge for SMEs. Regional cooperative banks can remove this barrier based on cooperative bank's characteristics and geographic proximity to SMEs. Understanding the interplay between these financial actors and firms can contribute to a better support of SMEs development.

The results are based on a case study of eight SMEs located in southwestern France. Interviews were conducted with two regional cooperative funds and eight SMEs. The interview guide included questions related to the company, the projects financed and how financing was accessed.

Results reveal that a combination of three forms of proximity allows regional cooperative banks and SMEs to establish effective financing operations. They show that regional cooperative banks are key players in the existing financing mechanisms for SMEs. Such financing is often used to gain access to larger players at a later stage. The findings suggest the need for public policies that promote the integration of financing actors in regional ecosystems to advance SMEs' development.

This article examines how SMEs access financing, with a focus on regional cooperative banks, which have received little attention in the literature. Moreover, the relationships between these actors are studied through the lens of proximity. Regional cooperative banks are able to finance projects that may have been overlooked by traditional banks due to trust-building local dynamics.

This paper aims to focus on the need for an enhanced anti-money laundering (AML) regulation for decentralised finance (DeFi) to protect the integrity of global financial systems against illicit activities. Research highlights the requirement for a robust regulatory strategy for the fast-paced DeFi evolvement.

This study used doctrinal legal research by analysing legislation, which involved creating use cases to illustrate different aspects of potential illicit activities via the DeFi ecosystem. Various DeFi applications were assessed for the potential regulatory responses and outcomes.

This paper offers valuable insight into the regulatory challenges presented by DeFi. This study addresses the blind spots leveraged by criminals afforded by the DeFi’s decentralised nature. This paper offers a comprehensive examination of DeFi regulatory challenges based on use-case scenarios and provides recommendations for regulators on how to address them effectively.

This paper proposes measures for regulatory authorities to minimise money laundering risks through new channels such as decentralised exchanges, non-custodial wallets and cross-chain bridges. This study concludes with the future directions for DeFi regulation and AML compliance.

This study examines the non-linear impact of financial development on income inequality and analyses the mediators through which financial development affects income inequality.

The study uses a dynamic panel threshold method with an endogeneous threshold variable on a comprehensive sample of 85 countries over the period of 1996-2015.

The author finds that financial development activities increase income inequality in developed countries. However, financial development promotes income equality in developing countries. Further, the study finds that education and institutional quality are the channels through which financial development has non-linear impacts on income inequality.

The study explores relatively new method to examine the nonlinear impact of financial development and also considers new dataset for the main explanatory variable.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of financial development on the economic growth of jurisdictions with systemically important Islamic finance.

The authors use several estimation methods. The primary analysis is based on the LSDVC method using a sample of 23 countries covering the period of 2000–2019.

The findings suggest that the financial sector may not be a significant factor in determining economic growth, or that it may decrease it depending on the proxy used. These results are in line with recent studies and robust across different estimation specifications and methods used.

Finance practitioners may reconsider the way they conduct their daily activities as their impact on economic growth is fading away. Similarly, policymakers should consider the role that financial development plays in economic growth alongside other factors that may influence its impact. It may be necessary to examine the moderating effects of institutional development on the relationship between finance and growth and consider the channels through which financial development can contribute to economic growth. Additionally, it would be useful to study the impact of Islamic finance on economic growth using different data sources.

Although the topic has been explored using different data sets and focusing on different samples, it has not been explored considering the impact of Islamic finance development on economic growth. Given the global appeal of the Islamic finance industry, it is worth investigating its significance for economic growth.

This study aims to investigate a startup accelerator’s decisions toward exerting effort in an information acquisition process and selecting an information disclosure strategy. In particular, the authors are interested in examining which factors may cause the accelerator to report more or less accurate information, which will subsequently affect the investment decision and the outcome of the ventures. This study examines the impact of the equity share taken by the accelerator on the effort level being exerted in the information acquisition process, as well as the accelerator’s decision on the information disclosure regime.

The authors use mathematical models built upon well-established theoretical and practical concepts to analyze the research problems and derive the findings.

The authors show that when the accelerator takes a sufficiently large equity share from the entrepreneur in exchange for admitting the entrepreneur’s venture into the acceleration program, the accelerator is motivated to exert a significant level of effort to observe an accurate signal for the quality of the venture, and then disclose the information about the venture’s quality consistently with the observed signal (informative disclosure regime). On the other hand, if the accelerator takes a small equity share, it is optimal for her to exert no effort in the information acquisition process and simply adopt the basic disclosure regime, where the accelerator reports the quality of the venture based solely on the ex ante expected payoff of the venture, regardless of the observed signal.

The results indicate that an equity sharing scheme, which awards a sufficient amount of equity to the accelerator, can be an effective tool to help obtain accurate information about the quality of a startup venture and make a well-informed investment decision.

This research illustrates that the ownership stake of the accelerator can potentially indicate the accuracy of the information about the venture provided by the accelerator to outside investors. That is, when the stake held by the accelerator is large, the investors can conjecture that the information about the venture reported by the accelerator may be highly accurate and reliable. In contrast, if the accelerator holds a small stake, then it is likely that the information provided by the accelerator may not add any value to the publicly available information. These insights can guide investors (e.g. angle investors, venture capitalists, etc.) in making well-informed startup investment decisions.

This paper examines the impact of sharia-compliant debt financing on stock price crash risk. Unlike those previous studies that took Sukuk or sharia-compliant firms, this study tests the impact of the proportion reported sharia-compliant debt financing in the balance sheet on the risk of price crash of a firm.

Using the data from 2,752 firm-year observations of 344 Malaysian non-financial listed companies from 2012 to 2019, this article used a robust panel data estimation technique for statistical inferences. This study also employs panel GMM and quantile least squares as the robustness check.

This study established a negative relationship between sharia-compliant debt financing and stock price crash risk. The robustness checks with different estimation techniques confirm the results. It implies that firms with a more significant proportion of Sharia-compliant financing tend to have lower future stock price crash risk.

Consistent with the Islamic finance literature, the present study contributes to the existing literature on Islamic capital markets from the perspective of stock price crash risk because it is vital for risk management and investment decision-making as a measure of tail risk for stocks. The findings of this research will assist investors in developing portfolio strategies that incorporate firms with higher levels of sharia-compliant debt financing in their balance sheets. Additionally, the results of this study suggest that policymakers and regulatory bodies should consider revising their monitoring approaches for publicly listed firms.

This study is interesting and unique, as it is a pioneer in testing the impact of sharia-compliant debt financing on reducing stock price crash risk.

The price clustering behavior is becoming a core part of the market efficiency theory especially with the development of trading strategies and the occurrence of major and unprecedented shocks which have led to severe inquiry regarding asset price dynamics and their distribution. However, research on emerging stock market is scant. The study contributes to the literature on price clustering by investigating an active emerging stock market, the Muscat stock market one of the Arabian Gulf Markets.

This research adopts the artificial intelligence technique and other statistical estimation procedure in understanding the price clustering patterns in Muscat stock market and their main determinants.

The findings reveal that stock prices are marked by clustering behavior as commonly highlighted in the previous studies. However, we found strong evidence of price preferences to cluster on numbers closer to zero than to one. We also show that the nature of firm’s activity matters for price clustering behavior. In addition, firms with traded bonds in Oman market experienced a substantial less stock price clustering than other firms. Clustered stock prices are more likely to have higher prices and higher volatility of price. Finally, clustering raised when the market became highly uncertain during the Covid-19 crisis especially for the financial firms.

This study provides novel results on price clustering literature especially for an active emerging market and during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of industry specialization of audit partners and audit committee members on the level of tax avoidance in Australian banks.

This study uses a multivariate regression analysis based on hand-collected data consisting of 180 observations from Australian domestic banks between 2010 and 2018.

The primary results of the empirical analysis indicate that audit partner industry specialization is negatively associated with the level of tax avoidance in Australian banks. Regarding the audit committee, the proportion of industry specialists among audit committee members reduces the magnitude of tax avoidance. These results are robust, as they hold the same for alternative measures of tax avoidance and industry specialization of audit partner and audit committee members. Results from supplementary analysis reveal that the interactive effect of both audit firm and audit partner industry specialization strengthens the auditors’ effectiveness in reducing the level of tax avoidance.

As this study highlights the importance of the industry specialization in decreasing tax avoidance, it can be beneficial for policymakers to assess the impact of good governance on the level of tax avoidance in the banking industry.

Even though the existing studies examine the link between the governance actors’ industry specialization and tax avoidance in nonfinancial firms, this paper explores the banking industry that differs from nonfinancial firms in among others; accounting and fiscal regulations. This study further provides unique evidence indicating that industry specialization of the audit partner constitutes a significant determinant of minimizing the bank’s level of tax avoidance.

In this paper, the authors study the phenomenon of price clustering in the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), a market viewed as one of the best-performing stock markets in the world during 2014–2017. The authors study the effect of stock-level variables on price clustering and analyze the determinants of the cross-sectional patterns of price clustering in the PSX, in particular the causal link between price clustering and political instability.

The authors' dataset comprises daily observations on 100 PSX stocks spanning from January 1, 2009 to June 30, 2019. The authors use multivariate regression and spectral analysis to shed light on the dynamics of stock price clustering in PSX.

The authors document abnormally high levels of stock price clustering, particularly on integer increments, in PSX. The nature of stock price clustering in PSX is consistent with the negotiation hypothesis of Harris (1991). The levels of stock price clustering on PSX are persistent and contain a cyclical component. Furthermore, the authors find that political uncertainty in Pakistan is a significant contributor to the high levels of price clustering on PSX. The authors' conclusions are robust to alternative econometric specifications and different measures of price clustering and political uncertainty.

The authors' findings are of interest to investors and policymakers. Since price clustering decreases market quality and degrades the information content of stock prices, the authors' study shows that price efficiency in PSX has not improved despite major reforms over the last decade. One practical implication of the authors' results is that investors should be cautious while rebalancing portfolios around political events such as general elections because stock price clustering increases in the PSX during these periods. As a result, stock prices are likely to deviate from their intrinsic values.

Research on price clustering is limited to developed markets, and emerging/frontier markets have been largely overlooked. The phenomenon of price clustering in the PSX has yet to be studied, despite the relevance of the PSX for emerging/frontier market investors.