Issue #4 (Volume 14 2017)

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, many companies have implemented extensive risk management procedures. Additionally, internal audit has increasingly attracted the attention of managers as it constitutes the core of modern corporate governance. However, regarding Greek companies, there is a lack of empirical research on factors that affect risk management. Therefore, the purpose of the present paper is to analyze specific factors associated with effective risk management. Primary data were collected using questionnaires distributed to employees in companies that are listed on the Athens Exchange. Multiple regression analysis was conducted in order to examine the relationship between effective risk management, risk based internal audit, internal auditors’ involvement in risk management and top management support. Our findings demonstrate that the above factors contribute positively to effective risk management.

This analytical study focuses on the financing of energy efficiency projects in Ukraine. In this article, the authors analyze the state and dynamics of the modern market of energy resources both on a global scale and within Ukraine, and it was discovered that the potential of the energy efficiency market is extremely large and interesting for different groups of bank investors. In the course of the study, it was revealed that private households and industrial enterprises are the largest energy consumers in Ukraine, which confirms the necessity of implementing a public program for financing energy efficiency projects. The study of Ukraine’s legislative framework has made it possible to clearly define the concept of energy efficiency and to highlight which projects can be considered energy-efficient. It is noted that the state actively develops and implements a policy to increase energy consumption savings both among private individuals and among producing enterprises, which is implemented at the state level by a specially created Energy Efficiency Fund. As a specific tool for analyzing energy efficiency projects, the authors suggest using benchmarking technology, which provides the opportunity to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of a specific energy saving project, as compared to the top project in the industry. As a result, in the course of the conducted analytical studies, the authors proposed a specific tool for the analysis of energy efficiency financing projects in Ukraine, which includes five priority areas for which it is necessary to build a methodology for assessing the borrower’s creditworthiness, which seeks to implement a project in the field of energy saving.

The problems of mixed life insurance and insurance in the case of death are considered in the article. The actuarial present value of life insurance is found by solving a system of differential equations. The cases of both constant effective interest rates and variables, depending on the time interval, are examined. The authors used the Pontryagin maximum principle method as the most efficient one, in order to solve the problem of optimal control of the mixed life insurance value. The variable effective interest rate is considered as the control parameter. Some numerical results were given.

This study investigates the impact of political instability, macroeconomic and bank-specific factors on the profitability of Islamic banks in the context of Yemen. The study used two common measures of profitability, namely, Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) as dependent variables. Seven key independent (internal and external) variables are also used. There are five fully-fledged Islamic banks (IBs) working in Yemen. The study selected only three out of five IBs due to the availability of data for the period ranging from 2010 to 2014. The descriptive and multiple regression analyses were done. The results of the study indicate that operating efficiency and financial risk have negative and significant relationships with ROA and ROE. The findings also show that capital adequacy has a negative and insignificant relationship with ROA and ROE. Furthermore, the study reveals that assets size (LogA), assets management, liquidity and deposits have a significant and positive impact on banks’ profitability. GDP, Inflation rate (IR) and Political instability have positive and significant impact on Yemeni banks’ profitability. Based on the best knowledge of the authors, this study is considered one of the first and pioneering studies that determine the factors affecting the profitability of Islamic banks of Yemen. Therefore, the study gives good insights for the policy makers, regulators and interested parties for enhancing the profitability of Islamic banks in Yemen.

The subject of the scientific work is analysis of the essence of the “transfer pricing” concept. It has been proven that transfer pricing is an economic and legal tool used by business entities for their tax burden optimization.

It has been concluded that the concept “transfer price” means the price generated by multinational corporations in the process of commercial activity between the affiliated companies located in different countries and, correspondingly, different tax jurisdictions. In essence, transfer pricing means intra-company pricing of goods transferred between the enterprise subdivisions located in different countries. Base erosion by means of transfer pricing can be performed not only based on the price manipulating by the affiliated companies, but also as a result of manipulating incomes and expenditures. The latter is accompanied by the financial resource withdrawal outside the national economy and its concentration in the low taxation jurisdictions.

Transfer pricing bears serious risks both for an individual country and for the world economy. Contractual freedom of transnational corporations and industrial and financial groups cannot be unlimited regardless of the principle of freedom of contracts in the private law relations. Economic activity of such business entities must subject to a strict control on the part of the country. In the process of transfer pricing tax control, the controlling state agencies are intended to prevent the decrease of tax liabilities by shifting the income to low tax jurisdictions by taxpayers.

Nowadays, studying the categories of “economic sustainability”, “economic sustainability management” and the peculiarities of these concepts is especially relevant. Their use would provide an opportunity to ensure the sustainable and most effective functioning of the subject of economic relations in the current period of time, as well as to create a high potential for its development and ensuring the conditions for investing capital in the Ukrainian economy. All this determined the purpose of this study, which consists in the analysis of the theory and essence of the economic sustainability concept, the interpretation of the concept of “economic sustainability of the system” and the concept of “management of economic sustainability of the system”, distinguishing factors affecting the sustainability of the Ukrainian economic system, determining the relationship of economic sustainability with economic security, investing as well as forecasting the level of the Ukrainian economy sustainability based on the innovative modeling methods. The object of the research is to develop the theory of the “economic sustainability” concept and to determine the level of economic sustainability of the economy aimed at raising the investment climate in Ukraine. To ensure the development, security and investment attractiveness of the Ukrainian economy, an organizational structure of the management model for the sustainability of the Ukrainian economic system was developed using the developed economic and mathematical model.

The emergence of Bitcoin in 2009 has received considerable attention surrounding the validity of cryptocurrencies as a viable and, in some jurisdictions, a legal currency alternative. Despite widespread concern that these cryptocurrencies are fostering the environment within which a substantial bubble can occur, it is important to analyze whether these new assets are behaving similarly to major international currencies. This paper investigates the effects of international monetary policy changes on bitcoin returns using a GARCH (1.1) estimation model. The results indicate that monetary policy decisions based on interest rates taken by the Federal Open Market Committee in the United States significantly impact upon bitcoin returns. After controlling for international effects, we find significant evidence of volatility effects driven by United States, European Union, United Kingdom and Japanese quantitative easing announcements. These results show that, despite its nature and ideals, bitcoin seems to be subject to the same economic factors as traditional fiat currencies, and is not entirely unaffected by government policies. This result has implications for investors using bitcoin as a hedging or diversification tool. In addition, we contribute to the existing debate regarding the classification of bitcoin as an asset class, by illustrating that bitcoin volatility exhibits various reactions that bear resemblance to both currency pairs and store-of-value assets.

This research is aimed at analyzing the causality puzzle on the correlation between financial leverage and systematic risk (beta). Financial leverage and beta are usually considered as two proxies of risk derived from different domains: one ends at financial decision outcome, and the other points to market. Cross-sectionally, this result does not support the moderating-variable impact of size on the relation between financial leverage and systematic risk. On the other hand, however, the moderating-variable impact of industry and operating leverage (to some extent) on the relation between financial leverage and systematic risk were well documented. Inter-temporally, financial leverage is significantly and symmetrically related to beta, not moderated by size and operating leverage. This means that the two variables show bidirectional causality. This study contributes to the new insight that financial leverage and beta are the two variables with bidirectional causality, showing that in the long run, risks from fundamental (financial/micro-economy) and from market (macro-economy) are tightly linked to each other inter-temporally.

The need to regulate microfinance institutions (MFIs) was advocated and researched yet lacks purposeful in-depth exploring studies of the formulation process of financial monitoring policies, their implementation and accompanying challenges. Consequently, this study contributes by reviewing the specific financial policies for microfinance in Ghana and assesses factors mitigating effective implementation of such policies. It also introduces implementation theory into the MF research arena, thus shifting MF research focus.
The study revealed that policies formulated for MFIs in Ghana and elsewhere are skewed and policy implementation, monitoring and supervision found to be less effective. The results further identified inadequate support structures and large unlicensed profit-oriented informal microfinance operations in Ghana as major obstacles to efficient implementation of microfinance policies. This paper therefore recommends the creation of a semi-autonomous institution, the National Microfinance Oversight Authority, to license, regulate and supervise the informal microfinance institutions in Ghana.

Earnings management (EM) is manipulation done by management in preparing financial statement in order to gain management advantages or to increase the firm value. EM can reduce the quality of financial statements because it does not show the real earning periodical. This research aims to identify the effect of good corporate governance (GCG) (institutional ownership, managerial ownership, frequency of board meetings, frequency of audit committee (AC) meetings), firm size, and leverage on the EM. Population comprises the companies in LQ 45 index of Iindonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) for the period 2010–2014. Samples of the research were taken using purposive sampling method, and the variables are tested using multiple linear regression analysis. The results of the research show that partially, only leverage has significant effect on EM, while institutional ownership, managerial ownership, frequency of board meeting, frequency of AC meetings, and firm size have no significant effect on EM, but all of the variables have simultaneously significant effect on EM. Limitations of the research are the only used 6 independent variables and 21 companies as samples of the research.

This paper examines the effect of tax policy on housing prices in Vietnam for the period from October 2004 to September 2016 using event study approach. The authors find that all five key changes made to the personal income tax, corporate income tax and non-farm land use tax have caused the housing prices to decline on average 6-11% during the event window, but only the impact of the personal income tax changes is statistically significant. The fact that changes in housing prices are mostly seen prior to the effective date of the tax policy change implies that tax policy change indeed has influenced the housing prices in Vietnam. Although this research has not examined the mechanism through which tax policy has influenced the housing prices, the findings offer some implications for the government in terms of using tax policy for controlling housing prices in Vietnam. The research is also of very few papers in this literature that use the event study approach.

This study developed a new ambiguity measure using the bid-ask spread. The results suggest that the degree of ambiguity has an impact on the daily UK stock market returns, but ambiguity does not cause changes in the returns. This implies that UK stock prices or returns cannot be predicted using variation in the degree of ambiguity through linear models, such as the VAR model, which was used in the study. The two sets of results in the study show that the degree of ambiguity from the previous two days might affect stock market returns. The authors observe that an increase in the degree of ambiguity two days ago is associated with a positive premium required by the investors. On the other hand, the degree of ambiguity tends to be affected by its past five-day values. Thus, the degree of ambiguity seems to persist for five days until investors update their priors. The intuition behind the result is that the degree of ambiguity can affect the returns of the UK stock market and UK stock market returns can in turn have an impact on the degree of ambiguity. The authors also observe that the degree of ambiguity does not seem to predict stock market returns in the UK when one applies linear models. However, this does not mean that there is no non-linear relationship between the degree of ambiguity and stock market returns or stock returns.

The present paper develops a general production function framework, augmented with two institutional variables namely bureaucracy and corruption on 28 transition economies over the period 2000-2015. The authors use various econometric specifications and apply both the Fixed Effects, as well as the advanced system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) panel data techniques. Empirical findings suggest that the impact of openness in terms of foreign direct investment and international trade is advantageous to all the economies of the panel. Furthermore, the findings indicate that classical growth determinants, such as labor and physical capital, have the expected positive contribution, while macroeconomic instability has a negative effect on real economic activity. Regarding the impact of the two institutional variables, corruption, and bureaucracy, the authors retrieve more influential results, as their impact appears to be diametrically opposite between the former Soviet Union states and the rest of European transition economics.

The development of public-private partnership in Ukraine in recent years has become very important as an instrument of anti-crisis orientation. The real economic situation objectively creates the preconditions for more effective use of this mechanism and institutes of public-private partnerships in order to ensure sustainable economic development, obtain new ones and improve the quality of public services provided to the population.
The objective of the research is to identify the components of project finance risk management and to provide justification of effective and balanced sharing of risks between public and private partners as the prerequisite and the main principle of effective implementation of public-private partnership.
The authors used the following research methods: systemic approach, theoretical and empirical methods of scientific knowledge.
This paper examines types of investment project financing by banks based on public-private partnership. It defines the structure of public-private partnership according to sources of capital investment in the project vehicle. The paper identifies components of the risk management process in project finance. It proves that a balanced distribution of risks between the private and public partners is the key requirement and the primary principle of effective public-private partnership. In this way, the need for mobilization of additional financial resources for implementation of investment projects calls for extended cooperation of state agencies and banks as a part of the effort of economic crisis management.

This study aims to examine the impact of product involvement, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control on investment intentions of individual investors in Pakistan. The data were collected from 548 individual investors in Pakistan using systematic random sampling. The data analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results of the analysis showed that product involvement and subjective norm have a significant impact on investment intention of individual investors in Pakistan. On the other hand, the perceived behavioral control appears as insignificant in influencing the investment intentions of individual investors. The results of the analysis can be helpful for the investment advisors in efforts to increase the level of involvement. They need to develop and promote customized investment portfolios for their customers that suit their risk profile, investment objectives and financial constraints.

Financial strength ratings (FSRs) have become more significant particularly since the recent financial crisis of 2007–2009 where rating agencies failed to forecast defaults and the downgrade of some banks. The aim of this paper is to predict Capital Intelligence banks’ financial strength ratings (FSRs) group membership using machine learning and conventional techniques. Here the authors use five different statistical techniques, namely CHAID, CART, multilayer-perceptron neural networks, discriminant analysis and logistic regression. They also use three different evaluation criteria namely average correct classification rate, misclassification cost and gains charts. The data are collected from Bankscope database for the Middle Eastern commercial banks by reference to the first decade of the 21st century. The findings show that when predicting bank FSRs during the period 2007–2009, discriminant analysis is surprisingly superior to all other techniques used in this paper. When only machine learning techniques are used, CHAID outperform other techniques. In addition, the findings highlight that when a random sample is used to predict bank FSRs, CART outperform all other techniques. The evaluation criteria have confirmed the findings and both CART and discriminant analysis are superior to other techniques in predicting bank FSRs. This has implications for Middle Eastern banks, as the authors would suggest that improving their bank FSR can improve their presence in the market.