Issue #4 (Volume 23 2026)

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
The cost of sending remittances remains above the 3% target of Sustainable Development Goal 10.c.1 even as digital technologies reshape cross-border payments. This study asks which dimension of the digital transformation of remittance markets is associated with lower costs and whether the association survives provider identity. Using the World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide database (202,851 quotations, 372 corridors, 2016–2025), the study estimates fixed-effects models at the quotation and corridor-year levels with corridor × quarter and provider fixed effects. Three findings emerge. At the market level, corridors shifting toward instant settlement record lower costs (b = −1.12 percentage points, so a 10-point higher instant share corresponds to about 0.11 points), an association that runs through incumbent cash prices, survives stable provider sets, and is concentrated after 2022. At the quotation level, the instant discount (−0.44) reflects provider composition. Money transfer operators supply 94% of instant quotations at half the mean price of banks; within providers, speed carries a premium that eroded from 1.5 points in 2016 to −0.9 in 2025. What providers price lower is digital delivery (−0.9); mobile money is cheapest throughout (−2.85). The discount holds across developing destinations and reverses in high-income ones. Ukraine, Armenia, and Kazakhstan illustrate these margins at different adoption stages, where each point saved supports household resilience, economic security, and human capital. The results support faster end-to-end settlement, complemented by provider presence in low-income corridors, as the margins associated with lower remittance costs.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
This study examines the effectiveness and consistency of overnight momentum strategies in the Indonesian stock market using cross-sectional, time-series, and dual momentum approaches. The analysis employs intraday stock price data covering 112 firms and 546 trading days from July 2021 to September 2023. Abnormal returns are evaluated using the Fama-French five-factor model to assess whether strategy performance can be explained by systematic risk exposures. The empirical results show that during the close-open interval, all three overnight momentum strategies generate negative and statistically significant alphas, indicating short-term return reversal rather than momentum continuation. When the holding horizon is extended, the reversal pattern remains relatively persistent for the cross-sectional and time-series strategies, whereas the dual momentum strategy exhibits weaker statistical significance, suggesting reduced stability of the combined signal over longer holding periods. Additional robustness tests based on trading days confirm that the reversal pattern is observed throughout the trading week, with the strongest consistency identified in the time-series framework. These findings differ from evidence reported in several developed markets that document positive overnight momentum and instead suggest that overnight return dynamics in Indonesia may reflect temporary price adjustments occurring between market close and the subsequent market opening. From a theoretical perspective, the results provide additional evidence that short-horizon return behavior may not be fully captured by conventional risk factors and highlight the relevance of behavioral and market microstructure considerations in explaining overnight return patterns in emerging markets.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
College students’ financial decisions can significantly impact their future, making financial literacy essential. This study evaluates the financial literacy of college students at Benguet State University, Philippines, focusing on its three dimensions, namely financial behavior, financial attitude, and financial knowledge. It also analyzes the relationships among these dimensions and investigates whether financial literacy levels differ based on selected demographic and financial profile variables. Using a descriptive-comparative and explanatory design, data were collected through a survey questionnaire administered to 464 college students selected through stratified random sampling. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Welch’s t-test, ANOVA, Tukey-Kramer post hoc tests, and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings revealed that students had a moderate level of overall financial literacy. They demonstrated positive financial attitudes and frequently practiced sound financial behaviors, but their financial knowledge remained limited. No significant differences were found across demographic variables, while debt status and weekly allowance produced significant differences in selected financial literacy dimensions. The study concludes that students’ financial behavior is influenced more strongly by their financial attitudes and financial circumstances than by objective financial knowledge. The results show that weekly allowance predicts financial attitude and financial knowledge, while debt negatively affects financial attitude. Financial attitude emerged as the strongest predictor of financial behavior, suggesting that financial literacy interventions should go beyond knowledge-building and address students’ attitudes, habits, motivations, and financial realities.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
In bank-based emerging economies, firms’ financing decisions are closely linked to bank credit conditions and government interventions intended to reduce borrowing costs. Interest rate subsidies may ease access to external finance, yet borrowing responses need not be uniform when firms differ in their financing conditions. This study examines changes in corporate financial leverage during the implementation of Vietnam’s 2022 Interest Rate Subsidy Program and whether these changes vary with firm size. The analysis draws on 1,160 firm-year observations from non-financial firms listed on the Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi stock exchanges between 2016 and 2024. A two-way fixed-effects model with firm-clustered robust standard errors is used, alongside supplementary analyses. The main estimates show that, for a firm of average size, financial leverage was lower in 2022 than in the reference year of 2016. The decline was greater among larger firms, indicating that leverage adjustments differed by firm size. Profitability is negatively associated with leverage, whereas firm size is positively associated with it. The supplementary analyses are consistent with the negative direction of the main association but provide less consistent evidence of size-related differences. These results suggest that lower borrowing costs alone may not be sufficient to increase firms’ use of debt when credit demand and business conditions remain weak. The study adds firm-level evidence on financing behavior during a credit-support intervention in a bank-based emerging economy, although the findings reflect changes during the policy period rather than the standalone effect of the subsidy program.

Acknowledgments
The authors thank Vietstock for providing the financial data used in this study. The authors are solely responsible for the analysis and conclusions presented in this paper.

Type of article: Research Article

Abstract
This study aims to investigate the determinants of audit delay among real estate and property companies listed on ASEAN stock exchanges during the 2020–2025 period. Although the timely issuance of financial reports is important for attracting investor confidence and helping firm transparency, prior empirical evidence on the determinants of audit delay in the ASEAN context remains inconclusive. Drawing on Agency Theory, Signaling Theory, and Institutional Theory, this study examines whether audit fees, profitability, audit tenure, audit opinion, audit committee expertise, auditor reputation, and firm size influence the existence of audit delay.
This study uses panel data from Refinitiv Eikon and company annual reports, including 254 companies and 1,524 company-year observations. A Random-Effects Logistic Regression model, which accounts for the panel data structure and unobserved heterogeneity across companies, is used for hypothesis testing because the dependent variable is dichotomous.
The findings conclude that while profitability, audit tenure, and audit committee skill do not significantly influence audit delay, audit fees, audit opinions, auditor reputation, or firm size do. These results suggest that audit-process variables are more important in predicting audit timeliness than corporate governance procedures or performance characteristics.
By providing cross-national empirical data from the ASEAN region, this study contributes to the expanding literature on audit delays. Additionally, by enhancing audit quality and implementing more efficient financial reporting procedures, the findings provide regulators and industry professionals with useful recommendations to improve financial reporting timeliness.

Acknowledgment
The authors gratefully recognise the financial assistance provided by the Institute for Research and Community Service (LPPM), Universitas Andalas, under the Flagship Research Scheme (PUJK), Batch I, through Contract No. 295/UN16.19/PT.01.03/PTM/2024. The authors also express their sincere appreciation to the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Andalas, for the institutional funding and accommodations that supported the successful completion of this study.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Housing affordability and mortgage-market development remain important challenges in Central Asia, where long-term housing finance is constrained by differences in financial-system development, borrowing costs, household incomes, and institutional capacity. This study examines the relationship between international housing-finance interventions and mortgage-market development in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and the Kyrgyz Republic over 2020–2025. Using 18 country-year observations, the analysis combines the Mortgage-to-GDP ratio and outstanding mortgage portfolios with two indicators of international financial activity: IFI Finance and IFI Projects. Real interest rates, inflation, and real GDP growth are included as macro-financial controls, while Price-to-Income and Mortgage Burden provide supplementary measures of housing affordability. The empirical analysis employs descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, pooled OLS regressions with lagged and contemporaneous IFI variables, diagnostic tests, and HC3 heteroskedasticity-consistent inference. The results do not provide stable evidence of a significant association between IFI-supported activity and Mortgage-to-GDP. Lagged IFI Projects are significant only in one specification and lose significance under HC3 estimation, while neither contemporaneous IFI variable is significant. In contrast, real interest rates show more consistent positive associations with mortgage-market depth, while the relationship with real GDP growth requires caution because GDP is the denominator of the dependent variable. Mortgage Burden is associated with Mortgage-to-GDP, whereas evidence for Price-to-Income is weaker. The findings indicate that international housing-finance interventions should be interpreted alongside domestic macro-financial and institutional conditions rather than as independent determinants of mortgage-market development.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Political information released during presidential elections may affect financial markets differently depending on both the type of market and the credibility of the information. This study examines cross-market reactions to candidate declarations and independent quick count announcements across Indonesia's five direct presidential election cycles conducted between 2004 and 2024. A cross-market event study framework is employed to estimate abnormal returns for the LQ45 Index and the IDR/USD exchange rate using a 150-trading-day estimation window, with robustness assessed through alternative event windows and complementary non-parametric tests.
The results indicate that candidate declarations are not associated with statistically significant abnormal returns in either market. By contrast, independent quick count announcements are associated with a statistically significant positive abnormal return in the stock market on the announcement day, whereas the foreign exchange market exhibits comparatively weaker and less robust responses. Although exchange rate movements are directionally consistent with Rupiah appreciation following quick count announcements, the evidence is not consistently statistically significant across alternative inference procedures.
Overall, the findings suggest that political information is incorporated differently across financial markets and that the informational credibility of political announcements contributes to differences in short-term market reactions. The study contributes to the political finance literature by providing cross-market evidence from an emerging democratic economy while recognizing that the findings are based on five presidential election cycles and should therefore be interpreted with appropriate caution.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Ownership concentration (OC) remains a subject of debate in emerging markets, particularly under heterogeneous institutional conditions and firm characteristics. This study examines how ownership concentration affects firm performance (FP) in Vietnam, while also analyzing the roles of firm size and subnational institutional quality in shaping this relationship. Using a balanced panel dataset of 425 non-financial listed companies over the period 2015–2024, the analysis applies the two-step system GMM approach to mitigate potential endogeneity concerns, with institutional quality proxied by the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI). The findings indicate that ownership concentration exerts a positive and economically meaningful effect on firm performance. This effect is substantially strengthened by both firm size and institutional quality, indicating pronounced heterogeneity across firms and regions. Specifically, the performance-enhancing role of ownership concentration is more evident in larger firms and in provinces with stronger institutional environments. In addition, the three-way interaction among ownership concentration, firm size, and institutional quality is significant, suggesting that these factors jointly reinforce the effectiveness of ownership concentration. The findings show that the performance implications of ownership concentration are shaped by the interaction between local institutional conditions and firm-specific factors.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
This study examines how realized annual price dispersion and trading activity co-moved with 2025 price returns in the cross-section of Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) equities. The official yearly sector bulletin contains 160 valid securities; transparent activity and data-validity filters yield a 142-stock baseline sample. Cross-sectional OLS models use HC3 standard errors and are complemented by broad-sector controls, outlier-resistant estimation, alternative range scaling, sample sensitivity, signed range decomposition, and a manual corporate-action audit of extreme observations. The annual high-low range is strongly positively associated with same-year price return: its baseline coefficient is 0.883 (HC3 SE = 0.075). Scaling the range by average price leaves the coefficient positive but reduces R2 from .729 to .307. Decomposing the previous-close-scaled range produces an upside coefficient of 0.806 (SE = 0.071) and a downside coefficient of –0.630 (0.187), with equality strongly rejected (Wald χ2 = 72.61, p < .001). The extreme-observation audit identifies official 2025 capital reductions for PHNX, OFTC, NAQL, and DAFI. Excluding these four securities leaves the unsigned range coefficient positive at 0.850 (0.082; N = 138); the signed coefficients remain 0.792 (0.062) and –0.653 (0.186), respectively. Because return and range are constructed from the same annual price path, these results document robust contemporaneous directional co-movement rather than an ex-ante risk premium, causal liquidity effect, or forecasting relation.

Acknowledgments
The author thanks the Amman Stock Exchange for making public yearly trading bulletins available. Any remaining errors are the responsibility of the author.